Embarassing crap on the wiki

Agreed. I am, for a handful of reasons, more worried (at least right now) about prudishness than lewdness. I think one of the big fears I and others had is happening, that people are taking this new(ly clarified) policy as license to let their prude flags fly.

edited 1st Apr '12 9:20:54 PM by HersheleOstropoler

It's one thing to take out too much detail in examples (no one cares about whether you're in your bunk, people!) it's another to make any trope that might have one or two people get pervy have no examples.

Either it's a sexual trope or it isn't; you can't have it both ways. I don't think high socks are "too sexy" to have examples, but the tropers writing that page go to great lengths to stress that they are; there is a rating system based on how much skin is shown, characters are judged according to the rank given to them, and there are these bizarre exclamations about "this character wears this and she's in fourth grade!"

I mean, if it's not supposed to be incredibly sexual (hint: it really isn't, at least as far as most of the works listed are concerned) then the page shouldn't treat it like it is.

If whether a character is "so much moe!" hinges upon the precise ratio of thigh to knee-high, then it's a sexual/fetish trope, and must be treated as such.

(The proposed example sectionomy was purely in response to lebrel's repeated insistance that we can't have examples without sexualizing them, which I don't believe to be the case, but if true then we would have to either remove the examples or lock the page.)

So what about tropes which aren't quite one but aren't quite the other either.

For example, the aforementioned Short Shorts. Not every character who wears them will be intended for sex appeal/fetish, but denying that it's a common use or ignoring that the cases where men wear them (such as in an episode of Mission Hill) is played as "uncomfortable" precisely because of how sexualized it is would be a mistake.

Then we acknowledge that sometimes it's played for fanservice without gushing about how hot it was or making exaggerated statements about its potency or ranking characters by inches of thigh shown. Pretty simple.

Except that ranking characters by inches isn't something we made up. That's actually how the trope is used.

No, it's something certain fans do. We don't have to participate.

Wait, are we talking about Zettai Ryouiki? Because if so, that's absolutely incorrect.

We are, and no, it's absolutely objectively the truest truth that ever trued.

Humankind has sought long and hard for the truth about reality. Some denied that such a truth existed. But now, at last, the search is at an end. The ultimate truth exists, and I reveal it unto you: the Zettai Ryouiki grades, while possibly well-known among anime fans, are an obscure convention seldom referenced or acknowledged in mainstream fashion or entertainment, and are merely representative of a fetish which this wiki does not need to endorse.

I'm reading the examples, and I'm not seeing it. A couple of the examples are a little skeezy, but they're completely manageable (if I didn't have work to be finishing for school, I would run through the page myself and clean it). The write-up itself seems to be the part of the page that actually needs the most work, although I'll grant that I didn't read through the anime/manga folder.

Some of the worst bits, like that fourth grade thing, have been deleted already.

I'm not seeing how what you say there differs from "this is a trope".

edited 2nd Apr '12 6:46:48 AM by KingZeal

The ZR page has been swept over at least twice, possibly more. I'd certainly hope it's not too bad at this point.

Can someone please freaking explain to me how this is a Japanese/anime only trope? People keep asserting it, yet do nothing to explain the Western examples.

edited 2nd Apr '12 6:48:00 AM by ccoa

Ah. Then I'm still not seeing the problem with the page. All it needs in its current form is some general tidying, and a more elegantly written...write-up. (:/) The grade thing could go either way, I think. While it seems to be used as a "higher grade = moar sexy" shorthand in some spots on the page, it doesn't necessarily need to be used that way, and, in fact, seems to be used as a way to easily describe the character's appearance in most examples.

Huh? I didn't assert any such thing.

The short skirt/long socks looks is common in westen media and fan circles. But I don't think the same uncomfortable amount of formalisation and grading is seen outside fetishist and anime enthusiast networks.

edited 2nd Apr '12 6:58:24 AM by joeyjojo

Maybe we should make a dedicated TRS thread for Zettai Ryouiki and put all of our discussion and arguments about it there, rather than this confusing split-up between multiple threads.

ZR can be western, but anime is the trope codifer as it were.

Long socks and short skirt with bare flesh showing in between them, as an indicator of sexuality is older than ZR, and Western in origin. It goes back to the 1920's in the US, when Flappers would wear their stocking unhooked from their garters and rolled down so that some amount of bare skin showe dbetween the top of the stockings and the hem of their dress. In the form of Thigh-high sheer or fishnet stocking and a short skirt it was a standard for "sexy" costumes by the early 70's in the US.

The biggest differences between that use and ZR is that it was almost always sheer or fishnet stockings in the west, rather than the opaque-style socks anime and manga popularized, and it was not something that a schoolgirl would wear. It certainly would never be officially part of a school uniform in anything but the very mildest "knee-high socks+ skirt hem slightly above the knee" form

edited 2nd Apr '12 8:15:49 AM by Madrugada

I know the page isn't going to be zapped, but why the hell do we need a page about all the high socks in media?

Have of any of you sat down and pondered why we need to list all the high socks in everything? No offence there.

Ah, I think of the sheer stockings/fishnets to be a seperate 'sexy stockings' trope. I'm a splitter, you see

@lolacat, because it's a trope, so we document it. Remember, No Prudishness. We just need to not drool over the trope.

Problem is, 'high socks' as a trope is edging into People Sit On Chairs territory, whilst precisely-graded, exhaustively-detailed skin-to-fabric ratios are... kind of unsettling.

edited 2nd Apr '12 8:26:20 AM by Iaculus

The page itself points out that wearing the style carries connotations about a character, which they may intentionally be playing into. It also notes that wearing different things in a similar style (e.g. boots, instead of socks, or hotpants instead of a skirt) can lead to a different meaning (in this case, that the character is an Action Girl).

Not really, because it isn't like you see girls wearing high socks everywhere you go. In fact, I can't think of the last time I've seen that. I am, however, sitting in a chair as I type this.

Goth is still a trope despite the fact that some people do, in fact, follow that fashion style. It still has a meaning in-story, just like Zettai Ryouiki. I don't personally know all that much about ZR, and I don't watch much anime, but I know it's still a trope.

edited 2nd Apr '12 8:29:42 AM by Martello