Needs Help: Contemptible Cover

As per the new No Lewdness No Prudishness clause, some of the examples in this article are either over the line or approaching it, since every example is a sexy pic of some sort.

The thing is, though, this is a Visual Trope, and removing the pictures reduces the page mostly to Zero Context Examples.

edited 12th Apr '12 1:49:12 PM by KingZeal

Fixed the page link in the thread title (make sure there are no spaces).

Weblinks Are Not Examples, so the ones that consist of "Work Name: [link]" need to be cut or replaced with a proper writeup. I see a few examples in the Music section where we might want to cut the links, but in general, if it's something the publishers though they could sell in Barnes & Noble it's probably OK to link to, as long as it's on a clean site.

edited 12th Apr '12 1:51:18 PM by lebrel

That's not the issue. The issue is that there's become a stigma against a page being a sea of examples which link to one sexy image after another. According to the way the wind is blowing, it makes the wiki seem perverted.

I'm seeing more examples of bad, non-indicative, inaccurate or silly-looking covers than lewd ones, so I don't think it needs a major revamp. More description of the Zero Context Examples, a bit of trimming here and there, delete a few NSFW links (gory as well as sexy).

We could consider merging this with Covers Always Lie. This is basically the same thing, only with sexy girls!

(edit) Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game is also the same trope as Contemptible Cover, except the former is about video games and the latter about books. As usual, we have a lot of pages and examples for "stuff some troper finds sexy", but that doesn't oblige us to keep all of them.

edited 12th Apr '12 3:51:08 PM by Spark9

I don't see why we shouldn't merge. This page is just The Same But More Specific.

Contemptible Cover is not about Sex Sells. It is any tacky or offensive cover. There are a ton of non-sexual examples on the page. It is also distinct from Covers Always Lie, as it is perfectly possible to be tacky but accurate.

While that may be technically true, the first lines of the intro text and the page quote and the page image suggest that this trope is really about sexy imagery that does not appear in the book.

Then maybe it needs a bit of a rewrite. Unnecessary sexy imagery is a very common way of making a cover contemptible, but it's not the only way.

Incidentally, the page image is from a work that has a lot of nudity, so it's not at all unreflective of the fanservice content. What the fans of Spice And Wolf got out of joint over was that the US cover looked like a paranormal teen romance, nothing like the manga-style illustrations in the actual novel.

Is tacky or offensive even a good objective criteria for a trope?

I wouldn't mind making it YMMV. But it's definitely a thing; there are entire websites devoted to collecting particularly dumb romance novel covers, for instance.

I remember when this trope was about video games that got covers (well, box art, but still) that were completely missing the point of the game they were advertising. The classic example was Mega Man — cutesy sprite characters on the inside, muscle-bound fantasy-novel rejects on the outside.

Somehow, apparently, it went from describing covers that made the characters look Darker and Edgier than they actually were to actual Harlequin-novel covers. That was what differentiated this from Covers Always Lie, and it still seems like it could be a valid subtrope given some cleaning.

Wouldn't Mega Man fall under American Kirby Is Hardcore?

I'm not sure I'm following what these two tropes are or were supposed to be about, but the way I see it, bad cover art can be divided thusly:

• Tacky, ugly, stupid, offensive, or lame: YMMV
• Cover is inaccurate or Completely Missing The Point, but would be a decent cover otherwise. YMMV how much inaccuracy is tolerable, but usually there's a canon to diverge from.
  • Sexualized cover on a non-sexual work
  • Subtrope of both: Tacky, ugly, stupid, offensive, or lame, and also inaccurate or Completely Missing The Point cover: YMMV

I can think of examples of the first two easily. The second two are less easy to come up with concrete examples.

All four are probably tropes and probably very common. And there's probably plenty of meta to say about why they end up that way (They Just Didn't Care, Did Not Do The Research (Did Not Read The Book), Sex Sells, Executive Meddling, really hard to illustrate abstract concepts, Mind Screw or Rule of Cool that just failed, Jossing the depictions, poorly-described aliens, etc.) In the case of GURPS books, I suspect it's because they put all of their limited budget towards making what goes between the covers awesome, with art as an afterthought.

edited 12th Apr '12 6:16:10 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Clocking due to lack of activity.

Page Action crowner in.

Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game seems to be the exact same thing, only with net ads instead of book covers selling a game instead of a book.

I helped with the page's repair some months back. This trope isn't just about inaccuracy. It's about tawdry, lurid illustrations. Scantily dressed women, sure, but also men with swords, or a bloody body, Covers crowded with lots of elements and garish colors. It may even correctly portray a scene from the book, but it looks cheap and trashy.

edited 14th May '12 2:54:17 PM by Routerie

Votes! Wants more votes!

Should we call this one?

Calling crowner:

• Define this trope as "tacky or offensive cover"
• Create a trope for "suggestive or sexual content on the cover not present in the work"

edited 16th Jul '12 2:22:34 PM by ccoa

Still waiting on action here.

How do we define a "tacky or offensive cover" without getting into YMMV territory?

Exactly as it's defined now? "An excess of sexual, violent or otherwise lurid imagery, often at odds with the book's actual content."