Needs Help: Genre Savvy

There are two different issues with the Genre Savvy trope which have been discussed in Ask The Tropers during the last few days. One is that the trope definition seems to have been made overly wide, and the other is widespread misuse even with the current trope definition. I'll start with the misuse part.

1) Several posters have noted that the Genre Savvy trope is being misused for characters just being generally savvy, and that this needs cleaning up. This by itself is maybe not cause for a TRS thread, but since I was taking this to TRS anyway because of the second problem I promised to take the misuse here as well.

2) To me, and several other posters, it seems that the essence of Genre Savvy is that a character, in-universe, is applying lessons from fiction to their real life. For example, a person who has read a lot of vampire fiction suddenly faces a vampire, knows that in the stories, you're supposed to stake a vampire, and proceeds to defeat the vampire by staking it.

The trope definition starts out by talking about this for several paragraphs.

Then there is the following paragraph, which at least to me reads like a later addition:

"There are two finely-distinguished varieties of genre savvy. The first comes from being familiar with fiction. (...) The other kind comes from being a character in some sort of serial fiction, and having a good memory. For example, many modern comic book superhero characters exhibit a lot of savviness, simply because they can remember all the weird things that've happened to them, and thus are not surprised when yet another evil twin shows up."

My problem is with the "other kind". The character in this case has no in-universe knowledge of the genre. The audience knows that it's a superhero story, but the hero doesn't. He is just learning from experience.

To me, this removes the "genre" from "genre savvy", and widens the trope definition from "character learns from in-universe fiction" to "character learns from experience". The latter is People Sit On Chairs, which would make the entire trope useless. And we'd still need a sub-trope from where the character does learn from in-universe fiction.

At first, there seemed to be consensus building that this "other kind" should be removed. Then there was some dissension, that this is just a case of Tropes Are Flexible. So I'm bringing the problem here for resolution.

Personally I'm for cutting what to me seems like a late addition that was made to justify shoehorning.

This is an excellent OP. It states the perceived problems, recaps previous discussion elsewhere, suggests a solution, and explains how the proposed solutions will fix the perceived problems. So "Bravo!" for that.

Opening for discussion.

I've been saying for a long time that a long-term cleanup thread is probably in order. Genre Savvy is probably the snigle most misused trope on the site. And that expansion to make the trope fit the misuse is a mistake.

I can't find a single thing in the OP that I disagree with - lets cut out that 'learns from experience' nonsense and get to cleaning.

I agree that it needs to be about applying knowledge from fiction into the character's own situation. It could come in the form of knowing they're already in a work of fiction, but not simply from previous knowledge.

I don't think it needs to be explicitly about knowledge of the specific genre, but rather knowledge that is applicable to the genre. In other words, if general trope knowledge works, for tropes that appear in all kids of genres, it would still apply. The important part is that the knowledge comes from fiction.

That's about the distinction I'd make. If it's something that has happened before, it'd pretty much need to be lampshaded as Genre Savviness to count as that, rather than as plain memory. Of course, that can also fall under Continuity Nod or something similar, but that's still not Genre Savvy.

On an unrelated note, the word "knowledge" is now a meaningless string of letters to me.

Oh boy, this needs to be fixed. If simply so that the term still means what it sounds like it is. I agree that it should be limited to the knowledge the characters get from reading/watching fiction. Otherwise, there's nothing to differentiate it from just paying attention to what's going on.

And as Madrugada-the-troper, I concur. "Paying attention to what has happened in the past" may indicate savviness of a sort, but it is not Genre-Savviness. That first word in the trope name is pretty damn important.

I also agree that that paragraph smacks of someone wanting to enable shoehorning. (According to the page history captured on September 2 of 2012 on the Wayback machine, it was added with apparently no discussion by woodwardiocom on December 13, 2011.) Cut it and clean up the bad examples.

edited 24th Feb '15 9:22:39 PM by Madrugada

How would this relate to Functional Genre Savvy?

Here's the paragraph in question in which it's been claimed to have been shoehorned into the description to make examples count:

I have taken this to mean that whomever wrote this paragraph here had essentially interpreted the word "stories" in two different ways: "fictitious works" and "personal stories". The latter can be interpreted as the person who's "experienced" enough to know how the Theory of Narrative Causality applies to their own lives even if they hadn't gotten their knowledge from works of fiction.

That's said, even under both of my interpretations, I still propose there's major misuse for fitting neither of my two interpretations - knowing the ways of something isn't the same as knowing how the Theory of Narrative Causality applies to one's own life, whether one got that knowledge from experience or from reading fiction.

edited 24th Feb '15 11:23:25 PM by KarjamP

Genre Savvy is explicitly about savvyness of the specific genre. The character needs to have read a book, watched a movie, or played a video game. The description part about having a good memory needs to go.

Functional Genre Savvy is about acting as if he's genre savvy without actually having watched the movies. A lot of misuse probably goes in that.

edited 25th Feb '15 1:20:34 AM by KarjamP

Thanks to Pop Culture Osmosis I am going to say they don't have to have read the genre to be Genre Savvy they have to bring up the genre or trope by name or description. Like say someone in a sappy Shojo romance manga equates the situation to a sappy Shojo romance manga and rolls with it knowingly. When they say it's a sappy Shojo romance work and it really is a Grimdark Kill Em All type work then that is Wrong Genre Savvy.

Functional Genre Savvy is more Common Sense About The Situation type of savvy I think, they know just enough to function in the world and plot and that is it, they never call it out or try to manipulate the tropes to their own advantage and such.

edited 25th Feb '15 1:09:38 AM by Memers

Guys, read Functional Genre Savvy properly - there's a reason why it's considered a Omnipresent Trope here.

In spite of their similarities, there are differences between Functional Genre Savvy and the normal Genre Savvy, especially within the context of the works. Functional Genre Savvy aren't usually deliberate on part of the authors, for example.

Another difference is that Functional Genre Savvy is about characters who have knowledge about how things usually are within their universe without necessarily being outright knowing about their lives following storytelling conventions, while Genre Savvy people do know their lives are, either by reading up about fictitious works (and recognizing that their lives are being played out similarly to fiction) or they had gained enough experience on their own to know what the storytelling conventions of their own world are (even if it's not outright stated by them that their lives follow storytelling conventions).

Take note, however, is that I'm not disagreeing about the misuse of this trope - I've discovered a few examples that are misuse even with my own interpretations on what this trope's about.

Functional Genre Savvy is essentially just The Law of Conservation of Detail as applied to the genre savviness of the characters. It keeps the plot on track. It's possible to avoid it, so I wouldn't say it's entirely omnipresent, but it's close enough.

Genre Savvy is about the characters explicitly using that kind of knowledge to their advantage. There's also a degree of doing something that isn't expected of them. Doing something against "normal" common sense but within the genre conventions would count.

The easiest way to sum it up would be to say that the difference is whether it's implicit or explicit, but that still loses out on the details. Or you could say that Functional Genre Savvy is about it being common sense within the story, while Genre Savvy is specific to the character with a contrast to what's expected.

Should I ask about Leaning on the Fourth Wall and Noticing the Fourth Wall too?

"Paying attention to what has happened in the past" may indicate savviness of a sort, but it is not Genre-Savviness. That first word in the trope name is pretty damn important.

While I do concur, I'd like to point out that in the case of Deadpan Snarker, the first word in the trope name was ignored to the point that the description evolved into just "Snarker."

I don't think Madrugada means that the first word in a trope name is always important, just that it is in this case.

The step from "Deadpan snarker" to "snarker" is basically The Same But Less Specific - not a huge change, because usually the important thing is the snarking, not its delivery.

The step from "Genre savvy" to just "savvy" is huge in comparison.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:05:20 AM by GnomeTitan

Gnome Titan is exactly right about what I meant. "Deadpan" didn't add a lot of clarity to Deadpan Snarker: most snark is delivered deadpan or close to it. "Genre" adds a lot of specificity to Genre Savvy thaa "Savvy" doesn't have.

Regarding the fourth wall: no, we don't need to consider them here: the fourth wall involves the character knowing that they are in work. Genre Savvy does not go that far: it only means that they recognize that their current situation is similar to a work.

wanna bring that up in trs then?

edited 25th Feb '15 6:34:57 AM by DAN004

I'd like to point out that while it's important to have a name that clearly summarizes what the trope's about, sometimes it doesn't really do so, especially if they have names that they only kept due to the Grandfather Clause we have here for them (due to how much they've been wicked).

Examples are Springtime for Hitler, Underground Monkey, Flanderization, Lampshade Hanging, The Scrappy, Red Shirt, etc.

And then there are tropes whose names are essentially terms redefined for our purpose. Case in point, I Google searched the term "Morphic Resonance" verbatim and found out that Rupert Sheldrake's theory is much more common than talks about this term as used in the context of the Morphic Resonance trope. Even when I included the term "shapeshifting", only one result so far included the alternate term, and when I also included the word "sci fi", only one of my own works at Deviant Art showed up within the first few pages (for which I used the term in the context of this trope).

I don't think Deadpan Snarker would get its name changed anytime soon due to it being one of the tropes under the Grandfather Clause concerning highly wicked tropes having bad names.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:41:58 AM by KarjamP

What does that have to do with the misuse of Genre Savvy? Unless you're arguing that the name is irrelevant and we should just allow it to decay to "Savvy"?

This thread is not going to derail into a general discussion about a bunch of unrelated tropes.

edited 25th Feb '15 6:58:45 AM by Madrugada

Because that's one of the points put up countering the claim that one doesn't have to gain their Genre Savviness from fiction in order for it to be an example.

Anyway, I do agree that there are misuse even under both of the interpretations of the tropes I've brought up. Therefore, I'll say "cleanup without the change in description".

Karjam P: what exactly are you arguing for? Since you want to clean up misuse, you don't seem to want it to decay to just "savvy".

On the other hand, you want to keep the case where a character learns from experience. How is that different from just "savvy"?

Let me set up two examples:

1. Bob has read a lot of stories about vampires, so when he meets an actual vampire, he knows that he's supposed to stake it.

2. Bob has never read a story about vampires in his life, but he has fought them before, so he knows that staking them works.

As I interpret the trope, 1 is an example and 2 is not. 2 may even be People Sit On Chairs; and if it's not, it's certainly not Genre savviness.

But with the current definition of the trope, 2 is an example (the trope definition muddies the water by talking about Bob being a character in a TV series — but Bob doesn't know that! If he does, it's one of those breaking-the-fourth-wall tropes, which are different animals altogether).

You want to keep the current definition. So do you maintain that 2 is an example of genre savviness? And what then distinguishes this trope from other tropes?

To me, the part where Bob has become savvy by reading stories is the very essence of this trope. Removing this requirement turns the trope into something completely different.

Edited: Note that the genre of vampire stories doesn't enter example 2 at all. Bob has never read a vampire story, so he knows nothing about the genre. To him, vampires exist and he's learned how to fight them. In example 1, on the other hand, Bob is aware of the genre precisely because he has read those stories.

edited 25th Feb '15 8:07:17 AM by GnomeTitan

Ok, I've done something a bit different this time: I've put up a crowner for whether this discussion needs to continue.

Please note, this isn't directly about whether to cut the paragraph — it's about whether there's a need to continue discussing it at all.

It was added as a unilateral, undiscussed, substantial change to the trope definition. Ordinarily, that alone would be grounds for removing it without discussion and starting a clean-up thread.

edited 25th Feb '15 8:10:47 AM by Madrugada

Just to clarify on the crowner, does voting down mean that we agree that the paragraph in question makes the trope too broad and should be cut?

Edit: Just from looking though the video games page I can tell this needs a cleaning. Either that or people aren't explaining their examples thoroughly. Or the characters are just savvy or Breaking the Fourth Wall...

edited 25th Feb '15 8:45:47 AM by ObsidianFire