Heroes and being Dangerously Genre Savvy.

So reading over the Dangerously Genre-Savvy page, I noted that it seems to be purely a villain thing. why is that? Can't a hero be Dangerously Genre-Savvy?

I mean, if the hero knows the villain is going to target Civilians, and gets them out of the way before hand, or something along those lines. There must be some examples of Heroic Dangerous Genre Savviness

What say you tropers?

edited 31st Mar '11 9:59:03 AM by HandsomeRob

No, that's just plain Genre Savvy. Why would a hero be dangerous by being Genre Savvy? Think about it.

Actually, my understanding was that Dangerously Genre-Savvy is to Genre Savvy as Exploited Trope is to Lampshade Hanging. With Genre Savvy, your character is aware of the conventions of his/her genre and can see them coming. With a Dangerously Genre-Savvy character, the character is not only aware of tropes, he/she actively uses and exploits them. It's more common with villains probably just because villains tend to be more Genre Blind then heroes, at least in the kind of things I read, so having villains actively defy their Genre Blindness is also more common. (Plus, villains tend to be smarter then heroes anyway).

In other words, the "dangerous" refers not to their intentions but to the fact that they actually take advantage of knowing about tropes. As an example:

Genre Savvy Hero: Comments sarcastically on the clichéd nature of the villain's Motive Rant.

Dangerously Genre-Savvy Hero: Defies Talking Is a Free Action and knocks out the villain in the middle of his Motive Rant.

edited 31st Mar '11 3:43:58 PM by nrjxll

No, that's not the distinction I'm aware of. By the writeup of Dangerously Genre-Savvy, it's distinctively a villain trope.

Strange... It does indicate it's a villain trope, but I don't see why heroes can't act in the same way. Overly narrow trope?

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Why is the tropes distinctly for villains?

Also, I totally forgot I started this topic until I came back here on a whim.

How, exactly, is a hero dangerously genre savvy? When a hero is Genre Savvy it's usually treated as a good thing, or at least a neutral thing depending on how well they treat the Fourth Wall.

edited 3rd Apr '11 7:54:44 AM by Fighteer

They don't have to play by the "rules" you know.

But Genre Savvy is just about being aware of tropes. Dangerously Genre-Savvy is the one where the character actively makes use of his knowledge of tropes. I don't see why that's exclusive to villains.

The hero's Genre Savviness could be dangerous to the villains. Heroes can be dangerous people too.

Yeah, and even if they're not strictly dangerous to the villains themselves, they're dangerous to said villain's plans.

Also, allow me to point out the following passages from various articles, which that there's some "schizophrenic" confusion on the distinction between Genre Savvy and Dangerously Genre-Savvy.

From the Trope Distinctions:

From Genre Savvy:

From Dangerously Genre-Savvy:

From Exploited Trope:

From The Universal Genre Savvy Guide:

From the Sliding Scale Of Anti Heroes:

So, the questions are these:

1. Is Genre Savvy really always "passive"?
2. Is Dangerously Genre-Savvy really limited to villains actively using Genre Savviness to their advantage?
3. Is Dangerously Genre-Savvy really just "having an attack of Real Life common sense", or does it involve "slightly bending The Fourth Wall"?

Well, there's gotta be more distinction then simply "Genre Savvy But For Villains".

A lot of the examples on the Dangerously Genre-Savvy page aren't actual examples of genre savviness. Genre savviness would be if the villain refused to tell the hero their secret plan because they know that in stories that always comes back to bite the villain. On Dangerously Genre-Savvy, however, a lot of the examples are more like the villain doesn't tell the hero their secret plan because they realize it's a stupid thing to do, no knowledge of stories required.

In my opinion, those examples need to be trimmed, but this isn't the Trope Repair Shop, so . . .

P.S. I think the distinction's that, a lot of times, characters are Genre Savvy, but they only talk about tropes, rather than actually using them. Dangerously Genre-Savvy seems to be more about characters realizing they're in a story (or that they're in a world where things work like in a story) and use their knowledge of tropes to manipulate events towards their own ends.

edited 18th Jul '11 5:08:19 AM by RavenWilder

That's the distinction I've always understood as well. I also agree that Dangerously Genre-Savvy should not include simple common sense, but should involve some actual Medium Awareness or the like - a villain who averts Just Between You and Me because he's intelligent and knows how stupid it is would not be an example.

Technically, Genre Savvy does rely on using common sense... by identifying the similarities between the circumstances they're in and the conventions of fictional works that they've previously seen/read beforehand, if not outright participated in (e.g. the Genre Savvy hero of an action-adventure film used to work as an actor in action-adventure films himself, hence his Genre Savviness). See also the Playing With Wiki entry.

edited 18th Jul '11 7:03:08 AM by MarqFJA

I never saw Dangerously Genre-Savvy as requiring Medium Awareness. It's essentially the Defied Trope version of Bond Villain Stupidity — the villain who's read (or at least understands) the Evil Overlord List and tries to follow it. You can also look at it as the villain studying from the defeats of his predecessors and learning from them.

Syndrome from The Incredibles has it in a couple of places — his, "You sly dog, you caught me monologuing," speech shows that he's at least taken the time to study what other supervillains in his world did wrong. Of course, like most other such villains, it doesn't stop him from making his own mistakes. Similarly, Wheatley from Portal 2 manages to pull some rather nasty surprises on the protagonist because he studied how the past Big Bad messed things up, and he very nearly wins (for certain definitions of "win", anyway) because of it.

edited 18th Jul '11 7:19:45 AM by Fighteer

But someone can avert Bond Villain Stupidity without knowing they're avoiding a cliche. It could be they're not even familiar with fictional works where the villain tells the hero their secret plan or puts them in an easily escapable death trap, or at least they don't think about those stories much, so it never even occurred to them in the first place to do anything like that.

For them to be Dangerously Genre-Savvy they need to display knowledge of how the situation they're in usually transpires in stories, otherwise they're not twisting genre conventions to suit their ends; they're just not using certain tropes.

To me the difference is that the Genre Savvy character sees the similarities and comments on them; the Dangerously Genre-Savvy character sees them and actively uses them (or tries to).

Whether the Dangerously Genre-Savvy character succeeds or not is irrelevant and often dependent on the genre.

That's what I thought as well.

@Raven: I said defied, not averted. Bond Villain Stupidity averted is simply, "the villain is competent and not inclined towards traditional stupidity." Defied is when he takes special care not to do those things and comments on it. I like to think of Defied Trope as a lampshaded aversion.

Ah, I see. In the context of Defied Trope, that makes sense, but since it is possibly to defy an expectation without being aware of the expectation in the first place, I misunderstood you.

The trope has had its current description more or less since 2007. As distasteful as I find over-narrowing a trope, I must admit it was originally a villains-only trope. And unless you can find misuse, we can't change that.

Bump.

Since when did (slightly) expanding a trope's definition require proving misuse? I believe that's only for renames, cutlisting, and transplants.

edited 13th Aug '11 9:11:23 PM by MarqFJA

The reason it's mostly villains who are Dangerously Genre-Savvy is because if the hero were too Genre Savvy, he'd inch towards Boring Invincible Hero, and if the villain is genre savvy, that just makes him a more effective villain. Also we tend to rate danger in terms of how dangerous it is to the good guys. The good guys tend to be the protagonists.

edited 20th Aug '11 1:33:59 AM by NoirGrimoir

But according to that claim, it is theoretically possible for heroes to be Dangerously Genre-Savvy; they just usually aren't. This is also the viewpoint I hold.

Fighteer, on the other hand, claims that Dangerously Genre-Savvy excludes heroes by its inherent nature.

We still haven't gotten a clear answer, though, on which is and/or should be correct.