What's the point of this page?: Hollywood Genetics

"Parents with blue eyes can't have children with brown eyes in fiction". This page acknowledges this is not impossible in Real Life, and...then what? There's something about the description that just doesn't work. It needs a Clean Up at least or delete it because it doesn't make sense.

A Cleaned Up version: "In fiction, in order for the viewers to recognize two or more people that are blood related, it will give them similar features (for example same eye color) which often will be commented by others for being similar, especially when these characters don't know are related."

Now from the description I couldn't understand what this trope is about, but that's what I figured out, that's what I assumed. If this is not what the trope is about, then correct me, but I don't understand the description. I understand the explanation of genetics, because that's 7th grade biology, but what does it want to prove?

edited 30th Aug '11 5:49:57 PM by drdeathray

It's one of the "Hollywood X" tropes: "Fiction generally greatly oversimplifies complicated subjects, often to the point that it's effectively wrong. Here is the most common oversimplification."

That said, the page does need a lot of work.

edited 30th Aug '11 6:15:56 PM by Madrugada

It's supposed to be a trope for when biological relatives don't "match" in the way they would be expected to in real life. Like the example you quoted of blue-eyed parents with a brown-eyed kid (though possible, very unlikely) or two pale blonds with a dark featured child, etc.

So the page Needs A Better Description.

Where to start?

edited 31st Aug '11 5:40:11 PM by drdeathray

A lot of the Hollywood Style pages get people writing vaguely angry articles about how something is wrong rather than identifying components of a trope.

The page says "It is impossible for two blond-haired people to produce a black-haired child. Similarly, two blue-eyed parents will not produce a brown-eyed child. Hollywood sometimes ignores this in casting." and then says "...in the real world...yes, two blue eyed parents can spawn to a brown eyed child". These to sentences contradict each other.

So Hollywood is being realistic, by ignoring homogeneous casting ...and...?

edited 31st Aug '11 7:27:51 PM by drdeathray

True; at the very least the two middle paragraphs should be combined and reworked—the information about blood types has nothing to do with the rest of the trope. I'll try to make an edit, but since it's a visual trope, I can't think of much to put. An image would be great, though.

Does my recent edit help any? I'm lost. The explanation was reduced, but now the justification is longer than the description. Like I said before, it's a visual trope, so I'm not sure how much description is needed. I'll try to work on it some more.

edited 31st Aug '11 8:36:54 PM by Mikebissle

nothing to see here...

edited 31st Aug '11 8:37:58 PM by Mikebissle

I think that it needs to be reworked into "oversimplification of genetics as a plot point", rather than "as a casting choice".

So things like the House and Everybody Loves Raymondexamples are good — but the ones like "In Dirty Sexy Money, Juliet has brown eyes while her parents are both blue-eyed." and "Dexter has Rita and ex-husband Paul, both blond. Their kids Astor and Cody have medium to dark brown hair." aren't.

And frankly, all the examples that are "parents have X color hair, but the kids are blond" need to go in any case — lots and lots of kids are blond when they're young and their hair darkens as they grow. (My parents were both dark brunets, and in my school picture up to third grade (age 9-ish), I'm very clearly blond. My fifth-grade picture shows light brown, and it gets progressively darker from then on til my eight-grade pictures.)

edited 31st Aug '11 8:43:44 PM by Madrugada

I modified the related tropes to mention that LEGO Genetics is a subtrope, not a sister trope.

Madrugada:Good call on the blond examples; blond children often do grow up to be dark-haired adults. As far as the reworking, part of the problem might be the title—it's not that intuitive to me. Just looking at the title I'd think it would be a trope closer to LEGO Genetics. How about Hollywood Heredity or something like that?

Well, the thing is that the Hollywood Tropes are supposed to be flexible about what does and doesn't count. If someone can think of other tropes that would fit under this name, I wouldn't be averse to a trope transplant with this as an index/supertrope.

Bump?

Do we want a rename or a transplant?

I say a rename; it doesn't seem we'll get enough thoughts to form a good consensus though. =.

We can holler for a multiprop crowner.

Or I can just make one and hook it up. Fill it up with the options you want.

bumping for more votes.

Crowners swapped.

I agree with Madrugada that the presence of Did Not Do The Research is not a reason to axe a page. That being said, it makes sense to make the description more accurate. Indeed, blue-and-brown are not a single-gene-matter.

Was the plan to use Hollywood Genetics for something else, or do we not have a matching trope?

Also, Septimus, you vote on a crowner by clicking the arrows next to the options, not hitting the "Add new" button.

edited 19th Nov '11 8:27:05 AM by Discar

We should probably get a few more votes on this.