"Childhood Friends" cleanup

Here is a diagram of how the tropes with "Childhood Friend" in their name currently stand.◊

There are three main problems with them:

Edit: Problem 0: An earlier problem was that Forgotten Childhood Friend was written as a completely unrelated to the trope family. It was already voted to be renamed, and the current name to be used as I drew it above, in the diagram, but this change wasn't executed yet.

Solution 0: For the time being, to avoid confusion, please refer to the old Forgotten Childhood Friend trope as Forgotten Friend, New Foe, and to the new one as Long Lost Childhood Friend.

Problem 1: The two main tropes about love between childhood friends (Unlucky Childhood Friend and Victorious Childhood Friend) are needlessly split. These are characterization and relationship tropes, there's no reason to split them by plot points, like romantic resolution. It's like if there would be a split between "Anti-Hero Who Dies At The End" and "Anti-Hero Who Lives". It could only happen because originally, someone made the first one with an unneccessary notion about chances of the character type's success, so someone else made another one to "balance" this.

Solution 1: Merge the two.

Problem 2: These two tropes are also surprisingly specific in their description details (especially Victorious Childhood Friend is). This is probably because they were originally intended as mostly anime-based tropes (note the paragraph about "osananajimi", and the long anime folders), to describe a stock Harem Anime character type, but they got semi-genralized, and in practice, now they are extended to ALL love interest who knew each other since childhood. I mean, I'm not an enemy of Universal Tropes, but in this case, it could only happen by ignoring all the the specific details, some of which are still in the description. Technically, if we would still expect those to be fulfilled, a whole bunch of prominent examples would count as misuse.

Solution 2: Support the tropes more generic interpretation in the description(s), to make it truly universal, and split off this specific subtrope about the Harem Anime Character Archetype with all of it's own associated elements.

Problem 3: There is no generic "Childhood Friends" trope without romance, but there is Beleaguered Childhood Friend, that doesn't involve romance, so the merged trope from "solution 1" needs a more specific name than that, not to be misleading.

Solution 3: That's easy. Launch Childhood Friends as an even bigger supertrope.

In the end, this is how the three solutions together would look like.◊

edited 4th Mar '11 11:15:07 AM by EternalSeptember

Totally nitpicking here, but the trope currently known as Forgotten Childhood Friend isn't actually related to love interests.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

I know. As I said in the first line, that is still under construction. The current trope under the title will be renamed, and this title will be relaunched with new, romantic text.

I thought I should include it that way, because it was already voted, so it is inevitable that it will look like this in few days.

edited 3rd Mar '11 11:39:08 AM by EternalSeptember

Yeah, but the anime trope that could be described using that term most certainly is.

I don't think that we decided that Forgotten Childhood Friend is an anime trope.

It's more like a plot point than a characterization trope, something that could happen with all other subtropes.

No, the point is that while its a trope in other media, its a different trope in an anime context.

How is it? In the other thread, no one could point out any difference between the two.

The current trope description specifies them as an "antagonist", which is very frequently not the case.

The trope as described does occur in anime, but a similar, but not identical, trope that could also fall under that name also occurs.

Number 1 I would say are different and are dealt with differently in works after the victor is decided and some shows have both Love Hina for example Naru the winner and Mutsumi the loser and Mutsumi admits it half way through the series.

If you must merge (which I am against) they should still be soft split. Or split Harem winner, Harem loser and the rest in another trope..

edited 3rd Mar '11 4:23:15 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

As I already said two times, it is already decided to be rewritten, you even commented in the thread whee it was decided.

The current antagonist trope will be renamed to Forgotten Friend, New Foe, we are talking about the new Forgotten Childhood Friend trope here.

No, really?

Follow the chain of responses backwards and look at the post I was originally responding to.

This thread is enlightening in a way.

Anyway, I definitely agree on the merging of victorious and unlucky childhood friend and launching a general Childhood Friends trope also sounds like a good idea to me. However, I'm not quite sure what to do about the anime exclusive osananajami character type. I do know that it's extremely common in anime, but I'm not sure how truly distinct it is from any western examples. Several more points:

1. Forgotten Childhood Friend has been decided to be split already. The consensus was that the original trope would be moved to Forgotten Friend, New Foe or something like that, I don't quite remember. The current trope name would be taken for what the trope is misused as, a situation where a childhood friend really has been forgotten entirely and has reentered the plot.
2. UCF is based on the premise that the character type usually loses. Completely untrue, it's actually one of if not the most successful.
3. VCF does not differ substantially from UCF in presentation. The only difference is that the VCF ends up winning. The actual character type is the same.
4. We do not actually have a trope about childhood friends that doesn't get all tangled up in romance or plot points. They definitely occur in fiction without containing either of those.
5. The anime specific variant currently in ykttw is a fairly good explanation of the character type as seen in anime and visual novels. However, as noted before, I'm not really sure that it is distinct enough from the current UCF trope to really warrant a separate page altogether. On the other hand, the examples show that it is an extremely common anime trope to the point where they seem to dominate the page.

UCF is based on the premise that the character type usually loses. Completely untrue, it's actually one of if not the most successful.

On another forum someone once did a (highly unscientific) survey of various shows, and the Osananajimi wins like half the time, assuming no major supernatural shenanigans that they aren't part of are going on. (I can only think of one major exception to this)

Ok, let's clarify this. For the record, from now on, I will call the to-be-renamed antagonist trope Forgotten Friend, New Foe, and the soon-to-be-written love interest trope as Long Lost Childhood Friend.

This was talking about Forgotten Friend, New Foe.

With this, you said that the trope that could be there, that is Long Lost Childhood Friend, will be anime specific. When I asked about that, four posts later, you answered that:

[[quoteblock]] The current trope description specifies them as an "antagonist", which is very frequently not the case. The trope as described does occur in anime, but a similar, but not identical, trope that could also fall under that name also occurs. [[quoteblock]]

You went back to talk about Forgotten Friend, New Foe, and claimed that Long Lost Childhood Friend is an anime-specific variation of that, that is supposed to be anime-specific.

It's not. The whole Anime Tropes debate doesn't even come into play until Problem 2, as Forgotten Friend, New Foe and Long Lost Childhood Friend were both intended to be universal.

If you have any specific reason to turn one of them into that, give reasons how Long Lost Childhood Friend In Anime is different from general Long Lost Childhood Friend, and we will see, but being different from the old, unrelated trope, is not enough.

You read way too much into my original comment, and then we spiraled off into complete inanity due to not understanding what trope, precisely, we were discussing.

Lets just drop it, ok? Your post is 100% correct in how things should be.

Ok, I edited the OP to clarify this.

It's not that anime has something different, but that it has something specific.

Think of it like how we just split Harem Genre from Unwanted Harem. True, it's possible that western works have something that is basically a harem, but it's still also recognized as a specific genre.

Now, here is this typical harem anime character type, with it's distinct personality type, typical scenes that happen with them, typical role compared to other girls in the harem, and it is publically recognized enough that it was already Lampshaded, Discussed, Invoked, and even Conversed in works, as a trope, it would be extreme Lumper-ism not to categorize this, just because we already have a trope about love interests who knew each other since they were children.

Also, don't forget, that if we merge the two main tropes, we also get to rewrite them, so we can get rid of the artifacts from back when they were launched mostly with anime in mind, that make it sound similar to the harem girl trope. For example the supertrope could be called "Childhood Friends In Love", a relationship trope, instead of "Childhood Friend Love Interest", a character trope.

The whole idea that it got worded as "The Chidhood Friend" character that uses the trope, rather then two people who were "Childhood Friends", is an artifact from the concept that this is about a girl who has this as a main attribute, compared to the other girls, rather than about a plot point in a relationship.

edited 4th Mar '11 11:17:42 AM by EternalSeptember

The confusion probably started when people decided we were getting too many Japanese trope names, so Unlucky Osanajimi (or however it's spelled - this was part of the reason for the rename) became Unlucky Childhood Friend.

^^ Well, I'm kind of indifferent on it right now. If it's really a problem other people will object. I'll just request that you either have the ykttw trope changed to an english title or give it a suitable redirect. Osananajami is a pain to spell or search for if you can't remember it.

Was that ever the main name? I don't remember ever seeing it in the past 1,5 years, and we had most of our japanese names back than.

I didn't know about that, I just guessed that it was anime-centric from the state of the description. Anyways, if it's true, it's surprising that that title got disappeared that perfectly, for a trope with 1000 wicks. Was there a systematic purge? Or maybe it got renamed right after it's first launch?

Great tread, Endless nine. Truly enlightening.

Ignoring the discussion of how exactly the problem grew up to be like it is now, I agree with your solutions. In the end there will be 3 new tropes, right(being one a merge)?

Assuming we go for it, we can just set Unlucky and Victorious Childhood Friend as redirects, right? Each example of these tropes will be for the new one, or there will be need for more fixing?

Yes, though if we agree to call it Childhood Friends In Love, the grammar might need to be changed in some cases, but that's not more difficult than changing the title itself from the redirect.

For example the sentence " In The Lion King, Nala, the Victorious Childhood Friend..." might be changed to "In The Lion King Nala and Simba, who are Childhood Friends In Love..."

edited 5th Mar '11 9:00:07 AM by EternalSeptember

I can see an argument for combining Unlucky and Victorious (that argument later in the post). If we do, I would prefer Childhood Friend Love Interest: For example, Helga and Mayl can definitely be classified as Childhood Friend Love Interests, yet to say that they are Childhood Friends In Love would imply that their respective crushes on Arnold and Lan are reciprocated; the former was not pre-confession and in-canon is still in dispute, and the latter also trends negative (in-game, that is).

This leads to the chief argument for combining: If we combine, we would not have to reveal the resolution to their relationship. Additionally, we can now add still-potential Love Interests in still-active series. When listing examples on the Trope page and Character pages, we can signify in spoiler text the status of the crush: Unlucky, Anchored, Active, Predominant, or Victorious. The last should only reasonably apply to a finished series; Predominant would be used in place of Victorious in a still-active series in most cases.

If we do combine the Tropes, I heavily recommend cleanup. The Childhood Friend Love Interest would need to have meet her/his Crush Object either during the period when The Westermarck Effect was in force or shortly thereafter.

As examples, a Pokemon Trainer is able to go on quests when he turns ten. Most Wizards are able to go to Hogwarts on 1 September following their eleventh birthday. These are examples of Rites of Passage which clearly happen outside of the Westermarck window. As such, persons first met during  ^*

or after such events are ineligible for this trope. (Unless it is later revealed that they had meet earlier in life.)

Remember, to qualify, the Love Interest and her crushie would have to have met no later than the 2nd grade. If they meet in Junior High or after a common Rite of Passage after the 2nd Grade, then that Love Interest is disqualified from this Trope.

Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.

You're right, that Childhood Friends In Love is too biased towards the victorious kind, though I still like the idea of making it a relationship trope.

Helga is pretty much a running gag character, who was built as a device for that trope, but in many other cases, it's not the character who is described with that trope, but the situation. For example if the Unlucky Childhood Friend is the protagonist, he can't be a character as device "love interest" at the same time.

Any other suggestions for a title that would reach that effect, while doesn't say anything about the feelings being mutual? Maybe Childhood Friend Crush? anything else?

I don't think that we need to take the westermarck window that seriously. Many examples were written without specifically bringing attention to that effect, they met later, but they still refer to each other as childhood friends.

There are no disputes on the page about an age limit, so there is nothing to be fixed by installing a strict rule of thumb.

^ I do think you need to take account of the Westermarck effect in the trope description, though perhaps not by name. I know that awhile back I went in and cut out about 20 examples from the UCF page because they clearly weren't childhood friends, but people who met each other in, say, middle school. Or didn't even think of each other in those terms. Like Satsuki herself.