Created By: Arborean on May 13, 2008
Single Envelope Syndrome occurs when a media that "pushes the envelope" in one way will flatly refuse to do so in almost any other way in an attempt to play it safe. A distant cousin of Rule Abiding Rebel; this is when a legitimate rebel in one or two areas will make sure to ovey all the "rules" in the others.
Examples:
.Immortal Defense is a deep, enlightening and somewhat disturbing game about immortality, life, love and madness. So it's understandable that all the characters with any kind of power are male (or possibly gender neutral, in the cases of Aa and Jamesh); the only female in the game is the helpless person you're protecting.
.The game 'I have no mouth and I must scream' is a borderline case. It definitely pushes the envelope; the storyline is engaging and uniquely dark, as are the puzzles. The fact that there is only one black character (who also happens to be the only female) is somewhat countered by the fact that she is the most important character, and the joint most sympathetic.
Hello, Unknown Troper. You'll need to get known to lend a hand here.
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Replies: 5
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UnknownTroperThere seems to be an underline idea in this suggestion that if a work of fiction ‘pushes the envelope’ in one field it needs to do in all others even if it’s not related to the story. it that count I have to disagreed. I don’t want to say it, but I’m seeing it here
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KaraloraI'm not seeing it. I'm seeing more of an observation that works which are groundbreaking in one way tend to be conservative in others, because too much groundbreaking will scare people. It happens with political candidates too.
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ArboreanThis is more complaining about games I do like. Does, uh, that count?
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DuncanWill And Grace pushed the envelope by having Gay main characters, but was a pretty tame sitcom otherwise.
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UnknownTroperYou mean Rule Abiding Rebel, but less so. In fact Rule Abiding Rebel is basically this trope plus Values Dissonance.
