Unclear Description: Alone With The Psycho

The trope description is about two parallel plot lines:

(a) the psycho and the victim are alone
(b) there is another party (cavalry) trying to get to the place in time

If you look through the examples, approx. 80% of them only feature (a) with no third party involved. I got to this number by checking Anime/Manga and Film examples.

My suggestion: Rewrite the trope to focus on (a) and have (b) as a bonus point.

edited 10th Aug '15 3:11:27 PM by eroock

Honestly, I think the current definition might make a good subtrope of your proposed redefinition. Though yours fits the usage and the name better, the trope laid out in the definition is really common in Police Procedurals and Mysteries.

Yeah, I've Seen It A Million Times, too. But the examples show that there's a Missing Supertrope that needs to be created.

Aye, I do agree we are dealing with two different tropes here.

Alright, following suggestions:

Supertrope:

• Trope title will be "Alone with the Psycho"
• Trope quote and image taken from current trope
• Description has to be written anew, focusing on the suspense dynamic between psycho and victim.

Subtrope:

• We have to find a new Trope title, something like "Race Against the Psycho"
• Description can be inherited from current trope, with the addition of a reference to the supertrope.
• New trope quote and image have to be found.

Examples:

• Examples will be sorted according to the nature of the setup. I noticed a couple of ZCE which have to be explored or removed.
• The subtrope will end up with few examples, so we might want to channel it through YKTTW before launch.

I think that sounds like a pretty solid plan. I can think of a few more examples of the proposed subtrope off the top of my head, so it's totally common enough to split off. But it wouldn't hurt to run it through YKTTW.

"Alone with the Psycho found in: 342 articles, excluding discussions."

Oh my... most of the links are gonna stay under Alone With The Psycho, but if we don't check thoroughly, some will end up misdirecting.

edited 13th Aug '15 2:57:58 AM by eroock

Any comments to the suggestions in #5?

Sounds good to me.

I have split off the two tropes the best I could. Compare first drafts at:

• Alone With The Psycho
• Race Against The Psycho

Feel free to improve on the content.

I am still leaning towards the option to keep this in one trope (soft split/bonus section), because:
a) the third-party savior scenario is rare
b) there are 300+ cross-links that nobody wants to check for correct assignment (I don't)

edited 6th Sep '15 5:13:54 AM by eroock

I'm not big on Race Against The Psycho as a name, since it doesn't do a good job of conveying that someone's trapped with them. I can get behind a split of some kind, though.

Anybody else caring?

Can we have a show of hands if the splitting into two tropes as drafted above is the way forward?

I agree with getting rid of the "third party rescue" part of the trope, but I'm not sure that that part is worth spinning off into a subtrope. What separates it from The Cavalry or Big Damn Heroes?

Usually you see those two arriving at the scene in the last possible moment as a surprise element for the audience. Here the third party gets its own plotline as we watch them solve the clues and Race Against the Clock to the villain's lair.

"Being a surprise to the audience" isn't necessary for either of those tropes. The Cavalry is "reinforcements arrive Just in Time to save their beleaguered allies, the protagonists" and Big Damn Heroes is "the protagonists arrive Just in Time to reinforce their beleaguered allies". Nothing about "it has to be The Reveal, too".

I'll add a complaint that the page quote for Alone with the Psycho, still used in the sandbox version, doesn't really indicate the trope.

^ I don't know the movie in question. Why is it not an example?

I don't know that movie either, though it is written up in the example section. But a page quote should at least strongly hint at what the trope is about. "You're mine now" does not.

Took the quote off the sandbox version.

Locking as part of the New Year's Purge.