Not Tropeworthy: How Do You Like Them Apples

This page is essentially "Everythings Better With Apples", similar to our collection of "Everythings X With Y" tropes. That is, it has turned into a Grand List Of All Apples In Fiction. Which, of course, is Not A Trope. Seriously, forbidden fruit of Eden has nothing to do with the poisoned apple from Snow White, or the apple logo from The Beatles' music corps.

But there are some patterns here that would be salvageable as a trope. In particular, "eating fruit as a metaphor for sex" appears to be a trope. "Shout-Out to Snow White" is a trope, albeit one already covered elsewhere. I believe the best approach would be to YKTTW some actual fruit-based tropes and cut or redirect this page (it has only 63 inbounds, which is hardly surprising with a needlessly long title like this).

To me, this comes as Symbolic Apple.

Well, apples (and similar fruits) are frequently mythical one way or another. Of all fruits, I think that happens the most with just apples, so there is a pattern there, and not all of them relate to the forbidden one. Probably.

In general, whenever you see a title that's "noun + (pun or common figure of speech)" you can be pretty sure its Not A Trope but just a collection of those nouns.

But in this case, yeah, the page looks intended as Symbolic Apple. (The first paragraph refers to "Faux Symbolism" but that's probably just because we don't have an actual Symbolism page.) But we can't just have a page called "apples symbolize things" because then we inevitable attract examples where it doesn't symbolize anything - a quick look at the page shows the majority of entries are just ApplesAre. We'd do well to cut it and then send any actual trope (Apple Of Fertility? Adam And Eve Shoutout?) to YKTTW.

Strawberry Shorthand also tries to be "strawberries symbolize something" but is actually "strawberries are."

Oh dear, we have a similar page about strawberrries? Yes, we do. It appears that (almost) every page on Fruit and Vegetable Tropes has the same problem as most "Everything's <pun> with <animal>" tropes.

So anyway, it strikes me that when fruit symbolizes something, we shouldn't split this by what kind of fruit it is, but by what it symbolizes. So "Fruit Is Sexy" is a trope; and that's clearer than having five pages for five different kinds of fruit that each (among other things) can be sexy.

edited 12th May '13 8:39:25 AM by Spark9

Yeah - Fruit Of Fertility would be more useful than Apple Of Fertility, which is in turn more useful than Apple Of Whatever.

Oh, and the laconic for Strawberry Shorthand is "Everything's better with strawberries!" - that one doesn't even pretend to be a trope. The laconic for Apples is "What do you mean apples are symbolic?" which links to "What do you mean it's *not* symbolic," which we cut and replaced with Faux Symbolism.

The only symbolism specific to apples and no other fruit is The Apple Of Eden. Otherwise fruit being fertile/sexy/etc probably can just be supertropes of all the related things that are used for it.

Well, there's the apple of discord as well.

Wait, do we really not have a page for just Symbolism? Symbolism redirects to Rule of Symbolism, which means something else entirely.

Symbolism does seem to be a Missing Supertrope. It's so high level that it doesn't really need examples though so it should be easy enough to make up a page for.

You're right about the Apple of Discord though. It has it's own trope already (which isn't limited to apples.)

edited 12th May '13 3:51:50 PM by shimaspawn

Maybe we should just rename Rule of Symbolism to Symbolism, since it's almost always used to mean simply "symbolism"...

Well, Rule of Symbolism is supposed to be about something that ought to break the willing suspension of disbelief but doesn't, much like Rule of Cool.

Should we just send Symbolism through YKTTW real quick or just hammer out a definition here? Rule of Symbolism will probably need its own thread, actually. Or maybe it'd be a short term project to just clean wicks to point to Symbolism instead.

Edit: Wait, getting offtrack here. I do think apples are used for symbolism more than any other fruit, but is there something they're consistently used for? I could see the Apple of Discord, the Apple Of Eden, a symbol of health and youth and I don't know what else.

edited 12th May '13 4:14:52 PM by Arha

Wow, looks like Symbolism's currently a redirect for Rule of Symbolism.

"Fruit of Eden" is not limited to just apples. That's in part because in the original Hebrew it really says "fruit" rather than "apple", so in certain depictions it is an orange, passion fruit, banana, or something else.

What the actual word used is doesn't matter. What matters is that it's entered the public consciousness as an apple.

I'd be fine with disambiguating this between The Apple Of Eden and Symbolism after converting that into a supertrope. In fact, there was a TRS about that some time ago.

Incidentally we already have a Forbidden Fruit trope, which is named after, and covers, the apple of Eden too.

It does, but the Apple Of Eden is used as symbolism for more than just Forbidden Fruit. That's part of it, but it's also the Fruit Of Knowledge.

Forbidden Fruit just shares a trope codifier with The Apple Of Eden, but it's not necessarily the same.

Okay, that's fair.

So I believe a good approach would be to make the supertrope Symbolism, and tropes for Fruit Of Knowledge and Fruit Is Sexy, move all examples from How Do You Like Them Apples and Strawberry Shorthand to these pages, and redirect those two to Fruit and Vegetable Tropes. Somewhat to my surprise, everything else on Fruit and Vegetable Tropes appears to be an actual trope instead of a "list of all <noun> in fiction".

Am I missing some other obvious trope applications of apples and strawberries?

Fruit Is Sexy is a thing? What would be an example?

Was about to ask Amygdala's first question.

For instance (quoting from the apple and strawberry pages),

In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Girl of the Week Willie Scott is disgusted by the dinner served at the temple and refuses to eat, despite being obviously hungry. Retiring for the night, the Belligerent Sexual Tension between Willie and Indy is heightened by Indy appearing with a big juicy apple that Willie devours with lust.

The first Sword of Truth book features a scene of the two leads sharing an apple in a rather sexy way, nearly leading Kahlan to lose control of her Confessor's power.

Firefly: The sexy, sweet, and seemingly naive Kaylee loves strawberries. The un-aired pilot "Serenity" features her eating a strawberry quite seductively. In the fancy party on Persephone in "Shindig," the strawberries are clearly her favorite item on the laden buffet table.

I'd say Erotic Eating covers all those.

Ah, I didn't know we already had that one. Yes, it does.

I'll be taking Symbolism to YKTTW now so we can put that matter aside. It won't have examples listed, but I don't know of all the subtropes that it will need listed.

Here.

edited 13th May '13 10:33:06 AM by Arha