What is this trope? (Alt titles crowner 10/18): Multicultural Alien Planet

Do we need a single prop crowner to decide whether or not this is actually a trope?

Well, there was already the multi-prop deciding the definition, so I doubt it.

Gee, Worldmaker, thanks for that useful contribution to the discussion.

Moving along, I don't think having a crowner to decide whether this is a trope or not is the right way to go, though not for the reasons you do: it makes no sense for the definition of what is and isn't a trope to be decided by popular vote. Either I'm right and this isn't a trope, or you're right and it is - it's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of who is correctly interpreting what it takes to be a trope.

So... we rename it, leave it be for now, and come back to it if there ever is consensus on the trope/not trope issue? Or else how are you thinking of resolving it?

I don't know - I'd kind of like to get an "official" ruling on this - but I do think that a crowner is entirely the wrong way to go about it.

We get in trouble with you guys when we unilaterally declare something to be not-a-trope. I'd be happy to cut and lock this but that's not how we like to do it. Proper protocol is to run a page action crowner.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If you didn't have a single proposition crowner to decide whether or not it's a trope yet, perhaps you should. I don't really think this is a trope if all it is is an aversion of Planet of Hats.

• First, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13151603990A91527300&page=0

I see you've already posted there.

• Second, I know should be and is is not the same thing. I think all women should be action girls, but truth is that many are distressed damsels.

• Third, is "norm" 50% or "a great many works"?

• Fourth, the question of "does an aversion count as a trope itself?" is an invocation of the root question, "what counts as a trope?", so I direct the discussion to People Sit On Chairs: "Tropes are conventions used in storytelling to convey some sort of information to the audience."

Now, Planet of Hats is a convention to refer to a entire races as near-interchangeable Character Devices. There are several ways to avert that. One way is to not use more than one race. (Issac Asimov usually uses this method) Another way is to never describe an entire race, but to refer to individuals only. (Star Wars movies 4-6 use this method) A third way is to actually make individuals within the race possess distinct personalities. (late Star Trek episodes did this)

How this trope averts the Planet of Hats is by giving each race multiple distinct cultures. The Orcs of the Ghetti plains are distinct from the Orcs of the Fangarl mountains. The Romulus Romulans are in control of nearly everything, while the Remus Romulans are nothing more than slaves, rarely even seen off-planet.

This trope is about having more external Consistency with the development of races than Planet of Hats has.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Or, to put it succinctly, yes, this is a trope.

Glad to be of help.

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

I'm not quite sure I understand the point you're making. Are you saying that this is a trope because it's one of several possible ways to avert Planet of Hats?

He's saying this is a trope for reasons that have nothing to do with Planet of Hats. At it's core, this is a storytelling trope about ways to flesh out races. Yes, it's vaguely related to Planet of Hats, but it's not a true aversion. A true aversion would be to give the alien race no distinct personality.

edited 21st Oct '11 4:00:48 PM by shimaspawn

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

{{58}} reading Trope description: "You've seen this somewhere before…

Merriam-Webster gives a definition of "trope" as a "figure of speech." In storytelling, a trope is just that — a conceptual figure of speech, a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the audience will recognize and understand instantly.

Above all, a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, a linguistic idiom... you know it when you see it. Tropes are not inherently disruptive to a story; however, when the trope itself becomes intrusive, distracting the viewer rather than serving as shorthand, it has become a cliche. Bad screenwriter. No biscuit for you!

On this wiki, "trope" has the even more general meaning of a recognizable pattern — not only within the media works themselves, but also in related aspects such as the behind-the-scenes aspects of creation, the technical features of a medium, and the fan experience. Around here, it is a stunt root, as in, "That isn't really different enough from our other tropes to be separately tropeable." The tropeability of a work is referred to as its tropiness; works that are particularly tropeable are often referred to as Troperiffic."

Tropes convey meaning. People Sit On Chairs don't convey any meaning — they aren't storytelling conventions at all, they're just things that happen normally or incidentally during the storytelling. In order to avoid People Sit On Chairs, the concept must have a narrative purpose. (The definition under Trope does not provide any limits to what constitutes a trope.)

Planet of Hats is a storytelling convention used to simplify world-building. Each culture is one race. Each race is a culture. It is often used to make it as easy to describe a race as a two-dimensional character, invoking Characters as Device. Multicultural Alien Planet is a storytelling convention used to elaborate the idea of a (generally) nonhuman race. It fleshes out the species the same way a writer would typically flesh out a character.

An aversion is when a situation where a given trope is used, but instead, it never comes into play. The writer forgot or intentionally avoided the use of that trope. Generally speaking, there is no meaning to an aversion. The fact that Harry Potter does not use Space Is Noisy is an aversion, and also People Sit On Chairs because the trope Space Is Noisy does not serve any narrative purpose in Harry Potter.

On the other hand, Studio Audience is an aversion of Laugh Track. It does serve a narrative purpose. While a Laugh Track can be used to punctuate what the writers/directors think is amusing, the Studio Audience elicits a more varied reaction from the jokes, and add unexpected reactions to the sound track.

Multicultural Alien Planet is an aversion with narrative purpose to Planet of Hats, just like Studio Audience is to Laugh Track.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

{{61}} and {{63}}: ok, they are the first and second best arguments about Multicultural Alien Planet trope status....ok, i changed my mind. Multicultural Alien Planet really is a trope.

I still have reservations, but that's pretty convincing. I'm going to withdraw my argument that it's not a trope.

Offhand, I would say this trope is largely "planet with multiple accents/skin tones/cultures" with a touch of Fantasy Cultural Counterpart mixed in (ie, this must be the white/black/Indian version of that species). I think it would benefit greatly with either going with a tight snowclone of Planet of Hats or eliminating "planet" altogether from the title. Multicultural Alien Planet seems alright, but Planet Of Multiple Hats or Multicultural Aliens sounds better to me.

Multicultural may be "has many cultures" or "accepts many cultures". Since aliens tend to be science fiction, I like the addition of planet at the end, to show it is the same species.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

As the crowner shows clear consensus for Multicultural Alien Planet, I did the rename. (Once the discussion has been moved, I'll change Lots of Planets Have a North into a redirect.) I also cleaned up the page a bit, removed the now non-relevant page quote, and did a little bit of entry pimping to get it off the list of Pages Needing Wicks.

Do people want to work on the description, or can this thread be closed?

edited 24th Oct '11 3:32:21 PM by Nocturna

The examples on the page still largely focus on accents.

We can largely mine Planet of Hats for aversions, and thus examples of Multicultural Alien Planet.

Should the accent examples still be listed at all?

Those would be Aliens of London IIRC (next on the rename list)

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

since I turned into a bit of an advocate, I can change the description to be more precise.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I don't see anything wrong with the description itself - my issue is that the examples remain the same as before, despite the trope being redefined.

I was responding to Nocturna, I know the accent stuff needs to be cut as well.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.