Trope Description Improvement Drive

Given that we've just had a Crowner decision on using certain tropes for Reality Shows, I'd like to add something to the intro of Breakout Character to document the policy.

It needs to be on the trope page so that people can follow the rule, and it needs to be self-explanatory, but also conscious it's an edge case and we don't want it to be too long. How's this?

Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 7th 2024 at 1:24:51 PM

That and Public Domain Character's description is way too big. We don't need to get into the details of the American legal system to the degree it does.

The description is 16 paragraphs long and over 1600 words. It needs to be trimmed.

Perhaps an Analysis.Public Domain Character page could be created.

Much of the trope description could be moved there.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 7th 2024 at 11:35:32 AM

Sounds like a good idea in my opinion.

Made an effort but I have a feeling it needs a proper description

"A character that nobody owns anymore, or was never owned in the first place, that everybody wants to take a shot at writing" <—-this is the most relevant part,if I was being more zealous I'd have removed everything but that

Edited by Ultimatum on Jan 8th 2024 at 1:21:22 PM

Updated Breakout Character.

Base-Breaking Character, The Scrappy, Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and Creator's Pet are the other four that definitely need a note for Reality Show scenarios.

How does this read? Apart from the trope name, it can probably be the same phrasing for all three.

Double post, but unless anyone has concerns, I'm going to add this to The Danza:

makes sense to me

The description for Know When to Fold 'Em is rambley and never actually gets around to describing what the trope actually is. Or, it suggests that "knowing when to just walk away is a useful skill", but other than that, it just talks about which characters do and dont relate to the trope. Also, it opens by saying You Can't Fight Fate, when the trope afaikt, is mostly about knowing when to retreat and fight again another day. So The very first sentence probably shouldnt be about fate.

I was thinking of doing a clearer rewrite, including a specific definition in the opening paragraph, and condensing the various additions into a clearer list of "related".

On a glance, the examples look mostly fine

I agree, and the page image isn't a good illustration either.

Igneous Poppy changed the Harry Potter references on The Stations of the Canon to Undertale ones instead. While I can get wanting to distance from that franchise, I don't think the story beats of Undertale are as well known as they are in the first HP book. It makes the description less effective and feels like Fan Myopia

Ideally, trope descriptions shouldn't use any work for reference. But this feels like a potentially agenda-driven unilateral description change and could go on ATT or here.

They also wrongly used "Natter" as edit reason.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 12th 2024 at 9:53:25 PM

I considered the unilateral cleanup but this didn't feel severe enough to warrant it (I don't want the idea to be watered down). If I catch more agenda edits I can go to ATT. I just thought this was the best place since it's not a serious change on its own, but something that I felt needed addressing nonetheless

Edit: their edits don't imply an agenda but they do make weird unilateral edits elsewhere...

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 12th 2024 at 1:59:57 PM

Speaking of using works in the description, Carnivore Confusion has a lengthy list of "ways" that could go to either Analysis/ or the examples.

Yeah, that's an analysis thing.

done!

Don't forget the index

which index?

Analysis.

done!

Something that has bothered me in the Magical Girl article for a very long time. While outlining the genre's history, the article mentions the show Majokko Meg-chan, followed by a series of bullet points about the new elements it brought to the Magical Girl formula.

Unless I'm completely misremembering, the list originally consisted of three bullet points. Later, someone added two more.

The current list reads:

"it was the first Magical Girl show to...

• have a Tomboyish heroine—all magical girls prior to this had been sweet feminine girls;
• feature a rival to the main character (Non, Meg's rival and the local Dark Magical Girl);
• include a really evil character. Prior to this, there was a perception that young girls couldn't handle such things;
• feature Fanservice (in the form of Panty Shots, slight nudity, and Megu being a borderline Fille Fatale), as well as Lovable Sex Maniac characters (Megu's stepbrother Rabi and Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Chou);
• touch on more serious social issues, like domestic abuse, extramarital relationships, drug abuse, and have the heroine not only lose fights, but having to face serious consequences (deaths, injuries, humiliations, etc.)."

The first three bullets I have no issue with: those are very common features of modern Magical Girl works, to the point where they might even be considered Omnipresent Tropes.

The fourth and fifth, on the other hand, just don't seem to fit at all. Fanservice and sexual implications aren't so vital to the genre that we need to catalogue where it started. The fifth point feels slightly more relevant, but even so, it gives the impression that the show started some sort of across-the-board trend of magical girl shows being super serious drama works, even though there are plenty (then and now) that are light-hearted action series. (Also, "have the heroine face serious consequences" feels a bit redundant to the "truly evil villain" bullet.)

All of which is a lot of words for saying: should we cut the last two bullet points, since they're not nearly as universal to the genre as the first three?

I should have probably mentioned I removed this massive wall of text from Les Collaborateurs description

I don't find the 4th and 5th items necessary either.

I do have concerns that chopping those things goes beyond the scope of this thread. It's trying to define the genre, right? Or is it just "here's a list of things this one show did", in which case I can see a stronger case for cutting? I'm just nervous about chopping anything that was considered relevant to the definition of the genre/trope.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 13th 2024 at 3:45:46 PM

I mean, those two were unilaterally added, so they're inappropriate on that basis. The 5th one is unnecessary because there are plenty of MG series that lack "serious" themes (and are usually only present in deconstructive works that can be counted with the fingers of one hand, like Madoka Magica and.... uhhh see what I mean?). The 4th one is not only expendable as well (again, not something all MG series are mandated to have), but also described rather creepily.