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

Yeah, I sent a PM to Fast Eddie about whether this was supposed to be a mod mandate or not.

A quick look at the wiks shows that it's got way more than that. Most people seem to me misusing it for friendship as an actual superpower. The actual trope being having friends that have your back and help you do shit when you need them.

I think if it's going to be renamed regardless, then why don't we just swap in Sexual Disorientation as the main title and relegate the current name to alt title? I think it's clearly the best title.

Also, I do agree with those who've said that the trope is offensive. Whatever we name it, we should modify the page description to reflect its Unfortunate Implications.

I'd dispute that, but it would be derailing the thread. So instead I'll ask, You're claiming all our big tropes have 10% misuse? Every single one?

One of six being misused is quite a high amount. If this is still O.K where is the line to bad?

And being a big trope is not a reason for much misuse, actually a bigger sample means that single mistakes count less. Having a trope with 10 wiks only one wrong example will lead to 10 % misuse. Meaning that at this point you cant say something is broken, it is just one editor who maybe didn't care that much.

But if a trope has 1, 684 wicks and we have 10% misuse that means we have 168 wrong entrys. That is not just one editor who didn't get the trope, that means people repeatedly fail to identify this trope correctly.

So I think one of ten (if we have a sample big enough to prove this)is the point when we should start to worry, why people don't get the trope. It is not the point when you can say it needs a rename, but it is the point when we should have a look at the description page image and laconic to see whether there is something misleading and maybe add a sentence to the description clearing up the most commen misunderstandings.

No, not all of them. Not the ones we just cleaned, but any trope with enough wiks and a long enough time since it's last cleaning has about ten percent misuse. It's pretty much attributable to drive by editors.

More than 1 in ten wrong is an issue. This change isn't being done by fiat, obviously, but I do think a change is needed.

Using Dropped A Bridget On Him for out-of-universe reactions (ie, audience reactions) is misuse. We have Viewer Gender Confusion for that. Maybe the name is too memetic and funny, and gets overused because people like to use it, like what happened to Rape The Dog (now Moral Event Horizon).

Edit: Oh, ok. I didn't see Viewer Gender Confusion mentioned anywhere, so I thought people had forgotten about it.

edited 23rd Aug '11 3:50:43 PM by Antheia

I put out of universe as correct only when it seemed clear that it was implying that viewers were having the same reaction as a character would to this trope.

I dunno. People here are talking like this is some sort of household word. I never saw it before this site, and when I first encountered it, I found the name's meaning to be completely turgid.

I'd still like to know where this term came from, but we can ignore that for now. Like I said, most of the problem seems to be that people are mistaking this for gender confusion in general, not the rather more specific trope this is. So if it gets a rename (or a redirect, actually), it should definitely be something that implies the "shock" aspect more. Sexual Disorientation doesn't do that at all.

Personally, I weigh in favor of keeping it. It's a cute title that conveys the meaning of what it portrays (or at least, I read it for its meaning the first time I ran into it). Yes, some people will be confused, but I think that's pretty typical when you try to sum a trope up in a few words. C.f. the I Thought It Meant meta-trope.

I'm more than a tad confused at the "attached crowner" at the bottom, which looks blank to me. Are we just voting to change it? Voting for a particular name?

Lastly, in regards to Unfortunate Implications... are you saying it's Unfortunate if implied that the reaction is always negative or that it happens at all? Reality is a revelation like that frequently will elicit a negative reaction in Real Life. Or are we taking a stand that reality is what needs to be fixed? :)

"I'd still like to know where this term came from, but we can ignore that for now."

It's based on Dropped a Bridge on Him, which is an unrelated term about what happened to Kirk in Star Trek Generations.

Fuzzy, you have to open the crowner first, other wise it seems blank.

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is that the description of the trope has some elements lacking, naming issues aside. If it is about The Reveal and the shock/surprise, then there should be some stronger language than

"There is a fair chance one of their friends never learned how to deal with it. The friend is stuck between trying to maintain a standard friendship and having really inopportune bouts of vaguely rationalized attraction."

This makes it sound like an ongoing refusal/rejection, not the moment this trope is striving for.

edited 23rd Aug '11 12:15:27 PM by ArtemisStrong

True, the description could use some work, it reads like "Guy sees this friend in a dress and it makes him question his sexuality from that point on" Not "Guy sees cute girl, goes over to flirt and finds out it's a man."

If it wasn't for the fact that the Bridget reveal is almost as famous as the Samus reveal I probably wouldn't be sure which this trope was about.

BTW, wasn't the Death Note example only dropped on scanlation readers?

edited 23rd Aug '11 2:28:44 PM by No9

"If it wasn't for the fact that the Bridget reveal is almost as famous as the Samus reveal"

I'm calling Fan Myopia on that. The Metroid series isn't really a top tier series, but it's still far bigger than Guilty Gear.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bridget#.TlQdmV1AKvw

If knowing makes me a fan I guess that might be true, but the internet spoiled this for me long before i ever picked up the series. And the Samus reveal was about 20 years ago, this is about 8.

Edit: Guess that makes this part of internet culture. Same goes for Pedobear, I know of it, but not where its from, and My Little Pony Friendshipis Magic

edited 23rd Aug '11 3:03:48 PM by No9

I'm calling Fan Myopia, too. I've only played Metroid in stores on the demo GameBoys they leave attached to the walls and I still know the Samus meme. I've never even heard of Guilty Gear.

That might just be me, though...

That just makes is a popular meme. Samus being a girl is part of the gaming culture.

Not entirely related, but I have to question why the bit about this trope in real life being used in "trans panic" defenses and how the idea of female looking character being hilarious has some major Unfortunate Implications got cut from the description. I think that's very relevant to the trope. I know it got cut due to invoking politics, but I don't entirely agree that part needed to go.

edited 23rd Aug '11 2:54:43 PM by Katsuhagi

In defense of Samus Is a Girl over this trope, it doesn't matter who 'Samus' is because 'is a girl' is on the end. The only reason you would say that is if the assumption that she wasn't one was in place.

I'd agree with that. You can tell from context that it's not expected that the character is a girl, while with this one it's unclear just what a "Bridget" is unless you're familiar with Guilty Gear.

I'm not sure about Sexual Disorientation, that sounds more like Stupid Sexy Flanders, though there's no gender bending (necessarily) involved in that trope. And even if you don't know who Flanders is (assuming you've been living under a rock for 25 years) you still understand because it has Stupid Sexy as the first words, so that's another one that works even though it refers to a specific character.

edited 23rd Aug '11 3:03:19 PM by Katsuhagi

Sexual Disorientation is a horrible name and captures none of the points of this trope. It's amazingly unclear what it's referring to.

Mistaken Gender Identity ?

Kinda bland.

Suddenly Penis ?

May be offensive.

She Is A He?! (with the punctuation)

Dialogue-y. (But maybe an exception could be made.)

edited 23rd Aug '11 3:16:13 PM by ArtemisStrong