Real Life section maintenance (New Crowner 19 Feb 2024)

Red Shirt Army: This trope is explicitly a Characters as Device trope, and real life people cannot be "plot devices"

Most of the examples are shoehorning anyway. Especially the Garibaldi example that says that his Camicie rosse (Red Shirts) are a subversion.

Not only is the trope not about literal red shirts or groups being called red shirts, but a real life military forces of the 19th century (long before Star Trek) were not created to set up an exception of a trope happening in order to dash your expectations.

I cleaned up some shoehorning. Only one example was left that can qualify. It's at least described somewhere along the lines of the actual trope. Well, aside from the hero part, but I think that's tangental to the trope.

It's still misuse, given that the IJA was not a plot device.

I agree that Redshirt Army doesn't need an RL section, given the "plot device" issue pointed out by others. Adding that to the crowner in a minute.

Also calling:

Dragon Ascendant - Added 3rd Sep 13 at 08:38:29 AM, 12:0

The Man Behind the Man - Added 3rd Sep 13 at 08:31:54 AM, 3.33:1 (13)

I know that there was some uncertainty about The Man Behind the Man, but it seems to have settled out into definitely qualifying for NRLEP in votes. If the trope is reworked so that it's not villain-exclusive we can later revisit the NRLEP listing. Nothing decided in this thread is "the discussion is closed for all eternity", after all.

edited 10th Sep '13 9:19:54 AM by Nohbody

I just realized that Redshirt Army is also a morality trope.

—As the singular Red Shirt is the "good" counterpart to Evil Minions, the Redshirt Army is the "good" counterpart to the endless hordes of Mooks.—

This is also backed up by the laconic which describes them as "Good guy Mooks".

Also, Red Shirt has the same issues. It is descibed as "A Red Shirt is the Good Counterpart of Evil Minions and Mooks — set filler for our heroes' side."

Given the fact that we are defining these tropes in terms of good guys and bad guys, we should not have Real Life examples. Especially examples like the Imperial Army of Japan during World War II.

BTW, why the heck do we have two different trope pages where one one trope is defined simply as the plural of another trope?

edited 10th Sep '13 9:38:20 AM by Catbert

I suppose RA could theoretically be removed and gather everything under just plain redshirts, but there may be a reason that I can't think of for the division (possibly even just that the people at the time that could be assed to do trope work were heavily splitter-biased at the time *shrug*)

edited 10th Sep '13 9:59:17 AM by Nohbody

As for the good guys vs bad guys about redshirts, it's the same as what I said previously about moles are reverse moles: We have tropes for the alignments, but no tropes for non-aligned troops, so the good guy version frequently gets used without implications of alignment for real life troops. And mostly, in fiction, people who're not explicitly evil are good by default, unless it's just that crapsack, so such tropes would probably cover anyone non-evil.

I'd say distinguishing by morality for Red Shirt and Mook makes much more sense than doing the same for the Mole tropes.

Yes, but the difference is more like between something you can squash like a bug (sometimes literally) with no moral consequences versus people who don't deserve to die. Less about being a hero and more about being a person with a value. Which I think is applicable to real life people.

Bumping for votes: Wife-Basher Basher was added to the crowner.

Thanks Candi, I was going to add a post after I put it on the crowner but got distracted.

Would be nice if you removed the section after it was voted on here.

Re-added the Wife-Basher Basher RL section, with an edit reason pointing to this thread and noting that voting is ongoing at this time.

Mind you, I don't see it surviving, given the vote count at the moment, but until it's called the RL section should remain.

I don't think it's an example anyway. First, it's a generic "example", and then it's basically about defending someone they think is in trouble. And the focus of the "example" is still on the victim, who isn't what the trope refers to. And improper indentation.

edited 12th Sep '13 7:26:27 AM by AnotherDuck

Calling:

• Redshirt - Added 10th Sep 13 at 09:41:56 AM, 15:1 (16)
• Redshirt Army - Added 10th Sep 13 at 09:18:03 AM, 14:1 (15)

Added Predatory Business.

Calling Wife-Basher Basher - Added 11th Sep 13 at 07:35:34 PM, 15:1 (16)

Okay, so Predatory Business could lead to natter, but Wife-Basher Basher?

Predatory Business is another 'Calling RL people bad/mean/evil'.

Yeah, I got that, but what about WBB?

WBB has no RL section...

S/He wants to know why it was removed.

Yup (and it's he BTW :) ).

In modern society, bashing your wife (or spouse, or partner), is considered a horrible, evil thing. To have a RL life section on the WBB means calling the Basher himself evil by default. TV Tropes doesn't call RL people evil.

It could also be seen as approving or dissing RL people who beat up abusers, depending on the example. TV Tropes doesn't touch that sort of thing with a ten-foot pole.

So the RL section of Wife-Basher Basher was put up for deletion and voted on accordingly.