Rename Desperately Needed: Boke And Tsukkomi Routine

The trope name is opaque and confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the culture from which it originates, is non-intuitive, and is blatantly unclear. This needs a renaming (and a partial rewrite to make it more general and less Japanospecific) badly.

Discuss.

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

No, it needs to be split, and the non-Japanese examples moved to Super/Sister tropes as necessary.

Uh huh. You should probably split it rather than rename because a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine is something very specific.

edited 5th Aug '11 9:45:04 AM by Arha

All that would do is make a The Same But More Specific page out of the Japanese examples. Aren't we supposed to not do that sort of thing?

I've noticed that a lot of the "resistance to change" involving Japanese-entitled trope pages boils down to "no, this is different!" when the only real difference is "its in Japanese".

edited 5th Aug '11 9:46:16 AM by Worldmaker

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

This is one of those cultural specific Weird Japanese Thing s.

Really it needs to be split or cleaned (I thought we had split it?)

edited 5th Aug '11 9:51:41 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Of course I know what a straight man is, but the specificness, and frequency of this trope in Japanese works makes it more than worth splitting into its own article.

Wouldn't it be far better to have two articles that each properly explain the different versions of how this works (and Boke and Tsukkomi is not just "Abbot and Costello in Japan") then one that tries to do both, badly?

edited 5th Aug '11 9:51:49 AM by SakurazakiSetsuna

Martin and Lewis, Abbot and Costello, Burns and Allen, and Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca argue otherwise.

Again, I've heard this argument before, about other tropes that were not Japanospecific, and yet were named in Japanese. This was, in fact, the primary point of resistance for changing "Nakama" for so long. That argument was less-than-convincing then, and it remains so now.

edited 5th Aug '11 9:53:59 AM by Worldmaker

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

Huh, I guess you've completely overlooked all my posts over the last couple months or so. I suppose I don't have that much of a presence around here, but you should probably try to have some idea of what you're talking about. For example, I'm the one who brought Osananajimi up for a successful rename around here within the last month or so despite it being a culturally specific sub trope.

But apart from that, yeah, I do think it's a culturally specific variant which is called this and has pretty good usage and, so far as I know, accurate usage.

They are not exactly the same thing. Very closely related but not the same thing. (again make the other trope this needs to stay.)

edited 5th Aug '11 9:56:38 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Except that Boke and Tsukkomi is not just a funnyman/straightman routine in Japan. And you have yet to articulate why axing the Japanese aspect entirely is better than just splitting the articles for increased clarity and accuracy.

edited 5th Aug '11 9:56:13 AM by SakurazakiSetsuna

I thought I explained that: I oppose creation of pages that are nothing more than The Same But More Specific.

Okay... list the differences, please, between this and a standard double-act.

If they do not amount to a collection of cosmetic details, but rather consist of actual deeply rooted cultural differences, I'll concede the point.

edited 5th Aug '11 9:56:50 AM by Worldmaker

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

No, see, it's your job to prove that they are the same thing. If you can do that, then it's a justified request to ask us to prove that they're not. The burden of proof lies on you who wants to change things before it turns to us.

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

As far as I can tell, the difference is that one tends to specifically use paper fans.

I'm really, really hoping I'm missing something.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

Ok, folks, can we cool it with the sniping? It's not productive.

The Same But More Specific mentions that the distinction between it and a Subtrope is blurry and subjective, and is something that should be decided by consensus of the community.

For this discussion to move forward, what we need to do is define the general concept of this type of routine, and then list out the qualifications that make the Japanese style of the routine different.

This will give us something to examine when making our decision.

edited 5th Aug '11 10:07:05 AM by Meeble

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Worldmaker: The Same But More Specific is about a very particular type of bad trope page, not anything that is a more specific variant. All subtropes are, on some level, the same as the supertrope they belong to, but more specific.

"When someone wants to start a new article which can be summed up as "the same as Article X, only with <specification>"

"This is generally not a very good idea, since it can easily clutter the wiki with nigh-undistinguishable trope variations. On the other hand, if the added qualification is clear enough that the result is noticeably distinct from the original — then it becomes a Sub Trope. " {Bold emphasis added to the relevant sections}

Because of the amount of cultural baggage some tropes carry in Japanese works, "<Trope> in Japan" can be a valid subtrope.

edited 5th Aug '11 10:09:41 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Yeah, well, this "<trope> in Japan" is defined thusly: "In Japan the manzai tradition (from which the Boke and Tsukkomi Routine originates) parallels that of the double act, although it is more formulaic."

So what we have here is a trope that is essentially a Comedy Double Act, but more formulaic, and in Japan.

Think that's enough of a difference to be tropable? Because I sure don't.

Being in a Japanese-produced work is not enough of a difference to warrant its own trope.

I'm not seeing anything particularly Japanese about this trope. Everything described in the trope's current description is more or less common among Punch and Judy-style pair ups worldwide:

That's a universal Punch-and-Judy routine, in as many words. I see absolutely nothing in that paragraph that makes even a mild distinction between straight man / funnyman routines the world over, and if I read it I would never even remotely think that it had anything to do with Japan especifically. It goes on to say:

Again, very common in this sort of comedy duo the world over, and again, reading these two blocks I quoted (which are the meat of what defines the trope), they seem to describe something universal.

I removed a few bits and took out the Japanese terminology, but those are more Useful Notes things than anything that makes a distinct trope. I'd say change into a non-Japanese-specific trope, then create a Useful Notes page under the old name to explain why they use that term for this common comedy pairing in Japan, the famous ones that have become iconic for it there, etc.

edited 5th Aug '11 10:20:47 AM by Aquillion

We actually have a Punch And Judy page, but it's treated as a work rather than a trope. Same goes with Abbott And Costello, etc. Is Boke and Tsukkomi specific enough that it could be spun off into a more work-like page format, leaving Straight Man and Wise Guy as more of a trope page?

First key to interpreting a work: Things mean things.