"Genki Girl" and "Keet" handle gender very oddly

This was an issue I stumbled into as I was about to write about Venture from Overwatch, a new character who is nonbinary and definitely fits the bill of "chipper, spunky, and always full of energy", but then ended up split between two tropes: Genki Girl and Keet, both of which describe hyperactive/energetic women or men, respectively, at least laconically (that will be important later). I was originally going to just write Keet because that sounds less gender-exclusive (granted, I don't really know its etymology and I get the feeling what I'm able to find is incorrect), but its description says:

I brought this up in ATT to see which, if either, sounded like the more gender-neutral trope to use for a non-binary character, and it appears that despite featuring an explicitly gendered title and describing it otherwise almost exclusively in a female context, Genki Girl is closer to being unisex by the sole virtue of its description just saying "it's not limited to females." Which... alright.

But if that's the case (and it manages to be indexed under both Always Female and Unisex Tropes without complaint) what exactly is Keet supposed to be? I've always assumed that it just encompasses the same general archetype but for men, and that the term "keet" was coined by some kind of anime-speak fan community (like Dojikko or Seme) to mean the concept, primarily because its description highlights the trope's usage in yaoi specifically.

Apparently, this technically isn't the case — as pointed out in the ATT, Keet is apparently supposed to be a much more narrow version of the "hyperactive character" concept: "Cute, energetic male character that acts as a little brother Audience Surrogate". But I'm not even sure if that's supposed to be true, because everywhere else — laconic description, indexes like Archetypal Character, Comedic Relief Characters and Immaturity Tropes, as well as basically all entries on its trope subpages — simply use it as "hyperactive male". Even the laconic description (started as "a cute, hyperactive guy" to the more specific "a cute and effeminate young male who serves as a male surrogate for a female audience" in 2013, then back to "a cute, hyperactive guy" in 2017.

In 2018, Keet was brought to the TRS due to concerns of overlapping too much with Genki Girl, but any action was ultimately decided against due to the stipulation that Keet is apparently more of a specific archetype of what Genki Girl suggests, which is itself a functionally unisex trope... which, I'm sorry, I don't get. To my knowledge, "Keet" isn't even an actual word or term used by anyone outside of TVTropes, so its name describes to me nothing that defines it as actually being more specific than what Genki Girl describes ("Keet" is named after "parakeet", right? because birds are energetic? where does the "little brotherly" part kick in?), while Genki Girl conversely has a misleading title that implies it to be more exclusionary than it supposedly is. All the while, it feels like the common colloquial assumption is that the two are the same trope, but gendered Distaff Counterparts, and are troped as such.

So basically, like... what's the deal? It seems like at least one of these tropes has a misleading and/or incorrect description; do both of these need to be addressed at once? Or are the weird anomalies in their descriptions over what they represent that go anathema to their implied meanings just something we should remove? Should they be going back to the TRS and reassessed for a merge even though the last time it was proposed, it failed?

(also, while we're here, if Genki Girl is supposed to be the "correctly" unisex trope here, what's a proper redirect for nonbinary folks? Some people online have been very immature about Venture being nonbinary and it might be weird to have to justify a seemingly misgendering trope name with an addendum of "but they're nonbinary though".)

Edited by number9robotic on Apr 1st 2024 at 11:29:10 AM

I admit, I never really had a good handle on what a "Keet" was. Genki Girl is straightforward enough, though it being unisex does feel odd to me given the title (though if it's true I'm not gonna dispute it), but Keet has always just kinda felt... idk... confusing.

All I can say is that Keet sounds like a specific anime/manga archetype and that seems to be what the description going for. Not gonna comment on trope validity though. All I know (from what others say) is childish and effeminate is part of being a keet according the TRS and examples. As far as the laconic and playing with goes, they clearly weren't altered to reflect TRS decision. Keet also had a cleanup thread that has stalled out and I don't know if most of the on page examples have been swept for misuse.

As for Genki Girl, I am sure it was initially gender exclusive (and written Japanese specific) and then evolved out of it. If it was made today, it wouldn't have that name it has now and not just because of the gender issue

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 2nd 2024 at 4:27:47 AM

I can confirm that "Keet" is not actual anime speak; it's very much a made up trope name. I'm used to anime circles and I have never encountered the term outside of TvTropes. Trying to look for results just point to this page. Until reading this thread I didn't even know it was meant to come from "parakeet".

The impression I get is that Keet was born out of an attempt to make a "gendered equivalent" to Genki Girl and eventually it morphed into its (confusingly vaguely defined) "own thing".

Oldest Internet Archive copy of Keet for reference. This is what Genki Girl looked like at the time, for the record; I don't think it quite stipulates it's unisex ("usually a schoolgirl, but not always" could be meant to have more emphasis on the "school" part than the "girl" part) but the last example is "considerably less female than...normal".

The description of Keet was rewritten as a result of the 2018 thread; here's how it looked around the time the crowner was ongoing. There's little to nothing hinting at the apparent distinction from Genki Girl that would be used to justify keeping them separate, but the idea that it is distinct is taken for granted. ("Keets are often also Genki Guys, as the cute and slightly feminine charm of a keet and the exuberant nature of a genki can go hand in hand quite well, however it's not strictly necessary for a character to be both.")

Edited by MorganWick on Apr 2nd 2024 at 3:35:05 AM

That version of Keet outright starts with "Direct male equivalent of Genki Girl", so it really started out as a Gender Flipped version of GG.

Is "Keet" one of those terms that were born on this wiki, similar to "Xanatos Gambit" and "Petting Zoo People" etc.? Because then there's no reason to keep it.

We have Flanderization, which was coined by us Tropers, which became so popular, it even has an article on The Other Wiki.

However, unlike the trope namer Ned Flanders from The Simpsons, Keet is essentially made up and is not obvious that it is named after the parakeet.

I feel like the trope should probably be renamed to make it clear it's unisex, and maybe avoid confusion for people who don't know the Japanese word used in the trope name also.

Edited by molokai198 on Apr 14th 2024 at 3:53:42 PM

Genki Girl isn't the problem, though. I mean, it could be, but this thread is about Keet being unintuitive and unclear, not Genki Girl.

But reminder again that Genki Girl is "supposed" to be the trope that's unisex and all-encompassing despite being explicitly gendered in the trope name, which is really confusing. I'm honestly not sure if we're supposed to go through a full TRS process for addressing these or if it's just a rewrite of the descriptions so that either one is just like "energetic character, male and female editions", though again, nonbinary characters are left in the dust (I still dunno which of these to use for Venture of Overwatch lol)

What sounds like the right course of action? If I were to queue these up for the TRS, what do I even wick check on them exactly, because it doesn't seem like the tropes themselves are being misused as much as their definitions don't agree with each other.

I suspect TRS would merge the two under an ungendered, English name.

If you do a wick check, look at both and try to see if there is any pattern as to how they are used: how much each is sexed (and how many don't indicate it) and whether there is any other distinction that emerges.

There was a TRS thread about the difference between the two back in 2011 too, so tropers have been arguing about these tropes for over a decade. There were even talks about renaming Genki Girl to Genki Person or giving it an English name.

Keet does strike me as being misused since its supposed main distinction (being a young Audience Surrogate character in female-oriented media) doesn't seem present in most examples.

If most Keet examples are "Genki Girl but male", then it can probably be merged into Genki Girl and maybe an argument can be made to give it a unisex name.

Edited by BlackMage43 on Apr 18th 2024 at 9:46:18 AM

I think the wick check for Genki Girl will show whether or not it's used as unisex. If there're very few male examples, it might indicate that the name confuses people into thinking it's an Always Female trope. And if there are enough male examples, we can check whether or not those examples also fit the definition of Keet. If they do, then the two tropes overlap.

Potential option: keep Genki Girl with Genki Guy as a redirect. There's several tropes I've seen do something similar with redirects.

You could format the wick check(s?) like I did my Sandbox.Nice To The Wick Check for Nice to the Waiter; it was mostly just me checking how many mean examples there were, which weren't many.

Genki Guy is already a redirect, as is Genki Boy.