Not opinion-related: Adaptation Decay

Why is this in YMMV? I thought it was established that Adaptation Decay is "the work was changed in the transition to a different medium" as opposed to "this adaptation sucks." I know this trope is a hot button, but I thought the definition is objective. I mean, it's not my opinion that, I dunno Disney Channel's Harriet The Spy: Blog Wars was a big change, it is a big change.

Whether it is decay or not is wholly subjective. If there is some agreement that the content of the article doesn't refer to decay, then it needs a name change.

edited 4th Jan '11 8:43:15 PM by FastEddie

We have a number of tropes about works being changed in adaptation. Adaptation Decay, Adaptation Distillation, Compressed Adaptation, Pragmatic Adaptation, etc. Decay is "changed for the worse," which is a subjective judgment.

The change between a work and its adaptation isn't too subjective. The subjective thing is whether or not it is done well. Is the quality important to the trope's definition? I was under the impression that it wasn't, but.. Either way, the word "decay" in itself has very negative connotations, so whether or not quality is a part of the definition, it tends to be treated like a "bad" trope.

In that case, shouldn't Network Decay be in YMMV? I'm sure SOME people out there wanted MTV to stop play videos.

I read the article and it pretty much outlines the trope as the change/distortion of a work as it gets transfers to another medium and outlines possible reasons why. It then goes on to state that the trope is "adaptation worse than the original". I would say that it's pretty objective and not really subject to opinion, quality issues aside.

There is a line in bold at the end of the description saying "This does not mean "adaptation that's worse than the original", nor does it refer to a negative change.", though I don't know when it was added. If this was the original intent, then the name was a poor choice and the trope has suffered major Trope Decay as it's now primarily used as a Take That! against adaptations you don't like, which is why it ended up in YMMV.

I'm also curious as to why Adaptation Distillation is not in YMMV, as it's basically the same thing as Compressed Adaptation, except the audience thinks it works better that way.

Removed that incorrect statement from the article.

In this case, the laconic version"The work is changed in a transition between two different mediums."must be changed?

edited 5th Jan '11 8:39:07 AM by MagBas

"There is a line in bold at the end of the description saying "This does not mean "adaptation that's worse than the original", nor does it refer to a negative change.", though I don't know when it was added. If this was the original intent, then the name was a poor choice and the trope has suffered major Trope Decay as it's now primarily used as a Take That against adaptations you don't like, which is why it ended up in YMMV."

• I think that was added due to the Trope Decay and the original definition wasn't "adaptation worse than the original." Even without the statement, the article still pretty much outlines Adaptation Decay as "the work is changed (either by a little bit or substantially) as it shifts mediums" and that's not subjective.

Then there's little difference with Adaptation Distillation or Pragmatic Adaptation.

Pragmatic Adaptation is specifically changes to better fit the medium. Adaptation Distillation can apply to a new comic book Batman continuity.

In Name Only is a more objective look as to "radical changes that make it different to the original" as that is a more quantifiable aspect. Decay means "inferior to original" which is subjective.

If anything, I would say Pragmatic Adaptation is more subjective than Adaptation Decay. Adaptation Decay's "the work got changed" and Pragmatic Adaptation's "the work changed due to the constraints", it seems hair-splitty..,I would say the latter is more opinion-based. The Last Airbender, as horrible as it is, it is a Pragmatic Adaptation - you can't fit 22 episodes worth of material in 90-something odd minutes.

Like you said, The Last Airbender changed many things to make a coherent narrative of a 20 episode season. But what one person lists as being decay someone else would consider it distillation or pragmatic. But they aren't opposites of each other, Adaptation Distillation means to condense a story and Pragmatic Adaptation means to alter for the new medium. We're not talking positive vs. negative tropes, we're talking about opinion based tropes. Distillation and Pragmatic already consider the manner in how things are changed, Decay is that they are changed for the worse. Whenever a trope hinges on the quality that's when it becomes subjective.

So wouldn't technically all of these Adaptation tropes be subjective? I'm looking at Adaptation Decay and it's still not saying that "this work changed for the worse." In fact, it looks too similar to Pragmatic Adaptation.

edited 5th Jan '11 8:30:43 PM by MegaJ

This is a few tidbits of the opening paragraphs: "The gradual distortion or even disintegration of a world and its characters during its odyssey from original source material to movie to TV movie then to television series then to video game and finally to licensed derivative work. The dramatic equivalent of photocopying a photocopy of a photocopy... When [the source material is] handled well, Adaptation Decay can be minimized, and each generation of the process will remain reasonably faithful to the original."

The bolded statements indicate that A) the material is inherently worse with the adaptation and B) Adaptation Decay is a by product of the act of adaptation and not inherent in the process itself. Basically, Adaptation Distillation is "We're taking inspiration for our new story from a collection of different stories from the original" and Adaptation Decay is "The resulting product is inferior to the original", the "photocopy of a photocopy" mentioned.

Adaptation Distillation is not inherent with just any "good" adaptation, as The Bourne Series of movies has almost nothing in common with the books and thus isn't a distillation. They're considered good, but that's on its own terms.

I think people are conflating 'signal loss' with 'inferior quality'(which admittedly is easy to do), but I always saw those as separate issues. For example, I've always considered the Bourne Series to have suffered extreme Adaptation Decay, no matter the quality of the movies. Lots of intrinsic material was lost or changed. Adaptation Distillation seems more like the novelization of Total Recall, where scenes were expanded and plot points better explained.

edited 5th Jan '11 9:59:29 PM by Daremo

I was around when Adaptation Distillation was created and felt at the time that it was basically an unnecessary split of Adaptation Decay into "good" and "bad" and letting Adaptation Decay Trope Decay into the latter.

Adaptation Distillation is taking a complicated source material and simplifying it into something more easily understandable. If the villain originally had a 12-page long Motive Rant but it's changed to "I'm doing it for revenge!", that's an Adaptation Distillation. That's not subjective.

Pragmatic Adaptation is making significant changes in order to account for a shift in medium. For example, if a comic book is adapted into a movie, a character that used spikey red-on-black Speech Bubbles gets a deep, echoing voice, that's a Pragmatic Adaptation. Not subjective.

Adaptation Decay is when the adaptiaton is worse than the original. If you enjoyed the Doom video games but hated the Doom movie because Video Game Movies Suck, then you could label it Adaptation Decay... but that's just your opinon (I rather liked the Doom movie, myself), so it's a Subjective Trope.

edited 6th Jan '11 6:52:00 AM by NativeJovian

"I was around when Adaptation Distillation was created and felt at the time that it was basically an unnecessary split of Adaptation Decay into "good" and "bad" and letting Adaptation Decay Trope Decay into the latter."

• Aha. So originally Adaptation Decay was just "significant changes to a work in transferring into another medium" as opposed to "They Changed It, Now It Sucks! in adaptation form"?

^
That's how I remember the trope as well. I don't even think you could call it misuse anymore - the "they changed it now it sucks - adaption version" seems to be the only remaining meaning currently. :/

Even if Adaptation Decay orignally just meant "Adaptation changes" I don't think it was ever used that way because of the "decay" in the name. Even then, I think that fosters the idea of "no matter what, any change make it worse."

The "decay" part is a bit misleading if indeed the original trope was not negative but I think the Grandfather Clause will make this not up for a rename.

Adaptation Decay is way too loosely defined right now, covering any changes that someone thinks reduce the quality of the work. Even assuming it was value neutral at first, how is "Adaptation changes" even a trope, when changing something is part of the very definition of adapting it? And if you redefine it as "major changes that were not required for the transition to the new medium, but don't reach the point of In Name Only", rename it to something else and make it objective, you'd still need to delete 90% of the examples, so it would probably be easier to nuke the whole thing and start from scratch.

All these other overlapping adaptation tropes are really confusing as well.

Adaptation Distillation probably needs a rewrite, since the way it's defined on its page has no noticeable difference from Compressed Adaptation. The Laconic mentions staying true to the spirit of the original work and the Compressed Adaptation article calls Adaptation Distillation a more effective condensing, both of which sound somewhat subjective to me. The name also makes it seem like the inverse of Adaptation Decay, and if that is not the case then at least one of them could use a rename.

Pragmatic Adaptation, if I understand correctly, is supposed to be about changes that are inherent with the switch to a new medium, which once again happens to some degree in every adaptation I can think of. Furthermore, it includes changes due to time constraints, so it overlaps with Compressed Adaptation and Adaptation Distillation. Finally, Laconic claims it's Invoking Adaptation Decay, which completely blew my mind. I can only assume it was meant to be "justified", which would still make it subjective.

I think we need to cut or merge at least one of these, but I have no idea which of the definitions came first and which are a result of Trope Decay.

Edit: Just noticed the article doesn't have the attached TRS tag. Anyone know how to fix that.

edited 7th Jan '11 11:35:01 AM by Killomatic

Adaptation Distillation is about making something less complicated; Compressed Adaptation is just about making it shorter.

edited 7th Jan '11 11:38:26 AM by NativeJovian

I wrote the Laconic entry for Pragmatic Adaptation. The previous one wasn't at all descriptive and I couldn't really figure how to sum that up.

Okay, so lemme get this straight...

• Adaptation Decay: The work was changed transferring it to another medium. This isn't Pragmatic Adaptation, the work suffers from the transition.
• Adaptation Distillation: The work was simplified in order to bring it to another medium and it's still true to the spirit. But it isn't Compressed Adaptation because they're not cutting out huge chunks of the story, just making it shorter.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The work was changed for a variety of reasons (time, money, Animation Age Ghetto) in order to bring it to another medium and possibly another demographic, whether this works or not is up to the viewers. But this isn't Adaptation Decay because the makers HAD to cut some out and change some stuff around.
• Compressed Adaptation: Large chunks of material are left out transferring a work to another medium due to time constraints but this is different from Pragmatic Adaptation because it's still true to the spirit much like an Adaptation Distillation but it's not Adaptation Distillation because there's too much stuff being cut out.

And only Adaptation Decay is subjective because it's a negative change in the eyes of the viewer.

Oy.

edited 7th Jan '11 12:46:21 PM by MegaJ