Misuse : Boy Meets Ghoul

Firstly, I want to say that I really like the "Boy/Girl meets whatever" format that most of the examples are written in. However, it seems to have caused a significant amount of misuse where what is a specific trope is used for any case of Interspecies Romance. Not helping matters is that the Laconic and Playing With entries, quite unusually, also get the trope wrong, apparently viewing it as Interspecies Romance But Cuter.

This seems to be what the trope is about:

but I'm not quite sure how literal it's supposed be. Is the trope for this exact situation? Is it for any pair of Star-Crossed Lovers where the star-crossed part comes from one not being human? Is it something else completely? I don't know, and neither, it seems, does anyone else.

edited 12th Jun '11 2:22:52 AM by nrjxll

Back when this one was launched, the definition was "A story premise where two people fall in love before one of them discovers that the other is different species". This is specifically a Beginning Trope and has the element of The Reveal in it. Interspecies Romance is much broader and includes endings, established relationships, and relationships where both parties are aware of the species gap from day one.

edited 12th Jun '11 4:44:31 AM by Koveras

So is this a subtrope of Interspecies Romance?

Also, I think the title is too narrow. I would have assumed it meant undead/living romance, not any Interspecies Romance.

This is looking more and more confusing. Again, I think this is a specific plot trope - Boy meets girl of his dreams, finds out she's not human (though not always with those specific genders) - but I can't really be sure. If that's right there's a lot more questionable examples then I though.

It's a subtrope of Interspecies Romance, yes. How exactly it's different is a little vague right now, though.

I think it differs in that Interspecies Romance is just any Interspecies Romance.

An elf meets and falls in love with a human and they both know that one is an elf and the other is a human from the begining isn't this trope. It's just Interspecies Romance.

A human meets a beautiful man. They fall in love. The human assumes that the man is human because what else could he be. The Reveal is that the man is actually an elf. That's Boy Meets Ghoul.

I think that shimaspawn described the distinction between Boy Meets Ghoul and Interspecies Romance well.

I think that the main issue here may be the name. I feel like the current name makes the trope either sound like a type of Interspecies Romance (i.e. what Doktorvon Eurotrash mentioned) or just sound like Interspecies Romance itself.

I made a page action crowner here which includes a rename option. I thought a page action crowner would be best in case other people have ideas about how the trope should be changed. If you do have other ideas, feel free to add them to the crowner.

edited 12th Jun '11 8:38:59 PM by LouieW

Support the rename - I really like the pun, but it's almost certainly the cause of the misuse.

I'll clean up the examples I can identify as bad soon, but there's quite a few I don't recognize and don't have enough context to tell. We'll also need to check the wicks.

Personally, I love the pun as is. But if you think you have a better title, by all means, try. :)

I like the pun too, but to me it sounds like a dark fantasy/horror trope rather than a general speculative fiction trope. "Ghoul" just doesn't say "non-human" to me. I'd expect this to be more specifically about romance with the undead (which is indeed a popular trope itself, especially when vampires, sparkly or not, are involved).

One possibility (which may be too snowclonish): Boy Meets Smeerp

Otherwise, something referring to The Masquerade might be good. Romance Through The Masquerade?

Boy Meets Smeerp sounds like it's about renaming genders. Romance Through The Masquarade sounds like it's never revealed and The Reveal is a big part of this trope.

I'm not sure how the "meets" in Boy Meets Smerp implies identity, but Smerp itself probably doesn't really suggest "thinly-disguised alien", which is what I was trying to go for, so throw that one out.

Your point about The Reveal is good; how about Fantastic Romantic Reveal?

^Boy Meets Smerp sounds like "girl" has been renamed to "smerp" in that 'verse.

edited 13th Jun '11 7:58:10 PM by StarryEyed

Bump for more votes or possible resolution.

Tried to fix the laconic:

"Boy Meets Girl-he-thinks-is-human-but-turns-out-not-to-be."

Better?

I also cut all the entries from Playing With that were based on simply "Cute couple, one's an alien"

edited 23rd Jul '11 9:14:43 PM by Madrugada

Definite improvement on the Laconic, but note that gender-flipped versions also count, according to the description. "Boy (or girl) discovers their romantic partner is not human" might be slightly more accurate (if a little bland).

Bump for more votes and/or possible resolution.

Current standing: +6 (yeas:10 nays:4) 2.50 : 1 for rename.

I have always found voting options like "I have no new title to suggest, but let's rename it nonetheless" great.

Hey, I made several suggestions, at least one of which didn't elicit any complaints (yet). The point is that we don't rename things because somebody thought of a cool name; we rename because the current name isn't working. At which point, just about any alternative should be acceptable as long as it describes the trope reasonably well. In this case we're seeing misuse and probable underuse because the name is misleading. That's a good reason for a rename.

Wait, what were the reasons for rename again?

Misuse, I would assume. Seeing the title and all.

But, yeah, now you mentioned, there haven't been much checking to see if there is misuse or not, have it?

There was mention above of cleaning up the misuse. But I suspect the name is misleading enough that we'll see misuse occuring again soon enough. The name is only tangentially related to the trope.

On the other hand, this has a page action crowner specifically to allow other options besides a rename to be suggested. I never would have found this trope under the current name, so I think redirect farming would be the least we could do.

Well, fixing the laconic is already a big step to fix it (assuming it was broken). A misleading laconic is worse then a bland title.

True, but the laconic doesn't help people find it when a title is as misleading as this one. I mean, I love the title. It just has nothing to do with the trope. I'd actually rather see it used for the trope it sounds like. (Romance with the undead.)

Edit: skimming the works linked to it, there seems to be a strong dominance of horror related titles, which suggests that it's not being found as a general speculative fiction trope, which is what it is.

edited 19th Aug '11 1:52:09 AM by Xtifr

To help people to find a trope we create redirects. For such purpose there is no need renaming.

I am not crazy for the name myself, but I think there should be some checking before taking decisions based on a potentially flawed premise.

Also, we don't really know if there was a motion to fix examples. nrjxll said he would, but then he never came back to report.

As I mentioned in my edited addendum above, it looks like a serious problem with underuse exists. There's only 100 total wicks, and most look like horror titles. This is not a horror trope. And it's a very common trope in our most-covered genres.

edited 19th Aug '11 2:06:40 AM by Xtifr