Something to add to the proposed Student Of Human Nature trope, I came upon the trope Gut Feeling, which not only seems to cover some of the misuse for Genre Savvy, but has one of several "types" for characters using their intuition, one of which is the exact opposite of Horrible Judge of Character.
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
To get this discussion moving forward, here's a summary of the last 10 pages of discussion and the actions that have been taken for those that want to catch up quickly.
The issue:
Genre Savvy is widely misused around the site for characters who make any smart decision based on either experience or cunning as opposed to the trope's original definition, which is characters who make a smart decision based on their familiarity with works of fiction (without knowing that they themselves are fictional; if they did, one of the Fourth Wall tropes would apply). "Characters do something smart" either carries so little meaning that it's People Sit on Chairs, or is so common that it's useless to list examples. This has led to massive Trope Decay where the non-trope misuse now outnumbers the correct trope use.
There are a number of different tropes that cover the misuse, including Taught by Experience, Crazy-Prepared, Seen It All, and others. There's also Functional Genre Savvy, which is about characters behaving appropriate to the type of fictional world they inhabit. This trope is omnipresent enough that it doesn't list examples, so moving Genre Savvy examples to that trope is not viable.
Actions taken:
- Before this TRS, a paragraph was unilaterally added to the original trope description to fit the misuse. A crowner voted overwhelmingly in favor to cut out this paragraph.
- A YKTTW was started for a more general "Savvy" Super-Trope, but the concept was so vague and open to misuse that it wasn't considered tropeable and was canned.
- Real Life Examples were cut from Genre Savvy for being impossible.
- Genre Savvy subpages have been preliminarily cleaned up. Until the problem with the trope is fixed however, we can't stop Trope Decay misuse from being added back in, at least without a lock.
- Wick cleanup. Some have occasionally been cleaning up bad examples, but at 12,000+ wicks, we need a LOT of contributors for this to hack away at the current misuse.
Related problem tropes:
- Dangerously Genre-Savvy, Wrong Genre Savvy, and Genre Blind have also been noted to have problems in their own right that are a partial result of the widespread misuse of Genre Savvy, but shimaspawn has said that these discussions should be continued in TRS threads for those tropes (for which the TRS backlog needs to be cleaned out first).
Current discussion:
- On the past two pages there has been an argument whether Genre Savvy should only apply to Genre Tropes, and that we should have a Super-Trope for Fiction Savvy / Media Savvy. This could be worth looking into, but since Genre Savvy is already effectively used to cover tropes from all Genres, this proposed reorganization is a secondary issue to fixing a broken trope. It doesn't seem to be the cause for the misuse, at any rate.
- YKTTW a new trope for Student Of Human Nature, the opposite trope of Horrible Judge of Character. A common trait of character archetypes such as The Chessmaster, Guile Hero, and Manipulative Bastard. However, there's also the trope Gut Feeling (which has been around since at least 2013, but doesn't have a YKTTW archive), which is another item that looks awfully similar to the current Genre Savvy misuse and lists "Judge of character" as one of its Internal Subtropes.
edited 10th Oct '15 2:48:26 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
The imaginative Christian Asperger
Perhaps we could rework Gut Feeling for the miususe? It seems pretty well defined to me, and as pointed out, it already has several different subtropes.
It has 198 wicks. Not bad, but not too good either.
Maybe we should rename Genre Savvy into Fiction Savvy? The name would indicate that the character is savvy because they know what works in fiction. Of course, I understand that it would warrant lots of wick changes, but I guess that's already inevitable at this point.
Fiction Savvy would be the supertrope to Genre Savvy, Genre Savvy works because things that happen in one genre do not happen in the next.
Such as things that happen in a Horror Movie do not happen in a Rom Com.
From the description
If they don't have that and just have basic troping ability then it would be Fiction Savvy.
edited 10th Oct '15 8:17:24 AM by Memers
I agree with Memers. Genre Savvy characters know the type of story they're in while fiction savvy would be more general.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Fiction Savvy would encompass Genre Savvy (character uses fiction to make a descision) and Wrong Genre Savvy (character's guess of what fictional tropes apply are wrong), and wouldn't have any examples of it's own.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
that totally depends on the true definition of Wrong Genre Savvy, which can't make up its mind on which.
"Wrong" Genre Savvy which would be just Fiction Savvy but subverted.
Or "Wrong Genre" Savvy which would be Genre Savvy but not the correct one.
edited 10th Oct '15 6:33:17 PM by Memers
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Genre Savvy, but Subverted Trope and Genre Savvy, but wrong both end up in the same place:
- character cites a reference to fiction, but turns out to be wrong.
edited 11th Oct '15 5:14:25 AM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
The imaginative Christian Asperger
I would like to talk about a related trope called "Dangerously Genre-Savvy". I believe this trope was created (and named) while this trope was undergoing major decay. Even the trope's description relies on the misuse.
The trope's about people using their shrewdness to the advantage within the given situation. In short, an aversion or defiance of Idiot Ball.
We may need to change the name of this trope to remove the mention of the trope's name and alter references to Genre Savvy within the description to talk about knowledge in general. The current trope name's a Bad Snowclone of this one precisely due to the fact that it interpreting "Genre Savvy" in a way we had already deemed as not examples.
This does seem to be a trope legit to me because it can make characters seem a larger threat than those who aren't knowledgeable enough.
No, the other one.
Dangerously Genre-Savvy was, as far as I know, supposed to be about villains who subvert story conventions in a way very detrimental to the heroes. Things like just shooting the heroes, attacking during speeches and transformation sequences.
Check out my fanfiction!
Dangerously Genre-Savvy IMO is more about you know what villains do in your genre of story and know how they lose, you specifically go to great lengths to avoid falling into that trap.
There is the opposite of knowing what they are and what they should do but they do it anyway because that is what the villain does ala Dr Evil.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Contractual Genre Blindness I think that's called.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
The Unknown
Dangerously Genre-Savvy probably needs a rename because it sounds like a The Same But More Specific version of Genre Savvy.
edited 16th Oct '15 3:54:50 PM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Not that I don't agree with you, but I think that should wait until this thread gets closed and I don't think this thread should be closed until someone has verified that all of the wicks (and the examples on page) are correct.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
The imaginative Christian Asperger
I'd just like to point out that Dangerously Genre-Savvy is no longer a villain trope due to it being a bit too specific. (It was me that altered the description to make it more generic).
Anyway, I thought I'd bring it up here due to the trope's name being and current description being related to the huge misuse this trope had underwent. If I were to say anything, it would be Dangerously Genre-Savvy was made after the misuse became rampant, with the trope's maker believing it to be a subtrope to Genre Savvy (hens its name and current description). Subtropes are, by definition, The Same But More Specific.
As it's pretty obvious now that the trope isn't a subtrope to Genre Savvy, I recommend that we try to fix that trope as well by removing incorrect references to Genre Savvy (including changing that trope's name). The only reason why I'm not opening a separate thread for this is because the Trope Repair Shop is closed for new threads due to the excessive backlog.
edited 17th Oct '15 4:00:33 AM by KarjamP
Dangerously Genre-Savvy should be handled in its own thread, I'd say. We are discussing a specific trope here not the whole family.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I disagree the whole family of trope is based on one specific definition of Genre Savvy, one that is the whole issue here, it being changed to something that was not is an issue for the whole family of tropes because the misuse is affecting the main trope.
edited 17th Oct '15 10:09:31 AM by Memers
The imaginative Christian Asperger
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
The reason why I brought it up within this thread is because Dangerously Genre-Savvy (and possibly other tropes), as it currently is named and/or written, is basing itself off of the direct misuse of this trope. In other words, this trope is directly tied towards Genre Savvy's misuse simply due to basing itself off of it.
edited 17th Oct '15 10:03:30 AM by KarjamP
Then what's needed is a resolution to look into those tropes after this one is done, so this one doesn't decay again. Otherwise, I agree we need to wait until we figure out what to do with the "base" trope here.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
The decision was already stated by a mod: Post 96, page 4
Clean-up the subpages and wicks.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
The imaginative Christian Asperger
The problem with this is that it's currently impossible to create new threads - the repair shop is closed for new discussions due to the massive backlog we're trying to clear up.
Cleaning up tropes such as Dangerously Genre-Savvy is related to the goal of cleaning up the misuse of Genre Savvy simply because these tropes, well, uses said misuse as part of its premise.
On a related note, Genre Blind and Wrong Genre Savvy are fine due to their definitions coinciding what Genre Savvy's supposed to be about. Contractual Genre Blindness, however...
Well, no, the problem is that people want to start to fix other tropes before the ones already here are fixed. This dilutes the attention and workforce and assures that nothing gets fixed.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The imaginative Christian Asperger
I'm not complaining about there being a massive backlog. I'm saying that certain tropes which perpetrates to be subtropes of Genre Savvy or Genre Blindness, like Dangerously Genre-Savvy and Contractual Genre Blindness, are relying on the interpretation of the trope we considered misuse, and thus, are directly related to the cleanup attempts.
Even you must admit rules are supposed to be guidelines on how to do things properly, not to be absolute musts. Rules can sometimes be broken if it gets in the way of doing things within the spirit of the rules. That's why I'm bringing up those tropes in this thread - in their current state, those tropes are directly tied towards the misuse of Genre Savvy which we're trying to get rid of.
edited 18th Oct '15 2:08:52 AM by KarjamP
Crown Description:
This is an advisory crowner to determine whether further discussion is necessary Does the inclusion of the following paragraph in the current definition of "Genre Savvy" make the trope too broad?
A Wrong Genre Savvy character is one that attempts to use Genre Savvy, but fails because of a factor they were unaware of (usually that they picked the wrong genre).
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.