GenreSavvy: It has to be someone familiar with fiction, right?

I keep seeing Genre Savvy that gets used for someone just being, well, pretty smart. No indication that they're savvy because of their familiarity with a genre.

What led me to make this was this page: Dragon Ball Z Villains

Plenty of villains have Genre Savvy or Dangerously Genre-Savvy entries, but none of them indicate they're making these shrewd moves because of a familiarity with tropes in fiction. If anything, they seem to be basing their decisions off of their own experience, which seems to be counter to the spirit of the trope.

edited 3rd Feb '15 8:07:00 AM by Larkmarn

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

Familiar with tropes, that is.

So, for example, someone who upon seeing a shadow in a dark forest in the night immediately guns it down because they know that such shadows are frequently the Monster Of The Story in horror stories, could qualify.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

It doesn't mean that the character must be aware that they are in a story; that's a different trope. It means that the character must, through experience or just having watched movies or read books, recognize and anticipate genre tropes. The classic example is a character advising the group not to split up, because the bad guy always picks you off when you're alone.

One pet peeve a lot of people have about many stories is that the characters in them act like they've never watched or read the kind of story they're in. The Genre Savvy character is the response to that, because he picks up on when what is to him Real Life starts suddenly mirroring tropes. Whether that helps him or not is up to the narrative; in many cases he gets killed off early for being a smartass.

In some types of stories, being Genre Savvy is indistinguishable at times from simply not being a drooling moron who walks blindly into obvious traps.

edited 24th Jan '14 1:19:07 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yes, a character must be familiar with the common storytelling conventions of at least one genre to be Genre Savvy. As Fighteer said, sometimes, that can be difficult to tell from simply not being a drooling idiot. In general, a Genre Savvy Character will tend to Lampshade, Discuss, or Converse about at least some of the tropes they encounter. They do not have to be aware they're in a work themselves; They only have to recognize the similarity between their situation and one that arises in fiction.

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

The way you phrase that is very close to what Genre Savvy is looking for.

• They recognize the similarity between their current situation and one that arises in fiction.
• They recognize the similarity between their current situation and one that they've been in before.

I'm not sure if that means it is same or different.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

"Things I saw in fiction" is a weak subset of "Things I have experienced", but basing their actions on something that has happened to them personally, or on something that happened to a friend is nowhere near the same as basing it on "something I read in a horror story", or "something I saw in a rom-com."

To be genre savvy, they must be recognizing and either acting on or commenting on the similarity between their current situation and the tropes used in a particular genre of fiction.

edited 24th Jan '14 5:46:38 PM by Madrugada

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

If the character is doing something because last time he did it or someone he knows did it it turned out bad then it doesn't qualify. Even if the character doesn't specifically talk about knowing fiction he needs to at least say, "This feels like a horror story," or something.

So, let's pull examples from that DBZ page:

• Genre Savvy: The "leading the homing attack back to the attacker strategy?" Please. Frieza knows that one.

—> Frieza: As if I'm stupid enough to be cut by my own attack.

• Not Genre Savvy enough, though. There are a lot of ways to use this tactic, and Goku found one that worked.
• There are other hints of this though. After he doesn't hear from Dodoria and Zarbon from their encounters with Vegeta, he immediately calls the Ginyu Force. Had Goku not arrived on time, Vegeta, Krillin, Gohan and even Nail, basically all of Frieza's problems would have been taken out in one go. Another instance is the momwents leading up to his transformation into his final form: He notices Dende healing Piccolo, and realised that's how his opponents kept coming back from the brink of death, some of them much stronger, so his first action in his final form is to instantly kill Dende.

Now, indentation issues aside, nothing shows familiarity with tropes (though if I recall correctly, he does say something about the first point being one of the "oldest in the book" which would qualify... but the example as written doesn't qualify). And the third bullet point is just "well, he's done some intelligent things." Am I correct here?

Here's another:

• Genre Savvy: If Frieza had just let King Cold destroy Earth from space like he was planning to do, both of their deaths could've been averted.

Doesn't seem Genre Savvy, just pragmatic.

And from Cell:

• Dangerously Genre-Savvy: Particularly in his first two forms, where he's driven by a single-minded focus to become complete and is forced to use cleverness rather than strength to accomplish it. Likewise, he knows his enemies' personalities very well, so he knows that, say, letting them retreat only allows them to recoup their efforts. So whenever anyone attacks him that he can deal with, no matter how important his business is he always takes the time out to deal with them before proceeding. In his second form, he knows Vegeta's ego and drive for seeing a real battle well enough to ensure that Transformation Is a Free Action. While Perfect, he knows that the best way to make a hero mad is to harm his loved ones... so he does.

That doesn't seem Genre Savvy at all; that's just knowing his enemies personally

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

Yeah, delete them all.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

None of those indicate at all that he's doing what he's doing because he is familiar with the way things would work in fiction. The first one is particularly clearly not related to knowledge of tropes in fiction; the quote makes it clear that he isn't fooled not because of what he's encountered in fiction, but from his own personal experience.

Cut them all as non-examples.

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

So I can cut other similar examples on other pages where it makes no mention of the character being familiar with works that are just "well, this guy sure isn't stupid," yes?

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

Yep. Don't forget to leave an edit reason noting that you removed them because Genre Savvy require familiarity with the conventions of storytelling, and the examples you cut didn't contain any indication that was the case, or indicated that it wasn't the case.

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

A question (using anime examples since the OP did).

So, there's a scene in Fullmetal Alchemist where one of the villains explains how their power works after cornering one of the heroes, and the hero immediately comments, (paraphrased), "You wouldn't have told us that unless you were planning to kill us."

Is this Genre Savvy even though it doesn't reference a fictional work? I know it is a Lampshade Hanging, which is similar but maybe distinct. I'd tend to think it would qualify in that its sort of similar to uses of Have You Told Anyone Else?- characters who recognize the implicit threat are Genre Savvy and those that don't are Genre Blind.

edited 26th Jan '14 1:39:06 PM by Hodor

Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki

I'd like to note that, in the description for Dangerously Genre-Savvy, it only briefly mentions actual genre savviness as part of the trope, instead focusing on a villain who uses "common sense" where most villains would be handed the Idiot Ball.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

^^ Recognizing the implicit threat isn't what makes a character Genre Savvy. What makes it this trope is recognizing the implicit threat because they are familiar with how it works in fiction. It's "Genre Savvy", not just "Savvy". There's nothing in the example as you describe it that indicates he recognizes the threat because he knows that's how it would work in a story. He may simply be not a complete dumbass.

^ Lets stay with one trope at a time, please.

edited 26th Jan '14 2:07:50 PM by Madrugada

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

There are some cases where the line seems a bit blurry, though. For instance, Bond Villain Stupidity being a "thing" is largely because of genre conventions, so if a villain defies it - even if they never actually mention genre conventions - it feels like that's not just ordinary common sense at work.

edited 26th Jan '14 2:37:29 PM by nrjxll

That very page lists a half-dozen valid reasons for a villain to not engage in Bond Villain Stupidity that do not rely on them being Genre Savvy. The fact that a trope is widely used doesn't mean that any character who doesn't use it is Genre Savvy.

Genre Savvy is not so much about what they do or don't do — it's about why they do or don't do it.

edited 26th Jan '14 2:52:09 PM by Madrugada

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

What if someone is aware of genre conventions, but their knowledge comes not from reading/watching examples of the genre, but from living in an example of the genre?

For example, if a Scooby Doo character points out that, everytime they encounter a ghost, it turns out to be someone in a costume instead, is that Genre Savvy or not?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Maddie, I think you're being too restrictive here. The point is obviously that the character has to be familiar with the conventions of the story they're in, of course. But if they mention "Well, that's how it works in all the stories," that's not the bare minimum requirement of the trope, that's just a Lampshade Hanging.

I tend to agree. Awareness of tropes does not necessarily require lampshade hanging of that fact.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If they mention "that's how it works in the stories" they are demonstrating familiarity with the conventions of story-telling. A Lampshade Hanging is virtually always evidence of some degree of Genre Savvy.

It's "Genre Savvy", not "Past-Personal-Experience Savvy", or "Paid-Attention-In-School Savvy" or "Remembered-That-One-Guy-On-The-News Savvy" or "Well-Duh-That's-Just-Common-Sense Savvy". Genre Savvy.

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

Actually, those are valid reasons for why the villain might follow the trope. The whole "if you do not immediately kill your captured opponent, s/he will escape and foil your plans" thing is really much more a product of fictional logic than real-world common sense, so I genuinely wonder whether a villain defying it (or at least intending to) is displaying Genre Savvy automatically.

edited 26th Jan '14 4:59:19 PM by nrjxll

A villain is never just Genre Savvy. They can be unaware of tropes (Genre Blind), they can be aware of tropes but deliberately play them straight (Card-Carrying Villain), or they can be aware of tropes and deliberately manipulate them (Dangerously Genre-Savvy).

edited 27th Jan '14 6:38:23 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Not necessarily. A villain could be Genre Savvy about things not directly related to their performance as a villain. Like if their lair is in a dark, spooky castle, they might realize that everytime they say something dramatic, a bolt of lightning and thunder will suddenly appear to lend emphasis to the moment.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

If their awareness of tropes doesn't both derive from knowledge of stories and lead them to take some action based on that knowledge, they don't count as Genre Savvy. By contrast, a villain who does take actions derived from their knowledge of tropes is Dangerously Genre-Savvy.

edited 27th Jan '14 11:24:01 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"