Needs Help: Enemy Mine

Firstly, Enemy Mine is named for a specific movie. Secondly, it refers to a concept for which there is already a more commonly used phrase: "Enemy of My Enemy." The latter's already a redirect anyway; why not make it the new title, and make the phrase "Enemy Mine" a redirect?

Personally, (that's me as a troper, not with my mod hat on) I strongly support this change. When there's a widely used term for a something we have as a trope, unless there's a good reason not to use it as the trope name, I think that we should use it.

I agree, Enemy of My Enemy is a much better name.

Given statistics like these, "named after a movie" is clearly insufficient cause for a rename.

If you google "enemy mine" (with quotes), you'll get 361,000 results. If you google "'enemy mine' -film" you'll get 241,000 results. If you google "enemy of my enemy" (with quotes), you'll get 445,000 results. For the sake of comparison, if you search "'enemy of my enemy' -film" you'll get 412,000 results. The word "film" for "enemy mine" accounts for nearly 120,000 results.

As already pointed out, the stats for Enemy Mine are 7263 wicks and 18,496 inbounds (in five years, since the article was created in 2007). For Enemy of My Enemy, the stats are 26 wicks and 5 inbounds.

The name has been around for nearly a decade,^EDIT  I've never used the Wayback Machine before, so I didn't really look around the page, but yeah, it's probably even older than that given and that on its own may account for the high number of inbounds. If we don't have to have a migration effort, I think I'd put more weight on the google searches than the inbound links counts. Those five inbounds will probably grow within the year.

EDIT (5/11): To be clear, I'm not "voting" yet. Just trying to wrap my head around this still.

edited 11th May '17 9:45:09 AM by WaterBlap

The page is actually at least a year older than 2007. The Wayback Machine link in the OP is to 2006 . The page was probably lost in the Great Crash and recreated in 2007.

Also, "named after a work" does not require misuse to be a reason to rename.

I've always seen "popular use outside TV Tropes" as the strongest reason to rename something, above misuse, underuse, and what not. We name tropes that aren't named, and if they're named, we use that name.

I don't think "named after a work" is by itself a reason, but it can be an indication or aggregate to a real reason. For me it falls below the strongest reason to not rename, which is, "It works." Or in other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

This clearly falls under the first paragraph, so I support the rename.

edited 10th May '17 10:09:31 PM by AnotherDuck

I'm indifferent to the change; Waterblap's post shows that Enemy Mine is also a popular term for the situation; showing up in hundreds of thousands of pages. If Enemy of My Enemy was an order of magnitude more popular, I would feel persuaded. As it is, I don't agree that the name is worth the migration.

Put me down for "abstain".

Updating my previous post, as there's also an album and various games with "Enemy Mine" in the title.

• enemy mine
  • "enemy mine" (with quotes)
    • 361,000 results.
  • "'enemy mine' -film"
    • 241,000 results.
  • "enemy mine" -film -album
    • 222,000 results
  • "enemy mine" -film -album -game
    • 135,000 results
• enemy of my enemy
  • "enemy of my enemy" (with quotes),
    • 445,000 results.
  • "'enemy of my enemy' -film"
    • 412,000 results.
  • "enemy of my enemy" -film -album
    • 404,000 results
  • "enemy of my enemy" -film -album -game
    • 313,000 results

It seems that "enemy mine" is used in quite a lot of media, whereas "enemy of my enemy" is more — for lack of a better term — "normie." The search for ""enemy of my enemy" -film -album -game" shows a lot of journalistic results, whereas the search for ""enemy mine" -film -album -game" shows more media (like books or songs, and that same film still shows up).

I'm against the change since "Enemy of My Enemy" requires a common enemy, while "Enemy Mine" covers scenarios where they are forced to team up, but not necessarily against a common enemy.

That's not the case. Enemy of My Enemy is currently a redirect to Enemy Mine: that is, it is a different name for the same trope. They are the same page.

The real question, in my opinion, is why "Enemy of my enemy" was ever made a redirect to Enemy Mine, given how different their definitions are.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend" means pretty much what it says on the tin. Two parties form a friendship or alliance based on having a common enemy. Note that there's no assumption or expectation that they were enemies beforehand; frequently they're neutral or completely unknown to each other.

An "Enemy Mine scenario", on the other hand, is when two enemies are forced by circumstances to work together. As Ferot pointed out, there isn't necessarily a common enemy involved at all. In fact, while I haven't​ read the trope namer, my understanding is that it's about two enemies having to work together to survive in a dangerous environment.

Both terms are well-understood off the wiki, I think. But while they can certainly overlap, they don't mean the same thing.

I submit that all that needs to be done is that the nonsense at the beginning of the description about "Enemy mine" being a short form of "Enemy of my enemy" should be deleted, and the redirect should either be nuked or turned into a separate page (as the concept it describes seems tropable to me).

edited 11th May '17 7:00:50 PM by tbarrie

Enemy of My Enemy as a concept sounds like it's covered by Enemy Mine already (the former is Enemy Mine with a third party).

I'm against the rename. Like it's been pointed out, Enemy of My Enemy implies the trope is more narrow than it actually is (Enemy Mine doesn't require a third party to be teamed up against, it can be a cooperation for mutual survival - See for example Star Trek The Next Generation's The Enemy where Geordi teams up with a Romulan so they can both survive on a hostile planet). And honestly, no one's really made much of a case that there's any net gain with the rename - there's clear drawbacks (The current name clearly works and has achieved some degree of spread of its own, the new name can imply a narrower definition).

Basically, it's not broken, I don't see a reason to mess with something that's clearly working fine.

Maybe make Enemy of My Enemy into a trope of its own.

EDIT: Thinking about it, Enemy Of My Enemy doesn't require the two cooperating parties to actually be enemies. They can be ambivalent towards each other. What matters is they are both hostile to the third party AND that hostility is what brings them together. That honestly is a completely different scenario of Enemy Mine where both cooperating sides have to be nominally enemies. Thus, I suggest we un-merge Enemy of My Enemy and make it its own separate trope.

edited 12th May '17 10:13:23 AM by Ghilz

And if a work leaves open to interpretation whether or not what they're uniting against is sentient or not, where do we put that example?

edited 12th May '17 8:36:34 AM by neoYTPism

Seeing as the other trope isn't made, I can't speculate as to what its definition may or may not include.

edited 12th May '17 10:12:56 AM by Ghilz

Fair enough. I'm just thinking the boundary between the concepts is blurry enough to justify personifying any insentient thing against which characters are uniting for the purposes of counting it under Enemy of My Enemy.

But even if we do split this trope, I'm still thinking we could do better than a name like Enemy Mine, if only for it sharing its name with a movie, being non-descriptive, and making tropers look kind of nerdy. (No offense...)

edited 12th May '17 10:40:35 AM by neoYTPism

I think the main difference is that Enemy Mine require the two cooperating party to be enemies - and what circumstances brings them togheter doesn't matter so much as you have two enemies now cooperating, While Enemy of My Enemy doesn't require them to start as enemies, but it requires them to be brought together to face a common foe they both are enemies with. And I'd say the term "enemy" evidently implies the third party is sentient. An enemy is by its very definition a "person". A Wild Tiger is a predator or a threat, but not an enemy.

Also, while I agree with your reasons against the title, I still don't think it warrants a rename. "Non descriptive" ? Maybe, but it's clearly not stopping the trope from being very well used, or attracting inbounds. "Shares a title with a movie" fair enough, but is it causing issues or misuse? "Makes us look nerdy?" ...have you looked at the wiki?

I don't favor renames of tropes to fix "theoretical" issues.

edited 12th May '17 11:04:53 AM by Ghilz

Splitting actual "enemy of my enemy" situations to their own trope sounds like a good idea.

I would like to see what kind and amount of examples each page would get if we were to split them, and what the overlap would be.

TLP would help with it, I suppose?

If that's the answer, I'm voting against a split.

Bear in mind that these two used to be separate and were merged. I can't find a record of the discussion that led to the merge, but I have found that there appeared to be a lot of confusion between them; too many editors who didn't see or didn't care about the difference between "2 people who are enemies must work together against a common threat" and "Two people or groups (but who dont necessarily have to be enemies to each other) unite against a common enemy."

Does that mean there's a Missing Supertrope?