Awful name: New Crowner 10/24/11: Dropped A Bridget On Him

Sweet Polly Oliver isn't always revealed. I've read books where it's never found out. It's also not about the reveal. It's about the act of disguise.

edited 28th Aug '11 6:30:34 PM by shimaspawn

Removed the offending line.

Sweet Polly Oliver also has the Spear Counterpart Disguised in Drag.

I know.... These tropes are such a cluster fuck of descriptions, and Related tropes, and bad trope names that I would just like to balance them all out nicely with gender counterparts and yada then look and see if we need more specific subtropes.

The only way Samus Is a Girl can work the way it is is if the characters or audience can not and does not actually see the person before the reveal. I think ~60% or so of the examples screw that up in which the characters are Bifauxnen, Bokukko or just plain dont have much of any female gender characteristics. (IE Pettanko etc) which would be the broader definition.

Actually the trope itself keeps saying "Sometimes or Oftentimes" on most of it...

EDIT: the misunderstandings of Dropped A Bridget On Him continue in the Image picking thread...

edited 28th Aug '11 7:42:31 PM by Raso

I think this thread should be moved to Special Efforts and each trope can be TR Sed one or two at a time as we figure them out.

edited 29th Aug '11 1:10:01 AM by NoirGrimoir

Or maybe start a special efforts thread for cleaning up the differences, and leave this thread open for the rename? Although this has been constantly active for a week, and the crowner seems stable below the supermajority, so maybe its done.

Oh, and does anyone have a problem with me YKTTW'ing the Gender Reveal supertrope?

The problem I have is that it really should be two Gender specific tropes. There are a bunch of differing ways it is done for each gender, as well as different connotations for each Sweet Polly Oliver (played for drama) vs Disguised in Drag (Played for Laughs) , Dragged into Drag (then Reveal) is one example of that. Then there are Becoming the Mask issues and how they are dealt with etc Harmless Lady Disguise etc.

A Female revealing that she is male is almost always Played for Laughs but a Male revealing that she is female is Played for Drama

It really is a Double Standard on it too.

edited 29th Aug '11 2:15:52 PM by Raso

Sweet Polly Oliver is played for humour as often as drama. The thing that really makes them spear and distaff is that they have different associated tropes thanks to the different sorts of scenarios that they tend to happen in.

Thats not what Disguised in Drag says "Sweet Polly Oliver is the Distaff Counterpart of this trope, but is more likely to be Played for Drama." (and my personal experience with the trope.. with most stories are around a Girl having to survive in a guys world.)

It's more likely, but that's because it's about 50% drama, 50% humour as opposed to Disguised in Drag which is about 98% humour. That's more likely, but that doesn't mean always by a long shot.

edited 29th Aug '11 3:02:59 PM by shimaspawn

Dude, we get it and Raso never said it was always Played for Drama, he was generalizing for the sake of simplicity in explaining the difference.

I always thought that She's A He? and vice versa would've been more better. I Thread Hopped, but didn't we have this discussion before?

I tried to suggest that, but Eddie squashed it; it's a line of dialogue, which by our standards makes it less better.

Ah, yeah, forgot about that.

Okay someone just put this in the YKTTW, as if we aren't having enough trouble sorting through all these. It's Gender Misdirection: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=vg249i4ckskgiubo6ke7mw2u

To make things even worse I (and some other tropers) have pointed out there that it's basically just a slightly different version of Samus Is a Girl.

edited 5th Sep '11 2:42:20 PM by BooleanEarth

Guilty.

I think that "slight difference" is what determines a trope. There are many tropes that could be "merged" but since this site is solely devoted to tropes, then why should they be merged? That would induce broad confusion. The trope I proposed is very different from Samus Is a Girl if you look at the concept. It's very different to assume a character is male by looking at her, than assuming such because of noun ambiguity.

I wasn't insulting your trope proposal, my friend, I was merely saying it further muddies the waters of our already messy gender confusion tropes section given the nebulous relationships between it, Samus Is a Girl, and Dropped A Bridget On Him.

Having read through all twelve pages of the thread, here is my understanding of the consensus that has been reached:

1. The various Gender Bender/Gender Reveal tropes should have their definitions clarified.

The agreed upon definitions are (mostly quoting Discar's definitions, post 273):

• Dropped A Bridget On Him: One character gets shocked by another character's true gender, whether they like the new gender or not.
  • Sweet on Polly Oliver: Character is attracted to a character they shouldn't be (because of their sexual orientation), only to find out they were wrong about the second character's gender.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Girl dresses up like a man to accomplish some goal. Does not necessarily include a reveal.
  • Twelfth Night Adventure: A plot revolving around a character masquerading as the opposite gender, often to protect themselves.
• Samus Is a Girl: Can be a subtrope of either Gender Reveal or Viewer Gender Confusion. The point is that people (either in-universe or out) thought a girl was a man because "he" was a Badass.

The proposition needs to be added to the crowner, or a new crowner created.

2. A Gender Reveal supertrope page needs to be created, listing all the above subtropes.

The page needs to be created in YKTTW.

3. Sweet on Polly Oliver and Sweet Polly Oliver should be renamed.

TRS threads need to be created for each of them.

4. A final decision needs to be made about whether Dropped A Bridget On Him is getting renamed. The crowner currently stands at +21 (1.51:1) in favor of renaming.

Proposed names (ignoring the obviously inappropriate ones):

• Gender Dissonance
• Sexual Disorientation
• Its A Trap
• Really A Guy
• Lost The Crying Game
• Crossdressing Surprise
• Gender Mixup Surprise
• Shock Inducing Gender Blender
• Shocking Transvestite Reveal
• Gender Mixup Shock
• Transgender Mind Screw
• Trans Whoa
• That Hot Chick Is A Crossdresser
• Mistaken Gender Identity
• Crying Game Surprise
• Incompatible Gender Surprise
• That Hot Chick Is A Guy
• Traumatic Gender Discovery
• Traumatic Gender Reveal
• In Universe Sex Reveal
• In Universe Gender Reveal
• Gender Shock
• Gender Reveal Shock
• Shes A Boy Trauma
• He Is A She Gender Reveal
• Crossdresser Realization

Is this correct? Did I leave anything out?

(I left out the YKTTW for now, as the Do We Need This? vis-à-vis Samus Is a Girl can be debated after we get the existing tropes cleaned up.)

edited 5th Sep '11 5:51:45 PM by Nocturna

Well there was some talk about merging Sweet on Polly Oliver and Dropped A Bridget On Him all together.

You're right except for three things:

01. I'm not sure that there's consensus on #3 there.

02. There's also the new gender trope discussed above on this page, which relates closely to Samus Is a Girl, so there's a merge/subtrope/something issue there, too.

03. You say you ignore the obviously inappropriate names for Dropped A Bridget On Him...then included Its A Trap? How is that not offensive?

edited 5th Sep '11 6:05:27 PM by BooleanEarth

03. I included that one simply because it is commonly found around the internet. The other ones are not.

02. I mentioned that I deliberately didn't include the YKTTW in the list because it can be (and will probably be better off being) discussed after we get the existing tropes ironed out.

02. Ah, I didn't see that. I still think it's relevant because if we do something with Samus Is a Girl or something that effects all of the gender tropes (like making a Gender Confusion supertrope) it would affect the new entry, too, in a way that couldn't just be dealt with after the fact, but I get your point.

03. The internet is full of bigots; TV Tropes is not. Let's keep it that way.

Its A Trap will get obvious misuse because it's a quote that originally referred to a literal trap. Remember what happened to Do Not Want?

Anyway, "dropped a bridget -trope" has 3 million Google hits, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that only one link on the first page actually references the character Bridget, and that might be a reference to This Very Wiki as well. So, it's not a common phrase. I support a rename, and a way to make this and Samus Is a Girl distinct.

The rename option is 25 points in the green, and a lot of alternative names were suggested so far. I say it`s time to switch the crowners.