The growing problem of inscrutable titles and text

It was at first. It's just had a little while to catch on.

Why in the world do I need to read some article about an anime fanspeak term to understand examples from a Marvel comicbook? It's just bizarre.

No, what is bizarre is that you seem to think that its anything other than a term. What in the world does it matter what language it is? No matter what, you'd have to get a defnition for it to understand what it means.

Your hangup over this is bizarre.

So what if it originated in Japan? What difference does it make? How is it fundamentally different from if, say, comic book fans here in the US made up a word for this?

@Setsuna: The character type described by Tsundere has examples that date back to centuries before the word "tsundere" was invented. It's Older Than They Think. That said, it would be better to redirect all further discussion of the trope here.

@Fast Eddie:

Sounds agreeable. What would happen to Japanese media industry terms like "Girls' Love" and "Shounen"?

On a tangential note, the points that I raised here in response to your desired approach (mentioned here) need to be addressed.

Also, quoting a post of mine from the "TV Tropes culture and behavior norms" thread, in response to a relevant clarification from yours truly, since both have more relevance to this thread.

---

Quoted For Truth.

edited 14th Jul '11 5:34:54 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Of course it does. Hell, elsewhere I made that point regarding a greek goddess (Artemis, totally tsundere) once, but that doesn't change the fact that no one actually gave it a snappy name until 2003 or so.

I'm a bit confused by Eddie's compromise. Does he mean that we're going to end up splitting certain tropes into different pages depending on Medium/Country of origin? Or will we just start creating lots of redirects?

edited 14th Jul '11 5:43:01 PM by VmKid

Hyperforce Go! http://vmkid.me/

If a trope needs Japanese culture to work, we pull out the elements that don't need that culture and put them in an article about those elements.

The name of the one that needs Japanese culture to work is reserved for anime/manga/visualnovel use only.

edited 14th Jul '11 5:51:12 PM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

How about "The name of the one that needs Japanese culture to work is reserved for works that need Japanese culture to work" rather than specifying that it can only be used in three specific formats? Why can't a novel or a movie require Japanese culture to work? Shogun certainly did. So did Memoirs Of A Geisha. So does Ran.

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

Maddy, he's already stated something along that line a few pages ago. I believe he's just being quick and brief, lumping everything that is Japanese works under the three most widely known/used categories.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Yup. If the work needs Japanese culture to work.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

This is only true to the extent that English stole words from other languages like schadenfreude and ennui when it encountered concepts it couldn't encasulate with its existing vocabulary.

But what if something occurs in African?

It feels like English usually adopts a foreign term encapsulating a concept if it hasn't already instead of being redundant and making its own unique term. English is a particularly adaptive language, one of the reasons for its success.

edited 14th Jul '11 7:32:40 PM by revolution11

Think Of The Ewoks.....

The main problem is there are terms where the concept has been around for a while, but the Japanese or some other non-English-speakers were the first, and often the only, ones to come up with a name for it. The Japanese certainly didn't invent the concept of "Tsundere", but they did invent the word. If you want to describe a tsundere without using the word "tsundere", you'd need a lot of words, maybe a sentence to do it right. English speakers ended up using the term "tsundere", not because they're trying to avoid English, but because they're using the only word they have.

The same goes for "Ryokan" only worse, since the concept is pretty much Japanese too (and "Ryokan Inn" is like having a page called "Sushi Food").

And as we know, the "food" part of it isn't needed.

edited 14th Jul '11 7:39:55 PM by chihuahua0

We've moved on from these topics, guys. Please review the thread.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Technically, it should be "Sushi Dish", because it's not just food, it's a specific dish.

Right. Besides the still standing issues of certain points raised about your "three-techniques" approach (linked above in my first post on this page), and what should be done with official Japanese media industry terms in cases like Girls' Love and Shonen, what is the current list of leftover issues to discuss?

edited 14th Jul '11 8:21:41 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I still don't get the sense that there is buy in on the idea that these terms are to be used in Japanese-culture-dependent contexts only. We've got to hammer that out.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Maybe we should sit on this for a day. I like the proposal but would like to hear more sides on this.

Think Of The Ewoks.....

I don't think you're going to get it. Trying to segregate anime terminology into "only when used in anime" is doomed to fail, especially when the current generation of Western writers and artists is fairly thick with anime fans. You'll either get edit wars over whether the Western or Eastern trope is in use in any particular work, or you'll sacrifice accuracy something fierce when you forbid the Eastern trope from being mentioned in any work not out of Japan.

For a concrete example of this, Bio Ware is a Western company that makes WRP Gs. However, Morrigan from Dragon Age is not just a shrew-in-need-of-taming, she is a Tsundere, and her defrosting is played along anime-inspired lines and with full knowledge of the Japanese cultural situation (because Bio Ware is marketing to video gamers and the video game market is traditionally Japanese-dominated). Either this will become "which trope is it?" edit-war fodder, or you'll damage accuracy by saying that it can't be Tsundere.

You're also not going to get support for simply conjuring new terms to replace the Japanese terminology, and quite rightly; the concept is often captured far more exactly in the single Japanese term than it would be in a simple English renaming. ("Schaedenfreude" is a lot easier to say than "a malicious satisfaction from the misfortunes of others," to languagehop for a second.)

Right, unlike some other languages (German definitely, Japanese to a lesser extent), English is less likely to make a new word by smushing a bunch of others together. Its more likely to go searching through other languages to try to find an answer to the problem.

Out of curiosity, should we rename The Thing That Goes Doink? It's definitely a Japanese thing, but it's not something that really has a lot of baggage. If it were to show up in a western work, I'd say "oh that's a sign they're in Japan or something of Japanese origin".

Fight smart, not fair.

You know, I never heard about that thing till today. Not only that, but my first thought was "Another Doctor Who named trope?"

"My life is my own" | If you want to contact me privately, please ask first on the forum.

I like Deer Scare, maybe we should make a TRS for that.

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Why isn't that already a redirect? Confusing...

I now have the sound of it in my head...

Now collecting White-Haired Pretty Girls.

The thing is, a lot of these tropes don't need Japanese culture to work, they're named in Japanese because they came up with an encapsulating term before anyone else. This effort to split them by subtracting Japanese culture from them simply results in a distinction without a difference.

You don't get the sense we're buying in because we're not Eddie, and we're not going to unless you have an easy encapsulation term like this up your sleeve.

I'd actually like that one renamed because it's too broad/doesn't necessarily describe the object in question. Lots of things go doink.

Nous restons ici.