Five-Man Band cleanup

Agreed; the more female characters on a team, the less likely the team is to have a clear Chick, and if there is no clear Chick then there is no Five Man Band. That's why the ruling Fast Eddie made about Two Girls to a Team made sense. One could have a Girly Girl as The Chick and another as a Tomboy in another role and the roles would still fit.

Yeah, that makes a little sense to me, since the more girls there are the harder it is to determine who The Chick is. However, it's also been clear to me that in general people have trouble understanding or properly defining all of the FMB roles, not just The Chick, and I'm sure that there exist some examples where all the roles are very clearly fitting and defined...but the entire team is female, or at the very least, most members are female. That said, the more girls we have, the higher the risk of The Chick just being relegated to "person who doesn't fit any other category" , so... I do think the two-girl-three-boy limit is the most reasonable. That's why I was skittish about my first House of Anubis example, since it's three-girl-two-boy...

My real concern is that we're trying to create a limit for this trope that may not actually exist in reality. It's absolutely possible that there are examples that fit the description... but just happen to have a different gender ratio. Aren't tropes flexible? Is having more girls than boys really breaking the trope?

It's all very complicated.

what it comes down to is the overall definition of the FMB. Is it the super trope of the five roles Lead, Foil, Strong, Smart, Spirited. Period.

Or is it the subtrope of the five roles + majority male team + the spirited one is female.

I'm of the belief that roles trump everything, and the gender balance is an oft recurring but not necessary complement. But I could see how the gender balance speaks to the fact that this was born out of a specific era, and we're highlighting things that still pay homage to that era in a specific way. And I could see how being more specific can stop some shoehorning.

I guess i'd propose that the true definition is the specific version (roles + gender balance) but if you had a case where you had either clearly you might be able to call it a "Subverted Trope" case of FMB. (Tropes Are Flexible). Like:

• Five-Man Band: Subverted, it has the 4:1 gender ratio and they wear bright colors like a sentai team, but their personalities are all over the place.

or

• Five-Man Band: Subverted, they clearly fit the roles but it's an all female team.

And either of these subverted examples would still have to make the case with context. no ZCE's. Would the group be okay accepting examples that are going to come like that if you open it up?

That wouldn't be a subversion, though, it would just be generically played-with. A subversion requires people to think the trope'll happen.

well are we okay to at least lock in the newly sorted examples as one major edit, and then discuss any redefinition as a separate edit later

What do you mean by that?

I guess I'm ok with swapping the sandbox, and not enforcing a specific gender criterion (other than that The Chick is female).

That seems fair to me as well. I'm worried about putting arbitrary restrictions that don't need to exist.

Hollering for mods.

I don't think I am going to alter the current gender roles rules. That the main people who discussed and justified them are currently inactive does not mean that their arguments no longer count.

I am thinking that the current sandbox may be short enough that it simply fits into the main page. Let me see...

The problem is, nobody knows what the gender restriction actually is.

Cool I think once the sandbox is done we can decide what discussion to open up next, and put together what looks like a compelling on that decision by itself so the message isn't confused.

The gender restriction is four men and a woman.

The confusion has been caused because there's been a general consensus among a growing number of tropers for a long time that the three-man, two-woman balance should be allowed. However, that's never been official as far as I can tell, so that just classifies as a 'would like to see'.

As a result of tropers wanting the trope to stop being about four men and a woman, the trope constantly attracts misuse in the form of examples that don't meet the gender requirements. However, the misuse isn't limited to the three-men, two-women scenario that tropers would like to see, it's misused much more widely than that (to be female-dominant or even all-female). However, as far as I can tell, this wider misuse has existed for a very long time and isn't caused by confusion over whether the gender limit is one woman or two (in other words, even if the trope was expanded to include two women, the wider misuse will still keep happening).

I think that's the basic history of the trope's gender question.

My suggestion would be to look at the possibility of whether we're missing a trope. Five-Man Band is a classic trope, but instead of trying to change it into something it's never been, it might instead be worth looking at the possibility that there's a spin-off 'modern' off-spring to this trope that covers five-person teams that initially, or superficially, appear to be Five-Man Band at first glance, but which are actually not (something that can be caused by a different gender balance or by something else, but which isn't as easy to dismiss as 'just a subversion or aversion or played-with').

In my experience, people who raise examples of differently-gendered five-person team examples to argue the Five-Man Band trope needs to change its gender restriction, what they're describing isn't a Five-Man Band example anyway; it's something that's slightly different... I don't want to say 'more complex', but definitely not the classic trope. As a result, I've been wondering about this for a while.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 13th 2019 at 11:26:29 AM

If we stick with the classic definition, then a lot of the sandbox examples, which are otherwise perfectly fitting, will need to be cut. That's my concern; we may be making unnecessary restrictions based solely on the gender thing, and while I get that the idea is that this dynamic isn't common, whose to say the trope hasn't evolved overtime to make it more inclusive? Why remove actual examples based solely on gender? Does having one extra girl really change anything?

You're arguing for a change in the trope definition. That's fine, but it's a different issue to being confused about what the gender restriction is (which is what I was responding to).

Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 13th 2019 at 11:56:36 AM

I was confused because even in this thread its been claimed both that 2 girls can and cannot be in the band. There's no consistency.

the clean up thread was started (7 years ago) with the intention of 3 men 2 women being acceptable. It's in the initial/stickied post, and is what we allowed in the new sandbox examples that everyone agreed upon (that we've been building towards actively for about 3 months or so).

That has been clear and at the top of every page in this discussion for people to reference.

Edited by acrobox on Apr 13th 2019 at 4:39:57 AM

Reminder that The Team was created to catch most misused Five-Man Band examples since it's less specific.

exactly. teams that don't hit the FMB definition, or the acceptable limits of FMB being 'played with,' but are still teams with roles/archetypes/group dynamics are appropriately under The Team.

But where's the limit? Only one girl? Two girls? Are gender-swapped versions okay?

per the rules stated at the outset of the clean up thread it is maximum 2 girls. i'm fine sticking with that for now.

Edited by acrobox on Apr 14th 2019 at 2:11:43 AM

Honestly it seems like most everything about this trope is just grandfathered in but the sandbox was running on the assumption that two girls are fine. The chick is often the only girl but does have some definition beyond that (if it didn't it'd be fairly redundant), so if you have one female character who fits and one who doesn't (often a dynamic like tomboy and girly girl) it's not that big a divergence.

What definition for The Chick are we using again?

Sandbox.The Chick

but really just consensus, if anyone disputed any examples in the sandbox they have been free to challenge them.

most times they just got cut with little argument if someone felt strongly that it didn't count. (either due to Chick definition or any other role, or if they really functioned as a team rather than just a list of the main cast)

Edited by acrobox on Apr 16th 2019 at 11:46:17 AM