Thursday Tropes: Week 41

It's been a minute, hasn't it? Well, we're back...and maybe slightly different?



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 2 tropes!

Nerd Glasses: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that nerds wear glasses. Usually ugly, unflattering glasses. There are several types of glasses that are signifiers of deeply-entrenched nerd-dom:

• Chunky black plastic (tape on the bridge optional), sometimes chunky tortoiseshell plastic instead—as worn by the classic Hollywood Nerd, though these have lately come back into fashion again, style being a Cyclic Trope.


• Coke-bottle glasses so thick they're opaque—have their own page at Opaque Nerd Glasses


• Unflatteringly large glasses poorly proportioned to the wearer's face—often with thin frames; in live-action these have the advantage that they don't block the wearer's face


• Old-fashioned round hornrims—sign of an Absentminded Professor or academic-nerd. Like the chunky black plastic example above, round hornrims have also become popular again as of The New '10s.


• Half-moon glasses—around the 50's, these were the eyewear of choice for the original nerds, although nowadays they're more of an old lady librarian style


• Browline glasses—a two-piece frame with thick plastic upper frames and thin wire lower frames popular in the fifties and sixties. Most often seen on highly intelligent and well-read types, or people who like to think they are. Similar to the above-mentioned black plastic and hornrim glasses, browlines are also back in as of late.


• "Cat-eye" glasses—once ultra-fashionable for women in the 50's, now usually restricted to lady nerds (and the occasional hipster)—unless they have rhinestones or are purple, in which case they are Impossibly Tacky Eyewear.


• Repaired glasses—broken frames held together by a shoddy repair job involving improvised materials like paper clips and adhesive tape.

Compare Meganekko. You may also be interested in the other Glasses Tropes.

Follow That Car: The villain speeds off in a car. The hero, close behind, flags down the nearest taxi, gets in, and, pointing at the car, says "Follow that car!". And thus, the Chase Scene begins. This is an alternative to Flashed-Badge Hijack, available to civilians as well as the police.

If the villain anticipates the hero trying this, expect the cabbie to be Not My Driver.

This is a Discredited Trope or even a Dead Horse Trope. Sometimes it's a case of I Always Wanted to Say That. "Car" may be replaced with another vehicle: "Follow that space ship!"

A common subversion is for the speaker to make the mistake of saying this before they get in, and the cab taking off without them.

See The Taxi.