Regarding the Trivia namespace (crowner switched 20th Jan 2020)

Aluminum Christmas Trees feel like it's still heavily part of the work, just a reference as well. Is it on the crowner yet?

I still feel Actor Allusion is too much about the Actor over the characters, and consider it should be Trivia. Wasn't sure if it was called yet, hence what I said.

The actor is still undeniably part of the work. Saying it's not so is like saying Bold Inflation isn't part of the work, because that's just about the way the words are written, and not the actual story.

Even not counting that, you still have the actual characters or other part of the work referring to the actor. It's a meta joke like any other. Or should we also make all fourth wall tropes trivia as well?

I still feels it relies too much on the Actor, and not the character itself. No, I don't consider the Actor themselves a key part of the work. That's something that's cool to know, but only really is important solely for the Character Sheet(to make it look more complete) and fun Trivia. There's very few times it's relevant, like on the boxart itself or advertising, which at least has a purpose beyond fun Trivia points. But that's my view of it.

Keep in mind I already have voted, I'm just renoting what my vote already is and why. Yes, it is set in stone(at this time) and I haven't heard a good reason to change it thusfar.

About Aluminum Christmas Trees, if i understood well, following the description, the trope namer was not a reference to something rare in real life- the trope namer is tecnically the Charlie Brown special, that was the responsible by the rarity of aluminum christmas trees in real life.

edited 30th Jun '17 8:44:30 AM by MagBas

And I still think that's a complete, fundamental misunderstanding of what a trope is. Relying on the actor doesn't matter. It's performed within the work.

You don't think the actor is a key part of the work? What do you have left of it if you remove all actors? Do you still have a story? According to you, the actor isn't relevant to anything within the work, so it should work without actors.

Take the example from the page image. You have the pair from Back To The Future acting in Spin City throwing tons of references to the former. Are you seriously saying that's not part of the work? That that whole scene doesn't count as part of it? The entire thing, despite being played completely in-character by the characters from Spin City, isn't part of the work? Just because some people might not get it, it doesn't count as a trope? Most of that episode doesn't even make sense if you arbitrarily decide to ignore that as part of the work.

Trivia is what you find outside the works, not inside them. Actor Allusion is within, deliberately performed within, and taken as a part of the work. It's a trope, any way you slice it.

I'm just popping in to suggest that Big Bra to Fill is probably trivia, since basically it only happens because real human actresses rarely have comic-book boobs.

... Oh hey, we coincidentally seem to be in the middle of a discussion about about whether adaptational tropes as a whole should be classified as trivia. So since it's topical I'll specify that even if we decide the group isn't inherently trivia, I think this particular item still is.

Isn't that basically a lesser version of Ability over Appearance? Something like settling for "good enough" in the looks department.

The Spin City / Back to the Future thing is an example of what I was describing before where Actor Allusion and Shout-Out overlap, but that actually falls squarely into I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine.

@nrjxll & AnotherDuck: Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship share founding members; the first broke up in 1972; the second was founded a couple years later. "White Rabbit" (one of the most iconic examples of acid rock with lyrics inspired by Wonderland) was recorded by the first band.

Alice Allusion crops up in works from vastly disparate cultures because Dodgson's books have been translated into practically every major language and are considered core literary canon worldwide. Pick any nation that produces literature, film, and television; I'd bet you can find several examples there with blatant allusions to Wonderland and Looking Glass. Rozen Maiden is one example from anime that leaps to mind, and Carl Sagan found Wonderland universal enough to use the Mad Hatter's tea party in his explanation of gravity in Cosmos: A Personal Journey. Another example, from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is when Angel Bunny, a white rabbit, taps a pocket watch and Fluttershy says "I'm late for a very important date", directly quoting the White Rabbit in Disney's adaptation of the two books.

I find common ground with AnotherDuck on Big Bra to Fill; definitely belongs in the trivia domain, and I find it amusing that the studios don't give the actresses a latex or silicone boost to avoid the discrepancy.

edited 7th Jul '17 12:19:07 PM by pvsage

Saying it's a different trope doesn't argue against it actually being in the work. If anything it's an argument it's actually a trope.

Arguing notability as a case for a trope doesn't really hold water either any way I figure it.

Both Actor Allusion and I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine rely heavily on You Might Remember Me from..., which is already in the trivia domain as well; perhaps they all belong there.

Alice Allusion, on the other hand, is closer to The Bard on Board. If you recognize Shylock, Marc Antony, or Polonius in a new work, you're also likely to recognize Alice Liddell. This isn't about notability, it's about a culture's literary canon; "a pound of flesh" and "What news on the Rialto?" for example, have little meaning without understanding their context in A Merchant of Venice, nor does "Go Among Mad People" without having read Wonderland.

edited 7th Jul '17 1:08:47 PM by pvsage

You Might Remember Me from... is just about the casting decisions. It's not about what's actually in the show, like the other tropes. You're comparing apples with apple boxes.

That's what notability means. You're just saying those works are more notable than others, and therefore they count as basis for tropes. Tropes don't require notability. They require patterns.

"White Rabbit"? You mean that song that P!nk released last year for the new Tim Burton movie? :)

Yeah, I suspect that one might qualify as the codifier for Alice Allusion. Before that, there were shout-outs to AiW/TtLG, but that song made it a whole thing for the hippie generation. It's become the go-to song to play when you want to show a Mushroom Samba, and it contributed the name to at least two books: the Based on a Great Big Lie anti-drug polemic Go Ask Alice and the slightly more realistic What the Dormouse Said about the influence of drugs on the early days of Silicon Valley.

If you notice a theme there—yeah. Thanks in large part to the song, Alice has become strongly associated with drugs. Especially weed and psychedelics. If you want to find a proper trope there instead of mere shout-outs, that's probably where I'd look. The caterpillar with his hookah; the Mad Hatter; the bottles labeled "Drink Me", etc. Using elements from Alice to suggest drugs has become, well, a trope.

Hollywood Old is the opposite of Dawson Casting, but it's not Trivia.

Have a question about something that's still on the Trope Launch Pad. It's called "Filming Location Cameo". It's about how shows that normally use California Doubling occasionally have a special episode where the characters travel to the city that the show is actually filmed in, allowing them to do lots of on-location shooting. For instance, Rizzoli & Isles is set in Boston and filmed in Los Angeles, and they had an episode where the characters went to Los Angeles.

So is this Trivia? I feel that since California Doubling is Trivia, this should be as well, but I wanted to confirm with some other people.

That's actually a bit tricky, because half the trope ("the show is normally shot in LA even though it takes place in Boston") is trivia, but the other half ("One episode takes place in LA") isn't.

I think that's taking something that's normally a trivia item, and making it into something with a meaning. Exactly what meaning I'm not sure, but it's similar to a Homage or some kind of reference. Could easily be played as in In-Joke of sorts.

Hmm...both of those are good points. Guess I won't immediately add it to the Trivia index once it launches.

I think Dead Fic should be considered trivia, as far as fanfictions are concerned. It's not possible to tell if a story is ongoing, on hiatus or dead without further Word of God.

Speaking of Dead Fic, is there any reason it should be fir fan fic only? Can't it apply to original works, such as web comics (which all too often tend to die)?

I know this is not the right place to discuss this, but what would be the best place? TRS?

edited 13th Aug '17 7:34:33 AM by GnomeTitan

Do we have a "things we've already discussed" list? Because I swear Dummied Out used to be trivia, and I don't know why that was changed. Or if I imagined this entirely and it was never actually discussed at all.

Have you tried using the search feature on this site or going through the topic itself?

I wouldn't mind a simple page or whatever full of all the finished items on the list with a clear explanation of why they made/didn't make the cut.

~Gnome Titan: yes, expanding definitions is the purview of TRS.

~Factoid Cow: I think that is trivia, because the audience isn't going to know that the "on-location" filming is or isn't in the same city as the production.

That does make sense. You've set me back to my original perspective

I'd like to nominate Faux Fluency to trivia items.

It's mostly for actors not knowing the language and momorizing the lines, usually sounding silly to native speakers. Or they are dubbed over by native speakers. Does not really seem like a trope.

Nominating Real-Person Cameo. We cannot assume the audience of a work Based on a True Story to notice when a characters is played by a person involved with the RL event.