Trope Idea Sounding Board

I've been looking around for a Feather Fall/Slow Fall trope, that thing in stories where magic or technology is employed to protect people from hurting themselves in falls, or in video games where an item negates fall damage, but couldn't find it even on trope finder

So have I missed it entirely or are we really missing something that obvious? Cause I'd be happy to put it up on the launch pad

Edited by Biggby on Mar 26th 2024 at 3:14:52 AM

#8347 reminds me of School Study Media. I don't know if what is essentially "audience interpretations but in academia" is distinct enough to be noteworthy, and could end up reading as pretentious if done wrong. (This is from someone who wrote her college thesis on South Park, FWIW.) I think it's worth citing these specific essays for applicable audience reactions, though.

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 26th 2024 at 8:54:56 AM

^^ Hit the Ground Harder and Soft Water would be sub tropes. I don't think we have the base concept though.

Hit the Ground Harder lists some more broad examples of avoiding fall damage, but it seems to be misuse. That trope actually looks like a mess..I think most of the examples don't actually fit what it claims to be.

I also see a lot of aversions listed in Not the Fall That Kills You… that could probably be relocated.

Your concept seems good to go to TLP. Although "Slow falling" and "no fall damage" could probably be considered different tropes.

Edited by IronAnimation on Mar 26th 2024 at 8:24:00 AM

I have an Elegant Character Elegant Weapon sandbox but I would like help on the description and examples before I take this to the TLP.

Royal Rapier?

That's a subtrope for this badboy.

^ Combat Hand Fan would count when it overlaps with High-Class Fan, also Parasol of Pain when it overlaps with Parasol of Prettiness. Death Dealer might also count as elegant sometimes.

• Steven Universe: Future: Pink Pearl is a petite ballerina theme'd character who wields a Ribbon Wand. When she fuses with our Pearl, the ribbon Wand is upgraded, gaining a bladed tip.

• Hazbin Hotel: Camilla wears a pair of bladed Combat Stilettos made out of Angelic Steel.

Hard to think of examples because most elegant characters wield subtle weapons, rather than elegant ones (bows, daggers, poisons). Except when they are elegant via being a performer.

Edited by IronAnimation on Mar 26th 2024 at 9:27:26 AM

I was thinking more in the context of something like a Knight in Shining Armor or a Lady of War.

I don't think many other weapons are exactly "elegant", other than maybe Naginatas Are Feminine.

Good characters have shiny weapons, while villain weapons are dark and rusty, maybe related?

Spears, maybe? Daggers or bows, possibly. I guess the distinction and contrast between this and Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon would be between weapons that are clumsy or imprecise but which deal a lot of damage on contact versus ones which deal less damage per se and require skill, elegance and precision in order to maximize their use.

Or to move the contrast to firearms, a Brutish one would be something like a shotgun or a Hand Cannon whereas a sniper rifle would be more Elegant, since it requires you to be able to exactly place where the bullet goes to utilize it effectively.

Would be easier to suss out a pattern with some examples to look at. I'll try to think of something soon.

That's also an option. Savage Spiked Weapons would be part of the "villainous" half of the equation, I'd imagine.

Edited by Theriocephalus on Mar 27th 2024 at 3:33:24 AM

Not every dagger, but perhaps Chastity Dagger?

I've mildly noticed a specific kind of misuse of Doppelgänger Spin that interprets it to mean "an ability to create decoy doppelgangers" that doesn't fit the actual use of the trope, but I think could be valid. Not quite overlapping with Master of Illusion, Self-Duplication, or Me's a Crowd because it's more specifcally about decoys/traps, and not used in an "encircling" fashion like the name "Doppelgänger Spin " insists. A few examples would be like:

• Dead by Daylight: The Unknown is able to occasionally drop immobile copies of itself around the map, which can be dispelled by survivors but are targets it can instantly teleport itself to at a whim.
• League of Legends: Fiddlesticks allows it to place effigies of itself across the map. In addition to acting like wards, they fake an attack animation against enemies who see and attack them to spook them out.

If this is worthy of being a standalone trope, would "Decoy Doppelganger Drop?" work as a trope name?

I think that has potential...if I'm not mistaken, in Valorant Yoru is able to create a clone of himself that will walk for a certain distance and then vanish, as a way to draw enemy fire.

Yep, that would definitely also fit in the concept. Draft posted.

I believe this is how the Double Team move in Pokemon is depicted in the anime as well. NVM that would fit Doppelgänger Spin, misread which part was the new trope

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 29th 2024 at 6:40:07 AM

The recent launch of Merry in Minor Key reminded me of a trope I've been thinking for a long time, Sad Minor Key Variation, when a major-key musical theme is rewritten in the minor key with a more doleful and/or subdued arrangement. This is primarily a Classical Music trope originally associated with the theme and variations form, though it's not unknown for it to occur with Leitmotifs in modern-day BGM scoring. The inverse transformation, Happy Major Key Variation or Triumphal Major Key Variation, is also common.

(I realize that the nice people at Trope Repair Shop who want the wiki to be written by and for those who don't know much about music would hastily recommend that this be merged with Dark Reprise. I strongly believe it's a distinct concept, since reprises of songs usually don't flip from major to minor modes like this.)

Has been thinking of two genres of works

• Background Lore Dissonance: Jigsaw Puzzle Plot B-Plot involving a Hero of Another Story that recontextualizes the A-Plot once the full picture is considered.
• Meta Horror: The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You or Reaching Through the Fourth Wall as Big Bad's distinct superpower or motive.

Is there a trope for a character eating meat in front of an animal from whose species the meat came from. For example, cooking and eating bacon in front of a pig, or mutton in front of a sheep

Edited by Paperfly on Apr 3rd 2024 at 2:09:01 PM

^^ Background Lore Dissonance sounds really interesting if you got some examples. The second one feels covered by the mentioned tropes.

Edited by IronAnimation on Apr 3rd 2024 at 6:18:33 AM

Is it frowned upon to make more Audience Reactions? I want to make one for when a song or lyrics from a song in a work becomes a meme (whether it stays self contained within the community or not) and have some examples in mind already and didn't see any when I asked in the trope finder page but I'm new here so I'm unsure if those pages require a different approach.

Negative audience reactions are a harder sell, but if you have enough examples, you can pitch an audience reaction as much as any other trope. We have semi-recent Memetic Mutation subtropes like Play-Along Meme.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 3rd 2024 at 5:12:38 AM

Started Sandbox.Japanese Urban Legends, just need to contextualize examples to see if I'm even getting somewhere.

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 3rd 2024 at 1:14:11 PM

Paperfly: That would fall under Carnivore Confusion if the animal is anthropomorphic. If it's not, that might be worthy of a separate trope.

Edited by FSharp on Apr 3rd 2024 at 6:46:53 AM

Been thinking of a concept loosely sort of a halfway between Victory Is Boring, Stepford Suburbia, and The American Dream: a character reaching a "proper/ideal" life — usually living out of upper-middle-class suburbia with a nice house and family — but still feeling existentially discontent. I think that there's enough to make a valid draft out of it but I'm not sure what to title it, as every suggestion sounds too general or too much of a mouthful: "Suburban Existential Angst"? "Success-Driven Existentialism"? "Existential Crisis at the Dream?" Here are some examples that might illustrate the concept I'm thinking about:

• The Incredibles: The plot follows the outlawing of superheroics, with Bob/Mr. Incredible and Helen/Elastigirl being forced to retire and live normal lives in a 1960's-ish suburbia. While Helen is mostly content with this and the two raise three kids together (all of them having superpowers, but otherwise dealing mostly with usual stuff that comes from going to school and growing up), Bob slipped into a depression from being forced to work a Soul-Crushing Desk Job that actively discourages him from helping people, leading him to doing reckless acts of vigilante justice in private just for the chance at making at recapturing the rush of being a hero.
• Cheekface: "Life in a Bag" is a song about someone abandoning their artistic roots along with their friends in exchange for settling down and getting a stable job, but still feeling discontent and having trouble parsing why. The picture the lyrics paint suggests that they made a massive sacrifice of their personal integrity and sold out, and subsequently regret it as all they have to show for it is becoming a slave to the status quo.
• Talking Heads: "Once in a Lifetime" depicts the narrator at the end of what sounds to be a fulfilling life — having a nice car, a wife, and a house — only to suffer an existential breakdown upon realizing just how unfulfilled he truly feels. The lyrics depict reaching this as having been the end result of a tedious, life-long grind as per the ideal of The American Dream, always searching, but never actually admiring what he ended up getting. Upon realizing he had no actual idea of what he wanted or why he sought out having a beautiful house and beautiful wife, he can only belt out "My God, What Have I Done?"
• Radiohead: The band frequently discusses the malaise and alienation coming from the modern age, much of which comes from the lie of living a "stable" status quo that is in truth defined by rampant consumerism, political unease, and accepting decay as a fact of life. Songs like "Fake Plastic Trees" and "No Surprises" paint similar pictures of just how bleak living in the modern age can be with those truths, both featuring a coda of eventually submitting to the fakeness and depression of it all, either as a desperate grasp to cling to any potential happiness, or just out of resignation and exhaustion just to avoid suffering further.