Needs love: Divine Date

For a page that's been around for a while, and a trope that's Older Than Dirt, Divine Date doesn't seem to be thriving very well, with only 18 wicks (four of which I just added). Someone recently started a YKTTW for the same concept, which is how it came to my attention. I think it may need some redirects for searching, if not an outright rename.

Well, it's pretty obvious that it hasn't been cross wiked pretty much at all.

Let's try the less radical measures to deal with underperformance first — making sure that all the crosswicks are in place in both directions, get a couple of good, boring searchable redirects, maybe some entry pimping...

If it's still languishing after all that, then we can go to a rename.

edited 31st Jul '11 9:56:28 AM by Madrugada

Yeah, while it's not something I'd think of, it's a very descriptive title.

It's a good title... lets do some entry pimping.

Ah My Goddess is the only one I can think of off the top of my head though.

Added a link to the Magical Girlfriend trope as they are related.

edited 31st Jul '11 12:27:35 PM by Sackett

Adding redirects doesn't seem all that radical to me. I agree that the name is not too bad (though "date" is a bit of a stretch in some cases). That's why I titled the thread "needs love", not "needs rename".

Entry pimping is definitely good. That was my first reaction. But I brought it here to at least discuss the possibility of redirects. As Fast Eddie recently posted, title seach gets over used over 100k times each day.

The discarded YKTTW is here, and the name there (Divine Lover) isn't bad. But I thought at least one redirect with the word "God" in it might be good as well.

"Date" seems kind of weird to me since it can also refer to an event rather than a person. Given the vaguely long term implication of the trope, I'd say it's probably one of the worst possible choices of all the options that actually make sense. So I second the idea of getting some redirects while we're here.

Romance With A God introduces two more useful keywords.

Rejected ideas:

• Divine Love (too easily mistaken for the other kind, i.e. God Is Good).
• Loving God (ditto)

Possibles that definitely shouldn't be the main name:

• Sleeping With A God (this isn't just a sexual trope.)
• Hot God On Mortal Action (the fact that I like this one so much probably suggests I shouldn't be in charge of the redirect farming effort.) :)

edited 31st Jul '11 8:13:40 PM by Xtifr

Actually I like that one too, but I think Hot Deity On Mortal Action is better.

Dating A Deity, perhaps? It doesn't require a sexual relationship, but it does require that there be a relationship, as opposed to say, Zeus's one-night-stand style.

edited 31st Jul '11 9:09:53 PM by Madrugada

Why do you think one-night stands are out? Is there another trope for that? I would think it would at least be a subtrope. I think one-night-stands fit, if loosely, into the category of date.

edited 31st Jul '11 9:30:47 PM by Xtifr

Yeah, I would say one night stands are included in the current definition and definitely in the examples.

If the trope was bigger, I'd recommend splitting off the short-lived flings from the steady relationships, but I'm not sure we'd end up with two viable tropes.

But the way short-lived flings and steady relationships are handled is generally quite different.

How about we soft-split the page and see if there are enough examples to justify a hard-split?

There's great variation in the way romantic entanglements are handled in general. There's a huge difference between, "we went out a few times a couple of years ago and nothing ever came of it" and "we've been falling closer and closer in love for the last couple of years" or even, "we got married several years back, and let me tell you, never ever marry a god!"

I think the significant factor in this trope is the involvement of a deity. I would personally hold off on any hard or soft splits until this has had a little more time to grow and get healthy.

What's weird is how the trope description implies it's something very different from Magical Girlfriend.

Magical Girlfriend is a genre — a class of stories that all share characteristics and usually have a group of tropes that each work uses. This is a plot trope. It's very different.

It was the second paragraph that I think was confusing, and so I removed it.

"Often, this works like a Magical Girlfriend but more powerful." If a Magical Girlfriend can be a Divine Date, then "more powerful" doesn't make sense.

"Unlike a Magical Girlfriend, the examples here work out about even genderwise." I sort of understand what this is trying to say, but it's phrased completely wrong.

Weren't you the one who brought up Magical Girlfriend in the YKTTW, or was that someone else?

EDIT: Never mind, I was thinking about another YKTTW.

edited 7th Aug '11 5:28:47 PM by chihuahua0

This is looking a lot better. It has a couple of good redirects, and the number of wicks has nearly doubled. I think we can go ahead and close this for now.