Example Trimming: Handle This Index With Care

Okay, I should've been keeping a closer eye on this.

Basically, this index is a hold-over from Unfortunate Implications. Unfortunate Implications used to have a index of tropes susceptible to them, but after a lengthy Trope Repair Shop thread, it was decided to remove the trope index and possibly split it off into it's own index which I launched and trimmed. And now the index has grown a bit and I want to get some feedback before I cut examples. Basically, the only real criteria (at least agreed upon) is that the trope has to have Unfortunate Implications latched onto them and having a history to them as opposed to just being leading to/tilt-your-head-and-SEE to them. Here's the ones that I take issue with:

• Abusively Sexy Woman: This is just a poor Distaff Counterpart of Bastard Boyfriend with few examples and Abuse Is Okay If It Is Female On Male covers it.
• All Jews Are Ashkenazi: Not seeing the negative connotation, though I suppose representation can be a sticking point.
• Anal Probing: Dead Unicorn Trope. I can see the implication, but it takes a leap.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Not seeing it.
• Asian Babymama: I think this is a poor trope in general (look at the examples) and it doesn't always have to be negative.
• Bondage Is Bad: I guess the portrayal of someone enjoying kinky sex can lead to UI, but I wouldn't really this fits.
• Gay Bravado: Poor trope in general. Probably should've spent more time gestating in YKTTW.
• Good Victims, Bad Victims: Too broad.
• Guys are Slobs: Again, probably should've spent more time gestating in YKTTW.
• No Koreans In Japan: Though, I'm iffy about axing portrayal tropes.
• A Sinister Clue: Old Dead Horse trope.
• Toilet Humour: Now, it does add the caveat that only some parts apply but I just don't think it fits.
• XYY: Poor trope that I don't even think has a YKTTW.

Got my beer so I'm ready to drink every time some troper wanders in here and says "cut the whole thing/being too p.c./making works look bad/oversensitive" or something like that.

If Christianity is Catholic does not fit on this list, I do not believe that All Jews Are Ashkenazi does either so I think that should be trimmed from the index. I understand the distinction there and I think that trope could stay on the index too. I am not completely sure.

I agree with you here.

I think this could fit on that index if someone could explain how it has Unfortunate Implications. I think the Unfortunate Implications are out there, but I am not sure I totally understand what they are.

Given how the description is worded, "[h]er relationship with the father of her child is rarely shown 'onscreen'; she's usually a footnote in his past," I do think it fits this index. I also think that the description needs some help as well.

I am not sure if Bondage Is Bad should be put on the index.

I can see how the first trope fits the index, but I will not argue against working on it a bit. I think the second one does not need to be there, but I do not really know too much about it, so I would defer to someone who does.

I think Guys are Slobs should be on this index (since I think it says something negative about men and is arguably overused), but I agree that it needs to be developed a bit more.

I think this should stay on the index. From what I tell, the Unfortunate Implications involve not seeing Koreans as valuable.

I do not quite understand why this does not fit the index. I mean, it fits the history requirement you mentioned earlier and I do think it still gets used today. I could be wrong though.

I do not think it really fits either because the words "toiler humor" bring to mind something that is inappropriate anyway.

I have not seen this trope in fiction much, but I could believe that it does happen frequently. I could support sending it back to YKTTW though.

edited 6th Feb '11 10:09:23 AM by LouieW

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

Bump for more feedback.

First of all, the "some of these tropes do have a history of being used to be offensive." part of the index description must be interpreted as "some of these narrative devices etc do have a history of being used to be offensive in works". They don't have to have such a history here on TV Tropes.

With this in mind, hmm, here's my input...

• These should be removed from the index:
  • Anal probing & toilet humor, just remove them. This index is about discrimination and such, not about vulgarity and such.
  • Gay Bravado: The trope doesn't seem to be relying on homophobia or heterophobia or anything like that. Only the simple comedy premise that if you say things you don't mean someone will eventually take your word for it. Lets remove it, for the reason I just stated. (Whether or not the trope is well written is beside the point for this thread, unless some bad writing makes it unclear whether the trope is about discrimination or not. And that doesn't seem to be the case.)

• Dunno about these
  • Asian Babymama, I honestly don't know about this one, but I guess it's some old racist stereotype or something. If it do have a loaded history, it should stay.
  • No Koreans In Japan: On one hand, it's clearly about discriminatory attitudes. On the other hand, it's not about portrayal at all, it's about the lack of portrayal. Handling this trope, with care or otherwise, seem like a double-negation.

• These should stay
  • A Sinister Clue have a rich history of discrimination in real life as well as in fiction. yes, it's a Dead Horse Trope these days... so what?
  • Abusively Sexy Woman should remain on the index for the same reason as Bastard Boyfriend remains on the index. Discrimination can go in both directions, and accepting abuse because the abuser is hot should be handled with care regardless of the abusers gender.
  • All Jews Are Ashkenazi is poentially problematic not because of negativity in itself but because of stereotyping that can be negative - especially for those jews who are not Ashkenazi.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil & Bondage Is Bad: Hello? A minority that exists in real life gets depicted as evil. Of course it belongs on this index.
  • Good Victims, Bad Victims: What does the trope being broad have to do with anything? The trope is about how only certain kinds of people deserve respect and human rights. It belonging on this index is as obvious as it gets.
  • Guys are Slobs: The trope is clearly about negative stereotypes against one gender. (And please don't do "complaining about tropes you don't like", especially not in a thread where it is off-topic such as this thread. If you think the trope need more work, then work on it. Or come with constructive criticism in an apropriate place, such as the trope's discussion page or a separate thread here in the TRS.)

Skimmed through the index, looking for other tropes that should be removed from the index. Didn't find any, but I did find many where the text probably should be rewritten. A lot of them sounds far whinier then they should have to be.

I remain unconvinced that Scary Dogmatic Aliens belongs on the list. It can be Anvilicious in the wrong hands, sure. But controversial? I'm less then convinced of that.

LOL, I missed that one. Remove it! Sure, just like toilet humor, and pretty much any other trope as well, it can be used in a discriminatory manner. But the link is seriously too weak for the trope to stay in the index.

I didn't put Anal Probing and Toilet Humor on the list because of "vulgarity." I put them because of the following:

Anal Probing is basically a way to throw cheap HOMOPHOBIC humor into a story. The "cheap" is not the problem, nor is the "humor." Almost all depictions of it contain not one but TWO Unfortunate Implications: they're comedic, ergo, Rape as Comedy, and they're implying anal penetration is the VERY WORST thing that could ever happen to a "real man," because obviously "real men" can't have any reaction to anal penetration other than horror and horrific pain.

The example needs to be written better than I did, I admit that, but it needs to stay, even as a subtrope of Rape as Comedy (if that's decided to be the worst interpretation) or of some "omg gay men aren't real men" implication.

As for Toilet Humor, the reason I wrote the example as it was is because of course not ALL toilet humor is problematic. Maybe the trope needs to be separated into Type A, B, C, and such to make it workable to list, and I will happily do that. The reason I listed it is because while some types of toilet humor definitely don't have Unfortunate Implications, here's a couple of examples I'm writing on the fly that would have huge ones of the varieties I mentioned:

• Bob, who has been portrayed as Camp Gay, is depicted eating animal excrement. Alice comments that he must have a special taste for shit. (Homophobic.)
• Alice has poor bowel control. This is Played for Laughs and she is treated as a Butt-Monkey for it, even as she experiences things that would be horrifically humiliating to someone in Real Life, such as defecating on herself in public. She is depicted as unlovable and unworthy of even the slightest human respect, and at the same time no medical cause or sympathy is brought into the picture at all. (Ableism and the invocation of What Measure Is a Non-Human?.)

edited 20th Feb '11 5:44:23 PM by AGroupie

?

Those are only potential, though. I have no love for either trope, but this index should only be cases where the trope itself - not just potential ways it can be used - carries a risk of Unfortunate Implications if not handled carefully.

Hmm, I'll just modify the individual trope pages as I have on Toilet Humor rather than list here. That said would Toilet Humor be an acceptable list if I specified the Type B?

edited 20th Feb '11 7:00:13 PM by AGroupie

?

If you want to make major modifications to Toilet Humor like that, you should start a separate thread for it. I don't agree with your classifications at all.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Split the discussion about toilet humor toa separate thread. Developing the trope a bit might be a good idea.

Bumped, as I'm still uncertain about many of these. Take You Are a Credit to Your Race. How is this supposed to carry unfortunate implications? In modern works, it's basically a quick way for establishing a character as a bigot without making him or her a frothing racist lunatic. And that's not to say that the character has to even be a Noble Bigot - it could be a Freudian Slip that shows that this guy isn't as progressive as he seems. I've never seen it used in a way to indicate that the author agrees with it. So what is the reason for it being on there?

And that's just one example. Many others, like the aforementioned Scary Dogmatic Aliens, seem more like someone had an issue with the trope than that the trope is legitimately offensive. Straw Civilian and Straw Feminist both seem unnecessary in light of The War on Straw acting as an index. Et cetera.

edited 10th Mar '11 9:05:52 PM by nrjxll

Scary Dogmatic Aliens I think belongs here, particulary the religious fundamentalist part. I'll concede on Anal Probing, the case was made well.

Keep in mind that these are subjective, so you may not see them as being unfortunate, but others might

^ A subjective index?!?!?

edited 1st Apr '11 1:55:09 PM by SeanMurrayI

I mean that in the sense that what offends you may not offend someone else, and vice versa. Everyone has their own opinions

Wow, Black Best Friend is on there. Really? Magical Negro and Token Minority cut to the chase moreso than that one.

Both of those are on there too :) Can we close the discussion now since we've achieved our goals of trimming examples that truly shouldn't be there?

?

Which is why it shouldn't be the basis for an index. Eddie even recently cut Depressing Tropes for having similar problems as an index.

Indexes are supposed to be catalogs of things that have objective similarities. They're not supposed to based on subjective opinions and YMMV themes.

edited 19th May '11 12:24:40 PM by SeanMurrayI

Maybe what we need to do is chop this index up into groups that are related to each other. A Racial Sterotypes Index for instance. Maybe another Index Of Gender Relations. Group tropes by the objective things that they have in common rather than trying to put all the reasons something could be offensive into just one index.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

^ I wouldn't see that course of action as splitting a large category into smaller ones but as simply starting fresh indexes from scratch.

A Racial Stereotypes Index or a Gender Relations Index would simply have those subjects mentioned in their names as the principal theme of their lists—which would not entirely be very relevant to anything where offended reactions to the tropes is the main draw. A Racial Stereotypes Index would be Exactly What It Says on the Tin and nothing more; anything related to offensiveness on such a page would be a secondary, superfluous detail (or circumstantial, if offensiveness is actually part of a trope about racial stereotypes itself), and it would not be the main draw or the main basis for establishing what goes in the index.

edited 19th May '11 12:19:17 PM by SeanMurrayI

There already is a National Stereotypes index, isn't there?

I also have issues with this index, as in a lot of cases it seems so random what is and isn't on it. Black Best Friend is, but Bumbling Dad (which has a whole paragraph devoted to its Unfortunate Implications) isn't? I'm tempted to favor doing away with the whole thing, but this does have a lot more legitimate reason to exist then the late Depressing Tropes did - there really are some tropes that carry a lot more potential to offend people.

^ But there are tropes that carry just as much potential to be depressing to people, as well... or maybe they make people feel joyous or angry or confused or anything else. What's the difference between basing an index around one type of potential viewer response, which you say is acceptable, and others which would be just as vague and entirely dependent on the individual opinions of whoever adds anything to these pages for legitimacy?

All in all, modeling indexes around "the potential" any tropes may have of provoking any kind of emotional feeling or reaction from an audience, rather than base them around anything that might be more objectively clear cut, is not good form. It breeds too many Square Peg Round Trope-Type examples and a lot of ugly, confused looks whenever anybody looks at such a page; this was a problem on Depressing Tropes, and it's a problem on this page, too.

edited 19th May '11 6:43:58 PM by SeanMurrayI

I've been struggling with a list of criteria for a trope to be added on here. I thought "Trope that in the past, have historical implications and are always problematic so be careful" would be enough, but as I found out...that can be a lot of tropes.