Not Tropeworthy

We've got a slew of problems with inanimate objects, being used for their ordinary intended purposes, being mistaken for tropes. I understand well that objects CAN be tropes. If the object is a story/plot device or convention, it's absolutely a trope. Fictional objects, such as the ever-pervasive Laser Blade or Absurdly Sharp Blade, would qualify. But if it's established that people sitting on chairs, using a mundane object for its intended mundane purpose, is not a trope, then I think some of these pages have similar problems.

And, coming down to it, our most egregious offender here on TVT seems to be weaponry. Some egregious examples (all but one taken from Weapons and Wielding Tropes):

An Axe To Grind: "People fight with axes." Was sent to the cut list by another user, but not cut for lack of discussion. Discussion subsequently occurred on the page, and did not perceptibly reach any objection to its removal other than the fact it should have gone to TRS before the cut list.

Blade On A Stick: "Polearms are weapons." Given mention as being a weapon of choice for the Yamato Nadeshiko type housewife - which would make that wielding itself a trope, not the polearm, or which would warrant mention on the Yamato Nadeshiko trope page.

Caltrops: "Caltrops... exist."

Fighting With Chucks: "Nunchucks are weapons." This is a LITTLE iffier though, due to title alone, as the concept of the nunchuck fight IS a trope of martial arts flicks and a cliche of ninja fiction. The trope page itself, however, just goes on to explain what nunchaku are. Same goes for its mention as being a typical province of mooks.

Kukris Are Kool: "This is a kukri." Another near miss, this title almost sounds like a description of a trope, but ends up just describing what a kukri is and not how they figure into fiction.

Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: "Here is a long description of what shields are and how they are used." This criterion for tropeworthiness would make basically any object whose history and nature you can describe in a few paragraphs a "trope".

Sniper Rifle: "People shoot people with rifles." This makes reference to the Cold Sniper and Friendly Sniper tropes - but making reference to tropes does not cause the rifle itself to become a trope, any more than the trope of "dwarves use axes" makes axes themselves a trope.

I had contemplated going through and labeling EVERY "this weapon is used as a weapon" page on the Weapons and Wielding Tropes page, but I think by now everyone gets the idea. If not, or if anyone feels we do need a clearer and more exact list, I can do so. However, the sheer inertia I'm working against, based on how long these have been around makes me suspect that it would be better to discuss the merits of this task in principle first before composing such a list.

So, the question is, what do we do about/with this, if anything? Rather than indiscriminately cutting pages, there are a few more moderate possibilities. One thought I've had: Are there more actual tropes relating to the weapon that could be put in place? For instance, spears/polearms being the classic weapons of hapless mook guardsmen seems to be a classic standby. Could that become the new subject of Blade On A Stick? Could An Axe To Grind become more about the personality types or varieties of characters who favor axes? The problem with repurposing of articles in this manner, however, is it might cause current uses thereof to become nonsensical. I'm definitely open to other alternatives.

I should clarify, certainly not all trope pages on the Weapons and Wielding Tropes page are problems. Epic Flail, for instance, seems to concern itself specifically with the fiction tradition of wildly oversized flails - which is specifically a fiction tradition, not just a mundane, real-world item. (Though, on second look, some of the examples seem to concern mundane ball-and-chain weaponry, and the description is a little ambiguous, so this one might be kind of questionable) Plenty of them are fine. It's these pages that simply tell us what an object is and how it's used that trouble me, and the weapon subpages seem to be especially full of them.

edited 3rd May '12 1:18:33 PM by Venatius

I guess you'd want the thread to be for Weapon Of Choice; that's the supertrope to various "character uses weapon" tropes.

This thread is a long time coming. I'm not really sure what to do with weapon tropes.

On one hand, they're clearly not being used in a trope sense. They can be, as characterization tropes and game mechanics, but they're often not used as such. On the other hand, they're a useful categorization, especially on character pages, and splitting them into tropes for X Weapon: Y Personality: Z Competitive Balance is really awkward and pigeonholing. If we tried to enforce that all weapon-related tropes had to have strict characterization relationships, people would try to shoehorn in the examples that don't fit anyway. As long as we make a decent attempt to tropeify the weapon tropes' descriptions, I think we can be a little lax on overuse. We might want to get rid of things like Sniper Rifle, though.

As a sidenote, they often fall under videogame mechanics, which tend to get a free pass as tropes on the wiki despite seeming less tropeworthy than others. This is not a bad thing; if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense why we trope mechanics of interactive storytelling.