Needs Help: Recycled Title

Recycled Title

Some time back I wondering if the site had a trope that was essentially this, and it didn't seem to exist (though now looking at the date for the page, maybe it did, but no one could help me find it in Lost And Found). Recently, I was going to launch a YKTTW for it, but I checked one last time, and ended up finding it myself.

Overall, I'm happy with the page and it fits more or less what I was planning to do. However, I feel like while everything I was going to put as an example is there, many of those examples don't actually fit the description, and caused those examples to call themselves "borderline."

From my quick count, about 20 of the roughly 60 examples (or a full third) are not the trope as literally described (an existing title exactly recycled by a sequel), but are instead, a sequel title that sounds like an original title (for instance, the original had the franchise name and a subtitle, but a future sequel just has the franchise title). Part of the problem probably comes from the name. Recycled Title, while a good name, implies that the title existed before to be recycled. The name I had planned to use for my YKTTW (though I fully realize it has its own problems and did not expect to launch with it) was Sequel Title Reboot, which was to imply that the title felt like a reboot, even if the series wasn't actually being rebooted.

I don't think there's enough room for two tropes here. Personally, since Tropes Are Not Narrow, I feel that the description should just be altered to be more open, and remove the "borderline" from those examples.

I'm not exactly sure how to define it, and I'm afraid it will cause some people to claim it's not actually a trope, but I feel the overarching idea of "a sequel that sounds like the original entry in a series, like Wolfenstein, Aliens, Rocky Balboa, Fast and Furious, etc." is totally a trend in modern sequel naming. As long as we have other sequel naming trends as tropes, I don't see the problem with this one. I think it's about it being a title without numbers or subtitles, that uses a key word from the franchise (as opposed to something like Riven, though that does have a subtitle).

edited 30th Jul '13 6:16:27 PM by Jokubas

Some of the examples have a title identical to the name of the previous work.

That's what the title and description expect. But like I said, a good third of the examples are not that. I personally feel we should expand the trope, and deal with the name, description, and examples accordingly, but we don't have to. We could agree to just get rid of those "borderline" examples.

I am leery at expanding the trope as I am worried about where to draw the line between "resembling" and "not enough resembling".

I think it should be about derivative works having an identical title or less to the original. That's what the examples indicate to me. Adding to an original work's title is typical and not usually noteworthy.

What do we need to do?

Delete the ambiguous examples, put in a comment to the effect that it needs to be exactly like a previous installment.

Could the later installment contain titles that are less than the title? Like how a sequel of Susan Lawton is Out to Lunch is titled just Susan Lawton?

What about adaptations? Sherlock Holmes is written under Film.

edited 25th Aug '13 10:26:06 PM by MikuruFan

I really don't like the idea of using this more broadly than "exact resemblance".

Right. I think another trope could be made for that.

Well, if it's not exact, then it strikes me as subjective. And then we end up with a list of "some troper happens to see a resemblance between two titles for whatever reason", which doesn't really help us.

Clock is set.

Clock's up; locking for inactivity. No further action is to be taken based on this thread.