Needs Help: Our Presidents Are Different

Agree with merging President Corrupt and President Scheming into President Evil.

I'd like to point out that sticking with President Target or what-have-you for any future tropes is a bad idea. It's a snowclone off of President Evil, which is a pun of Resident Evil. Presidential Target makes a lot more sense, you know?

If we kept the original names, they would be painfully uniform. There is a precedent for breaking it, Invisible President.

I personally don't think that all of the types there should be their own tropes.

Agreed. A bunch fall under President Evil, several are just "Existing trope" + President in non-unique ways.

I do think a Presidential Target one is worthwhile... other than that... not certain if any of them need their own trope.

President Target is already covered by The President's Daughter — it's "a person who is valuable only for the position they hold (eg, rich heiress, Blue Blood, President's daughter, etc) is kidnapped, threatened, or otherwise personally endangered, so the heroes have to go save/rescue/defend them". There's even an exemple of the President on The President's Daughter (Escape From New York).

President Minority may be trope-worthy, as it was used for some time as shorthand for a 20 Minutes into the Future setting ("it looks mostly like modern day, but look! A black/female/black female president!"), though this may be becoming less common now that we actually have an black President.

I don't think President Action is worth its own trope, as it's just The Same But More Specific of Authority Equals Asskicking.

Even if President Minority is becoming less common today, it still should have a trope page.

I think Authority Equals Asskicking does have slightly different connotations when applied to an elected official in a modern or futuristic setting. Not sure if that's enough to make President Action stand on its own, though.

Looking at the rest of these, I think President Mary Sue is also a trope, although the name should be changed - it's more closely related to Strawman Political than to any of the Mary Sue pages.

edited 8th Aug '13 10:48:57 AM by nrjxll

I don't think President Minority should be a trope, but I do think a trope along the lines of Minority In Charge would be worthwhile. Just any situation where a minority is the formal leader of a group that's primarily made of of non-minorities.

President Minority should be an Internal Subtrope of Minority In Charge.

I'd actually say the latter seems less tropeworthy than the former. As Native Jovian noted, President Minority has a long history of being used as a feature in futuristic settings and shorthand for telegraphing something about that setting. Minority In Charge just sort of seems like a "thing that happens".

Except it still gets used to signify the same thing: that the society in question isn't racist even though there are minorities. That can be used in plenty of non-presidential settings.

That's what The President's Daughter was about? That name doesn't indicate that for me.

President Action is not its own trope, but a redirect.

That's different from what we've described a stand-alone President Minority trope as, though. "Minority Leader Character" may be tropable, but if it is, President Minority would be a distinct subtrope, since it's used to give a 20 Minutes into the Future vibe to an otherwise normal modern setting, which is different than just "showing that these people aren't racist by having a minority leader".

I suspect The President's Daughter is going to need its own TRS thread, but that's an issue for another time.

For The President's Daughter, that's being dealt with in the MacGuffin Girl TRS thread I opened up yesterday.

Let's get back to this.

Sounds like we need to create a general The President trope, with subtropes of President Minority, President Evil, and Invisible President — the latter two being already-existing tropes. Is there anything else worth salvaging from Our Presidents Are Different?

The President has to be one of the weirder pages I've seen. It's not a redirect and is on an index.

There's also Webcomic.The President, so if we make that into an actual trope it would have to have a disclaimer or an entirely different name.

edited 12th Aug '13 5:51:56 PM by MikuruFan

According to the page history, that page used to belong to the webcomic. Somebody kicked it into a namespace but didn't finish the wick cleanup. I've got a few minutes to kill, so...

EDIT: Dewicked and sent to the cutlist.

edited 12th Aug '13 6:23:44 PM by StarSword

I know I sound like a broken record, but can we not name any new President tropes "President X"? It was done for President Evil for the Resident Evil pun, but doesn't work for anything else.

The names aren't final. We're calling them those because that's what they're called on the page.

edited 12th Aug '13 7:31:49 PM by MikuruFan

It's not a pun, it's just a descriptive term. Can you think of a clearer or more concise title for "president who is a member of a minority group" than President Minority?

... Minority President, for one. President Minority just is awkward.

Eh, it's about a president whose single defining characteristic is the fact that they're a minority. Read it like their name is "Minority" and it works out pretty well.

But we're getting off topic. Is there anything worth saving from Our Presidents Are Different besides the already-made subtropes and President Minority?

The President Minority trope may be related to Divine Race Lift.

So, we are going to split off Minority President. As for Our Presidents Are Different, I would have to know how much weight "presidents" usually carry in storytelling.