Not Always: Always Female

(Everything I'll say applies to Always Male as well)

It is also functioning as a list of Almost Always Female character tropes, that are culturally associated with women, but in rare cases, feminine men can also use them.

Misuse is the smaller problem, though there are occasional example removing with the reason that "it can happen with men", but that's a rare case, people mostly got used to it's meaning.

The bigger problem is, that this title blocks the room from another potentially useful index, about actually Always Female tropes, like the ones related to female biology, like Boobs Of Steel or Asian Babymama or those that are caused by the character's female status, like Bokukko, or Female Misogynist.

I think, it should be split along the lines of Female Gender Tropes for the former, and Female Sex Tropes for the latter meaning.

So you're suggesting splitting?

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Yeah, that's what I meant when I said "I think, it should be split" .

Missed that, or I would have already pointed out those would be confusing.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

I agree, having an "always female" be an index of tropes that are not literally impossible to do with a male character (and vise-versa) has always bothered me. I don't think calling one "gender" and the other "sex" is the way to go, though. Maybe Always Female and Traditionally Female?

But currently Always Female is the traditionally female page, and if we would change that, that would mean completely redefining the old page, that has 2,679 inbounds.

We should split in a way that Always Female could stay a redirect of the broader index.

edited 20th Apr '11 3:22:26 PM by EternalSeptember

The problem, to the extent there is one, is tropes wrongly placed on Always Female. If the trope description isn't strictly female*

, then the trope shouldn't be on the page.

For instance (to take the first such trope that I checked out), Beautiful All Along should not be on the page, because its description just makes it MOSTLY female. But if a Handsome All Along trope existed as a Spear Counterpart to Beautiful All Along, it would fit in ALWAYS Female.

edited 20th Apr '11 4:21:49 PM by suedenim

Jet-a-Reeno!

I think this kind of misses the point. This isn't just meant to be a list of things that can only possibly apply to women; it's meant to be an index of the way female-ness is used in storytelling; i.e. roles in a story that a man could fulfill, but almost never does by story-telling convention. "There are some roles in fiction that are almost always given to women" is much more trope-able than "tropes about motherhood and boobs only apply to women." If you're proposing a split into the former and the latter, I really don't see why the latter would even need to exist.

I fail to see why this is really necessary, anyway.

Well, first of all, it's not what many people expect by reading the title.

For example, in the edit history, you can see that people removed Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter, Motherly Scientist, Innocent Fanservice Girl, and The Chick, due to having male examples, even though they were feminine enough that this got referenced in their title, and similar to 90% of the other examples that stayed there.

Only Female?

Fight smart, not fair.

For me, the distinction is that most of our tropes have weird outlier exceptions, especially in the case of subversions, which most well-established tropes develop. Tropes that are almost always female, but have a handful of exceptions, or almost always about Japan, but have a handful of not-Japan examples... those are the norm for TV Tropes.

Tropes which truly are ALWAYS female, or truly and EXCLUSIVELY related to Japanese culture, those are interesting because there aren't, and almost by definition can't be, exceptions.

Or to skip to my bottom line, I think Always Female is a useful index to have, while Mostly Associated With Female wouldn't be especially interesting or useful.

edited 21st Apr '11 7:11:59 AM by suedenim

Jet-a-Reeno!

I think, both indexes would be equally useful, but for different reasons.

suedenim is right, that the more exclusive tropes are more unique, and it makes sense to categorize them for that, at least for practical purposes, to collect these unique tropes.

On the other hand, even if the mostly female tropes are more common, as girlyboy said, the idea behind them is closer to the spirit of how tropes work.

What about Only Female? If we would launch it as a literal counterpart to Always Female, misuse would be astronomical.

I would support a split because I think the Always Female trope index name kind of clashes with the description itself (which seems to me to be Mostly Female rather than always).

I can thus certainly see how finding male examples for tropes labeled as Always Female might be confusing, especially to someone who is fairly new to the wiki.

I think grouping tropes based on gender or sex makes a lot more sense than using an Always Female index because those subgroups are a bit more specific. In my opinion, they give a clearer idea of under what category a trope fits.

Still, I am fine with the current setup as well.

edited 21st Apr '11 1:18:20 PM 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

But in that case the description only allows for a very narrow exception (essentially, "characters who are female for all intents and purposes except that they have or once had a penis.") A Wholesome Crossdresser can, perhaps, be a Sweater Girl, but this guy◊ cannot, no matter how much he loves sweaters.

Jet-a-Reeno!

Maybe the description could be interpreted in that way, but clearly, most pople who added the example interpreted in another way, that just like a Wholesome Crosdesser, any similarly feminine man can have these tropes.

To be fair there not all girls who wear sweaters are that trope as well as that trope as it's laid out. One of the girls in A Channel always wears one (it's 3 sizes too big and is flat out Moe)

edited 21st Apr '11 2:09:26 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

It could be clearer, and we're always going to have a fair amount of Square Peg Round Trope, but I don't think there's really any other way to parse the sentence. The only exceptions mentioned are for men who, for one reason or another, appear to be women. If the trope was meant to be "can also be used for Bishōnen males" or the like, I have no doubt that it would say so.

If I were to rewrite it, I'd say "An index of tropes that only apply to females (or, on rare occasions, to males who become females or appear to be females.)

edited 21st Apr '11 3:34:47 PM by suedenim

Jet-a-Reeno!

Since the overwhelming majority of the entries already use it as mostly female, probably other editors did the same, so after such a redefinition, we would have a hard time removing all the incorrect wicks, we would cause unavoidable harm by leading these 2,679 people to a shortened page, instead of the one that they intended to link to.

If the concept of Mostly Female already grew on this page that heavily, the only sensible solution is to add the other, unused concept about Literally Always Female as a new page, and whatever we do with Always Female, at least leave the title as a redirect to the Mostly Female concept.

edited 22nd Apr '11 12:21:13 AM by EternalSeptember

"Since the overwhelming majority of the entries already use it as mostly female"

I don't think that's actually true, though. Granted, I haven't gone through each and every trope, but it seems to me that around 90% of them really are ALWAYS Female in description and examples.

Jet-a-Reeno!

Starting at the top:

• Abhorrent Admirer: "An ugly and/or overweight female is noticeably attracted to a male protagonist ... These characters tend strongly to be female rather than male, ... However, in recent years the male "undesirable suitor" has become more common in comedies." not solely female — incorrectly listed
• Abusively Sexy Woman: "This woman is a rapist, torturer or Domestic Abuser. And that's awesome. Her abusiveness makes her sexy, just like her male counterpart. Just like him, she is based on Rule of Sexy rather then Rule of Drama or Rule of Funny. While there are no inherent difference other then the gender,..." distaff counterpart to Bastard Boyfriend — correctly listed

edited 22nd Apr '11 6:40:04 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Starting at the bottom: (the top seems to be a bit unrepresentative due to terms like "Amazon", "Action Girl" subtropes, and "Beautiful":

• Zettai Ryouiki - counted at least 10 male examples on the page. Mostly Female
• Yoko Oh No - "it almost always will be a woman, per Double Standard rules" Mostly Female
• Yaoi Fangirl - Has male redirect, Mostly Female
• Yamato Nadeshiko - "You will sometimes find males who fit in the Yamato Nadeshiko role pretty well" Mostly Female
• Wrench Wench - Female by definition, Only Female
• World's Most Beautiful Woman Distaff Counterpart, Only Female
• Women's Mysteries - "Very rarely gender reversed - or, rather, male versions (involving hunting, circumcision, warfare, initiation etc.) are treated very differently." Ambigious, leaning Mostly Female
• The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask - "This trope can be done with a male regent as well" Mostly Female
• Woman Scorned - Has no male counterpart, and physically nothing stops a male from assumong that role, but nothing on the page indicates that. Ambigious
• Woman In White - Distaff Counterpart to Man In White, Only Female
• Woman In Black - Same as above
• Winter Royal Lady - "Note that kings and princes can do this, but it's rare" Mostly Female
• Wife Husbandry - 9 gender inverted examples on the page. Mostly Female
• The five widow tropes: Black Widow has a male counterpart, The Bluebeard. Determined Widow and False Widow has male examples, College Widow and Widow Witch have few examples of any gender, so maybe they could have.
• Wicked Witch - Has one male example. Description notes that female majority is only enforced due to Most Writers Are Male. Mostly Female
• Wicked Stepmother - Notes Evil Uncle as an "equivalent male figure", but also lists 3 characters who better fit here. Mostly Female
• White-Dwarf Starlet - "This character is usually female and, as such, sets a Double Standard." Mostly Female
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess! - Has 3 gender inversions. Mostly Female

edited 22nd Apr '11 7:56:43 AM by EternalSeptember

I spun off a new thread for Woman Scorned: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1303500965009629800&page=1#1

Also, I think it's important to make an exception for jokes or deliberate (non-literal) gender-bending, even for tropes that are literally always female — a writer could take any female trope and, with enough effort, apply it to a male as a joke, or vice-versa, going out of their way to exaggerate it so there's no missing what they're going for. If it involves the guy growing breasts, well, whatever! (I'm pretty sure there's a male example from Fight Club on the Gag Boobs page, say.)

But that shouldn't be enough to disqualify a trope as Always Female. Basically, if the only male example are jokes on the fact that it's Always Female, then that's underlining that fact, not undermining it.

I agree with that specific example, and I think, the Literally Always Female page should take the current "gederbender and crossdesser exception", while making it clear that these are the only exceptions.

But I don't think that all tropes should be allowed on it if their Gender Inverted Examples are only played for laughs. After all, that's how tropes work. They are commonly associated with certain concepts that the writer wants to communicate:

It is entirely reasonable that when a writer uses a Mostly Female trope, like The Libby, or Sexy Secretary, with a male, they intentionally want to communicate that it's a feminine trope, so the male character is kinda weird.

It just means that the trope is tied to the cultural concept of feminity, not directly to the fact of being female.

That's why I suggested Female Gender Tropes and Female Sex Tropes for titles.

suedenim,

I definitely agree with you there. I guess my issue is just that I think that it is a bit unclear what "female" means in the context of the index. I think there is a significant difference between feminine and biologically female (and between masculine and biologically male) and that is pretty much why I agree with Eternal September's idea.

I am still not really sure though. If we changed the index to just Female Tropes, would that help solve the problem at all? I guess that might just complicate it even more so.

At the very least, I would like to see tropes that are just usually female be dealt with in some way. I feel like those are most definitely not biologically related, but I guess I could be wrong.

edited 22nd Apr '11 3:31:06 PM 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