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Character trope rename: The Libby

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Deadlock Clock: Jul 26th 2011 at 11:59:00 PM
Heatth (X-Troper) Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
#126: Jul 16th 2011 at 1:45:41 PM

[up]I don't think anyone ever said it passed the One Mario Limit. Just that, despite not passing, it doesn't cause confusion anyway.

About the first line in the description. How much this have been there? Who put it there? Why was that put there? These are all very important. This is a wiki. A single person who believed the trope could be confusion, may have added that line, without further research. That line, alone, is not prove there have been confusion. It this was supported by some misuse (and, specifically, this precise kind of misuse), it would mean something. Right now, it is just a line.

Discar Since: Jun, 2009
#127: Jul 16th 2011 at 1:49:37 PM

Hawkture Shorts 155, apparently. He doesn't have a page or any recent edits. Should we just zap the line?

edited 16th Jul '11 1:49:49 PM by Discar

Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.
Heatth (X-Troper) Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
#128: Jul 16th 2011 at 1:58:01 PM

At May 15th of this year, even. Two months old, only. I believe the trope have been going fine for much longer then that. I seriously don't think this line prove anything more then 'a single person thought it may be confused with "women's libber"'.

Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#129: Jul 16th 2011 at 2:13:37 PM

So the disambig was (relatively speaking) a recent edit? Okay....

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
CaissasDeathAngel House Lewis: Sanity is Relative from Dumfries, SW Scotland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
House Lewis: Sanity is Relative
#130: Jul 16th 2011 at 2:22:46 PM

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that libby brings connotations of Women's Lib with it. It is a relevant slang term.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.
Bailey from Next Sunday, A.D. Since: Jan, 2001
#131: Jul 16th 2011 at 2:56:01 PM

Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English has "libby" as an adjective for 'pertaining to attitudes characteristic of the women's liberation movement'.

(This is from memory and not an exact quote; I'll see if I can double check the precise wording of that when I'm home, but it's definitely along those lines.)

TripleElation Diagonalizing The Matrix from Haifa, Isarel Since: Jan, 2001
Diagonalizing The Matrix
#132: Jul 16th 2011 at 3:36:44 PM

From my experience when a crowner in its mid-early stages looks like the one below, it means we are not renaming.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
CrypticMirror Cryptic Mirror from Scotland Since: Jan, 2001
#133: Jul 16th 2011 at 3:40:11 PM

[up]yeah, well until you jinxed it. [lol]

edited 16th Jul '11 3:40:32 PM by CrypticMirror

TripleElation Diagonalizing The Matrix from Haifa, Isarel Since: Jan, 2001
Diagonalizing The Matrix
#134: Jul 16th 2011 at 3:53:06 PM

[up] Pfah! If only such superstitions could overpower the cold, unforgiving might of statistics.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
Bailey from Next Sunday, A.D. Since: Jan, 2001
#135: Jul 16th 2011 at 4:52:18 PM

This is might be an odd question, but do we ever actually check where inbounds are coming from in these discussions?

This backlink checker seems to indicate our biggest source of inbound is Wikipedia's article on the archetype... which uses the term "Queen Bee" and only mentions in the link section that we call it something else.

What was it that inbound was supposed to demonstrate, again?

MousaThe14 Writer, Artist, Ignored from Northern Virginia Since: Jan, 2011 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
Writer, Artist, Ignored
#136: Jul 16th 2011 at 8:09:47 PM

Inbounds are meant to indicate whether or note a trope is gaining speed outside of the wiki itself.

The Blog The Art
chihuahua0 Since: Jul, 2010
#137: Jul 16th 2011 at 10:45:37 PM

-looks at Crowner-

At this pace, unless we get a wave of new voters, the name is probably going to stay, which I'm fine with.

TripleElation Diagonalizing The Matrix from Haifa, Isarel Since: Jan, 2001
Diagonalizing The Matrix
#138: Jul 17th 2011 at 12:15:11 AM

Troaccid, you did not "neutralize" the pro section of the crowner. You nerfed it. The case for renaming is not that the title "May be unclear"- the case is that it is unclear (which may or may not be true). I would so dearly like to edit the con section to stop saying that inbounds indicate the trope is "well used and understood", which I think does not follow, but as far as opposing arguments go I believe a hands-off approach is best.

EDIT: though I disapproved of the above-discussed edit, I was not the one who reverted it.

edited 17th Jul '11 2:33:19 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
Madrugada Since: Jan, 2001
#139: Jul 17th 2011 at 12:40:25 AM

Assuming that the inbounds indicate use outside the wiki and clarity is overstating the fact. Generally, the facts about inbound numbers should be put under "neutral": they exist but we can't interpret them with any certainty. All we can be sure of is how many there are. not what the link says at the other end. Wicks we can check for misuse; inbounds we can't. And technically, "We'd have to rename other tropes" isn't a con, it's also a neutral statement of fact.

edited 17th Jul '11 12:44:43 AM by Madrugada

troacctid (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#140: Jul 17th 2011 at 3:10:01 AM

Checking a few more wicks. Not sure about a couple of them.

Correct:

  1. Characters.Batman: As a result, he became even more withdrawn and angry at the world, culminating in him bringing a gun to the high school senior prom and attacking Jerk Jock Bo Griggs and his Libby girlfriend Sherry Squires (who had rejected Crane's affections), killing the latter.
  2. Characters.Batman Beyond: [Bobbi "Blade" Summer]
  3. Battle Athletes: Ling-Pha
  4. FanFicRecs.Battle Royale: The writer takes a plethora of High School archetypes and injects them with depth and dimension. No Archetype is safe, not The Libby, not the Jerk Jock and certainly not the Shrinking Violet or the Class Clown and his Plucky Sidekick.
  5. Characters.Battle Royale: [Hirono Shimizu is] much more violent than would usually be expected from this trope.
  6. Beautiful Creatures: Savannah Snow, with Emily and Eden as her Girl Posse.
  7. Beauty Equals Goodness: Interestingly, Pansy Parkinson is described as looking like "a pug", despite her being The Libby.
  8. Beauty Is Bad: Can overlap with The Libby, The Brainless Beauty, Light Is Not Good, and The Cheerleader.
  9. Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted, but still present in the live-action Casper movie, which, for the record, was scripted by two women. Kat is exempt from the wackier slapstick stunts, being locked in a closet while her father battles the Ghostly Trio. Also, the Up-And-At-'Em Machine seems to have more exaggerated effects on the villains than her, in fact seeming to effect only the male villain. However, the villainess doesn't seem to be quite as exempt from physical comedy as Kat and additionally the local Libby gets a slapsticky comeupence.
  10. Beauty to Beast: Of course if this happens to a Jerk Jock or The Libby - or simply a physically attractive Butt-Monkey - it may all be played for comedy and be undone by episode's end.
  11. Beauty to Beast: This is the fate of Bridget and Heather in The Final.
  12. Be a Whore to Get Your Man: Subverted in My Little Pony Tales when Melody makes over Bright Eyes to be 'cool' rather than a bookworm. Her new look and attitude completely backfires, causing an also-made up Lancer to reject her at the same time she rejects his new persona. The two get together after reverting to their normal selves, much to Melody's complete confusion.
  13. Be Careful What You Wish For: Hannah Montana- Miley wishes she was just Hannah Montana all the time. It is granted and her dad married a Gold Digger, her best friend became The Libby, and her brother became a hobo.

Not sure:

FarseerLolotea from America's Finest City Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#141: Jul 17th 2011 at 9:26:12 AM

I'm in favor of changing this to "Queen Bee" (already a redirect; what I've usually heard it called IRL) or possibly "Alpha Bitch." Up-voted.

edited 17th Jul '11 9:27:47 AM by FarseerLolotea

Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#142: Jul 17th 2011 at 9:41:42 AM

@Madrugada: Actually, that last one should be "the trope has snowclones" (which is a neutral fact); "we would have to rename the snowclones" casts negative connotations, implying that it is an argument against renaming.

Take something like Knifing The Libby In The Back — even though it's named after the same character, it has additional context (somebody getting betrayed or backstabbed) that its progenitor trope does not.

edited 17th Jul '11 9:41:55 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
TripleElation Diagonalizing The Matrix from Haifa, Isarel Since: Jan, 2001
Diagonalizing The Matrix
#143: Jul 17th 2011 at 9:46:10 AM

About the "Sample is not statistically valid"- If we do accept that there were 33 wicks picked randomly and not a single one of them was bad, I'm not so sure that argument holds water.

Define: W - the event "Wick check did not find a single bad wick"
M(X) - the event "There is a rate of exactly X misuse"
Ml(X) - the event "There is at least a rate of x misuse".
Assuming that our prior belief over how much misuse there is is evenly distributed over the range of 0 (0%) to 1 (100%) and using Bayes' theorem we can calculate the probability that there is at least 10% misuse, given the wick check:

P(Ml(0.1)|W) = P(Ml(0.1))P(W|Ml(0.1)) / P(W)

P(Ml(0.1)) is the prior probability we assigned to there being at least 10% misuse- 0.9.

P(W|Ml(10)) is the probability that the 33-wick check did not find any bad wicks, given that there is at least a rate of 0.1 misuse. It is equal to the sum*

from x=0.1 to x=1 of P(W|M(x)) - divided by 1800. P(W|M(x)) is equal to the product from i=1 to i=33 of (2000(1-x)-i)/2000 (a fact of combinatorics). Wolfram alpha gives this sum as about 0.000664234 .

P(W) is the overall probability for the wick check to have happened as it did by our assumptions. It is equal to the sum*

from 0 to 1 of P(W|M(x)) - divided by 2000. We know that P(W|M(x)) is equal to the product from i=1 to i=33 of (2000(1-x)-i)/2000). Wolfram alpha gives the result of this sum as ~ 0.022.

Therefore the probability that there is at least 10% misuse, given the wick check, is roughly 0.9 * 0.000664234 / 0.022, which is about 2.7%.

tl;dr: Math says that if all those wicks were randomly checked and actually correct, we should give Troaccid a break. Probability of some gross error in the above calculation is 99.999% tongue so take it with a grain of salt, but you should have an intuition that if at least 1 out of every 10 wicks is bad, checking 33 and turning up not a single bad wick is very unlikely.

EDIT: This post [down] is responding to another calculation that was removed from the post.

edited 17th Jul '11 10:57:45 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
Stratadrake Dragon Writer Since: Oct, 2009
Dragon Writer
#144: Jul 17th 2011 at 10:21:44 AM

^ Although the answer is correct, the correct operator is (1800 P 33), because 1800! would be well over five thousand digits long.

edited 17th Jul '11 10:24:18 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
CaissasDeathAngel House Lewis: Sanity is Relative from Dumfries, SW Scotland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
House Lewis: Sanity is Relative
#145: Jul 17th 2011 at 10:46:38 AM

[up][up] The wick count was deemed inaccurate based on the standard site formula for Wick checks of "square root of the minimum number of wicks, 50 being the minimum, or all wicks if there's less than 50".

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.
shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#146: Jul 17th 2011 at 10:50:11 AM

[up] We've checked over 50 wiks total now and the root of the number of wiks is less than that. Still 0 misuse.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Bailey from Next Sunday, A.D. Since: Jan, 2001
#147: Jul 17th 2011 at 2:17:03 PM

[up] So, obviously I'm not familiar with every example, but I'm a little surprised we're coming up zero misuse in the wicks. There are examples that look wrong to me even on the trope page itself. For instance:

  • Under Geoff Johns, Batman has become the male version of the Libby in the Justice League, with Hal Jordan being positioned as his chief rival, due to the fact that Hal is the only JLA member who isn't afraid of Batman (indeed, going so far as to punch Batman unconscious when Batman's doubts about Hal led him to try and prevent Hal from stopping the Parallax entity).

Ruling with an iron fist or being influential or intimidating in a group of heroes doesn't make you a male Libby; if Batman has a girl posse and is maintaining his status for status's sake by totally making Aquaman feel fat, then he's a libby, and also, I really need to buy that comic.

There are also a few instances that are not noted as parodies or deconstructions or anything, but mention that the girl in question is not popular and/or has no friends. Are we counting wicks as right anytime a hot girl is snobby or bitchy or superficial without fulfilling the "head of the girl-pack" part of the trope?

edited 17th Jul '11 2:23:04 PM by Bailey

Madrugada Since: Jan, 2001
#148: Jul 17th 2011 at 5:28:46 PM

We shouldn't be. She needs to be popular and head of the pack. She's usually hot, and well-off if not rich, but those aren't absolutely required.

Bailey from Next Sunday, A.D. Since: Jan, 2001
#149: Jul 17th 2011 at 6:41:59 PM

Okay, thanks. I've taken a look at our wick check(s), and a few of these do seem to be incorrect upon closer examination:

  • In Battle Athletes, Ling-Pha is rich, and uses her wealth and resources to cheat at sports, but other characters regard her as annoying. She's not a popular girl, and doesn't have any interest in social standing — she's only interested in winning. (She's also a Chinese stereotype, complete with broken English/Japanese, played for laughs).
  • In Adventureland, Lisa P. is just a Brainless Beauty. We never see her being bitchy or manipulative, and we have no indication that she's actually popular at all. She's the designated object of lust amongst her coworkers, which is not the same as having friends or social standing.
  • The example from Beauty to Beast is exactly half incorrect. Both Bridget and Heather from The Final are potholed to The Libby, but only Heather is the head mean girl in school. Bridget is a member of her Girl Posse, a passive follower, and not all that mean.
  • Also the Batman Returns example, listed under questionable, is incorrect. The Ice Princess is a naive beauty queen in the final print, and the deleted scene only makes her a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. We can speculate that she might have been a stereotypical popular girl in high school, but there's no hard evidence.

Also, I'm wondering about the example marked correct from A Drop Of Poison, since it's an unpublished troper work, and we haven't a way of checking it at all. (Some of the other tropes listed for the character indicate that she's an aloof cynic with no friends).

edited 17th Jul '11 6:46:26 PM by Bailey

TripleElation Diagonalizing The Matrix from Haifa, Isarel Since: Jan, 2001
Diagonalizing The Matrix
#150: Jul 17th 2011 at 9:46:27 PM

[up] What? Seriously? Passing off "well, arguably..." wicks as outright correct use?

If true, this is very alarming. At this point nothing short of proving this title causes cancer will change anything (and maybe not even that), but, well. All in all, the lows this thread has sunk to Gaming-The-System-wise are just depressing.

edited 17th Jul '11 9:50:17 PM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

SingleProposition: RenameTheLibby
15th Jul '11 1:52:55 PM

Crown Description:

Vote up for yes, down for no.

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