Spiritual Successor

Shouldn't this be in YMMV? It's about being a sequel "in spirit" which is subjective; Spiritual Adaptation is YMMV, and it's very similar.

I swore it was YMMV, but I just discovered it isn't.

Many of those tropes toe the line between main tropes, trivia or YMMV. Spiritual Successor has a particular focus on being a follow-up project done by the same crew and has a similar tone, which eliminates a lot of the more randomness of connections that you see in Spiritual Adaptation.

Still though, being less-random doesn't mean it's an actual trope that affects the narrative, and it's not Trivia. It's based on fan opinion.

But that's not a requirement for the trope. The description says this and many examples don't involve works that share the same creative team.

Aside from sharing the same creator, the only other way I can see Spiritual Successor being objective is when the creator explicitly mention another work as their inspiration.

But that's already Inspiration for the Work.

I've created Spiritual Successor Wick Check so I can see how subjective the wicks are. I'm not really expecting anything to go in the "objective trope" folder, but we'll see how it shakes out. This would make a TRS process go more smoothly.

Contribute if you want, it won't be finished over night.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 15th 2021 at 1:17:09 PM

Will something similar be done with Spiritual Antithesis?

There is an awful lot "can be considered" in those examples. I have long felt the concept is good but needed stricter criteria, currently it is running into the same problem as Counterpart Comparison had. I see three cases that would be valid, and might be better as their own tropes:

- When the works are within the same franchise, in which case the contrast is unavoidable and likely intended. A supertrope to Contrasting Sequel Main Character.

- When we have Word of God to say it was intended as such, as with Comic Book/Three and Things Fall Apart.

- When the contrast is not with a single work but a genre. Indeed many examples seem to be this, but pick the best-known example in that genre so they have two works in the example. Evangelion was contrasting against the Super Robot Genre and heroic fighting series in general, Zombieland Saga does the same to idol shows. It's what we usually term Deconstruction, but that is about taking conventions or premises to their logical conclusion, this could be more a matter of tone and atmosphere.

On the matter of Spiritual Successor, I would be in favour of restricting it to works that have some continuity of creators between them. Other examples would be under Spiritual Adaptation.

I've always treated Spiritual Successor as a companion trope of Follow the Leader and Production Posse, a work that follows a beloved work and fills the spot in pop culture it originally occupied. I do agree that much of the "Spiritual X" tropes are probably just too ill-defined to be all that useful, solid concepts but with sloppy examples, but I wouldn't want them to go the way of X Meets Y just because editors can't use it properly.

Well, when the wick check's done I can eventually bring it to TRS, and we can fix things there. Spiritual Antithesis might need the same treatment.

At least by the quote of Spiritual Successor, it'd be at least more notable if someone actually says "X is the spiritual successor of Y".

I got one "objective" example where the wick claimed the creator of one work actually based their work on another, so hey, that does exist just not very often according to the 45 wicks I have so far. Halfway done.

The wick check is done! The results are, well...unexpected.

It's mostly ZCEs. That's literally less almost half the entire wick check. There's tons of wicks that are also taking place in the same continuity as the other work, or are just made by the same people. While there's tons of wicks related to the audience's perception of the work, it's less common, which surprised me.

Thoughts?

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 21st 2021 at 9:03:24 AM

At the very least we should start a clean-up thread to get rid of the ZC Es and shoehorns.

I'd be down for that, even if nothing else can be done.