Misused: Keep Circulating The Tapes

So here are the issues in a nutshell:

• A lot of the examples are wrong and should be No Export for You, including the vast majority of the anime/manga section.
• Some works are available, but not in their home country. This isn't No Export for You, but doesn't seem to fit this page either. Maybe a split for these? See, for instance The Tick, which is an American show, but only available in complete form in the UK.
• Some works are available, but not in the fan-preferred cut. It's unclear whether these belong in this trope. Description needs to say one way or the other. do a search for "cut" in the film section for lots of examples.
• Some works are available, but special features from the laserdisc or an early, long Oo P DVD are not included. There's an extensive section about this in the film listings. Should those be under this trope?
• Some works aren't available on DVD, but are on Netflix. (Do a search for Netflix on the live-action TV page for dozens of examples.) I think it's pretty clear that it doesn't fit this article. Do we want to list them anywhere?

edited 24th Jul '12 1:27:34 AM by AceOfSevens

I think the core definition of the trope (and the essence of the name) is supposed to be that a show is no longer officially available/distributed in any form, and the only way to see it these days is via fans who recorded it onto VCR/DVD themselves.

BTW, #2 would be the inversion of #1.

edited 24th Jul '12 8:54:08 AM by Stratadrake

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

I think we have three major categories:

• You just can't buy it in your country.
• Technically there's an official release, but that was years ago or in an obsolete format. They're incredibly rare and expensive, but you could buy it.
• The official release has been hacked to bits by legal issues. Music licensing costs or whatever mean you'll never get the full experience legally.

No Export for you is the 1st.

The second and third can be lumped into this.

It appears there is disagreement over whether we should list stuff which is available, but not in the version fans want. I think we should list it, but soft-split.

Stuff that is currently available just "not in fan-preferred version" is Not An Example and should get cut with an axe.

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

The name pretty much suggests that it's any situation where people regularly watch old recordings of a show. Maybe it should become a supertrope of No Export for You, along with other newly-split-out tropes for the other types.

We could make a soft split, with a seperate category where it only applies to certain versions, such as Akira's old dub. But only if there are enough examples. I don't think it's a problem to include them, they are simply a different, more minor case of the same phenomenon.

Unless we're defining this trope as only applying to where legal issues are preventing or not making it worth releasing the product. In that case we may have to pick out other examples and launch a supertrope.

This trope does not apply to when it is not available in certain countries, I believe the export tropes cover that.

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I just discovered another issue: There seems to be a lot of overlap between this and Missing Episode. We could merge these, but I think we'd be better to add a note to Missing Episode that works which exist, but aren't publically available go under Keep Circulating the Tapes and a note to Keep Circulating the Tapes that if something isn't available because there are no known copies, it goes under Missing Episode. (Which I think needs a rename to somethign less TV-centric.)

I think shows that are only available in one country should only count if the language is different, so that you wouldn't understand it. A US <> UK thing should be cut, as those are available, just not easily so. Even then I'm still leaning towards cutting them anyway.

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^ Shows that are only available/distributed in one country already fall under No Export for You.

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

That's why I'm leaning towards cutting (or moving, if applicable). No need to duplicate the same thing for two tropes.

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You'd have to make a good case that they're really the same trope. To me, Keep Circulating the Tapes would only cover the "shown during the initial run, but never rebroadcast" flavor of Missing Episode.

There is a sort of hybrid case to consider: a work produced in region A and distributed in both region A and region B, which is then discontinued in region B but not in region A.

It's not really a No Export for You because it was exported at one time. And in region B it does fit the strict definition of Keep Circulating the Tapes because it's no longer being legitimately distributed there. I contend that such an example is valid for this page on the grounds that from the perspective of a distribution trope, the different releases of the work in question in various regions constitute distinct "works", and the discontinuation of any one of them is sufficient for the definition here.

Do you have any actual examples?

The description for No Export for You doesn't seem well-suited to calling the current bad examples from Keep Circulating the Tapes inversions. We'd either need to rewrite the description a bit or create a new trope for works which are available, but not in their home territory.

If it's available in another region, can't you just import it from there, with no need to "circulate the tapes"?

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No. Someone needs to export it. And it doesn't always happen.

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It does seem like we can split the examples into two major groups:

• A. It was released in Country X, but that was a long time ago and they're insanely expensive and rare.
• B. It was never released in Country X, so filesharing is the only way to see it.

i.e. with A there is a legal option and with B there isn't.

In response to Another Duck's argument that examples should be cut because they're easily available in another country in the same language, this is frustrated in many cases by region-locking.

But examples of this would fall under No Export for You, anyway.

edited 10th Sep '12 3:06:55 PM by Prfnoff

Split the page into subpages so that differences in releases can be addressed? U.S.A./Canada, Latin America, Europe/Australia, Asia, etc.

Here's potential comprehensive plan for everything that's been brought up:

Make a note on Keep Circulating the Tapes that this trope is for works that theoretically could be released but never were on modern formats (with a listing of the common reasons this happens) or had a small run that's long out of print, making them rare commodities. If they are available, just not in all the regions you would expect, that's No Export for You. If they aren't available because they no longer exist as far as we know, that's Missing Episode.

Rename Missing Episode to something less format-specific. Note that this trope is only for works not known to exist anymore. If they exist, but aren't being released for whatever reason, that goes under Keep Circulating the Tapes. Add a section for works that were thought lost, then turned up, roughly equivalent to the section for stuff that eventually got published in Keep Circulating the Tapes.

For both, soft-split works which are available, but not in the form people wanted.

For No Export for You, split by region as well as medium with a subsection for inversion where a work is available, but not in its home territory. If only a butchered version gets exported, that falls under Macekre or a couple other export tropes and doesn't go here.

Also, add a note to Keep Circulating the Tapes to not duplicate the examples from Home Version Soundtrack Replacement and perhaps create an availability index for all of these.

What about single episodes of larger shows that have gotten a public release that aren't included in reruns or DV Ds for some reason? I'm conflicted, because I used Missing Episode for those in my Super Friends description (even applying it to entire seasons), but Keep Circulating the Tapes seems more relevant to the MST 3 K examples that resemble that...

That's part of the reason Missing Episode should be renamed. In film studies, the term is Lost Film, but that's medium-specific. Lost Work might be good for a title.

Actually, to my understanding, Missing Episode is about installments of a series being unavailable for some reason. As an example series:

• Electric Soldier Porygon is a Missing Episode (and for good reason too)
• The slapstick-filled adventures of Izamu Akai fall under No Export for You. As do the Ruby/Sapphire, Fire/Leaf, and Emerald arcs of Pokemon Special. (If only individual Rounds were not published, that would be Missing Episode.)
• Pokemon Yellow falls under Keep Circulating the Tapes as not much of that version's quirks are acknowledged in the Remakes.

Not Released for Media Rights should be a separate Trope.

EDIT: I view the term "work" to be more equivalent to series, rather than episode/book. I'd favor the term: Lost Installment as that's clear that it's only a portion of a series that is lost, as opposed to possibly the whole thing.

EDIT 2: The "hybrid case" refernced earlier includes stuff like Earthbound, which I do agree qualify here, though the series' other installments would not (instead going under No Export for You).

edited 17th Sep '12 6:32:02 PM by DonaldthePotholer