Rework or removal of a vague trope: Playful Dolphin

An Image Pickin' Discussion was brought up that the Dolphins, Dolphins Everywhere pic didn't have "gratuitous" amounts of dolphins. Upon further inspection, we realized that the actual description did not have to do with dolphins being everywhere, but was actually something like "Dolphins. In sci-fi, smart dolphins." The examples are as unfocused as the description - most stating that dolphins do indeed exist in various works, which isn't really a trope.

I think there are dolphin-related tropes out there, but this page represents none of them. I propose a rework and rename to a trope that is actually significant. Two come immediately to mind:

1) Dolphins saving sailors from sinking ships, especially when sharks are involved.

2) Dolphins' high intelligence making them important to the plot somehow.

Edit: Ugh, there's an "even" in the "everything is worse..." shark snowclone? Bleah.

edited 3rd Aug '11 9:08:33 AM by unhappyyak

Split em.

1.Dolphins Are Here To Save The Day

2.All Dolphins Are Hyper Intelligent

...A lot of the "Everything's X With Y" animal tropes are like this, aren't they? I mean, Everything's Wetter with Otters seems to be basically "Otters. They're pretty great, am I right?"

edited 3rd Aug '11 10:27:58 AM by dangerwaffle

I have to agree. This one just bugged me because someone mistook it for "lots and lots of dolphins" instead of the usual lame animal pages.

It's basically Dolphins Sit On Chairs, isn't it?

Sapient Dolphins.

I would make that Sufficiently Sapient Dolphins.

If it were just Sapient Dolphins (or Sufficiently Sapient Dolphins), wouldn't that include dolphin characters from any show with talking animals? I was hoping to use this trope for the concept of "dolphins are the smartest animals".

You don't have to talk to be sapient. Dolphins Are Smartest if you want something for that subtrope.

Supporting some sort of split. As-written, this is just Not A Trope.

Yes, this is one of the worst-performing snowclones we have. Probably at least half of them aren't tropes at all.

The Otter page is equally pointless. I'd love to take a chainsaw to our "Everything Is X With Y" animal tropes, refocusing them into actual tropes instead of the lists of examples they are now, kind of like the Common Eye Colors discussion. I'll start working on a new TRS thread to develop a plan.

Edit: Found the Special Effort and TRS threads already on this topic.

edited 4th Aug '11 8:54:42 AM by unhappyyak

Another thing that hasn't yet been mentioned; while the title suggests "Gratuitous dolphins", and the trope description is just "Dolphins", the page quotes and image caption are apparently "Dolphins aren't as nice as you think they are", which is probably a separate trope entirely.

There is now a page action crowner for this trope here. Since I found the issues with this trope to be a bit complicated, I might not have described the options that clearly, so feel free to edit them or add more if you believe that is necessary.

I feel like work on this individual trope can probably proceed independently from the more general "Everything's better with W" tropes because we already have a thread for Dolphins, Dolphins Everywhere.

edited 3rd Nov '11 2:42:36 PM by LouieW

Maybe we should see what the actual examples seem to support before we figure out how many tropes we have.

I think Everythings Worse With Snowclones says that snowclone pattern is supposed to be "gratuitous X" or "lots of X". But frankly, I'm not sure that's tropable.

For dolphins, no, I don't think it is. But for other thinks I think they are valid tropes.

(Oh wait, Rainbow Unicorn Attack has dolphins pointlessly and randomly start jumping around on your screen once you've been playing for a whole. I would definitely call that gratuitous dolphins.)

I happen to think that the trope as written really does reflect a single coherent tropable animal stereotype, even if the name is poor and the examples aren't all on target.

Namely, that doplhins are smart, playful and heroic.

However, if we are going to split this up, I'm a bit confused by why the top two leading options propose a split into only two different tropes, each over lapping by one.

It looks to me like there are three tropes being proposed in total, and I don't see a reason why to not do all three.

1. Heroic Dolphins that save and otherwise help people
2. Highly intelligent dolphins, often sentient and sometimes even smarter than people
3. Dolphin motifs.

In addition, do people see there being a trope for Playful Dolphins, for wild dolphins that like playing around with people in the same manner that we see domestic dolphins trained for shows.

What about dolphin riding? How would that fit in to our proposed division of this trope?

edited 5th Nov '11 12:38:28 PM by Auxdarastrix

This is what I would say we need.

Heroic Dolphins: Dolphins will help people in danger, usually by saving them from drowning or from sharks.

All Dolphins Are Show Dolphins: Wild dolphins are friendly with humans, will play around with them, do tricks with them, and even let them ride on them. The degree to which this is Truth in Television varies, but most professionals advise keeping a safe distance from wild dolphins as they can often be dangerous.

Sentient Cetaceans: Whales and dolphins are as smart as people, and perhaps even smarter. Often overlaps with Space Whales.

edited 5th Nov '11 12:53:07 PM by Auxdarastrix

I think all of those are tropes, add it to the crowner.

Have done so.

We can combine the top 2 options to yield 4 tropes. That seems like a bit many for one species, but then again, they would still each be very distinct. Besides, we have more tropes about cats.

Yes to all these new tropes.

All Dolphins Are Show Dolphins looks like a subtrope of All Animals Are Domesticated. Is the former used so often that it derserves its own trope(or something)?

It may be some tweaking with the name and description, which can be worked out in the YKTTW, but I was trying to think of something that goes with the idea of humans playing with or even riding wild dolphins, which is something that goes back at least to Classical Greece and Rome, which I guess is before the show dolphins really exist. Maybe I should have gone with Playful Dolphins or Friendly Dolphins.

Consider the names to be "working names" that describe the general concept, not necessarily the final choice.

edited 7th Nov '11 3:23:14 AM by Auxdarastrix

Bump...