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So you're saying that a threesome implies specialness, exclusivity, sexual prowess? Indeed it could. If it did, that would be a trope. But that trope wouldn't be A Threesome Occurs. It would be The Elusive Threesome. And not just any threesome would end up on that page - the one in Y Tu Mama Tambien, for instance, would not.
"Supertropes in general" is really getting pretty far offtopic for this particular thread, Routerie. I'll make a thread to talk about them in Trope Talk.
edited 14th Oct '11 10:57:15 AM by Madrugada
Thanks, and I'll probably chime in there, but I'm not trying to talk about supertropes in general. I'm trying to argue that though supertropes exist, Three-Way Sex isn't one of them, or any trope at all. It's an element shared by different tropes without representing a trope of its own.
Looking at the description, I see that most of it does describe a particular trope. A type of Fanservice, about a sex scene chiefly from the man's pov. Another large fraction describes a totally different situation, a gag. But this description doesn't form the basis for all possible threesome examples. Suppose I add this example:
- In "Fire and Water" Charlie wakes up, drugged. We see two women in his bed.
The correct response would be: so what? This contains none of the the fanservice or triumph or dramatic tension that the trope description talks of. In fact it's a different trope altogether - and it would have been pretty much the same if he'd woken up with only one woman.
If we had a trope called Sexy Threesome or A Three Way Is Hot, I'd agree that Twin Threesome Fantasy would be a subtrope. It's a variant, maybe one significant enough for its own page, but it plays off the supertrope to the same purpose as the parent trope.
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I was including an example to prove my point, so I could have invented as many details as I wanted to suit my argument. If you want some more, here they are:
- In the episode "Charlie Carries On," we see Charlie get out of bed. Two naked women are there; one appears to have vomited in her sleep. Charlie pulls on his underwear and walks to the mirror, and he stares at himself for a few seconds. Then he reaches for his gun. He puts the barrel to his head and pulls the trigger, but it jams. He throws it to the ground and starts crying.
edited 14th Oct '11 11:28:18 AM by Routerie
The first version,
- In "Fire and Water" Charlie wakes up, drugged. We see two women in his bed.
is very close to X Just X. It's a poorly written example because there's not enough information.
The second one,
- In the episode "Charlie Carries On, " we see Charlie get out of bed. Two naked women are there; one appears to have vomited in her sleep. Charlie pulls on his underwear and walks to the mirror, and he stares at himself for a few seconds. Then he reaches for his gun. He puts the barrel to his head and pulls the trigger, but it jams. He throws it to the ground and starts crying.
there's a lot more information about the scene, but most of it (the part I put in green) is completely irrelevant to the trope. The one bit of information that is partly relevant and isn't in the first version (that one of the women appears to have vomited) carries extra information for the audience, but not about the threesome. The extra information is about what probably happened before the threesome — it was a wild night.
The fact that an example can be poorly written is no evidence for or against the validity of the trope its attached to. I could write bad examples for every trope on the wiki.
edited 14th Oct '11 11:42:21 AM by Madrugada
Here's a different way of writing the same example:
- In "Charlie Carries On," right before Charlie's suicide attempt, we see that he spent the night with two women. It was evidently a wild night (one still has vomit on her body) and Charlie appears thoroughly disgusted with them - and with himself.
Here, the threesome indicates something. It seems to indicate a wild but regrettable night in the life of a depressed man. This is very different from the fanservice sex scene that the page description suggests is the threesome trope. Even though they both revolve around three-way sex, they don't share a trope.
edited 14th Oct '11 11:48:46 AM by Routerie
Is it an issue that both of these tropes seem to be coming from a distinctly male Po V?
Yes, it's certainly tropable! But it's a different trope from what Three-Way Sex claims to be about. Three-Way Sex talks, when it's talking about a trope at all, about a fanservicey sex scene - which is also tropable, but is a different trope from Deviant Destructive Sex.
I think the closest case we have to this would be Masturbation. We used to have a page for Masturbation, and since we gave it a fancy name ("A Date with Rosie Palms") we gave the impression that it was a trope. It wasn't. Masturbation is tropable in many ways, but they aren't all the same trope. The A Date with Rosie Palms listed as "examples" of the "trope":
- A sexually frustrated woman cries while masturbating furiously
- A teenager mentions listening to the song 'I Touch Myself' and only later understanding the lyrics' meaning
- A teenager is caught masturbating. Hilarity ensues.
- A character walks offstage, voicing their intentions to masturbate.
These aren't people sitting on chairs - they all have narrative significance. But they all have different, unrelated narrative significance. So we discussed the matter in a thread, made some subtropes and cut all examples from A Date with Rosie Palms, leaving it as an index for masturbation tropes. And if people want to pothole humorously to it, fine, but it's not a trope in itself.
edited 16th Oct '11 3:23:17 AM by Routerie
Anyone else want to chime in? I suggest cutting Three-Way Sex or leaving it as an exampleless supertrope, others suggest cutting the subtropes.
Then the trope is "When a threesome happens, then it means X, or X also happens, Etc."
The trope is the various things that accompany threesomes or are implied by them in narrative, not just "threesome". If we actually had enough threesome tropes then it could be an index, but otherwise this page is just a list of threesomes in media and is therefore pointless and not a trope.
edited 11th Jan '12 4:49:39 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
Actually Threesome would be a subtrope Love Interests which is a high level supertropes because it describe how characters interact. Thus it should be a trope, just a subtrope of a trope that we have but lacks examples. Mostly because it's so high level it's basically omnipresent.
The trope with Threesome is that there's a connection, sexual or romantic or both between these three people. This shows that they have a deeper relationship than just three people who happen to be standing in the same room.
edited 11th Jan '12 7:13:13 PM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickWasn't the article for this Three-Way Sex and now it's A Threesome is Manly?
edited 11th Jan '12 8:30:49 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)No, it was always A Threesome is Manly. It's even mentioned in the first post.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickThreesomes are used in narratives in a variety of ways, we just need to spell that out more clearly. A girl having a threesome with two dudes can be a) sexually adventurous, b) confident in her sexuality, c) trying out something with her boyfriend. A dude involved in a threesome with another dude and girl can be a) experimenting b) also confident in his own sexuality c) a bit of a player etc etc.
Basically the trope description needs work.
edited 11th Jan '12 10:35:44 PM by Falco
"You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed." - Emily Wong.I suppose, but that's so general. It could be a truly romantic relationship between all three (rare, I think), it could be a one-night stand with a main character and two extras for fanservice... but I'd be find with making it an exampleless supertrope like Love Interest.
Crown Description:
This trope isn't thriving (31 wicks, 14 inbounds). It is supposed to be about the gay subtext involved in threesomes with two men and a woman, but it's often misused for simply "threesomes are hot".

What about a birthday then? A birthday, if mentioned, is always significant. A character never says "It's my birthday" only for it to never be remarked on again. So are Ironic Birthday, Significant Birth Date and A Birthday, Not a Break all subtropes of Birthday? No. Because they aren't all related but distinct ways of achieving the supertrope's purpose. Rather, they all achieve different purposes using the same concept.
edited 14th Oct '11 10:30:00 AM by Routerie