One thing worth noting is that TV Tropes is a website that catalogues tropes, devices of storytelling. A list of works that feature a trope (or vice versa, a list of tropes featured in a work) with no explanation is boring and not very useful. Example context gives an indication of how works use tropes, which is of far more use. It's also more interesting and gives less of an "This trope has something to do with this work, no I won't care explaining" impression.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
^ What about the issue I just brought up, where a group of tropes on the same entry would optimally give the same definition, and thus any one self-indicative entry there wouldn't need a description, because the characteristics given are already adequately described? That's not the same thing as reading an issue with no descriptions at all, rather it's a case of going through several redundant explanations, which may be tedious.
This redundancy may also come up with character descriptions, as well - not all character pages have them, but some do necessarily describe and list tropes before the actual list, in order to adequately describe the characters themselves.
^^ So a possible solution would be to necessarily combine like tropes into one entry? That's an interesting idea, if one that - as you say - needs some work.
edited 14th Aug '14 12:58:34 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Lost in Space
For one thing, you wouldn't list Power Trio in a Characters page; you'd list each component of it with the respective character that it applies to. Power Trio would then be listed on the main article, identifying (without sub-bullets) the characters and which tropes they fit.
For a character who displays elements of multiple related tropes, you have a couple of choices. You could list Narcissist, It's All About Me, and The Prima Donna individually, with similar (but not identical) descriptions, or you could pick the most applicable and pothole/link the others in the description for the main one. Both are valid.
For what it's worth, those are distinct tropes. A Narcissist typically shows signs of the other two, but they can exist independently as well.
edited 14th Aug '14 12:59:45 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Two different tropes are not likely to have the same ideal example writeup. Either the writeup talks too much about another trope or too little about this one. In that case, just split the writeup up between the tropes.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
In the case I'm doing (Quack Pack), I'm listing Huey, Dewey and Louie with tropes that apply to them as a set first (like the Classic Disney Shorts page does) before listing their individual characteristics. It's a bit of a unique case.
^ Not all the time, but it does happen. In this situation, for instance: Narcissist, It's All About Me and Prima Donna all cover the same ground, in particular because the latter two tropes are subtropes that, themselves, deal with individual aspects of the whole in a way that describing the whole itself is redundant - yet, because the whole is the whole and is still relevant, it merits mention. Its All A Bout Me and Narcissist, especially, are extremely close and even used as synonyms across the wiki (but we can forgo usage). While I'd argue that Prima Donna is another term that predates and exists beyond the wiki by a large degree and may not merit explanation itself, I will concede it needs to be described in this case.
edited 14th Aug '14 1:14:04 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Lost in Space
That's not the recommended way to handle it, but if you insist on doing it that way, then you should still list Power Trio in the group section and each character's role within it in their individual section.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
No, the other one.
The reason I listed the tropes on one trope like that wasn't specifically to show a way to actually do it, but to show how a few tropes aren't enough to describe another. You get the gist of it, but there's so much more you can do with it. And you should still list all tropes anyway. With individual descriptions.
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If the group makes up a Power Trio that is already a named trope (for instance, Fighter, Mage, Thief), Power Trio shouldn't be on the page at all; the specific subtrope of it should be.
If the group makes up a power trio that is not a named subtrope, but which is made up of named character tropes (Just for instance say there's a team made up of a character who has Encyclopaedic Knowledge, one who is Street Smart, and one who is The Mediator between them) then the entry on a character page for Power Trio should identify which three characters make it up and which roles they hold in it.
Thusly:
- Power Trio: Sam, a book-smart college student — see Encyclopaedic Knowledge; Will, a tough street kid — see Street Smart; George, usually finds the middle ground between Sam's theory and Will's pragmatism — see The Mediator.
But as has been said, Group tropes in general should not be listed under individual characters. The only time a group trope like Power Trio should be on the Character page as a bulleted entry rather than the Main page is if the character page doesn't have listings for those characters individually. Huey Dewy And Louie are generally always treated as a group; they don't have enough individuality to have separate listings for "Tropes that apply only to Huey", "Tropes that apply only to Dewey", and "tropes that apply only to Louie".
edited 14th Aug '14 1:26:36 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Done.
Edit: I fear my Power Trio derail may have caused this conversation to stop prematurely...
edited 14th Aug '14 2:09:26 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Why do people insist on descriptions for certain tropes?
I'll give an example.
Labrys: Trope Action Girl
What more really needs to be said? For one, she's a fighting game PC, which already implies a certain level of ass-kickery, for two, her description already describes her as a Anti Shadow Weapon and the trope in general's "Context" in the Trope's own page is often just the name of the character in question.
Well, you can say how she's an Action Girl. "She can fight" alone is fairly boring, and we have guidelines about example entries that rely on info elsewhere on the page too (—> usually, don't do that).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
But the fact that she kicks ass is pretty much the entire trope.
Some times are just too simple to require context honestly.
How does that address the "Boring" thing I mentioned before? Also, the trope is not just about "kicking ass"; it's also about being proactive in the story.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lost in Space
"Kicks ass" is interesting. Tell us more. Describe her asskicking.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
What's there to tell? She's a player character in a fighting game, it doesn't take a genius to figure that one out in the character page of a fighting game.
"Well, you can say how she's an Action Girl."
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
No longer a forum herald
Guys, what exactly makes Action Girl distinct from "Badass who is a girl"? (Which is basically what the laconic says.)
Because if being a girl is the only thing that establishes it as a subtrope of Badass, then all examples of Action Girl need to be written with a explanation (preferably Watsonian-type) of why the character being female is relevant, and not just why the character is a Badass. Otherwise, we've got a bad case of The Same But More Specific, and a trip to the trope emergency room TRS is called for.
Sexism, basically, with a bit of real life biology too. Women are expected to be passive and not to be fighters - see also Women Are Delicate. Hence, exceptions become notable.
edited 15th Aug '14 2:27:05 PM by SeptimusHeap
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lost in Space
A Fighting Game that features female combatants should not call out the Action Girl trope. That is a genre in which it is expected that everyone is a Bad Ass. Action Girl is only useful when contrasted with the default expectation that females don't fight.
If every video game that features a cast of female combatants lists Action Girl as a trope, then it has decayed badly.
edited 15th Aug '14 2:49:04 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
No longer a forum herald
In that case, we do need to take Action Girl to TRS, since that isn't really part of the current description or laconic.
I suspect Action Girl lends itself to being a ZCE because Badass itself does, due to being a very broad concept that would require a lengthy explanation without resorting to a more specific subtrope. We might want to look into just converting Badass into an index (an index of Badassery?) and retiring it as a trope of its own.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
Badass has a long-running cleanup effort for its subtropes. It would be a case for that effort.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lost in Space
"Girl who fights" is People Sit On Chairs. That suggests TRS is desperately needed for Action Girl, if it's decayed into that definition.
edited 15th Aug '14 2:59:01 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Just to play devil's advocate, what about something like this:
- Grumpy Old Man: Grumpy is his default emotional state.
Technically it has content and context, it tells us he is more often a Grumpy Old Man than a Cool Old Guy, but I consider it to also be technically not much different to a zero context example because it is basically restating the trope definition.
I've always been of the opinion that some tropes are self-evident and don't need a lot of description. Like for Grumpy Old Man if all you do is list one or even a couple examples it could be misleading that those are the only times they are grumpy, when it is actually all the time. Or a rather broad trope like Badass, what more can you say except "look at all the other badass tropes on his character sheet" or restate an example that has already been said a dozen other times on that character sheet.
It's not a blanket excuse to not give any examples to a lot of tropes, but to say that you have to engorge example descriptions can have just as much a detrimental effect on the wiki.
Action Girl might (read, might) be an example of a trope that might not need description on context, but a fighting game is likely not that context. As Fighteer said, since everyone in a fighting game is assumed to be Bad Ass, if a character is individually identified as an Action Girl it may likely be because of personality, not because she's the character that fills the "female badass" quotient like the trope is typically (if unfortunately) used.
edited 15th Aug '14 3:20:54 PM by KnownUnknown
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Let's see.
It's a start, but I think that could be improved, since it still doesn't say much about who the character is as a narcissist.
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