Author Appeal Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Charby the vampirate really doesn't belong on here. Its non-kid sized character far out number the kids sized ones and none of the authors other works reflect this assumption. Plus none of the characters have been sexualized in the comic while they were children. All fan service seems restricted to adult characters. Unless someone knows something about the author I don't think this trope applies to CTV.

Dave: Uh, this seems heavy towards it being a note of author fetishisms, but the large Likely Not Sexual section seems tacked on and misleading as to what exactly Author Appeal is. As such it sounds like the term just means the author happens to like things and puts them in there. At this rate we'll have Whedon's love of killing characters next to Frank Herbet's love of nuns, which are entirely different things.

(random passer-by): This is opening a very large can of very wiggly worms here, but isn't this pretty much unavoidable when humans tell stories to one another? Are there a whole lot of tropes here that weren't created precisely because of Author Appeal? I may regret asking the question, but I can't contain myself, and I apologize in advance.

Phartman: It's a common mistake to assume that using any of the tropes contained here is always a bad thing. Just like how a good comedian tells jokes that he thinks are funny, a good storyteller spins the yarns that he wants to tell.

It's just when this trope gets too obvious that it becomes a liability to the author.

Kizor: Dude, I was going to the launch button to take this to Discarded YKTTW when it was launched as a trope. The problem the random passer-by brought up was also brought up in the trope discussion, causing said discussion to wither up and die. It seems to me that that means something. Morgan bumped this along with a lot of other discussions so that "it can be launched somewhere", but from his comments on other bumps he included Discarded and was preserving the discussions, not saying that the tropes should be made.

osh: I think this trope exists in the sense it's sometimes very obvious a writer is doing it. I notice the word choice 'kinks' is actually pretty explanatory, especially of said kinks aren't seamlessly worked into the storyline or are really glaringly over-explained. Pointing out people do it in an openly obvious way isn't insulting is it?

Ununnilium: "Sabrina Online illustrates the difference between "comic featuring funny animals" and "furry comic"." ...so which side is it supposed to be on? I mean, yes, a porn star is one of the main characters, but very little of it is actually sexual; indeed, the porn studio parts are more like a Work Com.

Mister Six: Does this have to be about sex? Because Warren Ellis's obsession with mobile phones is almost, but not quite sexual. And he sure as hell forces them into every damned comic he writes.

Ununnilium: No, IMHO.

Ununnilium: "Also, a number of strips operate on the premise that Batman is comedy gold, and seem like they're right about it." That's not this, IMHO.

Ry Senkari: Should we change the name of this trope to Quentin Tarantino Has A Foot Fetish? It's in the Title Bin, and I thought it would be funnier than Author Appeal... but maybe that's just my opinion.

Kilyle: If this trope does stick around, I would definitely vote for that name change. Maybe not that particular name, but one very close to it (and that name does seem good, even if it's long). Thing is, Author Appeal doesn't indicate its topic well, whereas Quentin Tarantino Has A Foot Fetish demonstrates its topic with perfect clarity. And if it's (mostly) about far too obvious fetishes, it does need to come across clearly in the link, especially for people who might not want to read about them.

I would actually like to see the example list be consolidated. Something like "Shows by directors Bob, Jen, and Mary often focus on fat chicks" and "Shows by Steve and Mitzy often include sexually active nuns" or the like. I mean, sort by fetish, so there's less of a feeling of repetition. It would also be more useful in that we could tell which fetishes wind up more in web comics, which in film, which across a wide spectrum, etc.

Ry Senkari: Anyone else have any thoughts on the name change to Quentin Tarantino Has A Foot Fetish? I would think it would take more than one vote to change the name.

Seth: That name does bring the funny. But i think it borders on insulting.

Fast Eddie: Ho about just plain Author Fetish?

Lale: And drop the Added Alliterative Appeal?

The Defenestrator: Yes, please. I think Author Fetish is a good name for this trope.

Filby: I took out the bit about Hayao Miyazaki, since the feminist element in his films isn't really a kink or fetish but an expression of his social views.

Is Shortpacked really an example of this? From the description it sounds more like a standard case of "write what you know". If not, wouldn't every gaming-themed comic written by a gamer have to be listed? —Document N

Qit el-Remel: The Robin McKinley entry is inaccurate. Although Corlath in The Blue Sword was certainly older than Hari (it's stated that he's a bit long in the tooth for a bachelor king, and that a man just over a decade his senior has a son Hari's age...but it also states that kings are expected to marry and have families as early as possible), their ages were never specified. And the ages of Lissar and Ossin in Deerskin weren't even hinted at.

Admittedly, there is The Hero and the Crown, and the 11-year age difference between Aerin and Tor. But 11 is considerably less than 25. And Aerin did also have a tryst with Luthe...but Luthe appears to be both immortal and ageless. Although Beauty would seem to support the conclusion that was made, there were odder themes going on than any supposed "age fixation" in that book. (Don't get me started on Rose Daughter.)

There's also the fact that May/September romances—in literature, or in reality—aren't that unusual. (Not my thing, but I'd hardly call it a "fetish.")

arromdee: I took out the reference to Russell T. Davies and interracial relationships.

Russell T. Davies' fondness for nontraditional romantic relationships has bled into Doctor Who, most noticeably in the number of interracial romances that have popped up (Rose and Mickey, Donna and Lance, Martha and the Doctor, and Martha's father and his girlfriend, to name a few), and the in-your-face pansexuality of Captain Jack. And that's not even counting all the stuff that goes on in Torchwood.

...

This may be at least partly an example of Truth In Television - in this editor's experience interracial relationships are far more commonplace in Britain than they are in American media. It's worth noting that David Bowie and Michael Caine, two of Britain's greatest cultural icons, are both married to black women. (And Lenny Henry, one of Britain's greatest black cultural icons, is married to Dawn French.)
- It should be noted that classism is still strong enough in Britain that many viewers would have found a relationship between Martha and Mickey far stranger than the relationship between Mickey and Rose.

As has been pointed out, they're far more common in the UK than in the US.

Shale: Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing this in the article, if only because it seems like the vast majority of relationships in new Who that can be interracial are; the exceptions are mainly people like the companions' parents, who've already been established to be of the same race - Billie Piper, Catherine Tate and Freema Agyeman obviously aren't biracial - or people in eras where an interracial marriage would not be well-received. At some point it stops being common and starts being ubiquitous.
Freema Agyeman is biracial - African father, Iranian mother.
Daibhid C: Heck, you could spin this the other way: all the interracial couples in the series are either doomed: Martha and the Doctor; Rose and Mickey; Ianto and Lisa; Martha and Shakespeare, or a Bad Thing: Lance and Donna; Martha's dad and the woman who broke up the marriage; Martha's sister and Dr Lazarus, while the OTP Official Couples are the Tylers; Ianto and Jack; Gwen and Rhys; and, apparently, Rose and Other Doctor. What does Rusty have against interracial relationships? (And yes, I'm kidding, but it makes as much sense as the other version.)

Morganite: "The webcomic Misfile. Not here because of its transgender content; here because it goes on and on and on about amateur street racing." I'm not sure this is a good example. After all, Ash spending a lot of time on it makes sense - it's one of the few things in her life that is still relatively the same after the misfile.

Geese: That's reasonable, but the author is very explicitly an amateur street racer himself. He even has a cast page for the race cars involved, so it's fair to say he's a touch obsessed. Not That Theres Anything Wrong With That.

Scifantasy: I object to Song Of Ice And Fire being placed in the "teenage girls with adult men" category. It's about nobility in a medieval world...that's what happened. I doubt that Martin writes it because he has a Lolita complex.

Lupis42: Unless I misunderstand the trope completely (and I leave the cut reference here in case it is felt that I do), something occurring in a work is not sufficient for it to be listed here. It must regularly appear in an an author's work, or be described in an unepected amount of detail, in a manner that suggests it has considerable Appeal to the Author. While there are many things in A Song Of Ice And Fire that qualify, (feasting, weapons, armor, clothing, and relatively conventional sex), I don't see a section of the page that seems appropriate for those, and I really am just not buying this example.

George Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire—Martin is a history buff, and Westeros is basically a perfect recreation of medieval Europe, so a girl is considered marriageable the moment she has her first period, with predictable consequences for Sansa and Daenerys.

Roland: I find this a problematic statement because this isn't true. Yes, noble children were married at a very young age, but they were generally not supposed to consummate the marriage until they were of suitable age, usually in their late teens. And from all I've heard, Westeros is less a "perfect recreation" of medieval Europe than a Darker And Edgier version- real Europe in the medieval era was often problematic, but it wasn't necessarily a grinding period of misery and amoral oppression.

Shale: Maybe it's just me, but I keep having the urge to change the "likely non-sexual" header to "hopefully non-sexual".

Cambias: I'm not sure the Foglios/Girl Genius rate a mention here. I mean, yes, Phil Foglio likes to draw sexy women, but so does just about every other comic book artist, male and female, working today. (Besides which, they often toss in some gratuitous beefcake panels of male characters.) This is like saying Phil has a rectangle fetish because of the page borders — it's a standard feature of the medium.

Charred Knight: HP Lovecraft wrote books portraying Blacks as ugly monsters, Hitler killed millions of Jews. I think you need to gain a perspective

We seem to be forgetting the part where he was racist enough to make Hitler look like a pretty nice guy. Now count how many evil foreigners there are in his books.

Drow Lord:

Multiple women will also accept to share a man between them, with the protagonist being in a relationship with three women, and multiple wives being common among the Aiel.

The first one is a love triangle, and the second one is polygamy. There's no reason to suspect author appeal for their inclusion.

Fast Eddie: I have to come out for my boy Heinlein after these last few edits. Dude was a giant, aside from his sexual ... issues.

Truth Is Life: Remember, Tropes Are Not Bad. Heinlein was a giant, but that doesn't mean he didn't have a habit of inserting his personal views into his books.

Dioschorium: When I said the Gor novels "wouldn't be as bad" if they weren't obviously intended to be taken seriously, I meant "might not suck hard enough to leave bruises." See, if the people of Gor were simply into bondage, that would be one thing. But when the series' characters describe the men of Earth as miserable wimps and the women of Earth as unfulfilled shrews, then you can tell that the author is inserting his own troubling politics into his books.

Mercury In Retrograde: Considering that the dichotomy heterosexual/homosexual only crops up in the bourgeois descendants of Victorian psychology(or where-ever they jack boot their culture onto others), I think authors can be forgiven for exploring alternative sexualities among, oh, alien species and future cultures. It's far more likely that they _won't_ conceptualize sexuality as we do.

Nornagest: Christ. Got an axe to grind, much?

While it's true that the hetero/homo/bi distinction is pretty much a product of 19th and 20th century western culture, it is a decent (though admittedly arbitrary) way of breaking up the spectrum of gender preference. A noticeable and overtly idealized preoccupation with one particular range of said spectrum would also qualify as Author Appeal no matter how we break it up. LGBTBBQ is just a convenient handle.

Erica MZDM: Regarding the J.K. Rowling entry about names: Isn't funny naming a generic quirk of most fantasy novels? Especially when half the names mentioned aren't even that odd - Phineas, Cornelius, and Hermione are at worst slightly dated; Remus, Daedalus, Luna, Sirius, and Draco are all straight from basic latin and greek. I'd think they're there more to give a mystical/dated feel to wizarding society, not because the author thinks they're awesome.

Steve The Pocket: When I saw the link to this article (on the Crowning Music Of Awesome Western Animation page referencing Seth Mc Farlane:'s obsession with Broadway musicals, I clicked expecting to find a "boy, the author sure includes way too many references to blah-blah-blah" type trope. Instead I get this. So I'm thinking... maybe the non-sexual interests part of this page should be spun off into its own trope? Ideally, given the name, Author Appeal should be the name of said trope, and we can use Quentin Terantino Has A Foot Fetish or something similar for the other one, though a lot of editing would have to take place to fix the inaccurate links.

This troper calls shenanigans. It's only "full-warned" if you're actually, y'know, warned. Lots of people pick up Anthony's books thinking, "Oh, look — fantasy/humor!" rather than "Oh, look — nudist teens!"
If only. It's now 'Nudist five year olds'. In Xanth, not just Firefly.

KiTA: Has Xanth really gotten that bad? I know there's a lot of people that dislike how he's a (very self admitted) Dirty Old Man, but c'mon? Nudist 5 year olds? There's also something about "Rolling around naked in chocolate cake frosting" on the Xanth page. I haven't read a Xanth novel in quite some time, but honestly, has it really gotten that bad?

Roxana: Not IMO. Nudism and a certain preoccupation with girl's panties is certainly evident in the series but doesn't strike this reader as being particularly offensive... perhaps because she rather enjoyed contemplating the mental image of a nude Evil Magician Trent?

KiTA: It was more the 5 year old part that threw me. When someone mentions a nudist in media I think either Lampshading the ever loving hell out of Naked People Are Funny (or Rule Of Sexy or just general self-parody) OR some form of Innocent Fanservice Girl. There's always been (mostly unwarranted, imho) accusations of his characters being just a touch too young, so the idea of a random 5 year old Innocent Fanservice Girl in his books was like "wha..."? I'm still wondering if that reference needs cleaning up — I just can't believe even Piers Anthony would put a 5 year old Nudist in his books, unless we're talking about one of the half human characters.

Nornagest:

Joss Whedon sometimes also gets criticized for his portrayal of lesbians and bisexual women being an author fantasy. He always sticks to the straight male fantasy of the Lipstick Lesbian. Of course this could be more about everyone on his shows usually being abnormally attractive anyway.

Hmm... I don't know. While no one's especially butch, I don't buy this — Tara in particular is attractive, but compared to everyone else on the show (though not by real-life standards) she's not conventionally beautiful, and she doesn't dress or act lipstick. Unless this starts after Season 5, when I stopped watching.

Trouser Wearing Barbarian: As noted on the Lipstick Lesbian Discussion page, pretty much any lesbian character will either be criticized for being "too stereotypical" if they're more masculine or "catering to straight male fantasies" if they're more feminine. And if they're attractive it's also a male fantasy, but if they're plain or ugly it's implying that they "can't get a man", etc. To say nothing of the people who are just offended by homosexuality altogether.

[re: Robert Jordan, The Wheel Of Time, and the Leash and Collar of Subordination]

Which is supposed to be Squicky, its supposed to provoke revulsion in the reader! Its not an example of freakin' Author Appeal!

fleb: Already cut the same Justifying Edit from The Wheel Of Time page, but this—something being portrayed in a negative light—doesn't make it not an example.

Drow Lord: ...if the author is portraying it negatively, doesn't that necessarily mean it's not appealing to said author??

Lavode: Not necessarily. Take Lone Wolf And Cub and Lady Snowblood, for example - both manga are full of rape scenes, and while these are always treated as a major Kick The Dog moment for the rapist, the "camera" nearly always lingers on the victim's body in a Fan Service-minded way. Since both series were written by Kazuo Koike, you might suspect that that kind of scene appeals to him, even if he probably doesn't think rape is okay.

Trouser Wearing Barbarian: As the person who originally added the Morrissey example, I'm kinda wondering now if it goes better in the the "BDSM and status" section or the "Miscellaneous" section, where it currently resides.

EDIT: Went ahead and moved it.

Removed the Mercedes Lackey example:

This troper is convinced that Mercedes Lackey is a Yaoi Fangirl, as she keeps filling her novels with Yaoi Guys.

Lackey's writing is just as full of lesbian and straight relationships as Yaoi Guys, so I don't think this is really correct.

Anonymous Person: Um, can it be argued that Roald Dahl had a fascination with body inflation? There's not only the blueberry scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but Grandma inflates in George's Marvelous Medicine and a boy's forced to eat a very large cake in Matilda. Slatz Grobnik: Removed the Virgil example. In the Aeneid, he was copying Homer. In fact, it's most notable for his subversion of the idea from Homer. In the Georgics, it was poetry about farms, so, yes, it contained a lot of natural imagery. In the poetry overall, the vast majority of Romans would have a greater understanding of the natural world, so it was more about writing what people know.

Anon: How about Orsen Scott Card?, most of his series involve the young male protagonist being nude early on.

*Falcoon, producer of King Of Fighters: Maximum Impact, has admitted that he likes designing female characters with large chests, so it's small wonder that the Maximum Impact games feature a lot of Gainaxing and Jiggle Physics. This is especially noticeable with the characters Falcoon designed himself, like Lien Neville (whose chest receives a lot of the focus in cutscenes).

But it becomes a larger wonder if you know that Falcoon is gay...

Wait, WHAT!?

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