Needs Help: Dueling Works

Okay, I don't think the table is working anymore. There's a lot of text in some boxes which are really narrow and very long which not only looks absurd but makes it hard to read.

The tables are also titled "the original" and "the clone" which isn't accurate because sometimes it's just coincidental, and it can be hard to tell who copied who. The pages themselves are also insanely long as well.

I propose using the same format as used in Fan Fic recommendations, so something like this (fake entry):

• Big Apple Blues (2018) and Tim's Life In London (2019)
  • Description: A middle aged man struggles to find a job in the city.
  • Implementation: Big Apple Blues is more comedy and lighthearted while Tim's Life focuses on the struggles of the character himself, blah blah blah blah blah.
  • Winner? Big Apple Blues made $57M in the box office compared to Tim's $42M. However Tim's Life is still fondly remembered by many and retains a cult following to this day.

(Much cleaner.)

Looked through a couple pages. On a mobile device, some pages have the Winner column partially chopped off. This would be problematic.

Going ahead and opening this.

It seems to be a problem with TV Tropes 2.0, it didn't extend the page a while back. Bug report it?

I still like the formatting though, the essays about the 'winner' IMO can go as they are mostly ymmv.

edited 10th Oct '16 12:42:59 PM by Memers

I'm wondering if formatting isn't the only problem. I just started with the Anime and Manga section, and a lot of these feel like a stretch. I double-checked the definition and it does say that things made as a result of trends can count (although I feel like that stretches the spirit of this trope), but a few things still seem weird.

For instance: Puella Magi Madoka Magica vs Yuki Yuna is a Hero I'm not familiar with the latter, but there's a three year gap between them. By the time Yuki Yuna came out, the changes that Madoka made to the genre had already settled in pretty well, at least when it comes to fan expectations (Yuki Yuna's page even says that Madoka likely inspired it). From what I understand, pretty much everything in the genre can be said to have come out of that trend by that point (and, in fact, Madoka is compared to another series,Kill la Kill a little ways down from around the same time). Not to mention, the shared premise section is small and vague, while the differences section is pretty huge.

Now that's just one example, but just by skimming, I feel like there's a lot of "these things are in the same genre, even if separated by years, but I'm going to say they were dueling." Maybe the trope has evolved into just comparing similar things, but I thought the idea was when you have two suspiciously similar things coming out at around the same time. That has some wiggle room, but one actively inspiring the other years later is a lot different than "we'll try to jump on this bandwagon and push it out close to the other."

edited 10th Oct '16 2:06:47 PM by Jokubas

^Yeah, that too. Some of them are really a stretch, like the Chalk Zone and Foster's Home example on Western Animation. All they have in common is that it involves a boy and his blue sidekick.

But one thing at a time. Me think table needs to go.

edited 10th Oct '16 2:35:01 PM by BreadBull

It does say, "This page is a list of similar works made during the same period of time." I don't think two works are duelling unless they're on the air at the same time. If they're not, it's just Follow the Leader (assuming the first work was popular).

Just comparing two works that are similar (or only kind of similar from a certain point of view) and seeing which is more popular isn't anything.

If a work is done, and gets some sequels, and then another work gets made around the same time as those sequels, then it competes with the sequels, not the original.

Very much agreed there, they have to be airing at the exact same time to be dueling.

As an example Shakugan No Shana's L Ns ran from 2002 to 2012 and Kaze No Stigma's ran from 2003 to 2010. This is an example

The anime versions of Shakugan No Shana's firs season aired in 2005, second anime season ran fall 2007 while Kaze No Stigma's aired spring 2007. Not one week did they air together thus not an example. Follow the Leader was in full effect for both of them in a very odd way.

Things like video games though have a larger window of acceptability though since its a more long term development thing and really gotta be around the same year.

edited 15th Oct '16 9:04:45 AM by Memers

Lengthy explanations isn't really a problem. The only problem here is some of the works in question not appearing at the same time, right?

Yes.

Neither a change in format for the page (which is where this started) nor a cleanup of examples are things which require repair shop. Both can be handled as short-term projects.

The only possibilities for repair I see are changing the definition or name to either fight or encompass a pattern of misuse. But I'm not hearing any complaints about the definition or name.

Consensus to close this?

I'll move this to Short-term, since all the proposed courses of action are acceptable without the need for a repair shop.

What about the table? With the long texts some boxes have it'd probably be wise to scrap it and use a new format.

It doesn't look that bad with widescreen, but on smaller screens it's bad. For the formatting alone, I think the OP suggestion is an improvement.

The clock's long overdue, and I suggest keeping the table format.

The clock is for when this was still in TRS.

Pretty sure all that needs to be done is some example cleanup in the wicks.

Honestly, there is so, so much more wrong with this trope than just the formatting that it legitimately hurt to read some of these 'examples'. Half of them feel extremely shoehorned and/or potholed as a thinly veiled Take That! against a work a troper doesn't like. Just from reading the western animation page alone I found so many loosely held together examples that you could break it with a feather. Some highlights include:

CatDog VS The Fairly Oddparents: The reasoning for this one is super thin. It tries to argue that they both have Butt-Monkey protagonist who are ego manics, yet Timmy himself only became that later on because of Flanderization. The two shows are vastly different otherwise, both in themes and plot.

House Of Mouse VS Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law': Other than airing around the same time, I fail to see how an anathology short show with a framing device relates to an adult animation parody of classic cartoon characters. Even the 'reasoning' points out how the two shows are as different as night and day.

Johnny Test VS The Mighty B! and Steven Universe: This has to be the most face-palm inducing example I've seen yet. Steven Universe is nothing like the former two, aired way later after both of the former shows were taken off the air, even the 'premise' part doesn't even bother to point out how any of these shows relate to one anyother. It's a just a giant Take That! towards the former two shows by some Steven Universe fan!

Tak and the Power of Juju VS The Garfield Show: Pretty much the only reason I can think this is here was because they were both CGI shows airing on rival networks. Other than that, the two shows are basically complete opposites, with the 'similarities' being paper thin at best.

Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness VS Dragons: Riders of Berk: I fail to see how two shows made by the same animation studio can be dueling with one another. The very premise of them are wildly different, and the only justification being is they're both made by Dreamworks.

And then we get to the cross-media section, where we get this little "gem":

Yo-kai Watch VS Teen Titans Go!: What? No, seriously... WHAT!? The justification is flimsy at best and the premise of the two is wildly different! The only thing remotely similar is the focus on comedy, and both of the series take a different approach to that as well!

This trope is a mess. There's no way around it. It really needs a cleanup and a better defining of what counts as dueling works. In my mind, it requires three things to apply to this trope:

• It must be made by two different componies/studios.

• The premise must be remotely similar that you can tell it at a glance. No shoehorning things because there's some passing similarities. Heathcliff VS Garfield is good because they're both orange cats who get into wacky situations; Garfield VS Tak and the Power of Juju is not. Just because there may be a similar character dynamic between two characters of each show doesn't make it a dueling work.

• Must have aired at the exact, or around the time the work was still going: More than a few examples are shows that were either made after the original show had stopped airing, which honestly sounds more like Follow the Leader than a pure case of dueling works.

No matter what is done, the pages definitely need cleaning up regardless. I was just about to make a TRS discussion on this before I noticed there was one already opened.

edited 6th Apr '17 9:11:49 AM by TokoWH

I'm perfectly okay with cutting all examples of shows that didn't air at the same time.

I would say that the Yo-kai anime is dueling with the Pokémon anime, but they both air on the same channel now in the US.

I don't think later airings and exports are part of the trope. If they happen to air on the same channel in an export, that's incidental, and in the case of anime, I'd guess there are far more Japanese channels airing anime than Western, which makes it far more likely that an anime shown in the West would be on the same channel as some other anime, regardless of if that was the case in the original.

I'm going to advocate dropping the table again, actually. It was bad enough on desktop, but on smartphones it looks even more terrible. It's like, two words per line.

Sorry if I bump this, but I kinda agree on a new, simpler format. The table hogs space on mobile, and having an original/clone battle sounds a bit base-breaking; you might not know if two works with a similar theme are released coincidentally.

And for the complainey shoehorns...

edited 31st Jan '18 8:32:08 AM by alnair20aug93

Haven't seen this in a while, but I'll zap any shoehorn that you find there.

Also, someone put The Book of Life and Coco up as Dueling Works, even though they premiered 3 years apart? Should we do something about this?

Preparing to strip any sinkholes.

Edit: The WesAni one is a mess. I am going to trim that down, but I'm being cautious about it. If someone can post saying what should be cut, I'll be glad to do it.

edited 19th Feb '18 12:53:31 AM by jameygamer