Clean up?: Relationship Upgrade

okay, so i was looking for the "best friends turned lovers" trope to check if a certain example was already there, or if i could add it myself. naturally, i went in the direction of Relationship Upgrade— it's certainly what the description states on the very first line, and most of the examples fit this pattern. however, as i was looking through the examples and some of the wicks, it hit me that people are using it to mean any kind of relationship upgrade, even those that have nothing to do with romance. casual acquaintances becoming friends, Anti Heroes joining up with the good guys...

even within the romantic examples there's a rift, as i've seen it used to mean "from dating to marriage" a few times. does that count for the trope at all?

i figure a clean up is in order (i don't think anybody would want to expand this trope to fit all non-romantic examples), just wanted to make sure i'm in the right before i start deleting stuff, and i'd probably need some input anyway, for the series i'm not familiar with (it has 347 wicks. yee gads). i might start by making Friends Turned Lovers a redirect, maybe that will help somewhat.

It looks like the whole trope was launched without a YKTTW but it does seem to be used as any form of upgrade, not just romantic. They Do seems to be the specific UST-resolved trope you're looking for. But considering how Shipping is such a major part of any fandom people will of course focus on the romantic part.

nice, i didn't know They Do existed.

still, that sounds more like the positive resolution of Will They or Won't They?. i was thinking more of the case where they've been best friends since they met (or at least for a significant period of time in the context of the work), but without any obvious romantic subtext, maybe a few "hints" that one might interpret as romantic with the Shipping Goggles on but no recurring Will They or Won't They? plot, no overarching UST, they may have dated other people but they never outwardly saw each other as boyfriend/girlfriend material or even seriously entertained the possibility. they literally were Just Friends... until they started seeing things differently.

the trope description itself says it better than i ever could: "from Just Friends or Like Brother and Sister to lovers." think the first "form" of Just Friends, but resolved positively.

i thought about the possibility of it fitting under First Girl Wins, but what if there's no Love Triangle?

that's the scenario that first jumps to mind when i think of Relationship Upgrade, at least. mainly because couples with Will They or Won't They? dynamics or Belligerent Sexual Tension or just plain UST seem like they'd fit better in those pages than in this one, wouldn't it? unless Relationship Upgrade is meant to be a supertrope (in which case i should totally YKKTW the Best Friends Turned Lovers trope). i don't know, there are so many scenarios in my head that it's kind of confusing.

If we're up for a new definition, I'd suggest "they were friends, but not Like Brother and Sister or Everyone Can See It or UST, and at a later time agreed to advance to a romantic relationship."

That is, these characters were not set up at the start to be in a relationship, but they never declared each other off-limits either. They just happened to find each other romantically attractive around the same time.

^ That would be more like Pair the Spares, the name Relationship Upgrade is too broad to try and fix a too precise definition to it.

Maybe we should just make it a supertrope then. Make different kinds of relationship upgrades the subtropes.

Gah, Data Vampires got my post. Anyway, I wouldn't think Relationship Upgrade refers to anything but a romantic relationship. It's a meaning of "relationship" that's commonly used. For example, "We need to talk about our relationship." Or another example, Facebook's "in a relationship", etc. I don't really see any serious problem beyond correcting misuse.

I hear relationship to refer to platonic relationships all the time. People talk about their relationships with their parents. They don't mean that they're sleeping with them. The word itself doesn't always imply romance.

i'm with shima on this one: the word "relationship" has a very broad meaning. true that nowadays it's mainly used to mean a romantic relationship, but the broader concept is used, too.

in fact, even the trope title itself is using the broader meaning. think about it: if we define "relationship" as only romantic, then simple friendship doesn't count as a relationship. therefore going from friends to lovers is not a Relationship Upgrade— you're not upgrading a relationship, you're upgrading your friendship to a relationship. but no, clearly, the title of the trope uses "relationship" to mean more than just romantic. that's probably why there are so many non-romantic examples in there.

i wouldn't be opposed to expanding the definition for Relationship Upgrade and leaving it as a supertrope, i'm just worried about it getting too repetitive. for example, a Will They or Won't They? or UST that gets resolved positively or an Everyone Can See It that becomes an Official Couple would fall there (and i believe we already have They Do for those); let's not even mention the amount of Heel Face Turns we'd end up with, and i believe i've seen it used more than once for when The Rival becomes The Lancer. it just seems to be omnipresent whenever there's Character Development of any sort. if we leave it as a supertrope, we'd have to make sure we don't get all the examples in those other tropes repeated all over again in this one. exampleless supertrope?

and i'd still YKTTW a trope for "best friends turned lovers" because it happens so often that it really merits its own trope...

I think if we make it a supertrope it should be with a mention not to list anything from it's subtropes on it. That would take care of that bit.

Can you point me to some of the examples or wicks where it's used to mean something besides romantic? I'm not really seeing it.

alright, i think that's a good way out of it. we'd just have to rework the definition to make it very specific what the subtropes are.

uh. well, i remember seeing a few around while browsing the site, but i can't really go check wicks right at this moment (there are 348 of them O_o). i can tell you, though, that the very first example in the page (the Digimon02 one) isn't a romantic upgrade.

'kay, so just to summarize, our options are:

• Make it a supertrope: Expand the definition of the trope to encompass all kinds of relationship upgrades, not only romantic. Encourage people to post their examples in subtropes if applicable (Will They or Won't They?, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Everyone Can See It, etc) and clean up the examples and wicks for this purpose, as well.

• Don't redefine, just clean up: Leave the trope for only the romantic aspect, taking out examples and wicks that don't fit the definition.

i'm thinking most of us here were leaning toward the first option, but if anyone disagrees, now's the time to say it, i guess...

bump.

I'd agree with the first option as well. In particular, it seems pretty clear that it should be broken up into Romantic and platonic subtropes, with possible additional more specific tropes as the need becomes evident.

bump

There is now a page action crowner for this trope here which includes the two options that Carla mentioned.

edited 23rd Jul '11 10:36:08 AM by LouieW

Hmm, I'm tending neutral so far, but the biggest problem I have with a broadening is that this is a very common term for friends-become-lovers in RL. Much like "friends with benefits" could mean all sorts of things, but it practice, it means a casual sexual relationship (more-or-less).

Bump for more votes.

If we're not going to redefine, we ought to clean it up. Probably the upvotes for one option are the downvotes for the other, and vice versa. This should've been a single prop.

edited 28th Aug '11 6:27:46 PM by TripleElation

Calling the crowner, at 2.17:1 in favor of Making it a supertrope.

Remaining to be done:

• The intro needs to be rewritten to reflect this.
• List the subtropes, add a note that examples that fit in one of the subtropes should be on that page, not this one.
• Clear out bad examples,
• Move examples of a subtrope to that subtrope's page.
• Check all the wicks; change any that should be to one of the subtropes to the appropriate subtrope, cut any that are misuse. Yes, all 541 of them.

When all that is done, the thread can be locked.