Duplicate Trope: But You Were There And You And You

Can somebody explain why we need But You Were There, and You, and You when we already have And You Were There? What is the difference and does it necessitate a split-off? Just to strengthen my point, four of the film examples are appearing on both pages.

Opening and bumping.

But You Were There, and You, and You is a terrible name. I'm having trouble articulating the difference between them or lack thereof, though.

Previous threads.

Both of these tropes need renaming, partly because But You Were There, and You, and You is a terrible, dialoguey name and because they're too similar to each other. Beyond that, and making sure that the examples fit the proper tropes, I dunno that I'd support a merge.

So, the basic trope is "actor plays two roles, one in the 'normal' setting, and one in a more fantastic one".

And You Were There specifies that these dual roles are a deliberate reference — it's "often used to highlight or lampoon either relationships between characters or particular aspects of each character's personality".

But You Were There, and You, and You is just 'in a dream or something, the characters will be people the dreamer knows' with nothing else.

I would suggest retooling But You Were There into a supertrope for using the same characters in multiple contexts for any reason, and keep And You Were There as a subtrope where it's specifically done as a narrative device to showcase certain aspects of the characters. They both need a rename, though, and badly. Off the top of my head: Cast Recycling and Suspiciously Apropos Cast Recycling.

One thing that's jumping out at me right now is that the page illustration for And You Were There is from The Wizard of Oz, which is not this trope, as that film is explicitly a very long Dream Sequence of Dorothy's and thus goes under But You Were There, and You, and You.

There does seem to be a distinction. The Oz example is a dream sequence. And You Were There is, to use one example, what Moonlighting did when they had an entire episode that lampooned The Taming of the Shrew. Those aren't the same thing. The names are pretty bad, though.

^ Well if you're wanting to redefine, rename and change the examples of But You Were There, and You, and You and make it a supertrope, its not realy the same trope is it?

nvm, i misunderstood part of the discussion

edited 5th Sep '14 2:55:12 PM by PistolsAtDawn

I don't understand this comment. You can redefine anything, I guess. But as it stands, these are not duplicate tropes. And we need to find a different page illustration for And You Were There.

edited 5th Sep '14 9:59:02 AM by gallium

But You Were There is already a supertrope, in that it's just a less specific version of And You Were There — the former is "person dreams or something and people from their real life appear as different people in the dream", while the latter is "person dreams or something, and people from their real life appear as character in the dream, which serves the highlight specific aspects of those characters or the relationships between them".

That's not right—And You Were There is not a dream, and the word "dream" isn't mentioned in the review. It's defined as "a work will present a story different from, tangential to, or symbolic of the main story". For example, the Moonlighting episode I mentioned above, titled "Atomic Shakespeare", in which a kid imagines Dave and Maddie and the rest of the cast performing Taming Of The Shrew. Or, for another example, that Friends episode that presents an Alternate History for the characters—Phoebe is a ball-busting Wall Street trader, Rachel married Barry, Joey is a more successful actor, Chandler is a struggling comic book writer. That was an episode telling a different story that was outside of the main show's continuity, but it wasn't a dream. That's And You Were There, or at least I think it is from reading the definition.

You're focusing too much on "a dream or something". The point is that they're telling a different type of story than they usually are, the framing device for how they manage that isn't important. It could be All Just a Dream, it could be an Imagine Spot, it could be anything and the trope still applies.

Well, dreams or the lack thereof are crucial to the definitions. But You Were There, and You, and You specifically refers to a character telling a story or having a dream. And You Were There is about the actors appearing in another story.

Beyond dreaming or not dreaming, or having an Imagine Spot, it also seems like the difference is whether the alternate sequence is part of the main continuity or not. The Wizard of Oz example is But You Were There, and You, and You, because it is a dream being had by Dorothy Gale, who bumped her head one day in Kansas. The examples I provided for And You Were There from Moonlighting and Friends were both stories that were outside of the main continuity.

Re-naming is almost certainly called for, the examples doubtless need to be properly sorted, and And You Were There needs a different image, but they aren't the same concept.

The question isn't so much what they are now as what they should be. I don't think there's enough of a difference between the uses you're describing to justify having two separate tropes for it — that's why I suggest having a catch-all supertrope and a character-development-specific subtrope.

Clock is set.

Well, we certainly need to do something about this, given that we've got two near-identical tropes with two near-identical names. I still like my suggestion from post #5. Anyone else have thoughts?

I'd be inclined to rename both, given that the current names are dialoguesque, as said before, though I'm not entirely sure about the suggestions.

Nested Story Role and Apropos Nested Story Role? Imagined Story Role and Apropos Imagined Story Role?

Either of those work for me. Just for clarity's sake, the actual definitions we're talking about is "character plays different role in work than usual" and "character plays different role in work than usual, which acts as a reference to their their original character", correct?

For example, let's say a work that's normally about The Squad During the War does an episode that's an RPG Mechanics 'Verse for some reason. If the character roles are more or less random, then that's the first trope. But if the Officer and a Gentleman commanding officer becomes The Paladin, the Friendly Sniper becomes an Archer Archetype, and the New Meat becomes The Squire, then that's the second trope.

Those were my understandings of the definitions, yeah. I may also suggest "Same Characters Different Roles" for the first trope and "Character Role Parallels" or "Character Alternate Role Parallels" for the second.

Re-clocking.

No progress on this one; closing it down.