Trope Description Improvement Drive

I can see why you think that's my concern, and, to some extent, that's part of it. But it's not quite right because it's more that I see it as a symptom of another problem. I think it's more accurate to say this is my problem:

Or, more accurately, I think this is the trope's problem.

My concern is that, when dealing with a work whose creators are willing to discuss the creative process they go through, every act of brainstorming becomes a valid example of What Could Have Been. That's what's happening here: every time the creators mention something they brainstormed then either discarded or did differently, it gets added as an example of this trope.

My concern is that the trope isn't currently designed to handle this. Anything that goes through a creative process will have some kind of brainstorming process. At the very least, it has a process whereby creators come up with ideas that they discard before settling on whatever makes it into the final work.

That aspect of a creative process is pretty much chairs. It's a natural part of how a work is created.

The trope is only self-contained when it functions from the premise that we'll never have an insight into the entire creative process for a work; we won't even have an insight into most of it. The trope is currently limited solely by the inaccessibility of the creator(s), and that hides a problem with the trope as it currently stands: scope. As soon as we deal with a work that has an accessible creator who loves discussing how they thought of things and what got accepted or discarded along the way, we're dealing with a trope that is so unlimited it's in danger of mimicking a chairs situation at the very best and actually being chairs at worst. It becomes a trope that is entirely without scope or limit... and that becomes meaningless.

In other words, my concern is that, when the inaccessibility of the creator's creative process is removed, instead of troping What Could Have Been, we're actually instead troping Creators Explore A Lot Of Ideas Before They Choose What To Use In Their Work. And, personally, I think that's PSOC.

I'm not saying the trope shouldn't exist. I'm saying the trope hasn't thought itself through properly and it takes a work like this, where the creators are very accessible about their creative process, to highlight that there's a scoping issue with the current trope. We should be identifying which of these ideas from the creative process stand out as trope-worthy. Right now, that's not what we're doing. The trope description lists a couple of options for why ideas might get discarded or changed, and mentions other related tropes. One of the things I'm wondering is whether What Could Have Been is really an index in disguise, and works that have highly accessible creators who bombard us with countless examples of how their ideas changed may be giving us a bunch of examples that fall within specific categories that come somewhere underneath this umbrella that may or may not be sub-tropes or related tropes.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 11th 2020 at 6:58:52 PM

The pitfall of the "scope" problem is that what you may consider a "proper example" tend to end up being arbitrary.

I know there's a question that's bugging you and it's "where do we draw the line?" I would like to suggest that if (and only if) a work would have so many examples of it (usually due to the creators willing to share the behind-the-scenes process), examples could be limited to the "major" ones, like major plot moments/plot turning points, designs across many characters/objects/etc at once, major worldbuilding elements, (for games) fundamental game mechanics, and so on.

Also have to remind you: WCHB isn't a "trope". It's trivia.

Edited by 4tell0life4 on Oct 11th 2020 at 2:31:19 AM

Yes, I'd agree with that. How to draw a line without it being arbitrary (if it's even possible to do that at all) is a concern I do have. While I do think there's a problem with it, I don't know what a good solution would be, or even if it's possible to define a good solution.

I guessed someone would point out how I'm using the word 'trope', which is fair enough. I do misuse the word for YMMV and trivia, primarily because there's really no good way to talk about trivia... items?... otherwise. There's always a missing word when trying to create sentences around these terms, and I tend to fill that gap with the word 'trope'. I'm aware of the misuse, but I don't confuse the terms in my head. Not that you'd know that unless you live inside my head, of course. Be grateful that you don't.

I created the WCHB RWBY page a couple of days ago. We'll just have to see how big the page gets. I can see there are some other WCHB sub-pages, too. My guess is the biggest problems will happen in those works that have both accessible, chatty creators and a fandom that insists on troping absolutely everything those creators say or do. There doesn't appear to be a lot of sub-pages, however, so perhaps this can just be dealt with on a case-by-case basis if any of those pages ever start groaning at the seams.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 14th 2020 at 9:21:23 AM

If any of those What Could Have Been sub-pages ever do start groaning at the seams, that would necessitate this thread teaming up with the too-long page repair thread, right?

From what I understand, What Could Have Been is supposed to be strictly about older ideas from the creators, right? Because if we start listing every potential story variation of a work, we would end up with endless pages of fanfic ideas, basically.

Yes, that's correct. WCHB is specifically for planned content that was changed or cut for the final version.

x9 Yup, Catch-Phrase Spouting Duo doesn't sound distinct enough from Catchphrase, Totally Radical, or Those Two Guys.

So... what does 'planned content' cover? Is that plot, casting changes, costume design changes? Or is just when these things are finally decided... and then a further change (for whatever reason) then happens before the show?

If it's the latter, then the problem isn't the trope description, it's just the RWBY page, and I can sort that out on the general trope clean-up thread instead of this one. There are a lot of examples about all the character design iterations that characters go through prior to deciding what look to settle on, for example, or what potential voice actors were considered before the final voice actor was chosen — it's that sort of thing that started me looking at the trope description and its scope in the first place.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 15th 2020 at 6:55:04 PM

So, to look at the WCHB description, I was slightly off. It's not that it must have actually been in production and then changed, but that it requires Word of God in some form. For example: "We wanted to do this, but did that instead." There must be explicit acknowledgment or documented statements from one or more creators of the work.

That can include marketing material: for example, a scene from a trailer that didn't get in the finished product. However, we have other more specific tropes for that.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 15th 2020 at 1:59:50 PM

Next Gen Fic's description is quite barebones and doesn't really capture the trope quite well either (it's not for any work set at least one generation later, it's about future generations of children spawning from the canon characters). Are fanfic genre pages just allowed to be this vague?

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 17th 2020 at 3:39:06 PM

Plot Pants needs some help in this department. I had to read the desc. carefully to figure out what the trope was even about, and the last edit was 2 years ago.

Evil Is Petty contains a long, long list of stuff in the middle describing the petty acts these types of villains are to do. Is this necessary?

Apologies for the doublepost, but Reviews Are the Gospel is long. Very long.

x5 Okay, thanks for the clarification.

x5 I looked through all on-page examples for Next Gen Fic, a page I have some investment in as one of the works listed is mine Nearly all are, as expected, works dealing with the children or grandchildren of the canon characters. One example is clearly wrong, being set only 3 years after the canon. The only other questionable examples I spotted were three works set in the far future compared to canon.

The current description would allow these. However, the main Fanfic page described NGF as "A fan-fiction about the descendants of the characters", which would disqualify them. Also, it doesn't have an appropriate alternative trope for fics set in the far future compared to canon, so we might be missing that one (but there don't seem to be many examples anyway).

I don't know — what is the correct procedure in a case like this?

Does Genius Ditz properly distinguish itself from Idiot Savant, and vice versa?

I Work Alone has a pretty bad case of Example As Thesis. The trope name is also a Stock Phrase, but that would require a TRS thread and a wick check to prove misuse.

I'm trying to figure out what the core of the trope is. Is it a character trait describing characters that consistently insist on working alone? Or is it a plot trope describing any time a character refuses help and works alone, even if they are normally fine working in a group and the fact that they're refusing help this time is meant to be an It's Personal and/or O.O.C. Is Serious Business thing?

It was brought to my attention due to this entry on Film.The Rise Of Skywalker:

• I Work Alone: The movie's attempts to establish Rey, Finn and Poe as a Power Trio are undercut by Rey continually running away from her friends to chase after Kylo by herself.

Which I suspected of misuse / complaining, but when I looked into the trope I found that I couldn't be certain of misuse because I'm not certain what the trope is.

Edited by HighCrate on Oct 25th 2020 at 11:48:19 AM

Ridiculous Future Inflation has a major Wall of Text problem more fit for an Analysis subpage. A troper commented on the discussion that it contradicts itself about how likely this scenario is in Real Life.

We Will Not Have Appendixes in the Future has natter about the appendix; it should be condensed and moved to an Analysis subpage.

~High Crate: That, in itself, is sufficient reason to take I Work Alone to TRS. You would file it under "Unclear Description".

At this thread it was suggested that the description for Escort Mission puts undue emphasis on Artificial Stupidity.

I think Nu Speling's Self-Demonstrating description makes it hard to read.

Edited by LaundryPizza03 on Oct 27th 2020 at 2:43:00 PM

I think it is more of a plot trope, describing a situation when a character is hostile to a new partner after being assigned to a team because they're used to working alone.

"They're used to working alone" would be a character trait though.

I'd like to add this to Toon Physics:

"Toon Physics are more likely to be in effect in works with a cartoony art-style. It's very rare for a work with realistically proportioned characters to feature anything but realistic physics. In short, the toonier the characters, the toonier the physics."

Should Counting to Three also work for counting down, like for a race or something? Or should it be a separate trope?

@.@ What the hell is that description?

Something like Self-Demonstrating, I guess? ... It does seem quite excessively second-person and conversational.

Edited by Malady on Nov 1st 2020 at 10:02:20 AM