Not opinion-related: Adaptation Decay

That's oversimplifying it. If both are done to fit information into a limited time and both are accomplished by removing content, that's only a difference in the intention. Shouldn't there be some difference in the execution as well?

From looking at the examples, the major point of divergence seems to be that a Compressed Adaptation makes the plot harder to follow for people not familiar with the original, while Adaptation Distillation keeps it accessible to the newcomers. It's still a subtle point, but if that is indeed the case, I think the descriptions need to better reflect this.

And how does Pragmatic Adaptation fit into any of this? Is it supposed to be a supertrope or something?

edited 7th Jan '11 12:54:02 PM by Killomatic

Adaptation Distillation distills the story down into the essence, so to speak, in order to make it fit into another medium. Subplots can be left out, characters can be changed around a little so long as the important points are kept intact (a blind protagonist can be made a deaf one if you're doing first-person perspective in a visual medium, or first person perspective can be abandoned, so long as the storyline itself doesn't change).

Compressed Adaptation I would assume from the name squishes the story into the time frame by leaving out things or increasing the pace; I'm thinking here of The Other Boleyn Girl, the movie of which basically consisted of all the prettiest parts shot in all their glory with snippits of exposition squished in between. It actually appears to be "Important/Relevant chunks of the story went missing in the adaptation" - something like the second little pig not appearing in the story.

Pragmatic sounds like abandoning medium-specific techniques in favor of the specific techniques of your new medium. Things like not having a closeup available to demonstrate emotion when you're doing a stage adaptation. It actually appears to be "Distillation but the story itself changes rather than just the minor details being dropped".

Decay seems to have always been "They Changed Mediums Now It Sucks" to some degree. Neutrally it could be "Things get lost each time a story is retold" but... it's not really that.

edited 7th Jan '11 1:35:48 PM by Yamikuronue

Alright, we seem to have pinned the distinction between Adaptation Distillation (captures the spirit of the original work, while changing just enough to embracing the new medium) and Compressed Adaptation (cut-and-pasted script that changes little in the scenes it keeps and leaves fans to fill in the blanks in between). That should be clear enough so that people don't get the two confused.

Pragmatic Adaptation still puzzles me though. Both the substitution of medium-specific techniques (which by the way I don't get from the description) and the story changing with the shift in medium sound way too vague and all-inclusive to me. Is it a Compressed Adaptation that still manages to stand on its own, or an Adaptation Distillation where the changes are due to external factors, as opposed to artistic choices (can you always tell the difference without Word of God) or something else entirely?

Trying to re-purpose Adaptation Decay as a non-subjective is pointless, it's simply too far gone by now. Even so, the description needs cleaning, as it contains way too many nitpicky points about name changes, different hair colors, toned down blood or fanservice and the like, whereas the focus should be on the narrative and setting tropes.

I'd like to hear more people's interpretation before we take any action first. Also, since this discussion has shifted to a wider topic, would it be possible to link it to all four articles?

edited 7th Jan '11 4:57:00 PM by Killomatic

Do I put the links in the main post title or what?

• Adaptation Decay
• Compressed Adaptation
• Pragmatic Adaptation
• Adaptation Distillation

-Linkage. I think Pragmatic Adaptation is the really subjective one.

edited 8th Jan '11 6:39:47 PM by MegaJ

Pragmatic Adaptation is probably the least subjective one. Like it or not the general wiki tends to use distillation as meaning "good" and decay as meaning "bad," regardless of their actual definitions. Granted, if something is considered a "good" adaptation you can probably find the criteria of distillation in it. People just tend to go about it in the opposite direction, they fit the subject to the trope instead of finding the trope in the subject.

Back to Pragmatic Adaptation, comics tend to tell their story using panels, boxes, sometimes multi-page spreads to form a collage of images. It's been generally considered pragmatic to just use relatively normal, if dynamic, visuals for the film versions instead of trying to replicate the comic style. A few movies have tried, Spider-Man used collages of images for certain scenes and 2003's The Hulk used the multi-panels showing the same thing from different angles, but by and large it's generally expected to use a more standard film style. There is nothing subjective about that, the success of the overall product might be in question but that has nothing to do with the trope.

That's just it, almost all adaptations change the original media's conventions in the translation, that's what the very word adaptation means. The ones that try to be an exception are usually viewed as little more than interesting experiments, like what happened to Scott Pilgrim. If 99% of the works fit the definition, I'd call that People Sit On Chairs. Also, I may be an idiot, but could someone please direct me to the part of the article that says this is about changes in visual presentation, because I assumed this was about changes in the story's focus, not the way it's presented.

When I said links, I meant the kind that add the "Trope Repair Shop Discussion" banner to the top of the articles, so that people who don't frequent the forums can get involved. I'd do it myself if I knew how, but I'm kinda new at this myself.

edited 9th Jan '11 2:42:00 PM by Killomatic

I'm not sure how to do that myself...I see no helpful notes...

Perhaps the contents of Adaptation Decay should be moved to a more neutral title, like Adaptation Alteration. Then Adaptation Decay itself can be an example-free, subjective page.

Or accept the negative connotations and have it be YMMV, like Sequelitis. Which seems fine to me.

I think we probably need a neutral Adaptation Alteration trope regardless, though.

Adaptation Alteration could be the Super-Trope. There's still the issue of the other tropes though and just how objective they are.

Way I see it, whatever Adaptation Decay used to mean, the name is so negative sounding that you're not gonna be able to stop people from using it as "adaptation that makes the story worse," and it's too widespread throughout the wiki for a name change to be realistic, so it's best left in YMMV with vestiges of its original meaning cut out.

As for Adaptation Distillation vs. Compressed Adaptation: My understanding is that Adaptation Distillation isn't trying to do a straight remake of the original story, but rather taking the concept, characters, setting and what-not and making a story using them in their most basic, archetypal forms. A Compressed Adaptation, on the other hand, will be a more or less scene-by-scene retelling of the original story, but with a lot of material cut out to save time.

Yeah, Compressed Adaptation is a direct adaptation, not a Remake, Revival or Alternate Continuity.

And the example I gave for Pragmatic Adaptation is about the most generic one out there, which would be People Sit On Chairs if anyone actually listed that on the page. Most of the actual examples of the trope are deliberate thematic changes rather than inherent visual differences, such as Spider-Man's web-shooters being organic as part of his mutation rather than spending an extra 10-20 minutes explaining how he built the mechanical ones.

Adaptation Alteration would definitely be People Sit On Chairs though, unless you narrow it down to just major changes, which would also be kinda subjective. And it would also need to be a Super-Trope.

But that's what Adaptation Decay is apparently supposed to mean now, though it's suffering from Trope Decay.

Speaking of Pragmatic Adaptation, I changed the laconic to this:

• Necessary, realistic changes to a work in order to bring it to another medium.

I think I got it summarized but I don't know.

^^ No, that's what Adaptation Decay was supposed to mean; that's not the case anymore.

Though, now that I think about it, do we need an Adaptation Improvement page?

The "Trope Repair Shop Discussion" tag is working now, seems it was a bug. Unfortunately you can only link to one article at time, though I guess we can always repurpose the thread after we're done with Adaptation Decay.

Though, now that I think about it, do we need an Adaptation Improvement page?

Alternately, we could move the content of Adaptation Distillation to a more neutral name like Adaptation Condensation and then redefine Adaptation Distillation to how everyone's already misusing it.

Then just what the hell is Pragmatic Adaptation?!

Adaptation Distillation is about removing not-strictly-necessary material. Pragmatic Adaptation is about any change that's made in adaptation because the original would not work in the new medium.

Say there's a novel focusing on a character who never leaves a room, but his friends tell him of an epic, globesweeping adventure they just had. It works in a novel, because there's precious little difference between "narrator tells the audience" and "character tells the audience". However, a two-hour long conversation would not make for a very interesting film, so a pragmatic film adaption would directly show the adventure as much as possible. And if the movie focused entirely on the adventure by omitting the room-bound guy entirely, then it would be both distillation and pragmatic.

edited 11th Jan '11 10:03:54 PM by MetaFour

Looking at Adaptation Decay's examples, you can argue that most of those changes are pragmatic.

So would Adaptation Decay change to "unnecessary changes?"

That makes it seem even more like a way to go They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.

Maybe just revert Adaptation Decay to it's original definition and then make a new trope for negative reactions to adaptations? They Adapted It Now It Sucks? Bad snowclone, but I can't really think of anything.