Downplayed Trope - Do we need this?: Downplayed Trope

It launched early this year, the troper opinion in the YKTTW went 8 yes, 3 no and 1 maybe with a lot of contention and it barely scraped through the YKKTW with a minimum amount of examples. I was one of the No vote, this was something I wanted to keep track of after it launched originally to see how it went. It seemed a bit odd to create a new Trope Trope when these types of things seem similar to the way we refuse to create new 'crowning' pages.

It still only has 4 examples, with 41 wicks and 15 inbounds.

To me it seems like the kind of thing that should have been discussed further than just a ykttw.

Do we really need this?

The arguments against Downplayed Trope boil down to when a trope is setup but the delivery is not what is expected, that's a subversion. If a trope is setup and followed through on, it's a straight example. Even if the straight example isn't a strong example of it.

The examples the page itself uses as 'downplayed' can be shown to be either straight, aversions or subverted and not downplayed.

If the issue (crime I guess) in question was eating the last cookie in the jar then the butler eating it is still The Butler Did It and a straight example.

A powerful weapon that glows so little you can't see it in good light is either a straight example (it still glows), or a subversion if the setup is that expectation is for the weapon to glow brightly.

If someone eats everything but leaves a single French fry then that's an aversion of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich because it doesn't match the trope of characters ordering and never eating anything.

Am I on to something here? If you guys tell me I'm wrong I'll leave it alone for good.

As the launcher of the YKTTW for this trope, I'd like to take a shot at defending it.

Admittedly it's fairly weak in the examples department, but it's a completely valid form of Playing with a Trope. Namely, it's the antithesis of Exaggerated Trope.

As for your argument of "if it's a weaker version of X, it's still X"... well, a stronger version or a parody or a double subversion of X is still X under the same logic, isn't it?

...I'll have to replace the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich example with a different one. Admittedly that was a fairly poor example.

That's me.

I can see both sides of this. I need to think about it some more.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

This seems to reek of The Same But More, or in this case, less. It does have a case in that it's not actually a trope; it's a way to look at a trope. This seems be be building a sliding scale of "trope power": Averted -> Downplayed -> Standard -> Exaggerated.

I also agree that if we remove Downplayed that we should also consider removing Exaggerated.

I'd say we give this one a few more months to make it's case. Then we can analyze it to see if it can justify it's own existence. I don't suppose there's such a thing as a 3 month timer that can be set on this thread? ... Probably not.

Well... on the one hand, we have the idea that this will just invite the idea of "partial X", because it will come down to a YMMV where it could have been the trope played very subtly, or it could just be fan wanker-y. On the other hand, a trope played very subtly could produce a different overall reaction, like deconstruction/reconstruction/subversion. So...

Hm. Tough call. I guess it could stay if it were very well enforced, but we all know how that goes. At the same time, we have Exaggerated Trope, which needs a counter-balance; however, Exaggerated Trope is much easier to spot...

I am now known as Flyboy.

We could be very strict in it and only allow examples like in the description: "when The Butler Did It, but "it" was eating the last cookie in the jar? Or when a powerful weapon glows so little you can't even notice it in good light? Or when someone only ends up leaving behind a single french fry?"

edited 5th Sep '11 2:43:48 PM by MangaManiac

It's a way of playing with a trope, not a trope itself. And I do like the symmetry of balancing out Exaggerated. And it could help cut down on the Not A Subversions, if we have someplace to put subtle uses of a trope. I think the biggest problem is that it desperately needs Wiki Magic. I didn't even know it existed until yesterday.day.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

~shrug~

I've seen it before. I actually thought it was more common than this.

I tentatively vote to keep, with the caveat that it will need good monitoring...

I am now known as Flyboy.

I kinda have issues with Exaggerated Trope as well. It's The Same But More except not.. except that it is.. but is apparently (according to the same is more page) only for in-universe examples.

So should this get limited to in-universe examples of a downplayed version of a trope?

These two are a slight be confusing to me, which is why I brought it up here.

The Same But More is an attempt to make two tropes out of one. Exaggerated Trope is to KEEP overplayed instances as one trope. See the difference? It's actually in the description of the latter page.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

This is a form of Playing with a Trope that comes up all the time, and it's usually lumped into that, but I don't exactly have a problem with various separate articles cateloguing the different ways tropes can be played with, as long as they're linked under that heading.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

No other Playing with a Trope subtype tries having an actual example list, cause they are about how tropes will be catelogued in the main wiki. It's a way of using a trope and not a trope in and of itself. It's administrivia.

Even then, the examples it does have don't really align with what I would think a Downplayed Trope would be. The What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous? is complicating what it should be. For the whole The Butler Did It example, instead of focusing on the severity of the action it should focus on the role the butler played. Maybe the butler wasn't the one who did the actual murder, but they were paid off to leave the door unlocked so the actual killer could do the act. The butler is still a part of a horrible crime, but isn't as overt as actually being the murderer.

EDIT: Apparently I was wrong and several Playing With tropes have accumulated several large example lists since the last time I looked them over. I don't see much of a use of any of those, cause you can apply any of the playing with types to any trope, hence why we have the Playing With wiki.

edited 6th Sep '11 12:52:13 PM by KJMackley

EDIT: You're still wrong on your edited comment, since Playing With Wiki is for hypothetical examples, while these trope pages are for actual examples.

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"No other Playing with a Trope subtype tries having an actual example list"

What?

• Inverted Trope
• Subverted Trope
• Double Subversion
• Parodied Trope
• Deconstructed Trope
• Zig-Zagging Trope
• Enforced Trope
• Necessary Weasel (as a trope list)

And that's just a partial list.

edited 6th Sep '11 1:01:49 PM by DragonQuestZ

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

The last time I reviewed the playing with a trope types none of them had example lists (I can't remember, maybe a year).

There is Playing with a Trope and there is the Playing With Wiki. Playing with a Trope is administrivia that demonstrates how tropes are used, but otherwise aren't tropes. The Playing With wiki is a trope page tab that shows how individual tropes can be played with. Since tropes are played with any unusual methods of playing with a trope should go under the regular trope page. Example lists are meant to list every possible example of the trope, and do we really need to list every subversion of a trope ever made?

For example under Parodied Trope Lady Gaga is parodying Impractically Fancy Outfit, why can't it just be listed under Impractically Fancy Outfit? Why does parodied trope have to list it too? If it's to demonstrate the term it should do that properly in the description, or otherwise be structured similar to It Makes Sense in Context as one of the key things to getting that trope launched was no examples (to prevent a repeat of I Am Not Making This Up).

Exaggerated Trope, one of the Playing with a Trope tropes (or if it's not is ought to be), and the direct antithesis of this, has examples.

edited 6th Sep '11 1:36:39 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

In my opinion it needs more examples, not deleting it.

Free bacon!

"why can't it just be listed under Impractically Fancy Outfit?"

Why can't be listed under all three (those two pages and Lady Gaga)?

Plus examples are for the purposes of adding information, which means examples of playing with a trope help illustrate how they are done.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

This is going into personal feelings and not wiki policy. It's the same reason indexes and some supertropes have no examples and why franchise pages are about the series as a whole instead of allowing tropes that apply to only one particular incarnation, also why some pages get shuffled off to Dark Wiki or get an example ban. It's about what the page was designed for. People don't go to the Playing with a Trope pages to find examples of misc tropes, they go to that page to understand the terminology. An example list is meaningless if the concept to illustrate is too broad, and those set of tropes are as broad as they get.

Going back to Downplayed Trope, the examples are not helping because the trope is kind of vaguely defined to begin with. "The Butler took IT, meaning a cookie" sounds more like parodied trope, and the rest of the examples just seem like they used the trope in a unique manner, not actually downplaying it's use. The only example that makes sense is Transformers Prime with Arcee being blue with light pink highlights rather than being completely pink.

Funny enough, I was just talking on another forum topic about a possible trope called Refuge In Sublety, where the trope is used in such a subtle way that it hides the fact the trope was used in the first place.

How do you know people don't go to them for that reason? When I first came here, I found examples on those pages to be helpful.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

When you watch a recent movie and you notice they played with a trope, which place do you add it to first? The media page, then the trope page (or maybe trope page then media page, it doesn't really matter). The Playing with a Trope subpages were conceived under explaining an in-wiki term you might come across on the wiki. I sincerely doubt that those pages are the ones tropers go to first to add a recently used trope.

Again it's like It Makes Sense in Context, it's describing what it means when the term in used and is not meant to try and catelogue all instances of when the term was appropriate to use.

edited 6th Sep '11 4:57:21 PM by KJMackley

It doesn't matter where they go first in that situation. Nor is that the only way people run across examples. Plus the point of the page and trope examples are showing the trope, while these are explaining how they are played with.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

I think there's a point there about the other Playing with a Trope subtropes, but this is a neatly symmetrical counterpart to Exaggerated Trope and I definitely think there are clear examples of it. I suggest that we keep it but give it an Example Sectionectomy and put it with the other Playing with a Trope subtropes. That way it can be used the same way Double Subversion and Exaggerated Trope are used: it can be linked or potholed to from examples either on a trope page or a work page, but doesn't get cluttered up itself.

So, I don't know that we need this per se, but it's definitely a thing that has a valid place here.

"In the land of the insecure, the one-balled man is king." - Haven

Another example of why it probably needs to have examples cut or needs a very good explanation of when a trope is downplayed just got added.

David Sarif in Deus Ex Human Revolution was added to Downplayed Trope for Corrupt Corporate Executive. Except he's not a downplayed version. He's a subversion and is listed as such on his character page. I'd explain further but I wouldn't want to spoil anything.

He can't be a subversion and a downplayed version at the same time can he?

I think at least most people can see this has value, but it's the differences between this and various other methods of playing with tropes that's causing the issue now.

Maybe it needs a well written summary, explanation and laconic and a ban on adding examples to the main entry?

One example does not prove the examples need to go. It only proves people still don't know what a subversion is or isn't.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

On the DXHR example, I thought it fit when I read example on the main work page simply because Sarif does take morally questionable actions, as any corrupt businessman would, just not nearly to the extent that I expected given previous examples of Corrupt Corporate Executive in any media, and I think that's a key point to a downplayed trope.

As to the need for examples at all, I, personally, like reading examples, but I can see this working as a definition page only.