True, but it also doesn't mean that a trope that happens to be The Same But More Specific is not automatically Not A Trope for that reason. Hence why Sub Tropes are a thing.
All of that said, and my personal opinion notwithstanding, I don't feel strongly about it and no one else seems to care, considering that the discussion on the YKTTW has come to a standstill and none of them have come over here to participate. I'll participate in a group discussion about its shortcomings and merits, but it's silly to be the only one arguing a viewpoint that I don't particularly care about. With that in mind I'm going to drop it for now unless someone else feels strongly enough about it to support it.
edited 8th Jan '15 2:06:51 PM by SolipSchism
Chair Man
Thing is, SPSP's description doesn't mention how it is a subtrope to CC...
Btw has CC ever been through TRS before?
MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWW
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Royally Screwed Up's description seems excessively long. I'm thinking of transplanting the list of common reasons for the screwed-upness to the Analysis subpage. What do you guys think?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
And while we're at it, Status Cell Phone suffers from the fact that, to quote Fighteer, "the description places too much emphasis on 'modern times'", and "[a]s Examples Are Not Recent, neither are depictions of culture. Also, the description spends too much time discussing the phenomenon and not enough time making it clear what the trope actually is."
So... How do we fix this one?
edited 13th Jan '15 2:50:32 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Does Betty and Veronica have to be a love triangle? If not then the description should talk less about Archie and more about Veronica and Betty.
I'd like to think I improved the description on https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=y57zp6x8umw4tid0e87z51rg
, if anyone feels like giving some feedback.
Easily Forgiven's description was recently altered to include the following paragraph: "This trope describes the tendency of characters or a narrative to have a remarkable ability to overlook transgressions or outright evil performed by other characters, especially if they're a fellow series regular, and afterwards they start or go back to treating them like a trusted friend. The actions may be viewed as not a big deal or ignored entirely, the forgiving character and/or the narrative may present the character who committed the deed/s to be sufficiently apologetic to warrant forgiveness, or the latter character learning An Aesop may be considered punishment enough, but at the end of the day it seems like they've gotten off lightly for what in a another setting would be considered heinous behavior."
Opinions?
Well, it didn't have much of a description before. It had about two sentences (still does) in the first paragraph describing the actual trope, and then two paragraphs—one of which was quite large—describing Subtropes, one paragraph describing variants, and one sentence stating its opposite.
I like the change, although it could have used some discussion for such an extensive edit.
edited 28th Jan '15 2:08:33 PM by SolipSchism
Okay, thanks. Other thing: Recently, this bit was added to Free-Range Children: "This is less prevalent in Europe thanks to public transportation and more biking lanes."
Opinions?
That whole sequence is an ambiguous compound negative, complete with a Real Life digression. I'd cut that and the previous sentence.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanBy "previous sentence", you means " Modern people trying to bring back the days of free-range children often forget the survivorship fallacy, or don't bother to look up actual statistics."?
Yes. Especially since it sounds really out of the blue.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanOkay, thanks.
I would like to suggest a revision of Dead Hat Shot. I was in the Lost And Found looking for a trope that is pretty much Dead Hat Shot, (query should be around the top of here [1]) except that the trope description seems to suggest that it's only for drowning victims, while the examples indicate situations of other forms of death.
What are your opinions, praytell, o great troper base?
edited 29th Jan '15 2:14:15 PM by TheBob427
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
The Smurfette Principle has come to my attention. My opinion is that the current definition has the following problems: too long, too analysis-driven, and not specific enough on the definition.
The definition needs to be tightened because many works/creators are popping up in the examples just to be included on the trope page, instead of if they qualify for the trope. The description begins as a Tropes in Aggregate form, encouraging tropers to compare their favourite work to this trope. Multiple paragraphs provide justifications/excuses for the trope and ways creators attempt to avert or downplay the trope.
I think three paragraphs is enough: The trope, the history, and related tropes. The current description isn't clear if it must be the only female in the entire cast, and based on the original article, that wasn't intended. The goal from the article was primarily describing the number of female characters in ensembles within the cast. The Sesame Street example.from the article explicitly calls out that the human cast members were a Gender-Equal Ensemble, and the Muppets failed to have even one female character (things have changed slightly since 1991). In addition, The Smurfs had more than one female villain even before the introduction of the Smurf kids. So one female out of the entire cast would negate classic examples of the trope. Therefore, one female of an ensemble is the most sensible way to interpret the concept.
The Smurfette Principle is the negative stereotype that only one female character is needed in a group of men. Even in works with Loads And Loads Of Characters, each Ensemble (of five or more) will only contain one female character. Adding a second female to the ensemble creates a related trope. With the relatively few female-aimed works, contrasting the sheer enormity of works that are aimed at males, it stands out that the demographics of fiction shows a ratio of female to male characters much lower than Real Life.
The name of this trope was first coined by an article in the New York Times printed April 7, 1991, called "The Smurfette Principle". The article focused on the trope as it applies to young children, and discussed the negative message: males are individuals who have adventures, while females are a type of deviation who exist only in relation to males.
Compare The Bechdel Test and Two Girls to a Team for similar critiques of female:male proportions in fiction. This is also Distaff Counterpart to The One Guy. Subtropes include Never a Self-Made Woman when women cannot achieve anything without a male mentor or counterpart, Smurfette Breakout when the character becomes popular on her own, and Territorial Smurfette when another female is added to the show and the original Smurfette reacts negatively.
edited 31st Jan '15 5:17:24 PM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That's still pretty analytical. No offense, but I got bored with the soapbox and stopped reading after the first paragraph. Might help if you don't refer to the trope in the very first sentence as a "negative stereotype". It's not a negative stereotype, it's just a situation in which a show's main cast is all-male except for one female.
EDIT: Actually, I just looked at the main article and it has a much stronger opening paragraph. If a rewrite is really necessary, I suggest using the original article's opening. It clearly states what the trope is about without getting overly negative about it.
edited 2nd Feb '15 9:17:41 AM by SolipSchism
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Okay... so you stopped reading after the trope was defined? That's what the first paragraph is. The entire definition fit a single paragraph, and the meandering about personalities, frequency, merchandising, justifications, and Positive Discrimination are all Word Cruft wasting the reader's time by analyzing the trope.
I'd be interested in hearing what else I can do to reduce Anvilicious wording.
The Smurfette Principle is followed when a work of fiction has exactly one female amongst an ensemble of male characters. Even in works with Loads And Loads Of Characters, an Ensemble (of five or more) contains only one female character. Adding a second female to the ensemble creates a related trope. With the relatively few female-aimed works, contrasting the sheer enormity of works that are aimed at males, it stands out that the demographics of fiction shows a ratio of female to male characters much lower than Real Life.
The name of this trope was first coined by an article in the New York Times printed April 7, 1991, called "The Smurfette Principle". The article focused on the trope as it applies to young children, and discussed the negative message: males are individuals who have adventures, while females are a type of deviation who exist only in relation to males.
Compare The Bechdel Test and Two Girls to a Team for similar critiques of female:male proportions in fiction. This is also Distaff Counterpart to The One Guy. Subtropes include Never a Self-Made Woman (women cannot achieve anything without a male mentor or counterpart), Smurfette Breakout (the Smurfette character becomes popular on her own), and Territorial Smurfette (another female is added to the show and the original Smurfette reacts negatively).
edited 2nd Feb '15 2:15:05 PM by Madrugada
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Better. And reading the current article, it is definitely too rambly to even be in the same universe as Concise. I like the rewrite.
Zzzzzzzzzz
The only thing I'd change would be the first and second sentences of the first paragraph. The second is more or less repeating the first, plus it implies that it occurs in every work of fiction. Right now it's
I'd suggest something like
"The Smurfette Principle is in action when, in a work of fiction, the cast is made up of a group of males and exactly one female. This can occur even in works with Loads And Loads Of Characters, if each sub-Ensemble (of five or more) contains only one female character."
Otherwise, it's good.
edited 2nd Feb '15 2:21:20 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Incorporated Maddie's advice, and replaced the description. Thanks for the help.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Horned Humanoid is difficult to read. The style is distracting. It's not just me, is it?
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
It is a bit "clever" at the expense of clarity. That's in quotes because the description shows how clever the author is, without letting the reader feel clever for understanding, so it is a bad sort of clever. Added Alliterative Appeal is potholed irrelevant to the definition of the trope.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
I agree that Horned Humanoid should tone down on the alliteration. It gets tiring after the first paragraph, and it's kinda random in general. It's sort of like a Self-Demonstrating Article, except without the "self-demonstrating" part.
I find the description for Kimono Fanservice confusing. The way it's written it just rambles and goes off on tangents, and it can't seem to make up its mind whether it is a form of fanservice or a form of Fetish Fuel. And it honestly seems closer to the latter, despite the name.
edited 13th Feb '15 5:19:17 AM by MyTimingIsOff
We have the guideline page The Same But More Specific for a reason: just because something can be a subset of another trope doesn't mean that it should. If you want to try improving the description, go ahead, but I still can't see anything that makes it a distinct idea.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"