What's your favorite fiver troupe?
 

If you need a little background on troupes, you can visit http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/ but I'll just quote the relevant definition:

"Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. If a trope gets used too much, it becomes clichéd. The word cliché means stereotyped and trite. In other words, dull and uninteresting."

The fivists here have come up with a number of conventions that have become accepted as useful to use when writing fivers, and thus have become expected.

We can also use this thread to promote troupes that we want to see more of, as well as bringing up running gags between fivers that we enjoy.

My favorite would have to be 'Characters mocking the plot they're in' (this is what I voted for) followed by 'Boneheaded decisions by villians'. :)

Oh yeah, that's a good one. A favorite of mine is the "that's a stupid explanation, but that must be what happened" gag.

Any particular boneheaded decision you especially like?

Chili. :D

Interesting thread, Nate. But how can you have read that page you linked us to and still be consistently misspelling "trope"?

I suspect that it's either a simple error, a bad auto-correct, or some sort of humor too subtle for mere mortals.

Um, I suppose I could call it a preference for the older-style spelling, where I think "troupe" would be fully acceptable. I could, but I can't. I suppose I could also say "I'm an engineer, not a grammatician!", but then again, I just did. :)

Chalk it up to post-college spelling slide. Then again, maybe I've devoted so much of my mind to finding fault in the grammar of others that spelling has to take a back seat.

So as of this time "characters mocking the plot they're in" remains number one. I'm not in the least surprised.

Nor is Gak in second place surprising. It's gotta be one of our favorite sound effects. I just regret that Kablazmo isn't used more often by the fivists. It's such a shame that the DS9 episodes that I've fived really don't have any ships blowing up, or I'd use it myself.

It's gotta be mocking plots. Of course, I Five Rockman EXE, and it's just too easy to do that. Where else can you find giant psychedelic radiation fields that, when combined with an appropriate data chip, cause ordinary humans to sprout armor and grow beam sabers or guns on their hands?

(Zeke and Mav know exactly what I'm talking about, and for the rest of you, I swear I'm not making this up.)

I'm a little surprised you didn't include "geeky references" or "excreable puns" among the options.

Note: turns out "excreable" doesn't mean quite what I thought it did, but its actual meaning will do in this context.

Re geeky references: Okay, yeah, that should've been there.

Re puns: Ditto. Maybe I should recalibrate the poll, huh?

I've seen Megaman NT Warrior, so I've seen my share of Crossfusions. Still don't get how they're supposed to help. I think that the implication is that the closer the link and the shorter the reaction between NetOp and NetNavi, the better the results.

Oh, and remember that since all of that stuff is holographic, it's no weirder than the monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh.

Hm, I had to look that one up, and yeah, it could work. I thought maybe you were going for "execrable" but hey, I learned a new word today instead. Heh. :D

I still think that "chili" should have been a poll option.

Learning new words is always good. Heck, I never even knew that a word like "predicate" existed until Mr. Morton came along.

I was. I just couldn't make the spelling look right.

The best I can come up with is "excruciating," but ... uh, yeah, that's all I had to say here... :)

Never heard of him.

Hey, if I wrote a fiver that used everything mentioned in this thread, would it be Everybody-Gets-a-Trope Day?

Oh yeah, Schoolhouse Rock is a classic.

Good ol... GAK! *Falls over and dies from saying it.*