All posts by Chris Lang

The title 'Creator Killer', I feel, is misleading.

Currently, it's the title for describing when a work flops so horribly it ruins a creator's career, sometimes for good. It's that flop that they can't recover from.

However, a lot of people might believe it means a Rage Against the Author sort of situation where the creator might LITERALLY be killed by their own work. Such as a story where characters travel to a world where they're only fictional and confront their creator.

Or, some people might think it refers to a work where the creator dies in the process of making the work. For example, the effort done in writing, directing, or performing in the work causes them to suffer a stroke or a heart attack or something like that.

On The True Tropes, it was renamed to Creator-Derailing Project (similar to Star-Derailing Role, where actors' careers are derailed after a certain movie or show). But with The True Tropes being merged with Tropedia due to Fandom decreeing "There can be only one", I'm afraid any work in renaming the trope will be undone.

Personally, I feel the term 'Creator Killer' is WAY too misleading to stand as the title of the trope. In the past, similar renaming has been done. 'Going Down With the Ship' now refers to situations where a captain goes down with a literal sinking ship, but back in the 2000s, it was referring to 'shipping'. Too many people thought it meant the former rather than the latter, so the 'shipping' trope was renamed 'Dying Declaration of Love' and 'Going Down With the Ship' now refers to actual sinking ships and those who stay aboard when the ship sinks. And I feel that was the correct call.

So with that in mind, I think 'Creator Killer' should be renamed. Creator-Derailing Project is just one of several alternate titles that could be used.

There are a few trope names Tropedia (and ATT Miraheze) inherited from TVT whose names have bugged me. In the first one's case, I think it's inaccurate. In the second one's case, it assumes Cerebus is a household name that EVERYONE knows.

Disney Death

This tropes equates Disney with the sort of 'You think they're dead, but it turns out they're going to be okay' thing. This trope isn't just limited to Disney. For example, it's turned up in the anime ''One Piece'' a number of times, most egregiously in the Alabasta arc with Pell after his Heroic Sacrifice.

But the thing is -- people DO die in the Disney movies, and not just the villains. Bambi's mother, Mufasa in ''The Lion King'', Ray the firefly in ''The Princess and the Frog'', and the title character in ''Old Yeller'' are all examples of Disney characters who have died who were neither villains nor minor one-scene bit players.

So the trope's name isn't entirely accurate. I've thought of 'Disney Pseudo Death' as an alternate title, but it's still largely equating Disney with 'looks like they died, but it turns out they didn't' trope. I don't know what other name would be good.

Cerebus Syndrome and its many snowclones (Reverse Cerberus Syndrome, Knight of Cerebus, Cerebus Retcon)

Some people aren't fond of the name 'Big Lipped Alligator Moment'. Me, I like the name - I use it all the time. It's catchy and it rolls off the tongue. But I can understand why some people don't like it: It requires knowledge of a 30 year old Don Bluth film that hasn't been talked about in the mainstream much for quite a while. Hence people suggesting alternate names like Non Sequitur Scene and Wacky Pointless Moment.

But ''All Dogs Go to Heaven'' might as well be a classic everyone's familiar with compared to ''Cerebus'', a comic that few outside of devoted comic fans that read stuff outside of Marvel and DC have heard of. (And let's not even go into its creator's questionable beliefs here). I think the term 'Cerebus Syndrome' originated outside of TV Tropes, but it still depends on familiarity with a work the average person on the street has never heard of.

So we need another term to describe how a lighthearted work becomes darker and more serious as it goes along, I think. I just wish I could think of good alternate trope names for Cerebus Syndrome and the other 'Cerebus' named tropes.

So what do you think? Should the names of these tropes be changed?