Not Tropeworthy: Detached Sleeves

Zettai Ryouiki is the area of skin between a skirt, shorts, or equivalent clothing and thigh high stockings or Thigh High Boots. The smaller the gap the better.

Things like this would be examples of Zettai Ryouiki on the arms I think.

Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element? Ok wtf? He never wears any kind of Detached Sleeves at any point in the movie, scanning through my copy shows him wearing a bandage on the arm at one point but that is it. He spends the vast majority of the movie in a sleeveless tank top.

Detached Sleeves is a common element in Future Fashion or Fantasy Fashion though.

EDIT: is very common from my searches to pull this on Miko outfits, Chinese style clothing, Yukata and Kimonos As well as some more extravagant designs◊.

Googling more examples give me gloves◊ but same effect, That should go on Opera Gloves right?. and its not just the girls guys too◊. It is a serious thing [1]◊[2][3][4]princesses◊ and every one of them are from fantasy series .

edited 7th May '15 6:47:34 PM by Memers

So it's a Standard Fantasy Costume Element then? Asside from showing us that we are in a fantasy setting, what else does this covey? For me this falls under the "we're not in a real life setting, so we might as well do impossible costumes" umbrella. The only thing I can see this conveying is that a costume can show more skin, and pretty benign skin at that.

Detached Sleeves aren't inherently any more "impossible" than Opera Gloves. Certain fictional designgs obviously must be held up with glue, magic or cartoon physics, but the concept itself is entirely possible.

My two cents.

Detached Sleeves seem to be a kind of costume element that is more commonly seen in fiction than in real life. I don't think it's a trope on its own (same way as most appearance tropes), but I think maybe there could be a page about all those weird costume elements that are common in fiction but rare in real life? E.g. I remember having to explain to people elsewhere that "boob windows" weren't invented by Power Girl's creators but are in fact an existing costume element. So maybe there could be one page for all those costume elements that fiction treats as normal, but you can rarely see them in real life fashion. Is that tropable?

I don't see why it should be killed. It's no less tropeworthy than other costume tropes. I'll admit that the page could use some work, but is it really any different from Zettai Ryouiki or Anti-Gravity Clothing?

If the page was named Arm Warmers — which is what the rest of the world calls this very much existing garment — I doubt we would be having this discussion at all. Because it would be like having a page for Pants.

Does anyone think that having an obfuscating name alone makes arm warmers tropeworthy?

But detached sleeves are not arm warmers. They are a very unusual and stylistic piece of clothing that are sort of like arm warmers. And while we might not have an article about pants in general, we do have articles about magic pants and short shorts, and detached sleeves are at least a little magical, aren't they?

edited 13th Jun '15 4:37:12 AM by SebastianJS

No, there's nothing inherently magical about Detached Sleeves. Any potential magic that could apply to them could apply to any other clothing item.

Who Wears Short Shorts is only doubtfully a trope. It's on the list in the Appearance Cleanup thread.

Magic Pants is an entirely different trope. It's not about the pants themselves, but about clothes that are magically not destroyed for the sake of modesty/censoring. Which is a great point, since that's what makes it a trope. Detached Sleeves doesn't have anything connected to it as written. "This character has sleeves that are detached" is about as tropeworthy as "this character sits on a purple chair".

Also, "but we have this trope," is very rarely a good argument for justifying a different trope, since it mostly fails to account for why that other trope is an actual trope, and usually ignores any problems that trope may have on its own.

So, what is it that makes Detached Sleeves a trope? Why is it notable that a character has Detached Sleeves?

edited 13th Jun '15 5:50:31 AM by AnotherDuck

Ah, but are they not magical? Certainly they are magical.

Not literally magical, but magical nonetheless.

Just as Magic Pants is about pants that inexplicably remain in tact after the wearer undergoes things that should really make them not in tact, and Impossibly Low Neckline is about clothes that inexplicably remain worn despite the physical impracticality of it, Detached Sleeves is about sleeves that hang on your arm inexplicably despite the oddity of both their manifestation and application.

What makes detached sleeves notable? Why, their very existence!

Having done cosplay costuming and theater tech there is absolutely nothing magical about them. They're amazingly easy to construct. The trick is elastic which is about as magical as tape.

Purple may be a weird colour for a chair, but it doesn't make purple chairs a trope.

But they're not impossible. They're just as plausible as thigh-highs or, as noted above, opera gloves. There's nothing inexplicable about them. You can certainly make them work in an inexplicable way, but you can do that with any type of clothing. It's not something inherent in Detached Sleeves.

You're not comparing to Magic Pants or Impossibly-Low Neckline. You're comparing to Pants or Low Neckline.

"They exist" is not an argument for why something is a trope.

There is much inexplicable about them. If not "how?", then "why?".

Regardless, it's not that they exist that they are a trope. It's their existence that makes them a trope. It's not just that they are unusual, but that they are exceedingly odd. They exude a "feel" just by being there. I can tell a lot about a work just by knowing that detached sleeves are present. I can tell even more about a work by knowing how characters react to another character wearing them.

Is that not tropeworthy?

You asked "why?" However, the point here isn't to ask that, but to answer it. If you think it is a trope you should have an answer. What can you tell about a character wearing Detached Sleeves, or a work containing them? What would that "feel" be in concrete terms?

edited 13th Jun '15 7:09:08 AM by AnotherDuck

Well, since you asked...

A few things I've noticed about detached sleeves. Specifically in anime, since that's the only place I've really ever seen them. They tend to be worn by those of at least some grace and tradition, but still possessing a youthful enthusiasm and an open mind. They are rarely used by the boyish, the stringent, or the pragmatic. Additionally, works which contain examples of detached sleeves tend to take themselves less seriously and/or be less serious in tone.

It's a pattern if I ever saw one. And this very wiki often defines tropes as patterns in media, going so far as to label things that go against those patterns as aversions or subversions.

That's a good answer. Described like that it sounds much more like an actual trope. Not just something that exists in and of itself, but something that tells the audience something more about the character. Which is what we asked for to begin with.

How many of the examples on the page or in the wicks fit that definition? How many don't?

edited 13th Jun '15 7:31:37 AM by AnotherDuck

Probably a fair bit of them, but I will say that the page needs work badly and that I have no real idea what most of the examples are referring to (two things which are not unrelated). I will note that I have seen some examples which might actually be Opera Gloves on that page, but Detached Sleeves are certainly deserving of their own trope even if the pattern I observed is not the norm. It's not unusual for a trope to have more than one form or set of connotations, after all.

edited 13th Jun '15 7:39:46 AM by SebastianJS

Agree that this is not tropeworthy and should be cut.

The page, as it is now, is definitely not a trope. All it does is state what they are (PSOC) and compare them to Zettai Ryouiki.

The page, if it were rewritten to match what Sebastian JS (eventually) described, then I could see it becoming a trope.

The only options that I see are rewrite or cut.

Bumb. Should we get a crowning going on that definition?

I've attached a page action crowner and added an option for you. Honestly, this doesn't seem like a trope to me.

We're also getting rid of Opera Gloves as a trope and we already cut Thigh High Boots. It's just a disambig now.

edited 13th Aug '15 2:11:43 PM by shimaspawn

I support the cut, but I'd also like to reiterate an earlier suggestion of mine.

How about a trope (maybe an example-less one) describing costume elements that exist but are uncommon in real life, but common in fictional costumes? It would be especially relevant to media with traditionally garish and camp costumes, like manga / anime, video games or superhero comics. Thoughts?

Well, there are tropes like Rare Guns and Rare Vehicles, but those are more explicitly about stuff that's so rare that the amount that shows up in a single work is unrealistic. For clothes, any reasonably crafy individual with a sewing kit can make those, so actual rarity is more of an observation than a limit.

Yes, it's a bit more subjective, but I feel it could still be tropeable.

These costume elements aren't rare as in "hard to obtain", but rather rare as in "uncommon in real life fashion".

I think that's Too Vague To Trope since what are we defining real life fashion as? What part of the globe are we setting as the standard? And what time period? After all, people in period works wearing the clothing of that period shouldn't fit. It's too YMMV to be anything but a mess.

I have no particular opinion on whether this should be cut or not, but I've always had a feeling that there was - at least in anime/manga - a pattern to Detached Sleeves. Some googling around tells me that in Japan (and possibly other Asian countries) bared shoulders/ubber arms are - especially for women/girls - a no-no, while baring legs is not worthy of notice.

Most examples of Detached Sleeves I can think of without a dedicated search combine that with Kimono style dress and/or prim and proper nice, youthful ladies, as Sebastian JS has already described above. So I could see this having implications that don't quite translate to us, maybe? Showing skin where there should be none visible, and the fact that the arms are mostly covered actually draws attention to the shoulders, similar to Zettai Ryouiki for the legs, except bared legs seem to be fine.

Probably not tropeworthy if it's really due to a cultural thing not translating well, but wanted to point out that it's not exactly PSOC.

edited 14th Aug '15 10:20:26 AM by Derkhan