The "Dere" Family

Since Eddie has decreed we must do somthing about the dere tropes I figured we probably needed a thread to figure out what to do.

Lets start off with the monster: Tsundere

Renaming Tsundere would be shooting ourselves in the foot. It's one of the top ten pages for attracting inbound links.

There is a reason why Tsundere is doing so well at attracting people, and it goes with why it should not be renamed. Tsundere is bridging the gap between being an otaku thing and slowly entering the wider nerd culture. (When you start seeing it used to describe someone in Glee you realize this thing is starting to spread). Eventually it will become an actual word.

That's why everyone keeps linking to our page. Someone uses "tsundere" in a forum. Another person goes: "What?" And then a link is born to our page- because frankly our page has the better definition and beats The Other Wiki by a mile.

There are probably lots of reasons it's making the jump. One of which is the universal nature of the trope, despite not having a catchy short English phrase to describe it. Fiery Redhead is probably the closest.

Even a whole sentence has a hard time summing up the Tsundere concept. Most of the ones that do require context to make it clear what you are describing, or make people go "why would someone like that?" Which is obviously missing something important about the trope, since it is so popular.

Making it Japanese only would be almost as bad. For one thing it is not in anyway a Japanese or anime only trope. Plus it would probably reduce the attractiveness of our page to linkers.

The only thing I can think of is that we might want to look and see if we could create a supertrope to Tsundere that has an English name.

Frankly, I think we need to grandfather Tsundere.

Like all most new words, Tsundere has created imitators. The "-dere" family. These are much less likely to make the jump that tsundere is beginning to make.

Lets look at the strongest (and oldest) of these:

Yandere this was the first imitator of the Tsundere term. It has established a strong hold in the anime subculture, and will certainly survive there. The reason it came first is probably that a favorite romantic-comedy combo for anime is to set a Tsundere and Yandere fighting over the same guy. (Apparently constant undeserved violence by women towards a man because they love him is funny- Love Hurts and all that)

However, this term has not shown any sign of making the jump into wider conversations. Probably because Crazy Stalker Girl, Mad Love, and other terms are close enough for English speakers to feel they've expressed themselves, even if not exactly.

Yandere overlaps with these tropes, but is different in presentation and development. Two reasons I think: They get played much more sympathetically, and they are usually played much more deadly. (Face Palm I just checked the page and somebody just cut all of the part about the sympathy element as non-essential to the trope).

Truthfully, we could probably tighten the definition and description and make it a fanspeak page with new tropes for the examples. Killer Love Interest for the deadly half, and Sympathetic Stalker Girl for played sympathetically half. Link the two tropes and mention that if a character is both then they are probably a Yandere.

Yangire is a spinoff of Yandere mainly to describe a character who acts Yandere without having a Love Interest. The weakest dere family member to have it's own page. Not even very common term among the anime fandom. It is currently being renamed.

Kuudere is one of the newer ones, but has become pretty strong. I was actually a participant in the creation of our page on Kuudere. (In fact I wrote much of the description and formatted the page images).

When this page appeared I opposed creating it with the name Kuudere. Why? Because it was a rare term even among the anime fandom. "Tundra" was almost as popular. Only lately has it become popular- and frankly we are probably the biggest source of the terms popularity. Additionally it's not even really a Japanese term, it's a combination of English and Japanese. "cool" + "dere" is the source.

Since it was not well established yet I strongly supported finding an English name. (Frozen Flower was the main contender for that position).

Similarly to Tsundere it is a term that describes a universal trope. This trope does not have a short phrase to describe it. However, it can be communicated very easily with a short sentence: "Cool outward demeanor conceals a warmhearted soul"

So there are advantages to having it as a term, but I'm not so certain it's a break out term like Tsundere is. I'm fine with renaming it. (However, I'm not very supportive of the manner this is being accomplished).

The question becomes, should we have a fanspeak page for it similar to Dandere and Dojikko?

I tend to prefer they be redirects. I still think Dandere should just be cut. But maybe inbound links would prefer a page that defines the term Kuudere?

Did I miss any of the Dere family?

Usage counts for Tsundere.

Usage counts for Yandere.

And this should probably be put on the wiki headline.

I don't see why Eddie's so obsessively hung up on renaming them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

That aside... I highly doubt that splitting yandere and just having a fanspeak page is a good idea. The chances are, given the way things are going, that doing so would completely bypass any voting stage. And someone did mention that it's defeated a rename before...

And Kuudere? If the others are left, leave it. The page explicitly states that it's there to round things out, so... why not just leave it as it was? It may not have the insane popularity of tsundere but it was working and the name isn't wrong in the way nakama was.

edited 10th Sep '11 6:47:36 PM by RainehDaze

I was neutral about kuudere and in favor of renaming yangire. I am opposed to interfering with yandere or tsundere due to lack of suitable replacement and the way the words are catching on.

I vote do nothing. I really truly honestly do not see what possible harm the status quo is actually doing.

Also against renaming Tsundere and Yandere. (But, they'll probably happen anyways, so what's the point of saying not to, other than out of personal opinion?)

...because of all the reasons everyone else in the thread has posted.

Speaking of reasons, one of Eddie's reasons for wanting these renamed? There's too many Japanese trope names.

Excluding those that are tied to Japanese culture, there are six or seven. Umm...

Definitely true, but still, I'm a little worried. (Although I wonder if this is just paranoia?) What if they're ignored?

edited 10th Sep '11 7:31:33 PM by Bookyangel2438

If they're ignored, I won't be surprised. There was an agreement that names such as these would be left alone if Laconics were cleaned up—Eddie agreed write some code to turn the laconics into tooltips. Look what's happened... did I miss something?

I'm just going to repost what I said in the TRS thread when someone brought up the reasons for a rename, as I think it's relevent here

The cleanup is still ongoing, but its not getting very much attention.

I'm against the renames of Tsundere and Yandere on the basis of them being popular existing terms and on their way to becoming lone words.

I was initially opposed to Kuudere's rename, but after mulling over it I ended up on the opposite camp :P. Though, I do think it should remain a redirect and it should be mentioned somewhere that it is a popular alternate name in certain circles.

edited 10th Sep '11 8:17:41 PM by LenisJates

Old names are usually kept as redirects anyway.

Leaving these here for future reference:

• Inbounds for Tsundere
• Inbounds for Yandere
• Inbounds for Kuudere
• Inbounds for Yangire

Old names are kept as redirects, but if we rename Tsundere, people will stop associating that page with the (pre-existing and widely used) term, and as a result, people will stop linking to us to explain the (pre-existing and widely used) term when they use it, thus hurting our inbound counts.

edited 10th Sep '11 11:43:14 PM by troacctid

Another good reason to not rename tsundere! (And yandere too!)

I would strongly oppose renaming Tsundere. I have no particular opinion on the fate of Yandere.

Renaming both seem like bad ideas, for all of the above reasons.

Yep!

...I'll go for grandfathering Tsundere, but I dislike the rest...

Even Yandere?

Yandere already beat a rename at least once, and is a very commonly used term, though not at the level of Tsundere.

Oh, that's good.

For all the reasons stated above, I'm for keeping Tsundere.

Don't care one way or another about the other members of its family.

Concurring with Meta Four. The only reason I wouldn't rename Tsundere is that it's too big. The rest are just kind of annoying to try and keep straight. I've memorized Tsundere because it shows up everywhere, but...