Legitimacy of Sweet Scarecrow.

I've made a trope called "Sweet Scarecrow", which is meant to be the Distaff Counterpart of Scary Scarecrow. The link to it can be found here. -> https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=nyxf90km3xcblgxpwtowz58g

Some folks, however, tell me I must resolve something from Scary Scarecrow. Seems that that already has a number of examples that can be considered the opposite of scary. If it goes through, they would all need to be deleted from that page to make Sweet Scarecrow legit. And also if they can be split off without TRS (whatever that stands for) or not.

TRS stands for Trope Repair Shop, where we take a trope that has an issue or issues, such as being a duplicate with another existing trope, being widely misused, and having an unclear description, etc.

To me, personally, your draft is just an inversion of Scary Scarecrow that doesn't warrant its own split-off tropes. Now there isn't a rule against this as we have Tomboy with a Girly Streak and its inversion Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak, for example. However, in my opinion, these two are common enough patterns to have their own separate tropes, whereas your draft isn't something that I see a lot and can be just added to Scary Scarecrow.

Also, since this isn't a trope yet, it shouldn't probably be discussed here. The discussion continues in its TLP draft.

If you want more feedback on your draft, you can also post in this thread asking for attention.

I suggested to bring it here so we could discuss the situation with Scary Scarecrow and if:

• It warrants a split
• And if it does, if said split needs TRS

We can't discuss it on the draft since the issue at hand isn't whether or not Sweet Scarecrow is legit, it's that the concept is already covered by a trope that is supposedly about the opposite idea... and if moving the examples to Sweet Scarecrow would be too big a change to do without TRS or not.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 14th 2023 at 5:27:31 AM

There's a similar situation to this one. We have the trope Vasquez Always Dies, and someone has a draft for its inverted situation but I can't find it in TLP, and I don't recall anyone saying anything about this being already covered by VAD (tho I can be wrong).

A split is often warranted and even voted for if a trope covers two or more (usually stand-alone/distinct) concepts all at once or has a variety of cases that each can be its own trope, a.k.a too broad.

Even if Scary Scarecrow is taken to TRS, what would be a convincing argument for splitting it? Why not split all tropes from their inversions too, while we're at it?

The issue isn't "split from the inversion", it's the fact that the inversion has an entire section on the page. Most of the time, making an inversion isn't a big deal, and this wouldn't have been either if Scary Scarecrow didn't already lump the "sweet scarecrow" stuff into itself.

IDK what a convincing argument would be, maybe a wick check showing that people don't use it for "sweet scarecrow" and that moving the examples to the new name would make more sense as a result, or that sweet scarecrow and scary scarecrow being lumped under one trope makes it just "scarecrows exist", but the point here is, the issue is way more about protocol than whether or not Scary Scarecrow "should" be split.

Hmm. Fantastical Social Services had a similar overlap with Super Civil Services and I just pillaged appropriate examples from the latter while populating the former and I sort of assumed that was fine. It turned out there was less overlap in practice than the high-concepts suggested, but I'd've thought it would be even more okay for Scary Scarecrows. If TLP decides it's worth hard-splitting a trope which is already soft-split between straight and inverted examples, I don't see why TRS would need to be involved - the example section structure is evidence enough, and the old trope isn't actually changing. Cleaning the wicks might be sufficiently involved for a short-term project in a case like this, though.

"Scary Scarecrow has an entire section [of inversions] on the page", you mean the on-page examples? I agree with Noaqiyeum that this isn't something that needs TRS. We aren't really changing Scary Scarecrow as it doesn't suffer from any issue (so far); it's that someone wants to make the inversion its own trope. I think they can do this without TRS as long as other tropers support this in the TLP draft comments.

The reason I disagree that it's "not changing the trope" is because the description has a paragraph about nice scarecrows, and said paragraph predates the trope's recorded history, so we can't even just say it was a random addition.

As of now, yes, Scary Scarecrow does, in fact, cover both concepts because if it didn't the description wouldn't outright talk about it.

It's not an issue of an inversion being split. It's an issue of the trope being broader than the title and incorporating the friendly scarecrows in the definition of the trope.

If we interpret that one paragraph as a part of the trope, rather than simply pointing out that not every scarecrow is scary, then the page is chairs. "Scarecrows in fiction have moral agency" is not a trope. (But the page image and title and quote and 75% of the description and all of the indices are about scarecrows played for horror, so regardless of how long its been this way it's obvious what the intended focus is.) Someone could have done a wick check to see if there was a problem and taken it to TRS to argue for hard-splitting it, and if TRS determined there was a problem it might come to various decisions but what it would probably do is send the second half of the examples to TLP to be properly described and we would be exactly where we are now. (And I would have supported that, because I do feel like it's easier to launch new tropes than it is to fix old ones and that has been a source of systemic problems.)

This isn't one of those cases, though - the description is clear and the page is already soft-split. And Sweet Scarecrows is ready to launch anyway, regardless of whether Scary Scarecrows has issues or not. If it does, this will fix them; if it doesn't, it won't hurt. Let's not overcomplicate it. Just launch it, move all the examples, and if that's done properly there shouldn't be any reason anyone would argue they're duplicates.

Listen, I'd agree except that there's been numerous cases in the past of minor, nonsensical lines, sentences that alter how the trope is used, being kept around because changing them was considered a TRS action. On one old animal trope, for example, there was an infamous sentence that said, basically, that the trope could incorporate all cases of the animal being present in media. And in ATT, the mods claimed that while removing that sentence would be an easy action, it couldn't be done without TRS.

What I'm saying is that there's precedent for me to believe that this paragraph is meant to be considered part of the definition. Most definitions don't include stuff about inversions; there's absolutely no reason for them to.

And yes, I do in fact believe that the sentence makes this trope chairs, but not liking that possibility doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. I'm basing my argument off of years of TRS work, and knowing how these things are usually treated.

Scary Scarecrows did get a failed TRS thread here for a split because the issue was that page can't seem to decide if it's wants to cover scary scarecrows or living scarescrows as a type of creature. The thread didn't go anywhere but I think we'll have a better chance at getting discussion going not that a draft for good scarecrows exists. Since the definition includes living scarecrows in general even though the focus was supposed to be on scary scarecrows (I don't think sentience is required for that but could be wrong), TRS is needed.

(I said on the thread that Friendly Scarescrows could be its own trope but not sure about that anymore...)

Edited by MacronNotes on Jan 14th 2023 at 1:09:06 PM

Then that policy is ridiculous, but I guess it stands until the mods decide otherwise.

What about this: take Scary Scarecrows to TRS as Chairs, and while it's in the queue launch Sweet Scarecrows with any non-duplicate examples it has. Once the thread opens, it should make the decision and repair as fast as possible. Is that reasonable, or does that assume too much about how Scary will be split? It is a good point that the thread might split off Animate Scarecrows instead.

To the OP, Distaff Counterpart is about switching a trope or character's gender. Switching anything else falls under Inverted Trope as mentioned by the first response to the thread.

Related to the Vasquez Always Dies mention, IIRC didn’t that trope have a failed TRS of its own, or am I misremembering?

EDIT: It did, actually. The splitting was a result of that thread.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jan 15th 2023 at 10:27:54 AM

I guess based on this, splitting Scary Scarecrow would require TRS, and maybe bringing up the other issues that we mentioned would decide whether we can have a Sweet Scarecrow trope or not.

Because the description clearly includes friendly scarecrows removing that paragraph would change the definition and we only do definition changes on TRS. I'd bring in Scary Scarecrows as "unclear description".

I think the split should be between Scary Scarecrows (scarecrows/scarecrow motifs for horror) and Animate Scarecrows (for fantasy scarecrow creatures) but that's for the hypothetical TRS thread.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jan 15th 2023 at 2:49:09 PM

I'll admit, I didn't see that paragraph until you brought it up. Of course, with a title like "Scary Scarecrows", it does come off as just living scarecrows Played for Horror, hence why I proposed this trope.