Ambiguous Name: Plot With Porn

May Contain Sex isn't much of a trope. I always thought this was a trope about works that are obviously supposed to be pornography, but still make a serious effort to have an interesting plot. Like the Emmanuelle series (or so I've heard).

I'd say examples like Crank and Torchwood are misuse. Those are just works with lots of sex in them.

edited 18th Apr '12 5:28:49 PM by abk0100

Not really. Many examples just have random or contrived sex scenes in them. I believe that there are only 7 examples that are obvious pornography under the visual novels & video games section, though it does seem to be the odd section out. Other than those, there's no way you'll be able to tell if they did have porn on premise alone.

If Crank and Touchwood do have explicit sex or heavy fanservice, even if there's not a lot of it or isn't a major reason people watch it, then it's not necessarily misuse.

edited 18th Apr '12 5:54:06 PM by encrypted12345

I think Plot With Porn is definitely a type of story, maybe you could call it a genre. Manara's Borgia: Power and Incest is a good example of that. There's a complex story about the Borgia family, character development, beautiful art, graphic violence, and, yes, graphic sex. But you could take all those sex scenes out and it would still be a great comic book. To me, that's what defines Plot With Porn.

I saw this listed as a trope on Earths Children, and there's no way that series is "pornography." Contains graphic sex scenes, yes. Except that they take up less than 5% of the page count and I skip them all with no loss of understanding or enjoying the rather more important plot.

@21: Not necessarily. After all, there's no reason at all why the sex in what we currently call Plot With Porn would have to be gratuitous.

In fact, I'd say that in the best such works, it's not—it's used to further the plot or characterization. I'd also say that at least in those cases it's a trope—something the author does for a specific reason.

I'm confused. is this supposed to be about works in which the sex furthers the plot, or when it doesn't?

edited 19th Apr '12 4:25:36 AM by ThatHuman

Whether the sex is actually significant to the plot or not doesn't matter when it comes to this trope. Partly because sometimes explicit sex is used as an extreme version of fan service, and partly because most people aren't crazy enough to use premises that actually require sex and make a story out of it.

Such premises actually do exist, but so few have a quality story that it's pointless to give them their own trope. Most of them just end up being Porn Without Plot

edited 19th Apr '12 8:47:47 AM by encrypted12345

We need to do something with this, sooner rather than later. It has bearing on the current cleanup effort and the 5P decisions. I don't know if this is a genre, a storytelling trope, or what. Does Game Of Thrones fall into this? How about Manara's more plot-driven works, like the Borgia graphic novel I mentioned above? Game of Thrones is much more about the plot and the porn is more or less fanservice, while Borgia is a Heavy Metal production and therefore the porn is much more integral. But both works could stand alone without the porn. A number of other "mature" works come to mind - Artesia, Deadwood, Rome, and so on.

The description of this trope fits Porn with Plot far more than the current name, which sounds like "any plot-heavy work with explicit sex in it".

Hence I propose to swap with the redirect.

Arguably speaking, there is a spectrum and one example under videogames even contrasts two StrategyRPGs that are opposite sides of the spectrum. As it is used now, this trope refers to both extremes of this spectrum and anything in between.

I propose that we change this to Sliding Scale Of Plot Vs Porn (or something similar) and refer to Plot with Porn and Porn With Plot as opposing sides.

I am rather opposed to sliding scales. Why not split into Porn with Plot and Gratuitous Sex Scene/May Contain Porn?

I don't mind either way. If you want to split it, then I'll help.

I prefer the name Plot With Explicit Sex than Gratuitous Sex Scene though.

edited 24th Apr '12 2:18:40 PM by encrypted12345

How about "Sex To Plot Ratio" for the main page as it's sort of a sliding scale. Sex With Plot, and Plot With Sex as the two extreme ends.

Sliding scale tropes never work well, in my experience.

I think shima wants to document all about sex-to-plot ratios in the same page without an explicit "scale", but if I am wrong, I am going to oppose - still under the impression of Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes there.

I want a general example-less policy page about the ratio between the two. Not giving a firm "here's the line" but mentioning that there's a difference. Then having the other two be subtropes with actual examples.

So basically a variant of my idea with an additional policy page? I can live with that, but the policy page should cover the entire policy and facets rather than only sex-to-plot ratio.

I think having individual pages that explain some of the bits of policy and link to a page with the whole thing are actually more readable. That way when we need to pothole something to tell a troper why it's not all right they don't have to read through five pages of text to figure out what's wrong.

I'm not wild about splitting, since everyone's going to have different ideas about where the cutoff should be. I'd rather have this be either about the 70's art-porn type of thing, or about the very common attitude that explicit, titillating sex is a subject fit only for pure unvarnished pornography and the consequent rumpus launched whenever people notice that mainstream works have OMG porn! in them.

And a policy page would be great, but that's completely separate from this as a trope.

I am not really good at writing policy pages, so I'll take your suggestion for the policy page - as long as any needlessly ambiguous terminology and confusing layouts are avoided.

For the trope/genre, are we going to go with my idea?

edited 24th Apr '12 3:09:11 PM by SeptimusHeap

If the name is changed to Porn with Plot, and/or the description is left with the emphasis on the sex, then the misuse needs to be cleaned out of the wicks, because this is being applied to works that don't match that description nor the name Porn with Plot.

Also, the fact that we have redirects that should mean two different things and are ultra-confusing order-flips of each other is stupid. Let's make the current trope Porn with Plot and then create a new trope for Plot With Porn under a better name and a much better description.

Agreed.

Also, my google-fu is weak, but a quick search makes it clear that Porn with Plot is an existing term, while Plot With Porn doesn't seem to be.

Agree. Let's crowner that, shall we?

Crowner stitched to thread.