Too many tropes being labeled "Medium-specific"?

First, I'd like to start with my argument.

Tropes are tools. This means anyone can pick them up and use them. As such, I feel that any trope written to be medium specific should be re-written.

It's possible for a trope to depend on a mechanic of a medium, such as the various Camera Tropes, but any medium that uses that mechanic has free reign to use that trope.

Even then, parodies and works that are "set" in another medium can use them. Think of the various Web Comics that use Hit Points, one of the many Gameplay Tropes.

Plot tropes, by definition, cannot be restricted by medium, since anyone can use a plot.

Cultural originating tropes, such as those from specific regions can also be used by other mediums, even if it's just gratuitous symbolism.

Nor do I feel that mentioning that a medium has a particular fondness of a trope in the description is a good idea, as it sets people into thinking of the medium, instead of the trope.

As such, I would like to propose that we hunt down any and all tropes written in a medium specific way and remove the implication that other mediums are not allowed to use those tropes.

As long as you don't try to hide the history and the influence of the trope, (like the whole single hottip fiasco with Girl's Love) I'm okay with it.

Both the history and influence of the trope are secondary to defining the trope. If necessary, we could break off a History namespace for that. Or just use the Analysis page.

Yeah, they definitely still need some line like "this is much more popular among the western superhero genre" or something like that. True, the history of the trope isn't as important as the trope itself, but it is still important.

I don't think saying a genre likes a trope is bad, since genres are defined as a collection of tropes anyway, but having "[Medium X] loves this trope!" always seems like somebody trying to gush about their favorite medium. Which is bad.

Look at something like Save the World (or was it Saving the World), it's in TRS for both a rename and a minor re-write because somebody tried to say that "the original plot evolves into the hero saving the world" is Video Game specific. This isn't even a particularly difficult change in a lot of cases, it's just somebody not doing the write up well*

While generally true, I'm sure there are certain tropes that are medium-specific subtropes of others and/or which by their very nature cannot be played straight in other media. This is particularly noticeable when discussing interactive media (i.e. Video Games) versus non-interactive media (everything else).

Timed Mission, for example, is exclusive to videogames because it's how a Race Against the Clock is enforced as a gameplay mechanic.

Likewise, you cannot have Schrödinger's Gun in non-interactive media, well, at least not without some interaction between the author and audience.

edited 13th Jul '11 8:56:24 AM by Stratadrake

And those are mechanic specific. Tabletop Games could include one (I think), it would depend on it's set up. You can also invoke one for a game within a work. Something like that is tied to the mechanics not the medium (which, admittedly, is just a bundle of mechanics). I think it would be best to assume that any given trope isn't medium specific until proven otherwise.

We should also go on a campaign through YKTTW (and probably mention it in the YKTTW writting help) that if you start with that assumption, you've done something wrong.

Seems sane. The mechanics tropes are pretty important, as they are a huge part of the "vocabulary" of the medium, but I agree that there is very little else, storytelling trope-wise, that is specific to a medium.

edited 13th Jul '11 9:11:23 AM by FastEddie

I vehemently disagree. Saying "Tropes are tools, and therefore anything which can't be used in every media isn't really a trope" is like saying that a wood chisel isn't really tool because a baker doesn't use it, or that a spatula isn't a tool, because a cabinet maker doesn't use it.

There are visual tropes that can't be used in literature, and prose tropes that can't be used in live-action TV. There are tropes that can only be done in animation, because a real-live body can't do that.

We already addressed that, Madrugada. Tropes that discuss the mechanics of a medium are fair game. Plots, Characterization Tropes, setting tropes are not and cannot be medium or genre-exclusive.

That's why I tried to set up an exception for things like mechanics and parodies. Visuals and animation are the mechanics that allow those tropes to occur, and thus are the only restrictions on their occurrence.

I did not say that

I said

To extend the wood chisel analogy, a baker can pick up and use one, but they may not be able to use it well.

I feel that it's part of the "insular" problem Eddie is concerned about, one medium fandom is building tropes around their medium simply because it's where they hang out.

Or to further specify, things like Sweat Drop is a trope that can be used by any drawn/animated medium, be it Anime, Manga, Comicbook, Webcomic, Western Animation, Video Game, whatever. Claiming it's only used by japanese works will discourage people to look for examples from outside of japanese works. Considering there's a variety of mediums that do use Sweat Drop, it stands to reason that once a trope is created and used, anyone with the same mechanics can use it.

Well, sometimes, the bread gets baked really well into the pan and you have to chisel it out somehow, and a spatula does help with spreading varnish onto wood easier..

OK, enough kidding. One thing I do think is that even with mechanics tropes, those aren't necessarily as tied to a single medium as much as it might appear. Now, it might be that they haven't been ported yet (or frequently ported yet) to other media.

Of course, anything for plot, characterization, appearance, or several other tropes couldn't really be medium-specific, even if Save the World isn't commonly used in Live-Action TV (well, not compared to how often movies or video games use it).

I think it's more of a problem to encourage the other extreme: Ignoring that a trope originated or is widely used by one media (you can't deny that Sweat Drop is a trope often used by Anime and Manga). But as long as that isn't done, I think this will solve an existing problem.

And to use the wood chisel analogy better: Maybe the baker can use it to poke holes into his unconventional cake.

edited 13th Jul '11 9:31:25 AM by chihuahua0

I think the problem with television series and Save the World has more to do with Status Quo Is God rather than anything inherent in the mechanics of the medium. We should probably continue that in that TRS thread though.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the OP, I feel that once parodies come into the picture even mechanic limitations go out the window. It doesn't even have to be a comedy one.

For instance Webcomic.Goblins Life Through Their Eyes (or was it just Goblins?) a webcomic is a drama/action/adventure show where characters have their hitpoints visibly displayed over them as they die. This is a non-interactive medium using an interactive mechanic because they can. As a result, writing the description of Hit Points as something restricted to Video Games, or just games in general, would exclude valid webcomic/weboriginal examples. If you wanted to say they're gameplay tropes, you'd be right. Saying they're tropes that only show up in games is wrong.

Edit: I partially agree. Since we're relatively positive (I'm pretty sure, but if someone wants to dig up the history...) Sweat Drop originated in Japan animated (I don't know if it first showed up in Anime or Manga or Videogames), that deserves a small mention. That those mediums like the trope is unneccessary cruft in the description since that's what the examples are for. Bogging down the description with Trope Trivia has lead to many description chainsaws and rewrites. Hell, I had to redo the intro to Gainax Ending once upon a time. Why? Because it focused entirely on how the trope got it's name and did not clearly define the trope in the description.

edited 13th Jul '11 9:40:18 AM by Deboss

Then do you mind if I change the thread title from 'search and destroy'? to something that doesn't indicate that medium-specific tropes should be killed on sight?

I'm okay with a name change, I was just using the phrase.

This discussion is directly applicable to the last Most Common Superpower TRS thread, which recently decided that the trope should be limited specifically to the Western Superhero genre.

edit: Apparently that topic was completed, so I updated my post to reflect that.

edited 13th Jul '11 9:50:28 AM by Meeble

One more baking comment, and I'm done on the topic here

The point about Goblins is a valid point - since Tropes Are Tools, sometimes you get a better result for what you're trying to do by using a tool outside the expected format. Just because you may not see Hit Points used in a television show (and I'd argue that we have - Star Trek and the percentage that the shields are active sure sounds like the trope to me) doesn't mean you can't. Just means that you have to think more on how you use it before you do so.

All of this is reminding me... I really should do a rewrite of Chiaroscuro, since it actually is considered a valid literary trope as well (although usually via the use of symbolism rather than alternating bright and dim lighting).

And that's a great example of a problem with this thread. Most Common Superpower is being limited because it was being used as "character has big breasts," rather than "all superheroines have big breasts." It's an aggregate trope that doesn't really show up outside of the western superhero genre. But if, for example, every single empowered girl in an anime had massive breasts, then it would count, and subversions and parodies would also be used.

Medium-specific tropes don't need to get zapped completely, we just need to take a long, hard look at them.

Well, if the rename for Most Common Super Power gains steam (so far, Super Boobs looks like it's gaining fans... heh), it'll be much easier to start applying it to other genres (particularly anime) and make sure it doesn't deal with the Trope Decay it has undergone in the past.

I didn't actually mean "zap" them. I meant "do a quick re-write to eliminate the medium specificness" as most of that can be done by changing less than a dozen words.

Yeah, I think that if a trope relies on an element truly exclusive to a given medium, then the trope becomes more or less exclusive to that medium as well (key word: "more or less").

There are tropes that are far more likely to occur in certain media than others due to their nature, but even a trope that's intrinsically bound to one media-specific element can still be referenced, parodied, or otherwise Played With from a non-applicable media.

edited 13th Jul '11 12:35:02 PM by Stratadrake

I think you are wrong Deboss, there are definitely medium-specific tropes. And it's not even that they necessarily can't be used outside of that medium, just that they aren't. In the future, that may change, which would require a rewrite of the trope at some later date, but I don't think we should leave space in the trope for a hypothetical that may never come, and in some cases may muddy the definition of the trope. I do however think it should be common protocol (which it may be already) to consider whether a proposed medium-specific trope actually IS medium specific or not, or if maybe it's a medium-specific variant, or actually a general trope. Fan Myopia sometimes makes people think something is medium specific when it's actually not.

If a trope is really medium specific there is no real need to mention that in the description, because only examples of the right medium will be added.

If examples of other media are added either these examples are wrong and have to be removed like all wrong examples or the trope was not as medium restricted as believed.

This topic has been used to knock down a bunch of image-picking suggestions for the trope Eternal Engine, which is about a setting that's like an endless machine. The argument was that this was meant to be a stock video game level trope, and so non-video game examples (both images and entries on the page) should be zapped. A YKTTW was made to accommodate the non-video game examples. I made a rant (that everyone ignored) that compared the situation to "Video Game Level Trope Apartheid".

I'm very heartened to see this topic. Please vote against Trope Apartheid.