Needs Help: Genre Savvy

That's The Chessmaster.

with a hint of Functional Genre Savvy

What about a Savvy Index? We can stick The Chessmaster, Genre Savvy and such on it.

It would be far more specific than say Intelligence Tropes as say Ditzy Genius would not belong on it, its more functional intelligence and such.

edited 26th Aug '15 2:38:20 AM by Memers

So I started a YKTTW for cases where a character is not Genre Savvy, but is nevertheless aware of the formula their story tends to follow, just from experience.

that is just Taught by Experience, as that trope also covers the obvious repercussions with some falling into Seen It All. Please accept my comment with the knowledge that the description made your YKTTW sound like those things instead. However, we already have that.

edited 26th Aug '15 6:33:45 AM by lakingsif

Taught by Experience would be the supertrope, as it covers all forms of people "learning by doing"; that doesn't mean the things people learn through experience can't be tropeworthy in their own right.

I mean, I'd prefer it if we had a trope that was just "characters in a story are aware of the tropes and conventions of the story they're in". But since it's been decided that Genre Savvy means "characters in a story are aware of the tropes and conventions of the story they're in because they've read/seen stories like this before", there's now a need for a seperate trope for characters who become trope-aware through other means.

Incidentally, "experience" isn't the only means to become aware of story-telling conventions - being told about it, studying them, being taught it, observing them, researching them, analyzing them, etc. are all possible ways for one to become aware of storytelling conventions.

except, with Genre Savvy they don't need to have read or seen any works of the genre they're in. In either case, those are covered by Taught by Television and Taught By Books, with the equivalent being Taught by Experience.

(ok yeh what Karjam just said)

edited 26th Aug '15 7:00:03 AM by lakingsif

Another difference is that Taught by Television is about specific details of knowledge, while Genre Savvy is about story conventions. Relying on and taking advantage of the villain acting in a certain way because that's what villains in stories do is what it is, and not because that villain always does that (which is Taught by Experience), and the heroes are aware of that, or seeing a particular psychological trick on TV and applying that on the villain to get an advantage (which is Taught by Television).

What?

I thought the consensus of this thread was that Genre Savvy characters have to be Taught by Television, Taught By Books, etc., that if they were Taught by Experience how the story they're in works, it doesn't count as Genre Savvy?

There are many things someone can be Taught by Television. They can learn about world events from the news, animal behavior from a nature documentary, the workings of the court system from Law & Order. When what they learn from television is how the genre of story they're in works, we call that Genre Savvy.

All I'm suggesting is that the same thing apply for Taught by Experience. Someone can learn many different things from experience: they can learn how to cook by experimenting in the kitchen, learn how to drive by fiddling around in a car and seeing what happens, learn how to practice Supernatural Martial Arts by fighting other supernatural martial artists. But if what they learn from experience is how the story they're in functions, what tropes and conventions they can expect to run into, that seems worthy of being a trope, too, doesn't it?

edited 26th Aug '15 7:25:03 AM by RavenWilder

Yes? It doesn't matter if they're taught directly or indirectly by stories, though.

edited 26th Aug '15 7:21:25 AM by AnotherDuck

Okay, so let me pose my hypothetical again:

A Scooby-Doo story has Velma point out that the ghosts and monsters they run into are always a hoax, so this latest monster is probably a fake, too.

Does that count as Genre Savvy or not?

Explicitly Taught by Experience, but you can't deny that (should it happen) she has become Genre Savvy.

If Velma learned about the "Scooby-Doo" Hoax trope through knowing that's how stories of her type usually go, then it's this trope. If she simply assumes this due to it happening countless times before, then that's Taught by Experience, not this trope.

There seems to be some of us who think "Taught by Experience" can't be applied to "storytelling conventions" whether they learned them from stories or not. Let me point them to the rule "Tropes Are Flexible".

edited 26th Aug '15 7:43:59 AM by KarjamP

I don't think anyone's saying Taught by Experience can't be applied to storytelling conventions. The debate seems to be about whether, if you learn about storytelling conventions by experiencing them firsthand, if that counts as Genre Savvy. The trope description is currently unclear on that. Early on it says:

But later on it says:

I thought this thread had reached a decision that, if a character's knowledge of how their story works is not based on them having read/watched other fictional stories, it did not count as Genre Savvy. That's why I proposed a new trope for characters whose knowledge of storytelling conventions was Taught by Experience rather than Taught by Television.

I mean, we have tropes that cover all sorts of skills and talents a character might have; it seems like "knowledge of how the story they're in usually plays out" should absolutely be a trope. But if Genre Savvy is to be limited to characters who acquired that knowledge a certain way, then there seems to be a need for a trope concerning characters who came by that knowledge another way.

Either that or we need a supertrope that covers all characters who are aware of how their story's formula plays out, with Genre Savvy being a subtrope.

edited 26th Aug '15 8:17:02 AM by RavenWilder

Its very rare that storytelling conventions are actually storytelling conventions In-Universe. They're just facts about the world. Like physics. So ultimately the question is moot.

All your proposed trope is going to do is make a confusing mess of things. It's a distinction without a difference.

edited 26th Aug '15 8:19:58 AM by shimaspawn

Well there is an a type where someone accurately predicts what the hero is going to do because that is what he or just that type of person does, yet there is no reference for The Hero or the Staff Chick or anything like that. That I think would be in the super trope.

Index perhaps. A supertrope will not work in this case.

Knowing someone well enough to predict them would make a good trope.

You're forgetting about Like Reality, Unless Noted. In Real Life, when you have an all-star sports team with an undefeated record going up against a team of ragtag underdogs, you expect the underdogs to lose, and characters in fictional stories usually do the same thing. So if a fictional character figures the underdog team is going to win because underdog sports teams always win, that seems pretty noteworthy.

Yet, what you're saying is it's only noteworthy if they reach that conclusion because they've seen a lot of stories where the underdogs win? Not if, through experience, they've figured out they're in a world where underdog sports teams inevitably come out on top?

There are also people who do not know a thing about someone and still predict their actions simply because of human nature, odds or Mentalism.

Thrawn in the Starwars Expanded Universe was like that, he knew what a person would do based on what race they were and sometimes looking at the art they said they liked.

When they use it for manipulation that would be a type of Chessmaster but if they dont manipulate but respond that wouldnt quite be a chessmaster.

edited 26th Aug '15 8:34:48 AM by Memers

^^^ Something like a supertrope to Batman Gambit based on predicting character behavior?

edited 26th Aug '15 8:36:35 AM by Morgenthaler

That's fair. Student Of Human Nature for the just knowing how people in general act. And possibly Knows Them Well for when it's just that one person.

Okay, so people are saying that YKTTW should be discarded since it copies too much from Taught by Experience.

What then about a supertrope for characters who are aware of the narrative conventions that govern their world, with Genre Savvy being a subtrope covering cases where the character knows those narrative conventions because they've seen them in other stories before?

We don't need a supertrope for something that is entirely covered by other tropes. There are no signs of Missing Supertrope Syndrome here which means there probably isn't so much a supertrope as just an intersection point of tropes.

Besides, it's not a supertrope when all the subtropes don't fit neatly inside of it. This would be more like trying to trope an intersection and that tends to end badly.

Okay, what trope would you place this comic strip under?

A character shouts "Nothing can save us now!" because "It's a classic cliche! In this type of situation, when someone says 'Nothing can save us now' it's followed by someone showing up to save us."

There's no mention of where he learned this from, no mention of how this is what happens "in a story". Given that, can it still count as Genre Savvy?