Well, actually it is important to point out how the dynamic works when talking about such ensemble tropes. A mere list of characters with an (equally contextless) trope attached to them is not enough, especially given how frequently people misuse these tropes to list characters that don't interact like the tropes require.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lost in Space
Except on the Five-Man Band page itself, I should remind everyone that you are never to use the indented form for those ensemble tropes.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Zzzzzzzzzz
That's what is being discussed here, Fighteer: Why? As far as I can recall it was a sweeping Admin Fiat that each trope needed to be listed individually alphabetically, and that that included not sub-indenting the individual tropes that make up a composite trope. I don't recall him ever giving a reason beyond "that's the way it's going to be."
Personally, I think that the OP here makes a number of very good points about the way composite tropes work, and what makes them easier to read and understand.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
It looks more "normal" (in the sense of how trope examples are usually written) to put the character tropes that make up an ensemble into the example text of the ensemble trope.
Then the example text of the ensemble trope can describe how the ensemble works (not much detail on the character tropes involved needed) and the character tropes get their own bullet points and example text explaining how them apply.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
That leaves you having to skip around all over the page to get how the whole thing works together; Continuing to use Five-Man Band as an example, the first trope in the list will be the Big Guy, then The Chick, then you'll get to Five-Man Band itself, which refers back to those two, then The Lancer, The Leader, then The Smart Guy. It's like listing all the ingredients of a dish in strict alphabetical order, with the actual instructions plugged in somewhere in the middle, according to where the name of the dish falls alphabetically
- Bacon
- Butter
- Cream
- Eggs
- Flour
- Quiche Lorraine: Make a pie crust using the butter, flour, salt and water. Brown the bacon, dice the scallions and shred the Swiss Cheese. Beat the eggs and cream together, then stir in the bacon, eggs and cheese, and pour into the crust. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.
- Salt
- Scallions (or green onions)
- Swiss Cheese
How does that make more sense than:
- Butter
- Flour
- Salt
- Cream
- Eggs
- Bacon
- Scallions (or green onions)
- Swiss Cheese
- Quiche Lorraine: Make a pie crust using the butter, flour, salt and water. Brown the bacon, dice the scallions and shred the Swiss Cheese. Beat the eggs and cream together, then stir in the bacon, eggs and cheese, and pour into the crust. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.
or
- Quiche Lorraine: Make a pie crust using the butter, flour, salt and water. Brown the bacon, dice the scallions and shred the Swiss Cheese. Beat the eggs and cream together, then stir in the bacon, eggs and cheese, and pour into the crust. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. For one quiche, use
- Butter
- Flour
- Salt
- Cream
- Eggs
- Bacon
- Scallions (or green onions)
- Swiss Cheese
edited 27th Apr '15 8:50:06 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
It makes more sense because I can find the Quiche Lorraine entry in its alphabetic spot without having to read the whole list. Plus, it has the whole recipe that I can use.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
No, the other one.
A purely alphabetical order makes more sense if you're looking for a specific trope you know the name of.
Grouping makes more sense if you're looking for patterns and relationships between tropes.
I find that since the latter is much harder to see in the former order than the other way around, the latter is the better option.
Check out my fanfiction!
Zzzzzzzzzz
What? All of them have the whole recipe. And if you want to use the recipe, you have to comb through the list to see what gets used where in what order with the first arrangement.
Let's make it even more like a work's page — FMB isn't likely to be the only trope on there, so, now you have a couple of recipes, their ingredient lists, and other things that don't factor into either recipe.
- Bacon
- Butter
- Cream
- Cream of Tartar
- Dark Chocolate
- Eggs
- Egg whites
- Flour
- Meringue Frosting: Whip the egg whites to soft peaks, then whip in the cream of tartar. Slowly add the sugar and vanilla, continuing to whip until the stiff peak stage is reached.
- Milk
- Molasses
- Pocky
- Quiche Lorraine: Make a pie crust using the butter, flour, salt and water. Brown the bacon, dice the scallions and shred the Swiss Cheese. Beat the eggs and cream together, then stir in the bacon, eggs and cheese, and pour into the crust. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.
- Rum
- Salt
- Scallions (or green onions)
- Sugar
- Swiss Cheese
- Toilet Paper
- Vanilla extract
- Water
- Yeast
edited 27th Apr '15 9:10:37 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Or by citing the related tropes in the example writeup, rather than in subbullets. That'd be my preference.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
That identifies which ones go together, but you still have to comb through the whole list to find out how they work individually.
And what about the pages that have the tropes subdivided into folders — or worse, pages — Tropes A-D, Tropes E-K, Tropes L-R, Tropes S-Z, for instance? Two of the parts of FMB will be in the first folder, FMB itself will be in the second, two more parts will be in the third, and the final part will be in the fourth.
edited 27th Apr '15 9:16:17 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Not all the tropes that can make up an ensemble are always part of an ensemble when they are used. Or, a story might have several instances of a character type that can be part of an ensemble but only one or two of them are part of such an ensemble.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
Well, if I want to know how a character fits The Big Guy, why should I look under Five-Man Band?
Plus, almost every time I see an example with subcomponents listed in this way, it's a ZCE - like in the OP. The wiki uses subbullets for individual examples of a given trope - say, multiple Five Man Bands - the upper level bullet doesn't get context.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
One thing that I've seen work on a couple pages as a compromise is to have the relevant subtropes listed, but also have them listed in their proper places on the list with sufficient context (not just "See X trope"). Take Characters.Grrl Power, for example. Under Sydney we have:
- Ancient Artifact: Halo has seven of them. They're floating orbs in the colors of the spectrum, and each one gives her a different superpower:
- The orange one is pretty well a Wave-Motion Gun.
- The yellow one makes an illusion of her that she can see and hear through. It also grants her True Sight, the ability to see through illusions or invisibility. She later finds a setting that grants Aura Vision.
- The blue one lets her fly.
- The indigo one lets her generate force fields.
- The violet one gives her a telekinetic energy-pseudopod.
- She hasn't figured out what the red and green ones do.
But also:
- Barrier Warrior: When using the indigo orb. Not only can she change the size of the force field to cover large groups of people, it's strong enough to take some of Maxima's most powerful attacks without difficulty. It even gives her immunity to non-physical attacks like an aggro aura. It also protects the ground at her feet, as evidenced when Maxima hit someone — at the time anchoring himself to the ground — hard enough to lift the street... and Sidney's shield kept the ground at the same level it was when she shielded herself, making a hole on the raised portion.
And so on. Of course, most pages don't do that, they just list one trope that might, maybe, in theory be relevant under another, but it's a possible compromise.
Lost in Space
Here's the thing: a Five-Man Band example is one example, not five. Putting sub-bullets for each member is not only redundant with listing those tropes in their proper alphabetical order, but also contributes to ZCEs and encourages supertrope-subtrope indentation more broadly throughout the wiki.
If it is possible to list out the various components of the Five-Man Band in one bullet, it should be done that way. There is exactly the same likelihood of it being a ZCE either way.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
I'm getting confused... there seems to be different discussions going on here...
I initially thought the discussion was about "how to write ensemble tropes".
Then I see the word "composite" being used often, with a metaphor that leads me to believe it means the discussion is about "any trope that can be described via Troperithmetic".
Finally I see subexamples being listed with relevent potholes as part of this. 0.o
edited 27th Apr '15 10:45:30 AM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
I am with maddy and the op. It doesn't make sense to scatter the examples all over the page. Writing them all under one examples makes it look like a bloated example which looks sloppy. The method proposed is not only easy to find but very easy to read. It is also rather easy to maintain.
No matter how you slice it five man band isn't really a stand alone trope beyond saying these characters make up a five man band. It relies heavily on other tropes to explain its composition and justify its presence in the first place. The sub-bullets shouldn't be contextless but I see no good reason to not present it like the op does.
Who watches the watchmen?
I understand wanting to list subtropes under a composite trope, but I also see how subbullets-under-subbullets could (and does) attract Zero Context Examples. What about kind of a hybrid, where the subtropes are listed in separate entries in normal alphabetical order, and they are also described under the entry for the composite trope, but not as entries, only as potholes?
e.g.:
...
- Fish out of Water: Example from work.
- Five-Man Band: Short sentence about how Andre is the leader, and maybe that Betty is his foil. A brief description of why Caitlyn is the clever one, maybe an example of David being burly, and establish that Elizabeth is the team's peacekeeper.
- Foreshadowing: Example from work.
- The Leader: Something else, or maybe even just something very similar, about Andre being the leader of the team in this work.
That might make it hard to keep Five-Man Band wicks clean, but it would improve the examples a lot, often it is just a list of names.
edited 27th Apr '15 10:30:36 PM by rodneyAnonymous
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.
That was more or less what I was thinking.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Tropes? We don't need no stinkin tropes
If the subtrope bullets ARE Zero Context Examples, then they can be expanded or removed by tropers who happen by, like any other ZCE.
The "paragraph" style is, frankly, just a less-clear method of making the same list. It makes about as much sense as writing your shopping list as:
- Shopping list: Eggs for making the deviled eggs, pickles to put next to the deviled eggs on a different plate, beans for bean burritos, tortillas to wrap those beans in.
It's better in every way to write it:
- Shopping list:
- Eggs
- Pickles
- Beans
- Tortillas
Lists work well with bullets. It's what bullets are for. Without a list, EVERY Five-Man Band example is a Zero Context Example. So why not format that list in a way which makes sense?
(This was not a literal example. The entire point is that instead of "Eggs", you'd have the trope name and how it applies. Please don't claim that by using a simplified analogy with one-word list entries, I have suggested that ZC Es are okay)
edited 28th Apr '15 1:31:23 AM by Khyron42_Prime
And furthermore, moreover, I consider that Five-Man Band must be merged with The Team.
But seriously, I agree that putting them all in one paragraph just turns it into five ZCE's that are harder to spot than normal. I've had a good amount of success commenting out ZCE Five-Man Band (and Five Bad Band, for that matter) examples, only for the original editor to come back later and add sufficient context.
Lost in Space
Any context which applies to the trope applies by definition to the component tropes, so the only difference between giving them their own entries and one mega entry is whether it fits our indentation style, and whether explanatory text is needed for the Five-Man Band trope itself.
Here's my revised take: if Five-Man Band cannot get any independent write-up, but is only defined by the component tropes, then it is not actually a trope and should have its examples removed, or at least kept on the trope page only.
edited 28th Apr '15 9:45:15 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Zzzzzzzzzz
Five-Man Band itself should have some context: is the team the main heroes, a supporting team to the hero(es), a side team, when/how they formed, what the purpose of the team is; any or all of those are context for the trope itself, not specific to any one member of it and should be included in the FMB entry.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Lost in Space
Very good. And the entries for The Leader, The Heart, The Lancer, etc., can go in their own proper alphabetical order in the work's example list.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Is there any possibility of discussing the merits of the rule on "Composite Tropes" such as The Team, or Five-Man Band and its villainous counterpart?
The indented version of this particular type of trope has several advantages, and its popularity across the wiki (despite the rule) stands as testament to its effectiveness. The Five Man Band has a particular set of subtropes, and without specifying which are in play for which characters, very little information is actually conveyed by the example.
It just doesn't make sense to have an entry declaring a group of characters to BE The Team without explaining HOW they do so - it borders on being a Zero Context Example:
Adding "work as The Team" or "are a five-man band" or somesuch is redundant and unhelpful. This entry is just a list of names without context or use. You'd have to comb through the entire page just to learn how this example applies, and no sense of relationship is conveyed; The Lancer example might convey that Sean is The Lancer to Tom's Hero, but if Lisa is The Chick, her entry either has to a) contain the entire list of names AGAIN, or b) rely on the reader having memorized the list given in Five-Man Band. Whereas:
Basically, the indented form is a very effective way of organizing the information about how the "composite trope" is being used, and NOT using it leads not only to poorly-conveyed relationships, but also to a completely uninformative example under the supertrope's entry. Additionally, this can now occur:
This way, characters who fit the respective subtropes within their groups can now be acknowledged as such even when their role in the overall story is too minor to warrant their inclusion as a primary trope example. Also, when you have Loads And Loads Of Characters a Retool, or a Long Runner, you might have more than one Team:
Keeping track of the relationships between these two sets of five characters could be extremely frustrating, requiring many redundant re-statements of each team's members in each separate entry. This way, all of the relevant information is conveyed up-front.
Now, simply listing the various subtropes is certainly a Zero Context Example, but naming each subtrope and which character (or whatever) applies to each seems necessary to give the entry any context at all. And I'm not advocating the simple supertrope/subtrope indented lists, like the example for Badass; but those aren't built around relationships, they're simply ideas which are generally related. When it comes to an example which requires the relationships between various characters and their archetypes to be understood, the bulleted system is clean, efficient, and effective - and again, already widely used in spite of the prohibition here.
And furthermore, moreover, I consider that Five-Man Band must be merged with The Team.