Two similar tropes: NinjaProp and MediumAwareness

I came across Ninja Prop while wick cleaning for a TRS project, and found myself confused. Medium Awareness is supposed to be for characters that observe and interact with portions of the medium. But Ninja Prop seems to have collected many of the same examples. From the Example as a Thesis, I'd assume that Ninja Prop meant a thing that was assumed to be part of the medium suddenly turned into a character that interacted with the other characters.

I think I need clarification on what Ninja Prop is supposed to be.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Medium Awareness is what the characters know — that they're in a comic, or a game, or a movie or whatever.

Ninja Prop (and I think the problem is with the name; it went too hard for "witty" at the expense of "clear" — I expected the same thing you did —) when a prop suddenly stops being a prop and does something on its own is something they can do if they're Medium Aware — use some part of the medium setting as a real item. In the page image, it's the health bar, in a comic it may be part of the frame, or a speech bubble or something like that. Not using an item that's in the setting, but part of the setting itself.

I'd say Ninja Prop is a subtrope of Medium Awareness, and all examples of a character using an element of the media they're in as a real thing should be removed from Medium Awareness and moved to Ninja Prop I hate even typing that name. It's horrible. in keeping with the policy of listing examples on the subtrope rather than the supertrope.

There are also quite a few examples on ninjaProp that aren't the "prop" being used or becoming active; they're more Medium Awareness ( The Monty Python example about "and he sure knows how to treat a female Impersonator for one. I also think that the fake-out "it was really a set-piece when you just thought it was a set-piece" need to go. )

edited 29th Mar '17 11:00:41 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

That seems consistent with Metafictional Device being a supertrope to Ninja Prop. How does Chekhov's Gun affect it?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I have no clue. :(

I've added reworking the Ninja Prop page to my to-do list, but if you want to take a stab at it go ahead. That list is quite long.

I think the trope relationship tree would be Metafictional Device is the supertrope to Medium Awareness, which is a Supertrope to Ninja Prop.

I'm not sure you can have a Ninja Prop without some sort of Medium Awareness on the part of the characters, although I could be persuaded that it also includes some element of the medium itself taking action rather than a character using the same element (A speech bubble tipping over as the character falls asleep, for instance.) In which case Medium Awareness is also a sibling trope to it...

edited 29th Mar '17 11:48:45 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Hmm, never mind. I seem to be remembering my tropes wrong. Ninja Prop as written is an absolute mess.

edited 29th Mar '17 11:47:24 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I might draft up a Playing With The Medium in TLP that disambiguates between this and similar tropes, but I'll need to take some time to research before that would be ready. There's some common elements that might be getting lost by missing a clear grouping. I'm glad to see it wasn't just me, though.

edited 29th Mar '17 5:02:54 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Maybe an index/disambiguation page would be all that's needed. One problem with related tropes is that few pages actually list all the tropes they're related to.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.