Honestly, the disclaimer that "this trope is not bad, honest!" is utterly undone by the tone of the page, which implies that every one of these couples is awful due to this trope.

Actually, I agree with the example being deleted. Remember that this trope doesn't just mean that couple came out of nowhere. It's that the romance has to be laid on too thickly. You even said in the example that it was given a realistic feel because it came in short, small doses. That right there means it doesn't fit the trope.

You're right that we should keep the example (note that I supported this position in the discussion above, even before this was YMMV). Maybe I was too quick to delete it, and I apologize; I failed to notice that since the discussion where we defaulted to removing it, this has become a YMMV trope, which means a lot more flexibility on what stays.

But even YMMV has standards, and we should be trying to characterize the mileage varying, not pass rulings on who's right and who's wrong. You can't just state things you know aren't universally agreed upon and expect the example to remain intact.

The tone, for one, was definitely not neutral. It starts "Some of the hate against them as a couple...", which is obviously trying to convey the impression that there's some huge critical mass of such hate in the fandom (polls say: not even remotely). Then it proceeds to pile on some very controversial accusations (no meaningful interaction since book 2? Even now, after all these years, I can hear the ghost of the fandom's collective consciousness writhe in response, "CHOOOCOLATEEE IN THE LIBRAAARRRYYYY!"). In short, it wasn't being fair. I rewrote it in an effort to make it fairer. I imagine there's a lot of work still to be done on that front.

Also, @Fallen Legend: You do not get to remove YMMV examples wholesale without discussion. Quoting some part of the fandom which thinks it's not an example does not equal "the example admitting it is not an example". I restored what you removed, and if you want to discuss the removal of these examples properly- go ahead. But I do not recommend unilaterally removing them again.

The Romance Arc.

Obviously you're not going to have all of the bells and whistles in there, but you get the gist. Between Hi and They Do you have to go through a stage or two, and there's your list of what that stage or two may be.

As for the name- I agree we should change it (we have a few good redirects), but the last time I tried to bring this up on the Trope Repair Shop it didn't go through.

Sorry, that was my fault- when I rewrote the description I kind of completely forgot that most people don't know what the red string is. In my defense, this reference was also missing from the description I replaced. Added the metaphor.

Also, why is the YMMV banner missing when most of the page's curators agree it's subjective?

I agree, it really needs one since really, a pairing with a poor set up really can be in the eye of the beholder.

The banner was taken off by Fast Eddie.

This is not subjective trope. The title may seem that way, but it isn't. It's not about "poor setup", it's about when a couple goes straight from "hi" to Relationship Upgrade.

Okay, that's understandable.

I'd recommend keeping a watchful eye on the page in case someone tries to sneak in the former. We may even need to add a large disclaimer to the page, underlining its definition.

Gwen and Kevin from Ben 10?

More annoyed, personally.

Then again, people who rage over ships tend to annoy me in general.

Just read the entry. It was ridiculously slanted

Nuked Zuko/Mai. AGAIN.

Looks like Trope Repair Shop has overruled you, and left us with yet another unsolved problem.

This crowner seems to indicate there's a lot of support for splitting of "Designated Love Interest", whatever that is. I've made up a definition based on what the title sounds like, so let's see if Wiki Magic can take it from here.

Yeah, I know that the Trope Repair Shop has overruled me. When I did this I was under the impression that I had reasonable consensus to do it. Nobody has bothered to make a single serious argument in support of keeping this specific name for this specific trope, but, well, vox populi vox dei.

Because it doesn't fit. Strangled By The Red String is for pairings that go from no hints to definitely together. HBP shows Harry's feelings for Ginny shifting from friendship to romance. The start of the relationship might be abrupt, but that's teenagers for you. Please stop adding it back in.

"shifting" as in "going the full scale transformation in the duration of a second" and "that's teenagers for you" means it's a Justified Trope. Yes, this isn't the textbook case, and it has foreshadowing and a built-in Unrequited Love Switcheroo and whatnot, which is why the example said "have shades".

Listen, back in my jolly day I hung out on the perimeter of the hardcore H/G crowd (you know, Sugar Quill, Gryffindor Tower, the Fiction Alley.org debate thread...) and even we would freely admit that it blindsided us. The only way we saw it coming was laborious analysis of really backwards considerations plus heavy-duty Shipping Goggles, and even then we only knew that it may possibly hopefully be coming, not how or why it was going to get started. I think I'd be on steady ground saying even half a setence prior to the Wham Line featuring the chest monster we were still none the wiser. And this is crazy shippers; what this was probably like for the regular reader is, well, left as an exercise.

To whomever removed this again, would you please take the argument here? The whole point of discussion pages is to avert edit warring.

Anyway:

"It's not really "straddling the line" if there's plenty of evidence this was going to happen. An entry either is definitely this trope, or it isn't."

Well, fine, I should've put it up as an "abnormal" example or some such. Yes, something can be this trope if there's plenty of evidence that it's going to happen. The trope is about Relationship Upgrade sans the character development that leads up to it. Having tropes and Word Of God that seem to point in the direction of something happening is not the same as development.

Sorry, this trope is "This romance comes out of nowhere", yet it was foreshadowed for years in the story itself. I don't do shipping, I find it a waste of time, but even I saw that romance coming a mile away. I keep taking it out because it's just not this trope and not liking how she wrote the romance doesn't make it an example. Now please stop adding Harry Potter entries.

There are no "abnormal" or "almost" examples, something either is this trope, or something actually classified as a trope example like a subversion (it's not) an aversion (obviously not notable if it was) or an inversion (not sure what that would be here, but none the less...)

If I didn't make myself clear earlier, as far as I can see this is this trope. A honest-to-God example. Just an atypical one.

Liking or not liking anything has nothing to do with it. This is not a YMMV trope. This is about lack of development. That a lot of people saw it coming a mile away has nothing to do with anything. People seeing a romance coming correlates with development, but it doesn't flat-out imply it, as is demonstrated here.

The trope: Friends-> BAM -> Relationship Upgrade. This is exactly what happened with Harry and Ginny. How is this not an example? There's no need to get value judgments involved in it; Tropes Are Not Bad. It was probably done this way to avert Romantic Plot Tumor.

Because that's not how it turns out in the books. It happens a little fast, but there's plenty of warning and people seeing it come together from hints earlier in the series already disqualifies it.

Unfortunately, since this is not currently a subjective trope, where I'd be okay with the Harry/Ginny example, it's more rigid.

Hm. Well, I'm willing to concede this. The rule on tropes like these is usually that if something is too contested to stay on a page it should stay off.

This trope is not synonymous with bad couples, although most of them are. There can be good examples of being Strangled By The Red String, and this is one of them. It is in fact possible for characters to become a couple with little to no interaction before and still be a great couple.

Look, I admit I love Harry and Ginny as a couple, but the sad truth is that this trope applies to them, regardless of how good of a couple they are. Before I read the book, I had it spoiled for me that they hook up, and I actually though that it made perfect sense. However, this was before I had read the 3rd, 4th, and 5th books. After that I then found myself puzzled.

Harry and Ginny are definitely this trope. I do not know how anyone not wearing Shipping Goggles can deny this. Yes, it could have been predicted after Book 2, but Rowling screwed up on having it done well. There were hints in Order of the Phoenix, but none of them are recognizable except in retrospect.

Now, it is true that most of the 6th book does build up to it which does soften how bad it is, but only having it built up in one book when the past three books completely ignored it does not excuse it. By that logic many of the other examples on the page wouldn't count. So if a whole season of a TV series was spent building up a relationship between two characters who had rarely interacted over the course of the past several seasons, does that mean it wouldn't fall under this trope?

That depends. Whether a couple falls under this trope depends on what stages, if any, of the Romance Arc they actually go through. I guess time is a factor (you can't believably squeeze it all into an episode), but a season should be enough, so generally the answer is no, what you describe doesn't fall under the trope.

Actually, I think that now that the Romance Arc page has been fleshed out we can look at things more objectively. With Harry and Ginny we do get to see how Boy Meets Girl and do get one (implicit) She Is Not My Girlfriend scene, and they go on to become Just Friends. The next thing we know, Nothing Is The Same Anymore- we have a Green Eyed Epiphany that induces an Unrequited Love Switcheroo. In other words the problem is with the Will They Or Wont They phase. Namely, that it was so faint that the question wasn't even Will They Or Wont They but rather "Do they have a Will They Or Wont They thing going on to begin with?". We had two Romantic False Leads and exactly one Moment Killer (no chocolate allowed in the library!), and that's it.

Given that this pairing had ridiculous effort put into in on every other front- just check how many tropes on the Love Tropes index apply to it— it's an excellent case study of how much that phase matters in a romance. The execution on everything else is great, but that part is missing, and you have people feeling cheated out of something.

Is this bona fide red string strangulation? It's hard to tell. Certainly it's not a typical example. Maybe using this more precise analysis we can write about them on a page in an objective way that doesn't make judgment calls about whether development was "good enough".

Forgot to mention. This is YMMV trope, which means some of the fandom feels it fits this while the rest may not. Only part of the fandom feeling this way is all that is required for it to fit this trope. You don't delete an example just because you feel it doesn't fit there. Hence, the entire point of YMMV.

I think so. Normally its a good idea to avoid it, but its rare enough to find a picture that pertains to this trope at all (at least outside of context) that I think this needs to be up.

I disagree with making an exception. There are plenty of other tropes that don't have pictures for the same reason.

To be honest, until you mentioned it, I never thought of it like that. But in thinking of a response, I can't come up with a single reason why not. I'd be for it if there are no other objections.

Well...nobody ever add it. So I did. Because...yea, this is subjective as hell. One person's "TWOO WUV!" is another person's "WTF?!".

No subjective trope banner. Why? Because a lot of it can be done by the Author on purpose and is not all what the viewer sees.