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Looks have nothing to do with this, I agree. It's about the actual disparity in age and by extension, in life-experience, (so I also agree that cryostasis and such don't count unless the age/experience difference would still be present without it (so there still needs to be that 30+ year difference even when the stasis time is subtracted) ), not in appearance.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Sorry to bring this quote up again so late, but I have something to say...
However, I'm a bit uncertain about couples with ages like late-teens and mid-thirties. Jane Eyre (18) and Mr Rochester (36) or Marianne Dashwood (17) and Col. Brandon (36) of Sense and Sensibility. Emma (21) and Mr Knightley (36) come to mind.
There might be a historical trope worth creating here. People these days (*coughteenscough* might feel that the above age differences are somehow significant as a difference, while they probably were done for a unifying purpose. Ugh, my morning English. Please bear with me.
I'm meaning the whole "a man should be established and know his way around life, a bride should be young, cute, healthy, and fertile" thing. Anoyne?
edited 28th Jul '13 11:09:31 PM by peccantis
We should have a discussion around the lower ages / smaller age gap in a dedicated YKTTW thread.
I think the consensus is to keep *this* particular trope specific to the "old man/woman with young chick/guy" thing. Otherwise, we're ending up with exactly the situation the page is in now.
I'm looking at the page now, and it seems like we should be good to go with the new definition text.
Two things we need to do starting now:
- Can someone else please open a YKTTW thread around younger versions of this? I think it would look better if someone else opened it, that way this doesn't look like one person's crusade. We need to address three specific topics:
- The "lite" version of this, where the older is at least 40, and the age gap is at least 20
- The "teenager dating a non-teen" meme
- The "minor dating a non-minor" (i.e. under 18 dating 18+)
- We can start cleaning up the Examples section on this page, using the current criteria.
I don't think all of the above in 1) need a trope of their own, and indeed, the last two might be subsumed under others, but the discussion needs to happen.
OK folks, have at it!
edited 29th Jul '13 10:55:43 AM by trims
Oh, and I think I came up with a "proper" solution for the case where one party is Really 700 Years Old (or immortal) but looks like someone very young:
It should go in the May Fly December Romance page. It should be noted THERE as a subverted trope, since, while the trope appears not to apply, it actually does.
Comments?
I am OK with shifting May-Sept into a YKTTW - I note that I know squat about it, though.
While I don't know of any meme about "teenager dating a non-teen", I suspect that there are some implications in "minor dating a non-minor".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I cleaned up the Real Life, Comics, and Fan Fiction entires.
The Real Life had lots of fairly straightforward wrong entires, so I don't see much controversy there.
The Fan Fic was a bit harder - a lot of that was just speculation with no hard numbers, and much more was teen/30s or so, and some really May Fly December. Someone might want to recheck my removals, just for sanity's sake.
Comics is a huge problem. I had to add a whole paragraph at the top of that section, to note the major issues that retconning, universe screwing, and the confusion the Comic-Book Time makes with character ages. It's really difficult to tell how old someone is supposed to be in a Comic Book. Anyhow, I did my best in the edits.
Please, someone, check the Comic Book section for sanity. I really think that it needs to have reviews for both what I left, and what I removed, and also possibly some edits on the "explanation" header I put in.
Anyhow, everyone, take a couple of minutes to look at my edits, please. I did them all in a single edit for each section, to make it easier to revert and/or consider what I did in one big time.
More cleanups done.
Film, Literature, and TV Series sections are all now cleaned.
In particular, I removed a whole bunch of stuff where the age range wasn't specified, only as indistinctly "older". I think we want to limit examples to where it's clearly this trope.
Once again, people, please review what I did, and fix anything you find incorrectly delete or modified.
~trims, are you still here?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Yes.
I do think the page is in an acceptable state now.
Locking this for now, then.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I think it's fair to either cut or move to the appropriate page (Mayfly–December Romance, Really 700 Years Old, or whatever). In the event that, for example, it's remarked upon in universe because it looks like a May–December Romance but isn't because, for instance, one of them is Older Than They Look, maybe list it as discussed / whatever is appropriate, but not as the trope played straight (because it isn't).