Tropedia

  • All unique and most-recently-edited pages, images and templates from Original Tropes and The True Tropes wikis have been copied to this wiki. The two source wikis have been redirected to this wiki. Please see the FAQ on the merge for more.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Tropedia
WikEd fancyquotesQuotesBug-silkHeadscratchersIcons-mini-icon extensionPlaying WithUseful NotesMagnifierAnalysisPhoto linkImage LinksHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconic

Literal[]

Basic (non-)Trope: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. People sitting in chairs.

  • Straight: Alice sits in a chair.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Alice leads a mass chair-sitting event.
    • Alice sits on an impossibly large and ostentatious throne.
  • Downplayed: Alice takes a seat for less than a second before standing up again and continuing with her day.
  • Justified:
    • Alice is tired, and needs a brief rest.
    • Alice is a main host of furniture reviewing show.
    • Alice has a broken leg and needs a wheelchair.
  • Inverted:
    • A chair comes by and sits on Alice.
    • Alternatively, Alice sits under a chair.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice, obviously very tired, walks up to a chair... and leans on it for a moment.
    • Alice is about to sit on the chair, but at the last second Bob yanks the chair back and Alice pratfalls onto the floor.
  • Double Subverted: Then after a few seconds, she switches to sitting in it.
  • Parodied:
    • Alice is very proper about her chair-sitting stance, and spends hours on end adjusting herself to optimize the position of her posterior and back.
    • Alice sits in a chair upside-down, with her legs on the back and her back on the cushion.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Alice has a sore back after sitting on a chair for too long.
  • Reconstructed:
    • Alice takes care to select a comfortable chair to sit upon.
  • Zig Zagged:
    • Alice stares at a chair for several minutes, debating with herself over whether or not to sit in it.
    • Alice is playing Musical Chairs.
  • Averted:
    • Alice stands.
    • Alice sits on the floor rather than a nearby chair.
    • Sitting on chairs is impossible (like in most RPG Maker games).
  • Enforced:
    • The camera is pointing at the chair, and Alice can't be seen if she doesn't sit there.
    • The producer picked up a furniture catalog, decided that there must be something to this whole "sitting on chairs" thing if so many people are doing it, and ordered the writers to have Alice sit in a chair.
    • The chair is a Product Placement, probably from IKEA.
  • Implied: The chair is empty every time we see it, but we DO see the wear and tear from repeated sittings.
  • Lampshaded: "You really like sitting on this chair, Alice!"
  • Invoked: Bob arranges many chairs around Alice's house so she has a place to sit.
    • Bob asks Alice to sit.
  • Exploited: Alice's rival secretly lines her chair with superglue, so that when she sits in it she'll have a hard time standing up.
  • Defied: Charlie confiscates all the chairs from Alice's house so she can't sit down.
  • Discussed: "I think I can guess what happens next. See, there's the chair, and here comes Alice..."
  • Conversed: "Is Alice going to sit in the same chair for the whole show?"
  • Played For Laughs: Alice sits on a chair, not knowing that the chair has superglue on.
  • Played For Drama:
    • Alice sits on a chair, thinking deeply about her day.
    • Alice sits on a chair and decides the seat is too rigid for comfort. Alice chooses another chair but sinks too far into the cushion. Alice picks yet another chair that seems to be optimal. Third Time's the Charm — until the chair collapses under her inside of 30 seconds. This leads to discussions of Unfortunate Implications where Alice feels she needs to knock off 20 pounds (when she's already a size 2), and how chairs are shoddily manufactured nowadays.


Figurative[]

Basic Trope: Something inconsequential that happens all the time is called a trope.

  • Straight: Alice suggests "People Watch TV" as a trope.
  • Exaggerated: Alice makes a long list of ordinary activities, sprinkled with declarations of How Did We Miss This One?.
  • Downplayed: Alice makes a forum thread about people watching TV in works.
  • Justified: Alice is new to TV Tropes, and isn't quite sure what a trope is.
  • Inverted: Alice suggests a trope so ridiculously specific that it has practically no examples.
  • Subverted: After a back-and-forth in the YKTTW comments, it becomes obvious that Alice has a tropeable idea in mind, but worded it badly.
  • Double Subverted: After it gets launched, it gets subject to severe Trope Decay that undermines the specificity.
  • Parodied: Alice makes a humorous writeup of the "People Watch TV" 'trope' on the forum.
  • Deconstructed: Alice writes up a YKTTW for "People Watch TV" and leaves TV Tropes for a while. When she returns, she is shocked to discover that all of the responses to her post were flames by tropers fed up with a recent trend of People Sit on Chairs-type tropes popping up on YKTTW.
  • Reconstructed: Alice writes up an article for "People Watch TV," but upon realizing that it is meaningless, she puts a lot of effort into making the tone of the article match up to TV Tropes' casual, wry, snarky style, while still describing the "trope" well. The trope is indeed meaningless, but the article is so well-written and humorous that it gets launched anyways as a Just for Fun page.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice proposes "Taking Off Your Shoes At The Door" as a trope, and a flamewar breaks out over whether this is actually too common.
  • Averted: Alice restricts herself to adding examples.
  • Enforced: Alice makes a forum post asking what counts as a trope and what doesn't, and Ben chimes in with some examples.
  • Lampshaded: "I know this shows up a lot, but..."
  • Invoked: Alice is a Troll.
  • Exploited: Alice asks on Lost and Found if there's a trope about lightning during thunderstorms. Bob finds the post, heads over to YKTTW, and makes a The Same but More Specific Discretion Shot about cutting to a lightning strike right before the murderer attacks in a thunderstorm, knowing his trope will look so much better in comparison to hers.
  • Defied: "People Watch TV" gets launched to Discarded YKTTW.
  • Discussed: "A trope isn't just something that is or is not included, it has to be part of the storytelling."
  • Conversed: "I thought the essay would be an interesting analysis of the show, but I think the author was just ignorant of the culture the author was writing in — none of the stuff it called 'radical' actually was."
  • Played For Laughs: "I need to come up with an extremely important, prominent, Older Than Dirt trope that no other troper has ever realized before!" *Smash Cut to Alice writing "People Watch TV"*
  • Played For Drama: A legion of tropers whose People Sit on Chairs-type YKTTW posts were discarded finally stand up for themselves after all this time. They lanch a hostile overthrow of TV Tropes 'government', cutlist all the Tropes of Legend, and replace them all with tropes such as "Most Birds Can Fly" and "People Pay For Things With Money".

Hey, I've got an idea! Why don't we make links back to the original trope at the ends of Playing with Wiki pages a trope? It happens often enough!