Trope Finder

Depending on the situation, I'd call that Subverted Genre Savvy. Assuming the audience is at first led to believe that he's being Genre Savvy. Otherwise it's probably just Averted/Inverted Genre Savvy.

EDIT: Well, in the example above, it sounds like it's Inverted, because he's plainly being an idiot.

Edited by SolipSchism

Needle in a Stack of Needles?

MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWW

^ ...What?

^ that example in the webcomic sounds like needles.

MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWW

I have no idea how Needle in a Stack of Needles relates. Inverted Genre Savvy fits.

If you invert Genre Savvy you have Genre Blindness, which this is not.

Also Solip Schism, you used the wrong What!?. ;-)

Edited by eroock

So this is a new trope and I ought to put Too Genre Savvy through the ykttw?

It sounds to me more like Scotty is just a Cloudcuckoolander than anything to do with Genre Savviness or the lack thereof.

^^^ No no, that was certainly not a Big "WHAT?!". It was a pregnant pause, and then a Flat "What" due to Sarcasm Failure.

I probably failed to communicate that usage by including a question mark.

My bad.

Also: Not all trope/inverted trope relationships are a direct one-to-one relation. Some tropes can be inverted in more than one way. Inverted Genre Savvy could be either Genre Blindness or simply trying and utterly failing to be Genre Savvy.

@ Specialist290: It could be more than one trope. Yes Scotty is a Cloudcuckoolander but he is also attempting to be genre savvy.

@ SolipSchism: That is my question and why I brought it up. It is either an inverted Genre Savvy or a Too Genre Savvy. I won't consider any other possibilities but I'll go with whichever of these two everyone agrees upon.

Edited by bejjinks

That's a tricky one. Honestly, it could be either. I think it's a particular inversion of Genre Savvy, but a case could be made either way.

Here's my thought process, for what it's worth:

• Averted Genre Savvy would mean that, in this situation, you might expect him to display some Genre Savviness and he fails to do so. There's really nothing to be Genre Savvy about here, so it doesn't apply.

• Subverted Genre Savvy would mean that either he seems to be displaying Genre Savviness or the story seems to be setting him up to do so, and then he either fails to do so or he ends up being Wrong Genre Savvy, etc. Again, I don't think it applies, because the expectation is never really there.

• Inverted Genre Savvy would mean that he's displaying something inimical to real Genre Savviness. The simplest way to invert it would be to have the character try, but fail, to be Genre Savvy.

• Another way to invert Genre Savvy would indeed be Genre Blindness, in which he would fail to be, or even try to be, Genre Savvy, despite having obvious cues that should have tipped him off as to the situation he's in. I don't quite think that fits here, because he is trying.

• Wrong Genre Savvy suggests that he thinks he's in one kind of story, when really he's in another. Which could apply: Apparently he thinks he's in a story that has Evil Twins and is forcing him to Spot the Imposter, when in fact he's in a story that has a guy, a scarecrow, and an idiot. The only reason I don't really think this fits is that, as I mentioned with what I said about an aversion, there's not really anything to be Genre Savvy about to begin with. It's like... you can't be going the wrong way down the street if you're not on the street.

I'm voting Inverted Genre Savvy, but like I said, it could go either way.

Edited by SolipSchism

Solip Schism wrote:

• Inverted Genre Savvy would mean that he's displaying something inimical to real Genre Savviness. The simplest way to invert it would be to have the character try, but fail, to be Genre Savvy.

Trying but failing at a trope makes it inverted? I'd really like to challenge that idea.

My biggest contention with Wrong Genre Savvy is that it seems like the character has to be a little bit smart. A Wrong Genre Savvy character is someone who knows their genres and would be correct in their thinking except they missed one important detail.

Why I'm thinking of either inverted Genre Savvy or Too Genre Savvy is because these are characters who are plain stupid. They definitely overlap with the Cloudcuckoolander. They get everything wrong but they think they have everything right. I would be open to different names such as Ridiculously Genre Savvy or Self Deceived Genre Savvy.

Having had another look at the OP, it rather strikes me as an example of parodied Spot the Imposter. The character in question seems to correctly assume, an Evil Twin is about. So his Genre Savvyness is just fine. What he fails at is telling Chad and Evil Chad apart, which is ridiculous following the description above.

We do already have Idiot Hero and The Ditz, might be what you have in mind.

There is no evil twin. Scotty thinks there is an evil twin but there isn't. The scarecrow doesn't even look like Chad and isn't alive. It's just a scarecrow.

Scotty is not an Idiot Hero. He is The Ditz.

But all of that is beside the point.

So we will stop going off on rabbit trails, here is the example http://thegarage.thecomicseries.com/comics/136/

Edited by bejjinks

^^^^^^ "Trying but failing at a trope makes it inverted? I'd really like to challenge that idea."

Yes, that's exactly what I said.

No, that blanket generalization that I totally said verbatim is not correct. But not all tropes involve character motivation and/or actions. This one does. Let me break it down.

• To be Genre Savvy, you have to be Genre Savvy.
• To be Genre Blind, which is one inversion of Genre Savvy, you have to not only be not-Genre Savvy, but you have to be so not-Genre Savvy that you reach almost What An Idiot levels.
• Trying and failing to be Genre Savvy is another kind of inversion, as long as the attempt isn't built up convincingly enough to end up as a Subverted Trope. In this case, it isn't.
• To be Wrong Genre Savvy, you have to be savvy to the wrong genre. This may or may not come across as being an idiot.

Just to make sure this is clear:

• Alice is having a party at her house. Just after midnight, all of Alice's friends inexplicably disappear while she is distracted. She immediately locks every door in the house, grabs her shotgun, and decides to wait until morning to go upstairs and take a shower. Alice is Genre Savvy.
• Same situation. Alice deduces nothing. She leaves the doors unlocked, goes upstairs, and takes a shower, and promptly gets murdered. Alice is Genre Blind, which is an inversion of Genre Savvy.
• Same situation. Alice deduces that her friends are about to jump out and scare the shit out of her for fun, and goes to chill in the living room so as to be an easy target. Then the murderer jumps out and murders the shit out of her. Alice is Wrong Genre Savvy.
• Same situation. Alice deduces that her friends are about to jump out and scare the shit out of her for fun, and goes to chill in the living room so as to be an easy target. Nothing happens because Alice is an idiot and forgot that everyone left because the party was over, which the viewer saw earlier. Alice was trying to be Genre Savvy, and this is the kind of genre where that sort of thing could happen, so she's not precisely Genre Blind or Wrong Genre Savvy, but she's obviously not Genre Savvy either. And it's not a subversion, because the audience knows perfectly well all along that she's not being Genre Savvy. Therefore, it's another kind of inversion of Genre Savvy.

EDIT for a bonus example:

• Same situation. Alice immediately locks every door in the house, grabs her shotgun, and decides to wait until morning to go upstairs and take a shower. The door opens and a shadowy figure enters the room. Alice blows his head off. He collapses, the camera focuses on him — and it's Bob, her boyfriend, and all her friends are behind him, about to shout "Surprise!" as both the viewer and Alice realize that there was no killer at all, even though we thought there was. Alice is Wrong Genre Savvy in a way that subverts Genre Savvy—because we actually thought she was being Genre Savvy. (Assuming the story convinced you, anyway, which is more YMMV anyway.)

Edited by SolipSchism

Honestly, I'd just call the posted example Insane Troll Logic mixed with Conversational Troping. Maybe a bit of Comically Missing the Point too.

Also, when you confuse a person with a scarecrow, that's Easy Impersonation.