Unclear Description: Six Student Clique

From what I can gather, this trope is meant to be the six-man version of Five-Man Band. However, as is, it's doing a pretty awful job at that.

From the description and title, it seems to specifically target school scenarios, when it should involve any scenario with a party of six protagonists.

Furthermore, the specific characterizations that it's divided into are...mediocre, at best. They seem to be specifically suited to fit Saved By The Bell.

So I suggest two things.

First, change the title to be more universal. Maybe "Party of Six" or something like that which can fit any scenario.

Second, change the description. While it's true that any series with six protagonists is almost invariably split halfway down the middle between boys and girls, they should not be sub-categorized (that is, "the muscle" shouldn't be limited to being male, the "smart one" shouldn't only be female, etc.

I say we split it into six different gender-neutral roles, either role-based or personality-based.

If it's role-based, it'd be pretty simple: just follow the Five-Man Band formula with either a Token Evil Teammate, Token Mini-Moe, or so forth. If personality, then there'd be The Stoic, the Genki Girl (or boy, is there a gender neutral version of that?), the Cool Old Guy, the Tagalong Kid, etc.

Whichever method we go with, this does need some work so it can be reasonably categorized for other works to use.

But this isn't about any group of six people. It's about cliques of six students, a trope common in 90s shows.

And why would we want to model anything on a concept so broken as Five-Man Band?

Eh. This looks a lot like somebody built a trope to show off an example.

The idea is that there should be a "group of six people" trope that breaks down the personalities that go into a Six-Man Band, similar to the Power Trio and Five-Man Band.

True, but I still get that vibe from the trope.

I get that vibe too - except the main description says that "Lisa isn't very wild but..." so it seems the titles weren't written exactly for the sake of the Saved by the Bell characters. Either way, there does need to be less Saved By The Bell in the main description.

I can easily see the roles being met, dividing them to specific genders seems overkill, but hey, I'm not familiar with this genre. Also, they need some serious help with the Zero Context Example problem.

I do not like the "types" on this one it seems so iffy especially when the trope constantly references Saved By The Bell and not everyone in that series fits the bill...

Something like this:

"School shows use a six student main cast with opposing personalities usually gender balanced with three boys and three girls. Common character types for this include "Insert related character trope here"

Limiting them to just those types is killing the trope IMO if the cast is balanced with boys and girls the standard thing is six people. (especially when Japanese will use slightly different tropes in their six student groups like The Ojou, Lovable Sex Maniac, Yamato Nadeshiko and a few others... I can think of quite a few examples like Persona 4, Baka Test. )

edited 27th Mar '12 1:05:52 AM by Raso

I'd like it if we could expand this just beyond schools and use it as a general trope for six-member parties.

I can think of tons of RP Gs with a six-man group (Final Fantasy XIII, Radiant Historia, Tales Of Graces, Trauma Team, etc.).

Most of those are Five Man Bands with a Sixth Ranger. Or just a convenient party number for a Three person party x2.

Not really the same as this.

edited 27th Mar '12 8:11:57 AM by Raso

Not really. A Five-Man Band with a Sixth Ranger is a group of five and a sixth guy who tags along later on. None of the examples I posited are that at all; they're a Six-person group with the same personality and role diversity as a Five-Man Band.

And since there's the Power Trio for 3, Five-Man Band for 5, and Magnificent Seven Samurai for 7, 6 should be able to get its own category, since it's also very common.

While I'm not sure it's needed to divide it into genders, I do think it's an important part that there are three of each, as that allows for easy pairings within the group with no one left alone, as well as a Gender-Equal Ensemble.

Just six people with sort of specific labels doesn't say tropeworthy to me. That way there's no point of having exactly six of them. It leaves it even more broken than Five-Man Band. I also don't think a constantly changing cast counts for much either, as they just happen to be exactly six at some point. A lot of examples should probably just go away and hide where no one will look for them.

edited 8th Apr '12 12:53:00 AM by Feather7603

While they're not necessarily students, the Six Student Clique is a set of archetypes, always 3 boys and 3 girls, that is used in a sitcom environment. Six people who work together to save the world is not this trope, and probably form a variation on the five man band. The main problem with the description is that it has too much about Saved By The Bell and not being general enough. Apart from that, the description makes sense.

If it's "always 3 boys and 3 girls," can we delete the "gender variations" section?

edited 7th Apr '12 9:23:26 PM by abk0100

I think so. Gender variations listed here are when the gender ratio is different, and not just when a male and a female switch roles? Like making the muscle female and the smart one male.

I could make an exception if one gender is different, but is overall treated as the other gender. Say, a gay male fills in one of the female positions, and at least one of the other males is gay or bisexual. That would still make it possible for everyone to end up in relationships with each other at the same time. But that's just teoretical.

Edit:

So, would Friends fit? I'm just surprised it hasn't at least been shoehorned in, considering there are six people, and it's a very popular series. Chandler as the Head, Joey as the Muscle, Ross as the Quirk, Rachel as the Pretty one, Monica as the Smart one, and Phoebs as the Wild one. The siblings are both somewhat quirky, though.

edited 8th Apr '12 1:09:02 AM by Feather7603

We need to bring in people familiar with the examples and the trope.

"There happen to be six people" isn't a trope. There have to be six clear and distinct roles that are commonnly used in that combination in fiction to make a viable trope page.

Compare: Five-Man Band is commonly misused for "any group that has four to eight people in it" with the roles shoehorned in, but that's not what the trope is. Rather, the hero/lancer/big guy/smart guy/chick combination does actually come up a lot. So it is a viable trope that just needs frequent cleaning. If we don't have a clear definition at the heart of the "Six Man Band" then we're just going to end up with the misuse for no benefit.

See also Cast Calculus.

Getting into specifics, Saved By The Bell isn't anything special involving six students. Rather, it is simply two sets of trios. The three girls correspond to the Beauty, Brains, and Brawn trope, and the three boys correspond to a Power Trio.

And no, limiting it to students is not a good idea. Neither is adding "the wild" and saying that the example isn't very wild.

Looking over the examples I'm familiar with, neither The Breakfast Club nor Harry Potter correspond to the six "roles" given in the trope header; neither does Clone High, Buffy (that's a classic Five-Man Band), or Alvin And The Chipmunks, or The Goonies.

This is Not A Trope. This is somebody writing a thesis about a show he likes, and making up reasons why other shows follow the same pattern when there is no such pattern.

edited 8th Apr '12 11:54:21 AM by Spark9

I see why people would want to expand it beyond students. This is the only trope about a group of six people. And I can think of lots of works about three males and three females (Friends, Coupling, Cloverfield, Happy Endings, some Final Fantasy games, On The Town, Cluedo, etc) who aren't students.

And, yeah, we could make the Gender-Equal Ensemble a requirement. But should it matter which roles are male and which ones are female?

If we get rid of the student bit, then we might need another trope to cover that. Maybe one without a gender ratio or a specific number. But we can worry about that later.

While the roles are not specific for each gender, the roles themselves are pretty good, just not described very well.

Yes, but that is already covered by other tropes.

Clocking due to lack of activity.

Crowner hooked.

So is this going to be a cut trope or not? I agree wholeheartedly with the thread creator. It doesn't even fit for the Goonies entry (what actually brought me to the page).

I still think that it can work as a page describing six-person groups, since there are a lot that have each member as a specific role, and not just a Five-Man Band with a Sixth Ranger.