Is this tropeworthy/Chairs?

Good Girls Avoid Abortion has some aversions that are just when characters get abortions. If there's no mention of controversy or morality or anything, then is it actually noteworthy? (Note we have Abortion Fallout Drama now as well.)

Sounds like two separate issuues. If Good Girls Avoid Abortion has aversions, per Averted Trope these can be removed. The trope is fine to me.

Swipe Your Blade Off means "a character swipes blood off their sword with a cutting motion". The scene itself sounds like chairs. If this is done post-fight, it overlaps with the more general Victory Pose.

Edited by ElRise on Mar 18th 2023 at 4:41:39 PM

I think it's for Rule of Cool purposes, but maybe it can be merged with Victory Pose.

Technically not a trope, but trivia. The one that bothers me is I Knew It!. In the early days of fandom, especially pre-internet, I think this is a perfectly valid thing to accept as a trope/trivia. But nowadays? Fandoms have gotten to be so large and interconnected that pretty much EVERY major reveal will be an I Knew It!. Because fans work together so much more now, due to the prevalence of the internet, and can more easily piece things together. And if even so much as one fan figures it out, it becomes an I Knew It!. The page more or less is just a list of all plot twists ever, at least those from works created in the post-internet era. I feel like this has run its course and no longer belongs on the wiki.

Eh, not really. I mean some plot twists can come out of nowhere and shock even the most well-prepared theorist fan/consumer of the media keeping up with the smallest detail. I don't remember much but fans are humans after all, we don't have super powers to predict everything.

How do you know that if there was no internet for the consumers to share their theories and predictions? There might be some viewers who have guessed a plot twist right from their favorite media pre-internet and we just didn't know it.

Is that true? I'm not sure myself. I think the theory has to be a popular one at least and not just a very random theory by a single consumer because that doesn't seem to be enough for the trope (all examples are "many/some/a few fans) so, again, I'm not 100% certain.

Some plot twists are somewhat more predictable than others. Also, remember that there are smart/attentive/etc. fans everywhere so figuring things out isn't always difficult. However, fans also get shocked at unexpected characters' death and other endings. A bleak and dark story having a surprisingly happy ending without prior hinting would shock anyone. I mean, fans get shocked at some endings and grow to dislike them which is why we have Audience-Alienating Ending. If the fan could tell/theorize the show would have such a specific ending (if it's a twist ending ofc) then they wouldn't have consumed the work in the first place.

Plus to nitpick, not all fan theories are about plot twists. Some fans just predict something will happen in the series. Generally I think I Knew It! should apply to theories with a sizable following before they're canon though, and IDK why it's Trivia and not YMMV.

It’s not YMMV?

Sandbox.I Knew It Wick Check for when I’m ready

EDIT: Completed the wick check. Nearly all the use was written like YMMV. Will take to the Wick Check thread for second thoughts, then queue up when I'm ready.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Mar 18th 2023 at 5:26:54 AM

I came across Voiceover Translation. This is one of those "kind of seems like a Useful Notes" older pages. The on page examples are either general or comes off as "a voice over in an Eastern European language" which is not materailly different from a typical voiceover / dubbing. Tropeworthy?

Stumbled upon Adjective Animal Alehouse while wiki-walking just now, and while it's a genuinely impressively encyclopedic collection of named inns in fantasy, I'm not entirely sure what the trope part is supposed to be. I know this is an issue with naming tropes in general (and I personally have actually complained in the past that I think we're diluting the definition of 'tropeworthiness'), but this struck me as a particularly questionable case because pretty much by definition the names don't actually mean anything.

Edited by nrjxll on Mar 19th 2023 at 5:48:41 AM

The main thing I get skimming the description is that it's an excuse to have a cute/funny/iconic logo for the bar.

It's a trope like Ruins for Ruins' Sake is (or the currently-in-TLP Jar of the Bizarre) - it's there for atmosphere. It quickly establishes "this is a bar" and sets expectations of what it's like, even if Frothy Mugs of Water is in effect or if the viewpoint never goes inside.

I've been looking at The Illegible. It's about characters with illegible handwriting. Now, there's plenty of ways illegible handwriting can be used in a tropeworthy way. Perhaps an imprisoned character is able to sneak out a handwritten note to an ally, but the ally can't read it. Perhaps it's used for a Worthless Treasure Twist, where the villain defeats the hero and discovers the journal of a legendary inventor, but can't do anything with it because it's completely illegible. Or perhaps a character's awful handwriting identifies them as a doctor. All of those could be tropeworthy, but I'm not sure a character just having illegible handwriting on its own isn't just Chairs.

It's intended to be a character quirk.

Yeah, having a bad handwriting is often noted, mocked/made jokes of, and sometimes can be a gag of and in itself.

I think it can also function as a characterization shorthand, such as that the character is in a rush or is generally sloppy and unprofessional. Though that's making me wonder if we need a general "handwriting as characterization" trope...

While I see the appeal of Most Writers Are Writers as a subtrope of Write What You Know, the examples seem to run a bit broad. Does it apply to all writers, or should the character specifically be a writer in the same medium as the work? I.E. does it count if a comedic television show has a character who is a writer of dramatic novels.

This might not be the right thread for this, but to my understanding the trope is about having main characters that are writers of any kind, under the same principle that explains why we aren't specifically about TV Tropes anymore: the skills to write creatively tend to be the same regardless of medium. Note that the bullet points in the description talk a lot about journalists and nonfiction writers. (Yes, this arguably makes Most Writers Are Writers even more of a bad snowclone than it seems.)

If you're asking here because of the idea that the trope might boil down to "character is a writer", I think the idea is a Trope in Aggregate: writers have a tendency to fall back on writing as a profession for their main character because that's what they know, even if the characters that exhibit that might not have much else in common on the surface.

Edited by MorganWick on Mar 25th 2023 at 4:26:04 AM

Yeah, that's why I was asking, but tried to refine my point as the issue might not be the definition, but the usage. I'm wondering if any instance of a character working as a writer would count. I guess if it's limited to main characters that's fine.

I've always assumed it was about protagonists or POV characters, which is even narrower.

Happy Harlequin Hat seems to just be about the hat itself. I guess the trope is trying to go for "this hat is associated with jesters/medieval times".

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 27th 2023 at 6:09:10 AM

What's the trope behind Alice and Bob? I get that they're "generic names", but outside of them being used in various Playing With/ entries and the occasional Example as a Thesis trope descriptions, are they actually tropeworthy when applied to works? "Work features characters named Alice and Bob" seems like chairs.

Edited by Adept on Mar 27th 2023 at 8:13:41 PM

The trope is supposed to be about placeholder names for hypothetical characters and not all of the examples use Alice and Bob. However, some examples do read as character who happen to be named Alice and Bob.

Which means this shouldn't apply to works outside things like a gag-per-day comics, stand-up comedies or skit shows where there's no set "characters", right? Because characters in films, TV series, etc. aren't "hypothetical".

Hm, I think that it can happen in-universe if characters are using placeholder names to explain a concept to other characters/the audience.

Now that I am more awake, I see that most of the on page examples either have insufficient context or are just Alice and Bob.