Less racism, more accuracy: Switch with redirect: Me Love You Long Time

@Raso: I don't think we can retroactively change a trope the way you suggest. If we are to replace this trope with the one you suggest, we should first have this one cut, then get your trope started on YKTTW. A solution I personally disagree with, by the way. I think this trope could be fixed, and has been fixed. No need to scrap it entirely and replace it with another concept.

@joeyjojojuniorshabadoo: That's why I haven't changed any indexes or works pages. Reverting my change would take seconds, not minutes. And I really wanted to get going with the other changes to the description, which required the title/redirect switch to be none first. Yet, I realize now that I could have used the sandbox for that instead. Sorry for being overly hasty.

I recommend that no-one revert merely for the sake of reverting. But until Sunday-or-therad-lock-whatever-comes-first: If someone feel that reverting the switch is the right choice... Just go ahead and revert it, and we can start voting about it afterwards.

Edit: To my defense, I must say that i felt &%¤# embarrassed when Altoona Man started talking about Stormfront and white supremacy. Because he's right. Before the fix, the page was a stain on TV Tropes... And thus on me, since all of my friends know this is one of my biggest hobbies. A major source of Impatience Fuel, I'm sure you can imagine. Still, sorry for the lack of patience.

edited 8th Sep '11 7:22:49 AM by Xzenu

@Michael: Those six points are no longer the sliding scale, they are examples of different stages on the scale. That said, they might be redundant now. At this point I prefer to keep them, but maybe we should move them to the analysis page. And if so, maybe expand them a bit more there. If we do need to make them more nuanced in order to make sense, we definitely should move them - they take enough room as it is.

Just listing interracial couples is P So C IMO and comes off... well... racist, a specific portrayal of said couples like war time romance with someone who might be the enemy, relationship from being stationed abroad, different customs issues, disagreeable parents, etc. That is a trope.

And we really do not rename for the hell of it and wait till everyone is ok with it here...

edited 8th Sep '11 8:42:21 AM by Raso

Hmmm... It's not this trope... but Love Across Battlelines is a very valid trope in itself. If we don't have it yet, we should definitely get it started.

This TRS is moving very fast. Xzenu might want to take a break from it for at least 12 hours and see what opinions other people can come up with, I think. This thread reads more like an essay than a group chat.

From what I've seen, I do support the name change. I do not support the speed with which is was done.

Also ... I'm not seeing a trope here. Like many others, I thought that "Love You Long Time" was a trope for asian hookers, which is valid. The current description? That's just Interracial Romance Tensions. It could be any ethic pairing the way it's written. As far as the war time only thing, I'm going to agree with a more generic Battle Lines Romance trope. Either way, I'm not seeing a lot of tropy-ness in Asian/American only.

Go ahead and give the trope a more neutral name. It was originally supposed to be about Asian fetish but its interpretation has changed so much since then that a renaming is in order.

Xzenu, quit jumping the gun on TRS actions.

@Fighteer: Yes, I should have continued the description development in the Sandbox namespace instead of jumping the gun with a premature switch. I have already realized that and apologized. Again, sorry.

I'm also sorry that I didn't get around to starting this thread until the other guy riled me up by talking about Stormfront. While a few days more or less doesn't make any difference, the switch is long overdue.

Love Across Battlelines now active on YKTTW.

Over and out.

I have the same concerns as Raso. I don't see how a specific type of interracial couple counts as a trope, unless there are cultural connotations to it. And if that cultural connotation happens to be negative, then so be it. Tropes Are Not Good, Tropes Are Not Bad.

Well of course we do. Culture is linked to history, and TV Tropes is about explaining (aspects of) culture, isn't it?

So is the description currently there the final version, or are we changing it up again? Shouldn't 5 and 3 be switched?

edited 8th Sep '11 1:19:02 PM by Merlo

Would this work better as just thinking Asians are hot? If we don't have it, we could make this Hot For Asians or something like that.

Yeah, I like the new description, but I do think the title switch was premature, even if I do ultimately agree with it.

The Other Wiki uses the term "Asian fetish", but also mentions "Asiaphile" along with "Yellow Fever".

EDIT: The last is a redirect to the old page. I'll go ahead and retarget it.

edited 8th Sep '11 2:46:54 PM by 20LogRoot10

@Dragon Quest Z (and others)

Lets brainstoprm a bit. And lets pretend we have a blank slate to work with: There are no tropes regarding race & sexuality/relationships, we are fresh at YKTTW. How should we best categorize it?

I think your suggestion is a good start. Hot For Asians. Yeah, some people have a fetish for Asians. Of course, there are also some people who have a fetish for black people or white people or for native Americans and so on.

Should we assume that the person who have the fetish is white? Nah, I don't think so. However, we should mention the outdated tradition of having the white man as the one who see and the person who is woman and/or non-white as the one who is being looked at.

So... maybe a race neutral catch-all trope for Race Fetish? "Race" including not only black/white/asian, but also tribe, nation, state, ethnicity, whatever's relevant.

Having this trope, should we also make tropes for archetypical constellations such as black-man-white-woman and white-man-asian-woman?

(To be continued)

So, having a trope for Asian Gal with White Guy and a trope for Black Man With White Woman?

Sure, why not? I would never bother to start such tropes, but as long as they are done in a neutral and respectful manner, I can't see a reason why we shouldn't have them.

Would two such tropes be tropes? Yes, I think so. Or, let me respond with another question: Are Crossdresser and Parasol of Prettiness tropes? If so, why?

Is it so that a man dressing in a skirt is a trope, while a man dressing in pants is not? There's a lot of modern people who don't raise any eyebrows at men in skirts. Me being one of then: I once attended an entire seminar, and only towards the end did I realize that the chairman of the organization was wearing a dress. Yes, chairman, not chairperson. Yet, men wearing skirts or dresses still have a potential for raising eyebrows. And this make it a trope, even when the character's clothes are not relevant to the plot. We should not imply that it should raise eyebrows, but it's an objective fact that it sometimes does. In the same way, there are still a lot of people having opinions & feelings not only about mixed relationships in general but also about the two mentioned constellations in particular.

Over to Parasol of Prettiness. This is a trope because some people find it cute and pretty. Well, same with the two mentioned constellations. Just like some people are uncomfortable with it, there are some people who are more than comfortable with it, to the point of finding it beautiful.

So. I think we can have these tropes. As long as they are done in a manner that is not racist and not coming across as if people in such relationships are automatically fetishists or fetishes.

Should there be some rule about plot relevance? No. First of all, it's not needed, for the same reason as for we wouldn't need it for crossdresser. Second, I'm sure it would be impossible to uphold. Relevant or not relevant can be highly subjective. We can't make objective tropes have YMMV criterion.

edited 9th Sep '11 9:02:05 AM by Xzenu

Back to the tropes we currently do have, I have just read through Where da White Women At?. The description as well as the example list seem to be limited to cases where relationships between black men and white women are discussed. Almost all examples are about the social reactions to the relationship. That's a pretty good trope, quite different from what we are dealing with here.

If this trope was still at YKTTW, changing it into that direction would certainly be an interesting option. As it is, the example list lacks the social analysis.

Also, the Where da White Women At? example list doesn't seem to contain the Race Fetish element, it's all about the discriminatory social reactions stuff.

I read through this page as well. Great discussion. Speaking of which, I know Where da White Women At? has a Trope Namer from a popular movie but that title bugged me as well.

Hmm, that title used to bug me a bit as well. I thought it was bad, although not a total disgrace like "me love you long time".

Until an hour or so ago, I thought that the trope was "black guy with white gal" with a "oh, but only if it's somehow relevant" disclaimer thrown in at the end. That's the impression I got from studying the description. If that had been the case, the title seem male-centric and also slightly derogatory.

However, having studied the example list as well, it turns out that the trope is actually about "social reactions to black guy with white gal relationships - their encounters with racism and such". With that being the trope, I instead find the title amusingly ironic.

Started the generic Race Fetish trope at YKTTW.