Thursday Tropes: Week 38
I totally missed last week. Oops. Here's 3 for this week.
This time around...A. FULL. YEAR. OF. TROPES!
Some Thursdays will have 2 tropes, some will have 3, but I think the majority will have 1 that's really popular.
Descriptions will be pulled from TV Tropes and a link provided if you want more information.
The rules? They're simple. Write at least 250 words or create 2 icons/1 banner. Anything from suggestive to outright porn is allowed.
This week, there are 3 tropes!!!
The Bridge: As The Couch is to sitcoms, so is The Bridge to Wagon Train to the Stars type shows: a gathering place for main characters. The Captain can usually be found here, and this is the native environment of Bridge Bunnies; together they spend their time making the Cool Starship go, noting that the Readings Are Off the Scale, evading Negative Space Wedgies, manipulating the Applied Phlebotinum, and so forth.
The standard bridge cliché involves The Captain sitting in the very center on a Command Chair, with two crewmembers (sometimes Bridge Bunnies) in front of him steering the ship, looking at an Applied Phlebotinum viewscreen showing a whizzing star field or a map of nearby space. Other characters sit at workstations arranged in a circle around the perimeter. There's an elevator or other extremely convenient access, and any character who wants to come to The Bridge can do so easily. The Bridge will be spacious and have a large stage, usually in front of The Captain's chair, so the officers, their invited guests, and the random uninvited enemy of the week can walk around and meaningfully emote.
Essentially The Bridge is part of the Space Is an Ocean model of space flight, in which the traditions of naval architecture are Recycled IN SPACE!. It will typically either be perched on the obvious "top" of the ship, often in some sort of conning-tower, or in the nose like the flight deck of an aircraft.
The Bridge will typically cram navigation, weapons control and even strategic-level command functions into a single room, all controlled by the same handful of people, despite the fact that putting them next to a giant window seems to be a disaster waiting to happen.
There are No Seat Belts on the bridge, so that the dramatic effect of Star Trek Shake will be maximised.
See also The War Room. Not to be confused with Take It to the Bridge, or with Dropped a Bridge on Him.
Of course, the reason this trope is so prevalent is because it works so well for storytelling purposes. The producers of Star Trek: Voyager tried playing around with the setup, but they realized that it's pretty much the optimal design for the kinds of stories that Star Trek tells.
This has nothing to do with the game of Bridge, the cop show known in English as The Bridge, the Sirius XM Satellite Radio channel known as The Bridge, the Puzzle Platformer game The Bridge, the German movie The Bridge (Die Brücke) (or novel of the same name), or the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic/Godzilla Crossover Fanfic of the same name.
Micro Monarchy: A Micro Monarchy is the setting (or a mentioned location, or a background for a character) used for a tiny (and usually, but not always, modern) country, that is under a monarchy, albeit usually a liberal, modernized one.
If the monarch has the title of Prince, it's called a Principality. The prevalence of micro monarchies as principalities is probably because of the Holy Roman Empire and All the Little Germanies, in which many of the smaller German monarchies (thus "micro monarchies" in their own right) were ruled by princes rather than kings. Perhaps because of this history, unlike English the German language has separate words for a prince who is a monarch in his own right ("Fürst") and a prince of who is merely the son or grandson of a monarch ("Prinz").
The make-up of the country will include ancient castles that are juxtaposed with modern day architecture of the surrounding buildings and — if it's a European state — the typical modern European car. Despite its size, it will usually have a decent economy, often based around one product that it is known the whole world for, or massive tourism to its historical sites. The nation's defense forces will only consist of ceremonial knights, palace security, and local police, and they will rely on some more powerful neighbor for defense.
If they ever are attacked in earnest and their neighbors let them down (or, even worse, the neighbors are the attackers), expect it to be easily conquered, with its inhabitants becoming either dead or oppressed, or, if they fare better, members of La Résistance. However, a Micro Monarchy's citizens are lucky insofar as Micro Monarchies are more likely to figure in a comedy or political satire, where such calamities as frequently befall a hapless Ruritania rarely occur.
This sort of setting has a tendency to be inherited by a long lost princess who has never even heard of the place before.
Compare and contrast with Land of One City, which may or may not be also a Micro Monarchy; as well as Ruritania, which is just a fictional Southern, Central or Eastern European country, Qurac which does the same for the Middle East, and Bulungi which covers Africa: All these can be Micro Monarchies too, but don't have to. Also tends to be The Good Kingdom.
Pluto Is Expendable: Pluto has become the Butt-Monkey of the solar system, and not just because it's named for the Butt-Monkey of the Greek-Roman pantheon of gods. Want to get someone's attention? Show that things are serious? That a villain can put his money where his mouth is? Screw the status quo! This time, change is happening, and it's something big! Something cosmic! Something on a large-scale level that would shock the world if it happened in Real Life! A change that will alter the universe! ...er, well, at least the galaxy... The solar system?
What do you mean Reed Richards Is Useless? What can we alter about the universe that would be a big deal without being a big deal? It's not like we can blow up a planet...
Wait! What about one of those planets floating around the edge of the solar system? That insignificant, dark, icy one with one giant and four minuscule satellites — no one will miss that. It wasn't even important enough to be called a real planet. What was its name again?
Never mind. Let's blow it up!
The reason Pluto was downgraded from a planetnote to a dwarf planet is based on the 2006 formalization of the definition.note To qualify, an astronomical body has to have four characteristics:
It's in orbit around a star or stellar remnant;
It's big enough to be spherical from its own gravity;
It's not so big that thermonuclear fusion has begun (in other words, it's not a star);
It has cleared its orbit of all similar-sized objects.
When the definition was finalized, it was quickly found that Pluto fails the fourth criterion, as it is very similar in size, composition, and orbit to hundreds of other objects in a region of space called the Kuiper Belt. Ironically, Pluto is still one of the most valuable objects for exploration, since it's the closest Kuiper Belt object and can provide science with information about the solar system's formation. So much so, New Horizons (which was launched in January 2006, seven months before the IAU worked its magic) flew past the planetoid in July 2015.
That might have changed when the first clear picture of Pluto taken by New Horizons revealed a large heart formation on its surfacenote making it an internet sensation and possibly the most adorable (dwarf) planet ever. Indeed other images from the same spacecraft have shown Pluto is far from being a dead world covered with craters, instead having large — for its size — mountains, what seem to be dunes, and complex surface features that show (at least past) geological activity.note
See also Throwaway Country. Not to be confused with Mickey's dog. We hope.
On the other hand, one might be inclined to wonder how it relates to the death of Meio Setsuna...
Compare Insignificant Little Blue Planet for the self-inflicted version, and Uranus Is Showing for another planet that's... a different kind of Butt-Monkey.
This time around...A. FULL. YEAR. OF. TROPES!
Some Thursdays will have 2 tropes, some will have 3, but I think the majority will have 1 that's really popular.
Descriptions will be pulled from TV Tropes and a link provided if you want more information.
The rules? They're simple. Write at least 250 words or create 2 icons/1 banner. Anything from suggestive to outright porn is allowed.
This week, there are 3 tropes!!!
The Bridge: As The Couch is to sitcoms, so is The Bridge to Wagon Train to the Stars type shows: a gathering place for main characters. The Captain can usually be found here, and this is the native environment of Bridge Bunnies; together they spend their time making the Cool Starship go, noting that the Readings Are Off the Scale, evading Negative Space Wedgies, manipulating the Applied Phlebotinum, and so forth.
The standard bridge cliché involves The Captain sitting in the very center on a Command Chair, with two crewmembers (sometimes Bridge Bunnies) in front of him steering the ship, looking at an Applied Phlebotinum viewscreen showing a whizzing star field or a map of nearby space. Other characters sit at workstations arranged in a circle around the perimeter. There's an elevator or other extremely convenient access, and any character who wants to come to The Bridge can do so easily. The Bridge will be spacious and have a large stage, usually in front of The Captain's chair, so the officers, their invited guests, and the random uninvited enemy of the week can walk around and meaningfully emote.
Essentially The Bridge is part of the Space Is an Ocean model of space flight, in which the traditions of naval architecture are Recycled IN SPACE!. It will typically either be perched on the obvious "top" of the ship, often in some sort of conning-tower, or in the nose like the flight deck of an aircraft.
The Bridge will typically cram navigation, weapons control and even strategic-level command functions into a single room, all controlled by the same handful of people, despite the fact that putting them next to a giant window seems to be a disaster waiting to happen.
There are No Seat Belts on the bridge, so that the dramatic effect of Star Trek Shake will be maximised.
See also The War Room. Not to be confused with Take It to the Bridge, or with Dropped a Bridge on Him.
Of course, the reason this trope is so prevalent is because it works so well for storytelling purposes. The producers of Star Trek: Voyager tried playing around with the setup, but they realized that it's pretty much the optimal design for the kinds of stories that Star Trek tells.
This has nothing to do with the game of Bridge, the cop show known in English as The Bridge, the Sirius XM Satellite Radio channel known as The Bridge, the Puzzle Platformer game The Bridge, the German movie The Bridge (Die Brücke) (or novel of the same name), or the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic/Godzilla Crossover Fanfic of the same name.
Micro Monarchy: A Micro Monarchy is the setting (or a mentioned location, or a background for a character) used for a tiny (and usually, but not always, modern) country, that is under a monarchy, albeit usually a liberal, modernized one.
If the monarch has the title of Prince, it's called a Principality. The prevalence of micro monarchies as principalities is probably because of the Holy Roman Empire and All the Little Germanies, in which many of the smaller German monarchies (thus "micro monarchies" in their own right) were ruled by princes rather than kings. Perhaps because of this history, unlike English the German language has separate words for a prince who is a monarch in his own right ("Fürst") and a prince of who is merely the son or grandson of a monarch ("Prinz").
The make-up of the country will include ancient castles that are juxtaposed with modern day architecture of the surrounding buildings and — if it's a European state — the typical modern European car. Despite its size, it will usually have a decent economy, often based around one product that it is known the whole world for, or massive tourism to its historical sites. The nation's defense forces will only consist of ceremonial knights, palace security, and local police, and they will rely on some more powerful neighbor for defense.
If they ever are attacked in earnest and their neighbors let them down (or, even worse, the neighbors are the attackers), expect it to be easily conquered, with its inhabitants becoming either dead or oppressed, or, if they fare better, members of La Résistance. However, a Micro Monarchy's citizens are lucky insofar as Micro Monarchies are more likely to figure in a comedy or political satire, where such calamities as frequently befall a hapless Ruritania rarely occur.
This sort of setting has a tendency to be inherited by a long lost princess who has never even heard of the place before.
Compare and contrast with Land of One City, which may or may not be also a Micro Monarchy; as well as Ruritania, which is just a fictional Southern, Central or Eastern European country, Qurac which does the same for the Middle East, and Bulungi which covers Africa: All these can be Micro Monarchies too, but don't have to. Also tends to be The Good Kingdom.
Pluto Is Expendable: Pluto has become the Butt-Monkey of the solar system, and not just because it's named for the Butt-Monkey of the Greek-Roman pantheon of gods. Want to get someone's attention? Show that things are serious? That a villain can put his money where his mouth is? Screw the status quo! This time, change is happening, and it's something big! Something cosmic! Something on a large-scale level that would shock the world if it happened in Real Life! A change that will alter the universe! ...er, well, at least the galaxy... The solar system?
What do you mean Reed Richards Is Useless? What can we alter about the universe that would be a big deal without being a big deal? It's not like we can blow up a planet...
Wait! What about one of those planets floating around the edge of the solar system? That insignificant, dark, icy one with one giant and four minuscule satellites — no one will miss that. It wasn't even important enough to be called a real planet. What was its name again?
Never mind. Let's blow it up!
The reason Pluto was downgraded from a planetnote to a dwarf planet is based on the 2006 formalization of the definition.note To qualify, an astronomical body has to have four characteristics:
It's in orbit around a star or stellar remnant;
It's big enough to be spherical from its own gravity;
It's not so big that thermonuclear fusion has begun (in other words, it's not a star);
It has cleared its orbit of all similar-sized objects.
When the definition was finalized, it was quickly found that Pluto fails the fourth criterion, as it is very similar in size, composition, and orbit to hundreds of other objects in a region of space called the Kuiper Belt. Ironically, Pluto is still one of the most valuable objects for exploration, since it's the closest Kuiper Belt object and can provide science with information about the solar system's formation. So much so, New Horizons (which was launched in January 2006, seven months before the IAU worked its magic) flew past the planetoid in July 2015.
That might have changed when the first clear picture of Pluto taken by New Horizons revealed a large heart formation on its surfacenote making it an internet sensation and possibly the most adorable (dwarf) planet ever. Indeed other images from the same spacecraft have shown Pluto is far from being a dead world covered with craters, instead having large — for its size — mountains, what seem to be dunes, and complex surface features that show (at least past) geological activity.note
See also Throwaway Country. Not to be confused with Mickey's dog. We hope.
On the other hand, one might be inclined to wonder how it relates to the death of Meio Setsuna...
Compare Insignificant Little Blue Planet for the self-inflicted version, and Uranus Is Showing for another planet that's... a different kind of Butt-Monkey.