Okay, an index then? This seems very close to what we did earlier with Masturbation.
No, Masturbation is less inherently tropable. It's just an act. Not a trope about a relationship between three people be it sexual or romantic or both.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
All right, this is a new argument. Rather than the act needing to have any narrative significance to be a trope (as I thought you said) or needing to have specific narrative significance to be a trope (as I said), it must be about the relationship between people?
Well, let's look at some examples.
- I gave a hypothetical one on the previous page where the threesome has significance (it reveals the character's desperation and self-disgust) but different significance from any other threesome scenes. You said it belonged on the Three-Way Sex page. It had nothing to do with relationships between people.
- "On The Office, Michael brags that Todd Packer had a three-way with two saleswomen they met in a bar. Considering how repulsive Todd Packer is onscreen however, it could just be Michael telling tales." This has something to do with relationships - Michael and Todd's - but nothing to do with the relationship between the three sexual partners, two of whom may not even exist.
- "Todd from Scrubs, when pressed, admits he's had a threesome. Normally he would flaunt information like this, but it wasn't the 'cool kind.' Of course, this was before his sexuality was revealed as 'The Todd'." Again, significant, but it reveals something about Todd. It doesn't develop his relationship with other people.
- "In the episode 'The One with the Jellyfish', it was revealed that Phoebe was conceived from a threeway between her parents and the girl who ended up being her adoptive mother." Translation: Phoebe has a crazy past. Develops her characterization? Yes. Develops relationships? No.
Anyway, we've never had anything resembling a policy whereby "act with one person are not tropes; acts between people are."
Being about the relationship between people means it automatically has narrative significance. The people that a character is tied to help shape their characterization even if we never see those other characters. In all those cases, the act changes our view of the characters. The only exception is The Office one which would better fit something about characters making stuff up about other characters.
Even if we never see a character's parents, finding out about their ties to their parents changes our perception of them. It's the same thing with intimate partners.
edited 12th Jan '12 7:53:19 AM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Yes, finding out that a person's parents conceived them in a three-way in a garage tells something about them. Finding out a person masturbates while crying in the garage because hes impotent with his wife tells us something about him. But labeling the first as Three-Way Sex or labeling the second as Masturbation does nothing to document either scene. It would be just as useful (not useful at all) to label each one Significant Garage Scene.
Let's take it a step further back. Sex. Sex is always narratively significant (as is masturbation, as is three-way sex). Should we have a sex trope? No. Because sex can mean many things, many completely unconnected things. We can instead, and do, have a list of Sex Tropes.
And this isn't a lumper v splitter debate. A lumper might want to list the frustrated, lonely masturbator in the same page as the frustrated, lonely three-wayer. The splitter ight want separate pages. Both have valid positions. But if someone wants to list either of those on a page with the some guy on Entourage doing it on a plane while laughing, they're wrong.
Hi
Clock's ticking.
Ravenous Sophovore
Crowner stuck to thread.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
Bump for votes.
"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer
Ravenous Sophovore
Bumping again for votes.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
Having encountered neither of these tropes, I would have thought that either name was simply about "all guys want threesomes". The different treatment of the MMF arrangement did not immediately occur to me, although I now remember a good bit David Alan Grier did about it on Loveline years ago.
Hi
Calling in favor of the merge. Make it so.
AKA redirect it to A Threesome Is Hot, but simply delete the examples, which aren't about threesome's being hot. (They're either A Threesome Is Gay or just plain Three-Way Sex.)
Ravenous Sophovore
Still waiting on the merge here.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
Ok, guys: Which page is to be merged into which page?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Hurler of Swine
Threesomes Are Hot should be the final one, I think. And then someone ought to YKTTW Threesomes Are Kinda Gay or whatever we're gonna call it.
Finished this.
"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer
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".
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]")
Exampleless supertropes are only for Omnipresent Tropes. As Threesomes are rare in works, they wouldn't count. It should have examples unless all examples are covered by a stubtrope.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick