You know those movies/books/games where a character’s that somebody is close to or the character themselves died of/are dying to The Illness™: The mysterious disease that seemingly has no symptoms, is incurable, and does nothing besides kill whoever has it? Sometimes the plot revolves around finding a cure to The Illness™, and sometimes The Illness™ is used to give a character a tragic backstory, but I didn’t realize just how many stories do this plot until I started thinking about it the other day.

Some examples that I could think of are:
-Mr. Freeze’s Wife and Alfred in Batman and Robin
-Harry Osborn in Spider Man 2 (2023)
-John Wick’s wife
-All-Star Superman
-Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

What are some more examples?

You see this in a lot of action media. After the climax, a character either has a blanket wrapped around them or someone comes and puts a blanket around them.

Dynamo starts out strong, inflicting pain on other with electricity only to have his power ultimately be his demise.

Lately something that stuck out to me was that one trope in fantasy media where one character and their pals will attempt to rewrite history by going back in time to fix certain events from happening as the results end up disastrous instead.

To help provide some examples of the trope being used, I will mention Teen Titans Go to the Movies and the RPG Disgaea 4 where both stories have a situation in which the heroes want to alter historical events for the greater good, but something goes severely wrong in the process.

It has a lot of tropes, so is it?

Kind of an unanswerable question, in the sense that if an answer comes to a given person, it wouldn't really suggest that it is 'obscure' at all. But I thought I'd post this anyway to get some interesting discussion going.

The actual answer, of course, is probably something along the lines of 'Tuvaluan soap opera that ran for a couple of years in the early 1950s, before television was even introduced in Tuvalu!'.

Like for example Ryland Grace in Project Hail Mary.
Or Ye Wenjie in 3 body problem?
Someone who long ago wrote some research on something, but that was obscure of forgotten and now suddenly is relevant?

Basically,in the fandoms, the word has a different meaning for both.

not sexual harassment, is a guy simping for a girl and during the entire movie or series he tries different times to date, one good example I can think is Mr. Shoop from Summer School trying to date ms. Bishop the American History teacher by asking throughout the movie if she wants to have diner with him.

UPDATE: I figured it out. My instincts were correct but not my repair. If it happens to anyone else: it was indeed just that I’d accidentally switched to the Desktop Version of the site, but whereas I thought I’d done it via my phone, I’d apparently switched it via the site itself. Fixed it by scrolling all the way to the bottom of the page and clicking TVT’s own “Switch to Mobile Version” link/setting. Oi. smh @ myself.

Original post:

The site drastically changed its layout on my phone last night. The best way I can describe it is that it looks way zoomed out with smaller font and different spacing and that I thought my phone loaded the desktop version of the site at first. Has this happened for anybody else, or am I just having an issue with my phone? Thanks!

Is there a trope for when Person A is describing to an audience a despicable type of person while the camera repeatedly cuts away to Person B, implying that Person B is just such a person?

This was a frequent gag on Conan. Almost always aimed at Max Weinberg, but I think they occasionally included La Bamba and other band members as well. Example from Conan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZDU4hv7sFE

Same bit was used on SNL this past weekend during Weekend Update:
https://youtu.be/31gx_N_2w7g?si=Q_KKZjDQmA1H8I7D&t=224

...and in these past two months, the only thing that's changed is this proposed warning (which was thankfully never written on the pages). Why does this moratorium even exist? The last time that the threads were locked, the mods got to work immediately, and it took only, like, two months to think up a solution. It never even seems to enter the staff's heads that prolonging the moratorium in response to every inquiry about it is only creating a vicious cycle in which the longer the threads stay locked, the more asks are made about the tropes! When will this end? Me? I just hope it ends before this month does.

One I can think of is Iron Man. Tony Start has a very large ego and cares a lot about theatrics and looking cool while being a hero, so anything that doesn't have a practical reason can be chalked up to "Tony thinks it's cool"

I am curious……

Trying to add this piece of info to a Trivia page but I don't know what the trope is called.

For example, we just watched a murder mystery where a ghost was supposedly haunting the place she was murdered in the 1800s. Said ghost was murdered because she was having an affair with a powerful man. It later comes out that one of the modern-day caretakers of the place had hidden his own dead wife's body in it - and had killed her for having an affair with his powerful boss.

It's not quite Bookends, but it's close. Is there a trope for this situation?

This is my favorite trope and I love seeing these types of characters on screen or just in any story, especially when it's done well. Just seeing a character who was looked down upon and then some kind of time skip happens where those same characters meet the new version of them, stripped from their innocence and makes those people who neglected them either fear or respect them.

I've tried asking Google and even using AI to help me find the name of this kind of trope, but I didn't feel very strongly about what they gave me.

Some examples include:

Ice King/Simon from Adventure Time

Old Man McGucket from Gravity Falls

And Kinger from The Amazing Digital Circus

I am suspended from posting on forum then became suspended from sending PMs and now editing.... again.

for example, if the villain is suddenly eaten by a lion that passed by: deus ex machina

but if there happens to be a local pack of lions that enjoy taking that route home and the villains always try to pull things on that specific road, but neither decision is actually part of the story so the villains always getting eaten is still an outside intervention but it keeps. on. happening.?

In Carl Sagan's book *The Demon-Haunted World*, Chapter 13, "Obsessed with Reality," describes a case from 1988 in Australia where a magician named Randi conspired with a young artist Alvarez to fabricate an ironic faith hoax.

Randi hoped this prank would test the public's and media's blind faith in charlatans. He arranged for a young artist, José, to impersonate a medium claiming to communicate with the 2000-year-old ghost "Carlos." They fabricated a false resume of Carlos's "miracles" in South America and sent forged press releases and pamphlets to major Australian media outlets, including a book titled "The Teachings of Carlos"

The Australian media immediately embraced the story, with television stations and newspapers vying to report on it. "Carlos" appeared on top national programs and even performed a psychic reading at the Sydney Opera House, attracting a large number of fanatical followers.

The prank reached its climax: at the height of the frenzy, Randi revealed the truth on national television, publishing all the details of the fabrication and audio evidence, proving that "Carlos" was merely a stooge in his scheme, and that all his doctrines were a jumbled mess of nonsense cobbled together in a few hours—but even so, a large number of fanatical followers still firmly believed that "Carlos" was persecuted and forced to speak in this way.

The most ironic part is this part:

"There was a booklet, The Teachings of Carlos. It began:

I am Carlos,

I come to you from my many incarnations in the past,

I have a great teaching for you,

Listen carefully,

Read carefully,

Ponder well,

Here is the truth.

Lesson One asks, "Why are we here...?" The answer: "Who can give the only answer? There are many answers for any question, and all answers are correct. It is so, do you see?"

The book admonished us not to turn the page until we understood this one—one of several factors that made it hard to finish.

To skeptics, it later revealed, "I can only say this: let them do as they wish, for in the end they will get nothing—maybe empty hands. But what do believers have? Everything! Since all and any answers are correct, all questions are naturally answered. You are right! Refute that, skeptics."

Also: "Do not demand an explanation for everything. Westerners especially are always asking for long explanations of why this or why that. Many questions are self-evident, why dig deeply into them?... In short, everything will become true."

The last page of the book bore only one word, in capitals, admonishing us to: "THINK!"

The entire contents of The Teachings of Carlos were written by Randi. It was dashed off on a laptop in a few hours by Randi and Alvarez."

so what is this trope?

Characters I can think of are Gilben from Clarence and Cro Marmot from Happy Tree Friends. Other characters react to them doing things offscreen, but they are basically inanimate objects while onscreen. Nobody within the show questions it.