Too many tropes being labeled "Medium-specific"?

I could go on and on about this, but the main point is that in Japan, Bishōnen / Bidanshi is the culturally-dominant male beauty ideal, at least when trying to sell stuff to women; it is the way of making a guy attractive, and has no particular connotations other than "hot". In Western culture, Hunk is the culturally-dominant male beauty ideal; Pretty Boy is a minority type that is largely associated with some degree of non-masculinity, with being a "ladies' man" rather than a "man's man". Of course, part of this is that Japanese culture both currently and historically values gender-blurring beauty esthetic much more highly than Western culture, which for the most part values gender-reinforcing beauty standards; for the last hundred-odd years the stereotypical markers of male attractiveness have emphasized rather than downplayed masculinity.

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edited 23rd Jul '17 2:06:40 PM by Jicragg

In general I think the Bishōnen / Bidanshi incorporates a much wider range of androgyny into the "hot" category than Pretty Boy does; they're similar at the more-masculine end but guys like Andrej Pejic are never going to be household names in the West the way Kim Jae Wook is in Korea; Pejic is too pretty, looks too much like a girl to be hot as a guy to the majority of Westerners. I personally think he's smoking, but I know plenty of people who think he's creepy-looking. Bishōnen doesn't seem to have that cutoff.

I think Animeesque works and works that call out Bishōnen are OK on the Bishōnen page as long as you explain that the work is specifically referencing the Asian trope.

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edited 23rd Jul '17 2:05:45 PM by Jicragg

I guess I wasn't clear. Pretty Boys can be as feminine as they want (Pejic is on the page), but for many people they stop being a "hot guy" if they become too pretty, and instead become some sort of sexless natural curiosity. Bishōnen don't seem to have that cutoff; they can be as pretty as the creator wants to make them and they'll still be accepted as attractive men.

Furthermore, most Western creators won't write a Badass, an Action Hero, or even a Love Interest who is too far into Pretty Boy territory; there's a point where the character becomes too feminine-looking for the "male" roles. Bishōnen don't seem to have that cutoff either; Emperor Ryuuki from 'Saiunkoku Monogatari'' is acknowledged to be prettier than any girl, with long feminine hair and a total lack of stereotypically masculine physical traits, and that doesn't stop him from being the Love Interest, or being hot stuff with a sword.

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edited 23rd Jul '17 1:58:45 PM by Jicragg

Well, we were talking about this in TRS at one point and Fast Eddie came in and axed it on the grounds the tropes should not be different, so I dunno if that would be acceptable to The Powers That Be. Perhaps on the analysis page?

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edited 23rd Jul '17 1:57:35 PM by Jicragg

Wall of Blather's description was too comic-centric. I tried to make it more neutral, but maybe it could use another fix.

It's a Speech Balloon trope. What other medium do you expect to see it in?

Videogames maybe.

I have seen more than a few Video Games with speech bubbles, as well as Anime and manga's.

Some actually interact with bubbles like they are used as weapons.

But those are exceptions, so the description being comic-centric is rather justified. I think.

As noted by the Most Common Superpower debacle, not making a trope medium-specific when it is medium-specific only obscures the meaning and leads to Square Peg Round Trope when the definition drifts off to things that aren't intended for the medium.

Suicidal Overconfidence is a prime example: it describes what can only be a videogame mechanic because the trope refers to a videogame enemy's scripted response being the same whether you are facing it with your starting power level or you are pointing at it a nuclear arsenal that would send running any Real Life enemy with half a brain. As noted on the page, there are separate tropes that deal with actual characters and not "mooks/AI" that ignore overwhelming force.

In the case where a trope is medium-specific but the definition is not so cut-and-dry that "similar phenomena" exist outside of the medium to be listed on the page, Tropes Are Flexible.

And honestly? There have been TRS threads for stuff like R-Rated Opening because someone saw a single line in the opening paragraph suggesting the trope is specific to a medium or genre but it's clear the trope could exist without that line. In such a case, you just tweak the definition a little bit to account for that. It's a case-by-case thing to have a trope that was mistakenly described as medium-specific but that's not the same as something not being wide open enough because it's specific to a medium.

Most Common Superpower isn't medium specific, it's genre specific, that genre is almost entirely restricted to comic books though. Mechanic specific tropes were already covered.

A single line in the description saying it is medium specific, when it's started collecting examples outside the medium, shouldn't require a TRS to deleted the line. It's clear that the trope has already morphed, there's just an old line that needs to be changed. Now, if the entire description needs a rewrite and you don't know how to do that, start a TRS or drop a line in the description improvement thread.

What if the entire description is medium-specific, and there are only a handful of examples outside that medium, but the basic idea seems like something that ought to be usable in any medium?

I'm thinking of Bubbly Clouds here. There's no real reason I can think of that "land of clouds that isn't Heaven" needs to be videogame-only, but that's the way the whole thing is written. Should I just delete those two non-game examples?

Well, is it part of the stock videogame settings which include the types of bad guys and whatnot as well?

I don't know. I don't play video games, I wouldn't recognize any of that.

Yes, it includes stock enemies and obstacles. It needs really Solid Clouds as a supertrope.

Missing Supertrope Syndrome strikes again.

Or better yet, TRS'd into Solid Cloud Platforms. There isn't any functional difference between the trope in videogames and out of it; the overall idea is just a world where the clouds are solid ground and it could start off describing that and the videogame part being the 2nd paragraph, starting with "Mostly found in video games, where—"

There is a functional difference between the video game work with stock obstacles and enemies and just clouds being solid.

We separate stock video game levels from other tropes for just that reason.

edited 20th Apr '12 11:11:42 AM by shimaspawn

I just came across two "usually anime" trope descriptions: Idiot Hero and Girl In A Box.

Idiot Hero de-shonened and shortened by a bit. Girl In A Box as well, but it needs a bit more nurturing.

nvm

edited 24th Apr '12 12:03:53 PM by Raso