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Tropes about tropes. It is easy to get this confused with a category for tropes that share some commonality or are tropes that are particularly universal. That's not what this is about. It is about how tropes come into existence, live, mutate, evolve, and die.
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Audience Reactions to tropes
- Favorite Trope: Tropes that the author or audience can't get enough of!
- Newer Than They Think: This isn't as old as most people think it is.
- Older Than They Think: This has been around far longer than you think.
- Pet-Peeve Trope: Tropes that piss off the audience.
- Trope Enjoyment Loophole: When (and perhaps why) something that's a Pet-Peeve Trope doesn't piss somebody off, or the inverse.
- Trope Telegraphing: "I know exactly what will happen next because of this trope."
Perceptions of tropes
- Spoilered Rotten: Tropes that are spoilers by default.
- Tropes Hidden from Audience: Tropes that creators usually do not want audiences to know about or recognize.
Stages of tropes' life cycles
- Characteristic Trope: Trope becomes discredited due to audience associating it with a certain show.
- Cyclic Trope: The trope alternates between being played straight and discredited.
- Dead Horse Trope: Not only is the trope discredited, but the parodies, subversions, etc. are more common and well-known than straight use ever was.
- Dead Unicorn Trope: The so-called Dead Horse Trope was never used seriously to begin with.
- Discredited Trope: A trope that no one plays straight anymore, lest they face ridicule.
- Evolving Trope: The trope evolves after a period of disuse and become relevant again.
- Forgotten Trope: A trope that no one uses at all anymore.
- Trope Breaker: Something that renders a trope useless.
- Trope Codifier: One example stands out as the template that many other examples follow.
- Trope Makers: The first unambiguous examples of tropes.
- Unbuilt Trope: Trope deconstructed before it was even constructed.
- Undead Horse Trope: The trope is constantly played with or scoffed at, but still sees enough straight use to avoid becoming a Dead Horse Trope.
- Ur-Example: The oldest known example of any given trope.
Trope presence
- Omnipresent Tropes: Tropes that are present in pretty much all fiction, usually by necessity.
- Overdosed Tropes: Tropes that are present in nearly all media, but not by necessity.
- Troperiffic: Work uses a lot of different tropes.
- Tropes in Aggregate: Meta-tropes that become apparent when looking at the whole genre or fiction in general.
Trope relationships
- Sister Trope: Tropes that share similar ideas.
- Sub-Trope: Specific variant of one trope is common enough to become its own trope.
- Super-Trope: The broader category that multiple tropes fall under.
Variations on a trope
- Averted Trope: A trope is simply not used at all in the work despite there being an opportunity for it to take place.
- Conversational Troping: Characters within a work discuss the use of a trope by a Show Within a Show.
- Deconstructed Trope: The intentional use and exploration of the trope, played far straighter than usual in order to show the trope as poorly thought out, impractical, or unrealistic.
- Defied Trope: Characters in a work realise a trope is about to happen In-Universe and take steps to try and make sure it doesn't.
- Discussed Trope: Characters within a work discuss how a trope applies to their situation.
- Double Subversion: A trope is set up, initially not executed (single subversion), and then executed in a different way than initially expected (double subversion).
- Downplayed Trope: The trope is used to a far lesser degree than typical.
- Enforced Trope: There is a specific out-of-universe reason a trope was used in a work, e.g. Executive Meddling or budget constraints.
- Exaggerated Trope: The trope is used to an extreme level.
- Exploited Trope: A Genre Savvy character, aware that a trope will occur (or is occurring), uses it to their advantage. If the trope is not yet in effect, the character who Exploits it may Invoke it in the process.
- Gender-Inverted Trope: Trope specific to one gender is used with the other in mind.
- Implied Trope: A work suggests that a trope has taken place without actually confirming it.
- Intended Audience Reaction: When an Audience Reaction is intentionally invoked by the authors or creators.
- Inverted Trope: The trope (or its elements) are reversed and then used.
- Invoked Trope: A Genre Savvy character deliberately sets up a trope to occur.
- Justified Trope: A trope has a specific In-Universe reason for its presence.
- Lampshade Hanging: The work intentionally calls attention to the use of a trope as a way of maintaining Willing Suspension of Disbelief on the part of the audience.
- Logical Extreme: The trope is taken as far as it can logically go while still fitting within the description.
- Parodied Trope: The form of the trope is twisted and used in a silly way, specifically for comic effect.
- Played for Drama: The potential serious or melodramatic elements of a trope are played up.
- Played for Horror: The potential horror elements of a trope are played up.
- Played for Laughs: The potential comedic elements of a trope are played up.
- Reconstruction: Reconstructed tropes are the new and improved Played Straight of an often deconstructed trope, reassembling the trope into something that resembles the original but addresses the original's flaws.
- Subverted Trope: A trope is set up, but then not executed.
- Tropes Are Flexible: Tropes have far more room and variation than some would think.
- Tropes Are Tools: Tropes are not bad, nor good. Just devices used to entertain.
- Zig-Zagging Trope: A trope is Played With multiple ways in the same work.
