Needs Help (supertrope titles crowner 3/9/14): Wet Sari Scene

Wet Sari Scene is now defined as wet clothes used for fanservice. The trope name could be clearer, in the trope talk discussion, it was suggested that it could be Wet Clothing Fanservice.

Alternatively, we could decide on making a super-trope and Bollywood wet sari scene (literally) could be a sub-trope.

Or we could have saris as Internal Subtrope, perhaps together with the wet shirt contest thing.

Topic from Trope Talk: Trope Talk.

(edit: just fixing the link)

edited 26th Sep '13 8:34:38 AM by XFllo

The way I see it, if we're going to be accurate, this needs to be expanded as such:

Super-Trope: Wet Clothing Fanservice/Wetlook Fanservice (the latter is the more genre-correct term)

SubTropes: Wet Sari Scene, Wet T-Shirt Contest, Tissue Paper Swimsuit, the male equivalent

The overall effect may be the same, but the contexts are completely different between the three female ones. The first is a (potentially contrived) way for a character to provide fanservice while most likely not meaning to in-story, the second is deliberately showing off your assets and the third could be either, depending on if the woman knew that the suit would be that revealing when wet.

edited 25th Sep '13 8:20:21 PM by Willbyr

We should have a page for the wet sari scene trope, because it's a trope, more so than any of the other wet clothes stuff. We can make it a stubtrope of Wetlook Fanservice, but I don't think we need to go too overboard on other subtropes. For instance, someone actually tried YKTT Wing one for wet tshirt contests a while back, only to find that there are very few examples of them in fiction. People came up with many examples of people referring to the contests but not many of the contests themselves - which are much less common in fiction than they are in real life.

Well, there are not that many literal wet sari scenes either.

That seems to be a Bollywood specific trope, perhaps with some leaking into western media (probably as Conversed Trope). There are now 5 Indian films, one has three examples. We could very likely collect more — if we had more people troping Bollywood films.

Most of the examples are just ordinary wet clothes — people bathing in clothes, playing in fountain pools or swimming pools in clothes, people accidentally spilling themselves with water, getting wet in rain etc., and of course, there's a big number of zero context example entries.

I don't understand why you think wet saris are more tropeworthy than wet shirt contests.

I believe if there was enough time for the draft to stay in YKTTW, it could collect several examples from media. I must have missed that draft as I don't remember ever seeing it there.

edited 26th Sep '13 8:21:55 AM by XFllo

Really, just five examples? I hadn't checked it out, but I'd heard it was a thing.

Wet tshirt contests are real life events. There's nothing media-like or story-like about them. Do we have any examples of them in fiction, other than actual softcore porn? Sure, people mention them, but do they actually take place in full? How would that even work - how would there be a story or conversation without cutting away from the contest?

edited 26th Sep '13 11:50:35 AM by AmyGdala

The one time that I know a wet T-shirt contest was significant in any way was during the second season of NCIS, when the Handsome Lech on the team found a picture in a bar of the (usually rather uptight and prudish) female team member participating in one. He held it over her for an episode or two, until she found a way to get back at him, and then the whole thing blew up in both their faces in an amusing way, and that was pretty much it.

edited 26th Sep '13 12:47:11 PM by Willbyr

And yet even that isn't actually an example of a wet tshirt contest, is it? The contest doesn't take place on-screen. There's no fanservice scene.

But anyway, we don't need to discuss this. Back to the main discussion. Rework the page as Wetlook Fanservice?

True, the contest doesn't happen on-screen, but we do see the picture of Kate participating, and the fact that it becomes a point of character interaction/humor spread out over multiple episodes makes it significant enough to note if we actually had that as a page. If it were just a one-note gag, I'd say ignore it.

Considering the apparent lack of examples, making the generic page and then making Wet Sari Scene a distinct subtrope seems to be the way to go for now.

EDIT: What about Tissue Paper Swimsuit^note swimsuit that's so sheer/skinhugging when wet than she might as well be naked? Does anyone know of instances where that comes into play, or is that just one of those things like Wet T-Shirt Contest with not enough examples to justify it?

edited 26th Sep '13 4:05:44 PM by Willbyr

Outside of Hentai? No.

I think we really just need the Wet Clothing Fanservice Super-Trope.

Do we really need a bunch of different pages on the various fine distinctions of "hot women in wet clothing"? How about just the one, and let Wet Sari Scene or whatever it gets renamed to be that trope.

Not only women. Men in wet shirts is a thing as well.

I said we should keep Wet Sari Scene separate because I'd heard it was a trope - it's a trend specific to media. That makes it more tropeworthy than many of our fanservice concepts, which are just "things that are sexy in real life and that appear often enough in fiction for us to catalog them." But if we only had five examples, and we only ever launched it to lump it with broader wet fanservice, maybe we should send it back to YKTTW.

Just watched a Detective Conan episodes where "Wet Scenes" were referenced (but not shown) is a way that makes it clear it was a reference to a type of fan-service used in live action Japanese Media. So yeah, the general concept seems pretty widespread.

Then let Wet Sari Scene include that as well. The definition of the trope is fine. A name change to something that doesn't imply an exclusively Bollywood trope might be appropriate.

It seems to me that Bollywood has a distinct subtrope about a Wet Sari Scene, and we just need a super trope for the more general thing.

Why do we need a super trope? As it is, it perfectly describes the situation where you avoid nudity censorship by using wet clothes. It also appears in Western film. Why does it need a non-Bollywood name? Why do Bollywood examples need to be subtroped? Is there anything going on here other than people not liking a Bollywood reference for the trope name? It is possible to make something more general I suppose, but there is such a thing as being too literal.

The wet sari scenes of Bollywood were about censorship. In most cases, it has little to do with censorship - they could show off the body far more explicitly than Bollywood would traditionally allow, but they choose to go with wet clothes.

There may or may not be such thing as being too literal, but there's definitely such thing as not being literal enough. A general name like "shirt" can apply to specific examples like "sari" but there's no reason at all to use a narrow name like "sari" to describe a more general concept.

I'd bet if the trope were called Wet Dress Scene, people would have no trouble listing examples that are saris.

Sure, since a sari is a kind of dress. But we can probably come up with an even more general name than that.

I would not describe a sari as a type of dress. It's a wrap.

Let's not get off-topic. The name should cover the whole trope. "Sari" is too specific a name for a concept this broad.

But then again, maybe we should also take care to keep the concept from being too broad. This should be more specific than just Wet And Sexy. And a casual look at the page shows a huge number of examples which are just "character gets wet," even when it's not a fanservice scene, just because some troper felt like describing the scene.

edited 8th Oct '13 10:20:30 PM by AmyGdala

"The name is from Bollywood, where it's pretty much a cliche. If an attractive woman is wearing a sari, expect her to get soaking wet at some point in the movie (getting soaked in the rain is considered especially romantic). India has a legally enforced nudity taboo, so this is Fanservice without the nudity (even if you do see breasts- but not nipples)."

That seems legit to me. I like the description. most of the examples I'm looking at are fine. As long as there is water, fanservice, and some level of enforced or conventional nudity, it works. The only reason I would endorse any name change would be if the Bollywood specific version were actually getting crowded out, it was felt necessary for some reason to relentlessly catalog every such scene in Bollywood, and there was a move to split off that subtrope. Originally this was going to be Wet Clingy Dress or something along those lines, but as soon as someone mentioned how common this was in Bollywood cinema, we rallied around this suggestion as being the most representative way to describe the trope. If creating a Non Opaque Wet Dress Scene redirect floats your boat, go for it.

EDIT: I knocked off three non-examples from the Film section.

edited 8th Oct '13 10:34:13 PM by pawsplay

Ok, if you're taking this as the definition:

what makes the example from As Good as It Gets questionable? All of the elements you list are present.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I'm fine with leaving the name as is, or with breaking off Wet Sari Scene as a specific Bollywood subtrope.

If we change Wet Sari Scene into Wet Clothing Fanservice and keep Wet Sari Scene as a subtrope, wouldn't it be The Same But More Specific? At most, we should make Bollywood films into a separate folder.