Rated M For Manly and Testosterone Poisoning... where did we go wrong?

Is it just me or somewhere along the line, we have mistaken the trope meanings from shows which point is about being manly, or manliness taken to absurdity... into a trope about "OMG THIS GUY IS SO MANLY"... grouping characters as "Manly"? Do we need to bring this to the Trope Repair Shop? Is 'Manliness' of a single character tropable anyway? I mean, what makes it different than Mr. Fanservice?

This is because when I look at the polar opposite of Rated M for Manly, that is, Chick Flick, that page is more to-the-point, listing shows about girliness, not characters that exude femininity so much.

Let's discuss this first before bringing it to the repair shop.

edited 2nd Jan '15 11:55:54 PM by ChrisX

I see more stuff about characters being badass, which is a different concept (though related).

I think it can be about a character if that character embodies the trope, though. Such as if you have a chick flick and one character talks about bending running chainsaws with his hands, wrestling bears and has the scars to prove it.

Well maybe we can add that additional definition for the trope and actually differentiate between examples about shows being Rated M for Manly and characters being Rated M for Manly.

Previous threads on this topic:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1311614098061780500&page=1

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=14054724170A76405500&page=1

The idea we were going with before is basically that Rated M for Manly should be about explicit "ultra manly stories marketed to guys" while Testosterone Poisoning is an ultra manly character. One typically includes the other, but are otherwise different ideas in principle. It doesn't help that the original YKTTW are basically the same thing. The crowner basically said to keep it a "played straight" vs. "parodied" division, which I never thought would work.

edited 3rd Jan '15 2:48:18 PM by KJMackley

Testosterone Poisoning seems pretty clear in its description about being used for parodies, and that's what the examples generally seem to be. Not sure how that's "unworkable".

Poe's Law

That hardly makes it unworkable.

A good deal of movies that aim for Rated M for Manly do so with a certain degree of humorous intent, they don't play it completely straight. That's why you get conflicting opinions on whether or not it is "absurd played straight" vs. "absurd for parody." And for the most part on the wiki we don't divide tropes according to differing methods of playing with the trope, that's what Playing with a Trope is all about.