Misused: Widget Series

This article is a mess. The main problem is that although the trope is supposed to be for a series that is marketed as, or at least primarily thought of as, a weird foreign thing, a majority of the entries are people simply saying "I think this show is weird, let's list it". Just because *you* find the show to be weird doesn't mean it is marketed as weird or thought of mainly as weird. It's ridiculous that Super Mario is on there no matter how weird you think it is to have a game about plumbers.

I think this is fixable, but I doubt any individual person can easily fix it. It would take several people familiar with the examples to know if they are really thought of as weird by a lot of people, or if it's just one guy saying "it's weird that we have a game about plumbers". As a start I would suggest getting rid of the entire American, British, and Canadian sections, getting rid of any series which is clearly mass market such as Super Mario, and putting a strong note on the page saying that the series must be mainly thought of or marketed as weird and that personal opinion is not enough to put something on the list.

I'd also suggest getting rid of the abbreviations. I mean really, EIEIO? "Widget Series" can be Googled (with dfficulty) and show other people actually using the term. Three guesses how many people use EIEIO.

Well, there was a farmer....

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Reading it through quickly, I noticed a lot of things that can be described as somewhat weird for average boxed-in people, or having unpredictable humour. Optionally. A lot of things are also meant for children, who don't think quite like adults, but for the target audience, it's perfectly reasonable.

Most of it is being about stuff that's weird in one way or another. There's little to no emphasis on cultural differences in most examples. The way I read the trope, it's something that's weird because it draws or exaggerates on the cultural specifics that don't exist in other cultures.

I'd estimate a lot of it can be safely axed.

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Feather 7603,

That was my reading of the trope as well. If we want to move the trope's use towards that direction though, I feel like we probably need to deal with some of the emphasis on surreal or just generally bizarre stuff in the description and then snip examples which do not specifically mention links to national cultures.

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

I think at least a few of these might fit better under Gag Series or Surreal Humour. A lot of them I just don't see a trope like this for, such as Total Recall or the Mario series. Lemmings and Worms are debatable, but definitely not Widget Series. Mondo Medicals and Mondo Agency are just weird, and have nothing to do with being Swedish. Toss The Turtle is just another variation of the launching game genre (Do We Have This One). Not sure what started it, but the first I played was Nanaca Crash, so it'd definitely not a weird American thing, as mentioned in its own page.

I wonder if it's possible to analyse this and see what trope's missing, if any. If so, it might be possible to launch a new trope and move those examples there.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

I have a problem with this too. The word widget is short for- very explicitly- Wierd JAPANESE Thingy. The article itself tries to justify other acronyms to apply it to other foriegn countries like Canada, France, New Zealand, and others.

What I get from this trope is: "It's become popular because it contain wierd quirks that makes it stand out from other programs". This might be a trope, but it doesn't adress that the series has to be Japanese in origin.

I'd say... redefine, remove the awkward acronyms, and remove the Japan exclusivity.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Agreed on expanding. Yes, the origin is Weird Japanese Thing, but its being used all across the internet as Weird Cultural Thing. Obviously, we'll need to include a line noting the Trope Namer, and also how the definition evolved beyond that.

I would say a supertrope should be created and leave this one to the preexisting term Weird Japanese Thing.

edited 28th Feb '12 7:02:07 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I'm not sure I think it's all that meaningful to split into multiple pages for different cultures. Might be a cause for a soft split, though.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

Japan is memetically known for weird pop culture output, though. Can a Japan-only version be an Internal Subtrope?

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.

That sounds better.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

If nothing else, I feel the Japanese examples need to stand out alone as it's own category.

This still leaves the problem of just what defines the trope though. I don't think anything that doesn't have a sequel (like that Toss the Turtle example) should ever count, since it isn't really a series... I dunno... I think the Surreal Humor thing mentioned is part of what makes a widget series a widget series. It's the popularity of the series that is garnered from it's oddities.

It is "normal or ok to the Japanese weird to everyone else." that is the whole trope nothing about popularity or such, if it is weird to everyone then it is What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?.

edited 29th Feb '12 3:21:09 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Ahh, good point. I said that from the viewpoint of someone who would watch the show, but I forgot that it had to be dubbed and released overseas first.

No, some shows are deemed too much of a Weird Japanese Thing and thus are No Export for You or Americanitisized or some it is the complete appeal to the show... It really doesn't matter for the trope.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Bleh, you know what I meant!

A great number of examples should be moved to What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?. I find that to be the main problem.

Free bacon!

I say move everything none-Japanese to What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? and remove all those other silly initialisms from the description. I've never heard of a Weird Icelandic Thing - in fact I've never seen any Icelandic "things" at all, except for that awesome Bizarre Foods Iceland episode. I'd love to try puffin meat.

edited 2nd Mar '12 11:55:39 AM by Martello

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

But there probably are some weird Icelandic things out there.

Foreign-ness is all relative, of course. We don't all live in America. I think that is a major flaw to this trope; for example, take Earthworm Jim. It's a weird local game for anyone living in the US, so how can it be a widget series?

On the other hand, if you live outside America, then of course it's a widget series.

I think we should remove all the examples that come from English-speaking countries, and keep the rest, that way we can leave some valid non-Japanese examples.

edited 30th Mar '12 5:25:47 PM by TropeEater

   Evil is my favorite color.   

Unless they're known to non-English-speaking countries as weird? I doubt there are many, since English-speaking countries are at the centre of our cultural consciousness, but why rule out the possibilities?

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.

If the works are not weird to those English speaking areas they origin from, but are to the rest of the world, they qualify.

The important part is not really that they're weird, but that they aren't weird to the home demographics.

edited 30th Mar '12 9:10:09 PM by Feather7603

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

On the other hand, I'm sure Katamari Damacy is at least wacky by Japanese standards, too.

Is there a possibility that the trope is where over-the-top bizarritude and wackiment are attributed to different cultural mores, whether or not it is true?

edited 30th Mar '12 9:30:37 PM by Catalogue

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.

That's quite likely. It might be less weird in Japan, though, in which case it probably still qualifies. I'm not Japanese, though, so I can't tell.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

I can't tell either, but if I can guess, perhaps it is weird, but the fact that it is weird isn't. That is to say, there's an aesthetic, a genre where wackiness is expected. Rather like Monty Python.

In any case, for me, attribution is a more workable criterion than making it a Western-centric phenomenon.

edited 31st Mar '12 3:27:28 AM by Catalogue

The words above are to be read as if they are narrated by Morgan Freeman.