Guess The Trope: Red Skies Crossover

I can pretty much guarantee that nobody will be able to guess this. Time for a rename?

Do you mean no one who doesn't get the reference?

...But yeah, it needs to be renamed.

How about Lip Service Crossover?

Well, I did know it, because I remember the Trope Namer.

That said, it's incredibly obtuse even if you do remember it - supporting a rename. Either Lip Service Crossover or Informed Crossover sounds good to me.

Well, honestly I got it at the first try because in my close circle we use the trope to mock DC fans... Actually I'd promote a rename of this one.

Sounds like somebody named a bitching trope after one of their hated examples.

Informed Crossover.

I'm not sure if Informed Crossover is fitting...

Informed Ability (and the rest of that trope family) means that the ability is never actually there, but the characters mention it. This "red sky crossover" means that the crossover is there, but the characters mention it only as a Shout-Out ("hey, what is that?"). If anything it feels like the inverse.

I know it's semantically the wrong word, but the above description suggests me something like Passerby Crossover. If we could find a better equivalent word...

Not quite - Informed Ability is that said ability is never shown, but not necessarily that it isn't there period (at least, according to the description). Similarly, this trope is about a crossover that isn't actually shown (there are other causes for a red sky after all... one of them being sunset).

How about Just Crossing By (a pun on Just Passing By)

Rule #1: We don't change titles that are working fine just because you don't like them.

This title is performing exceptionally well, especially considering how infrequently it occurs. Unless you can prove misuse, this is going to fall under Redirects Are Free.

It's a preexisting term.

Do a search for it excluding tvtropes.

"Red Skies Crossover" isn't one, and it looks like "red skies" isn't a term used when referring to this trope, so...

^^ I just did, putting it in quotes so the only pages using the entire phrase, exactly, would return as hit. I got this: About 557 results (0.28 seconds). Not great results to play the "pre-existing term" card with.

edited 15th Jun '11 3:30:46 PM by Madrugada

It's not always used with that exact phrasing. "Red Sky" in the singular is more common, and it might be described as a "Red Sky Issue" instead of "Crossover," etc.

The concept and "red sky" link has definitely been around for a long time, though.

And... isn't 557 a fairly large number? I mean, it's not a term that's going to come up every day, but still....

edited 15th Jun '11 4:07:10 PM by suedenim

Generally, we look at around 10,000 to be the level of high usage to be classified as a pre-existing term. I think.

Ten thousand of what? "Unique" results according to Saint Google? Domain-split results based on the field of application of the term? Social network referrals?

557 sounds pretty good to me considering that the Exact Words were used. Any semblance of using the term in a wider context is gonna deliver higher results.

That said, I still favour a rename or a pretty good redirect. I'm still leaning to Passerby Crossover, but something like Just Crossing By (or perhaps the more explicit Just Crossovering By) might be better.

I'm good with Just Crossovering By.

I find the "crossing by" metaphor too Just For Pun for comfort. The level of abstraction involved in decoding it is just too much IMO.

The current name is actually not that bad. From my experience it needed to be explained once for it to click exactly what the "Red Skies" stand for - and I've seen much worse in terms of how much sense a title makes (some titles just never click and you go back to the page again and again to remind yourself). Still, I can see the point of the "Once is too many" camp. Seems to me the only title proposed so far that hits the "self-explanatory" mark is Lip Service Crossover.

edited 16th Jun '11 5:05:14 AM by TripleElation

557 is a lot?

-laughs really hard-

Sorry about that. Really, I don't care about this name, but I'm neutral on this issue.

edited 16th Jun '11 5:16:27 AM by chihuahua0

It seems like a fair amount given that the term is mostly, if not exclusively used when discussing American superhero comic books, and then only in the era where "crossovers" existed. I mean, yes, I'm entirely willing to grant that the term is seldom if ever used when discussing 1970s cop shows or Regency novels or 17th century Italian opera, but is that really the standard?

It is kind of a specialized term. I've heard it far more at comic cons than on the internet though.

Well, if you think it's good enough, I'll bow to your comic book nerdiness. I just consume media, I don't chat with fandoms.

No matter what we do, some redirects would be really nice.

Added Lip Service Crossover as a redirect.