Not Tropeworthy: Butterfly Knife

Note: This thread was proposed by ~Synchronicity, who gave permission for others to create the thread, so paging her here.

Per its description, the appeal of the Butterfly Knife is its novelty: it has a unique structure and is harder to use effectively than the average knife. And when it is used effectively, it looks cool:

However, per Butterfly Knife Wick Check, Most of its usage on the wiki is "butterfly knife exists", mainly in "a character uses a butterfly knife". That's not a trope, it's Weapon Of Choice. As added evidence, many entries double up with Knife Nut, which we've determined isn't a trope.

Results: (from 50/86 wicks)

• "Butterfly knife exists": 30/50 or 60%
• "Butterfly knife is novel/unique/cool in some way, eg. it's illegal": 8/50 or 16%
• "Crazy people or criminals use the butterfly knife": 5/50 or 10%
• ZCE/other: 7/50 or 14%

I was able to find some examples that mentioned the coolness/uniqueness of the weapon. Another pattern I found is that due to the aforementioned difficulty, it's illegal in many countries. As a combination of these two things, its wielders are crazy people, criminals, or punks. Not enough to justify a retool, however.

I think a trope for "unstable/criminal people use butterfly knives" is yardable, in the vein of Sinister Switchblade and as a subtrope to Psycho Knife Nut (split on the basis of the butterfly knife's flashiness compared to a regular knife allowing for even more danger and Rule of Cool). For the Butterfly Knife page itself I recommend detroping posthaste, maybe disambiguating between Psycho Knife Nut and Weapon Of Choice (that's already what we're doing with Knife Nut, so IDK if that would be redundant). I also wonder if some of it might be worth salvaging for a future UsefulNotes.Knives page, similar to UsefulNotes.Swords.

Anyway, I'm in favor of Yarding the Psycho Knife Nut subtrope for unstable/criminal people using butterfly knives, and disambiguating the page itself as mentioned in the OP.

IDK if we need to make a separate subtrope about a specific kind of knife unless there's enough usage and meaning behind it. I'm good with just merging these examples into the Knife Nut splits we're currently making.

I think the psycho butterfly knife variant can be merged into Psycho Knife Nut as I don't think an unhinged person with a butterfly knife is distinct from a Psycho Knife Nut with a different type of knife.

I am good with disambiguating Butterfly Knife between the existing knife tropes we already have.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 15th 2022 at 1:26:42 PM

I favor yarding UsefulNotes.Knives, and moving Butterfly Knife and Sinister Switchblade there as categories. The tropes seem to be about the weapons more than they are about the users, so I'm not feeling relating them to Psycho Knife Nut (and Sinister Switchblade's users are often sane).

Another solution (not mutually exclusive) would be merging Butterfly Knife and Sinister Switchblade together into Thugs Prefer Smaller Knives, and earlier idea about thieves/rogues preferring daggers may fit into it as well.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 15th 2022 at 8:37:06 PM

I prefer the idea of sending Daggers And Thieves / Criminals Conceal Switchblades / whatever to the Yard so that we preserve such examples and turning this into a redirect to Knife Nut. No opinion on the Useful Notes page, aside from a sense that we need to limit/check the expansion of that namespace in general.

Er, Knife Nut has already been turned into a disambig and the concept you're referring to was just launched as Devious Daggers.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 15th 2022 at 1:55:20 PM

I was aware that Knife Nut is a disambiguation. Redirect to the disambiguation was intended. Based on the previous post, I didn't realize that Devious Daggers existed yet.

The only really tropeworthy thing I could think of with butterfly knives is when people do the really flashy thing of flipping them open and closed multiple times (like this), and even then I'm not sure that would have enough meat on it to justify its own page.

Edited by Willbyr on Mar 15th 2022 at 1:02:58 PM

Forgot about Devious Daggers (and I've picked an image for it). I think it already sort of covers what Butterfly Knife and Sinister Switchblade could be used for.

I don't think there's anything here that isn't covered by either Devious Daggers, Psycho Knife Nut, or Weapon Of Choice. Disambig between them.

Disambig Butterfly Knife.

I'm okay with yarding a Thug Knife trope (for such uses in Butterfly Knife and Sinister Switchblade or whatever) but meh about calling it a subtrope of Devious Daggers. Thugs aren't necessarily stealthy or roguish.

Edited by Tabs on Mar 15th 2022 at 11:15:59 AM

I'm actually fine with skipping the Yarding of the Psycho Knife Nut subtrope and instead Yarding or launching UsefulNotes.Knives and folding the butterfly knife-related examples of Psycho Knife Nut into Psycho Knife Nut itself. Redirecting to the Knife Nut disambiguation page instead of turning Butterfly Knife into a disambiguation page itself also doesn't sound like a bad idea, so I suppose both could be options (similarly to how Skirt Over Slacks and Tights Under Shorts both ended up becoming disambiguation pages, but turning just one into a disambiguation page and turning the other into a redirect was on the table at the time).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 15th 2022 at 1:40:43 PM

That's a Weapon Twirling / Intimidation Demonstration.

Yeah, I found Weapon Twirling after I posted that and wasn't sure if the balisong flipping would merit being made into a subtrope of it. It's only explicitly mentioned once on that page.

Edited by Willbyr on Mar 15th 2022 at 2:16:24 PM

I've only ever seen butterfly knives used twice in two different works, and they were both the Weapon Of Choice for characters associated with Cloak and Dagger style espionage (The Flight Attendant and Team Fortress 2 specifically). Would it be possible to retool Butterfly Knife for being a weapon used by spy-like characters, or is that too narrow an idea?

Only if there are enough examples to justify a split from Devious Daggers? (Spies are devious, right?)

Edited by Tabs on Mar 15th 2022 at 12:44:02 PM

Yeah, I'd argue spies are a devious-like character.

That said, I'm unaware of any extra examples of this idea. Maybe I could investigate, but I'm not sure how I would relay my findings, if any.

Yeah, it's not worth a subtrope at this stage.

Just thought I'd chime in and say that I'm fine with Synchronicity taking ownership of this thread (so to speak) partially because this thread was her idea, and partially because I have a cold again and might not be as active on TRS. (I never intended to claim this thread as my own, anyway; I just made it to help clear out the TRS Queue.)

No need to 'take ownership' of it, I have no strong feelings about what to do beyond what I've already laid out in the OP If nothing is yardable that's OK too, I just mainly want the actual page detroped.

I seem to remember that a few years ago I posted in the weapons trope clean up thread that I thought a number of the weapons tropes should be changed into Useful Notes pages to stop "This Exits" examples so I personally would prefer to go down that route but wouldn't object to disambiguation.

I wouldn't mind a Useful Notes page for various types of knives. We already have one for swords.

That's already an idea in the OP, but I don't know much about knives and nor do I care to do that much research for the sake of a UN, so "yard that" is the current idea.

I feel like making such a Useful Notes page is a free action.