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

I disagree that they have to act on their knowledge for it to count. Look at the page image: "I watch horror movies. I know this is a bad idea, but I'm doing it anyway."

See, that's what I'm not sure about - in cases where something is only a genre convention, does characters' awareness of it really only have to come from fiction to count as Genre Savvy?

(I also don't entirely agree with that distinction between Genre Savvy and Dangerously Genre-Savvy, but that's a subject for somewhere else).

Just because you're aware of a genre convention doesn't mean that knowledge is of any practical use. For example, if a character slips on something and falls, they might correctly surmise that someone must have left a banana peel lying on the floor, but that doesn't do them much good after the fact.

Would it be worthwhile to start a cleanup thread for this? There's a ton of misuse for "yep, that was a good idea" rather than having anything to do with being familiar with fictional tropes.

At this point, said thread would be a perpetual misuse issue. But I've been wrong before...

No, you're probably right.

A clean up thread sounds like a really good idea. I keep seeing examples that's basically just being savvy, no genre.

It's weird: everytime I watch a zombie movie/show, everyone has absolutely NO IDEA what these walking dead things are, or how to kill them. I guess Genre Savvyness died along with the world.

The problem with that is if everyone was smart and Genre Savvy there wouldn't be much of a movie. People are just savvy enough to be functional in the world and advance the plot, hence Functional Genre Savvy.

Zombie movies set in a world where people have seen zombie movies almost cannot help but be farces or parodies if only because the premises of the genre are so inherently ridiculous.

I think there's a problem^note Got to avoid saying "true problem" with the way you guys are phrasing the argument, getting at least one person (to be more specific, me) confused on what you actually mean.

You said "the characters have to read or know stories", right? Well, the way you make it sound like, the character must literally be stated within the work to have gotten his knowledge just by knowing stories.

In reality, the trope's about characters being aware of storytelling conventions and being able to apply that knowledge to a specific situation at hand even though they don't know that they, themselves, are starring within a story.

True, you can only know "Storytelling conventions" through knowing fiction, but it doesn't have to be specifically stated within the work that they did so, just implied. Stuff like Megamind knowing that evil always loses is such an example as "evil always loses" is something that only happens in fiction. In fact, when he defeats a superpowered being turned evil, he outright tells said being that "evil always loses", and thus, he knows that it's this very trope that helped him win in this specific case.

Note that just knowing about how things usually are through experience, study, etc. isn't enough. As I said, the knowledge has to be at least implied that it came from them knowing storytelling conventions.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:19:29 AM by KarjamP

The key sign that you're dealing with a Genre Savvy character is when they say something that calls out the fact that they are in a genre work, or at least think they are. "In zombie movies, they are always killed by headshots!" "Guys, don't split up. The killer always gets us that way!"

The characters are drawing on meta knowledge for what to do in a given scenario. That is the original premise of the trope.

Genre Savvy is almost impossible to demonstrate without a lampshade of some sort. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's impossible: the lampshade is built into it. The only real way to demonstrate that a character knows something because of their familiarity with fiction is to have them or someone else comment on it.

This is not a bad thing.

This. A Lampshade Hanging of genre tropes is a required part of Genre Savvy.

Contrast with Dangerously Genre-Savvy, where the villain doesn't necessarily have to hang lampshades as long as they make it clear that they are deliberately defying the usual Bond Villain Stupidity.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:38:14 AM by Fighteer

They don't have to name it by name but they do have to call it out and compare it to trope/stereotype standard to the genre. I will quote myself from the repairshop

Ok take a moment from the first episode Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, The main character is having her wanna be love interest come with her to the bike racks and thinks she is going to ride home with him on the back of his bike and trying to decide how she wants to do it◊. It is a standard shojo anime romance trope, it even gets discussed earlier in the episode◊. Now that is Genre Savvy if it was a romance anime and it happened like that

The problem is the work is a comedy series and NOT a romance series so nope its an embarrassing 2 seater◊ thus being Wrong Genre Savvy and a complete Moment Killer.

Edit: they said it better, I gotta refresh pages more for new posts.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:43:18 AM by Memers

You have to be careful not to confuse genre savviness with acknowledgement of cultural norms. If riding on a bicycle together is a love trope in that particular type of anime, then calling it out is Genre Savvy. If it is the sort of thing that is generally prevalent in the source culture, then it's not.

I don't think stuff like Megamind knowing that evil always loses should be an example. He could easily be speaking from his own experience.

It's illegal to ride bikes like that in Japan, the series even calls her out on it. But that doesn't actually stop romance works like say Amagami SS from doing it on multiple occasions.

Her whole character is basically based around being Wrong Genre Savvy as she sees things only in Shōjo romance tropes/stereotypes and expects them to resolve in the stereotypical way they do in that genre, which would make her the Genre Savvy God in a Shojo romance series not a comedy series.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:52:34 AM by Memers

Technically, my argument still stands even if the example that I used doesn't.^note Septimus Heap claimed it to be an example, but I do see your point, and when I was playing Devil's Advocate to try to defend my misguided interpretation of the trope, I tried pointing this out).

Lampshade Hanging the tropes is technically "implying".

edited 3rd Mar '15 10:02:51 AM by KarjamP

I'm actually wondering about examples like in The Incredibles, where the villain of the work, Syndrome, is shown to be Genre Savvy exactly as how Madrugada describes it, complete with a Lampshade (He says, "You got me monologuing!" at one point where Mr. Incredible tried to take advantage of him doing some Evil Gloating by throwing something at him in order to distract him, something a fanboy-turned-supervillain like him might know).

However, superheros are known to exist in-universe, complete with the relevant tropes (at one point, Mr. Incredible can be seen Discussing the trope "Evil Gloating" with Frozone, which isn't an example anymore than him reminiscing about old times for which this trope was more common back then).

...Coming to think about it, I think I can see where the cut paragraph was going. I don't think it was supposed to contribute to the misuse anymore as it offering an alternate interpretation on how one might obtain knowledge of storytelling conventions. The mere fact that it seemed to have contributed to the misuse, however, was a bad thing, which meant it had to be cut.

The trope's supposed to be about people knowing about storytelling conventions and how it applies through their situation at hand. Most of the misuse was simply fellow tropers interpreting the trope as if it was simply about them acting clever within the situation at hand.

The reason why I didn't initially see a problem with that paragraph, but managed to see misuse anyway (which is what I was trying to say while trying to defend the paragraph) is because I had interpreted the problematic paragraph differently than most people who thought it caused the exact misuse as it has now. In other words, I've interpreted it as if knowledge about storytelling conventions is still a requirement even though it's possible to obtain said knowledge through experience instead of through knowing fiction.

It's alright to disagree with me on this, but take note that I'm not trying to argue.

edited 3rd Mar '15 10:29:14 AM by KarjamP