No, the other one.
#127: Mar 5th 2015 at 8:33:33 AM
That's what I said.
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#128: Mar 5th 2015 at 9:10:20 AM
She is a crosseyed example of Genre Savvy with Kozumi actively trying to Batman Gambit Haruhi's Genre Savvyness and make sure it happens or else she would change to world to make it happen (Enforced Trope?) with bad side effects to the change.
Haruhi predicts that the island they are going to will be a Murder Mystery because that is what happens stories, Kozumi creates one. Haruhi thinks there is an Absurdly Powerful Student Council after the club as that is what happens in school club Mangas and Kozumi creates one. He feeds her Genre Savvy addiction.
edited 5th Mar '15 9:11:14 AM by Memers
No, the other one.
#129: Mar 5th 2015 at 9:22:12 AM
That's basically Right for the Wrong Reasons, which isn't Genre Savvy.
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#130: Mar 5th 2015 at 9:32:23 AM
Well, Both IMO. When she equates them to fiction itself and since the series runs off every genre in A&M it would be Genre Savvy in her eyes as it actually does happen. We just get to see why it does, in many respects, but it Genre Savvy especially to her.
God we have so gone off on a tangent.
edited 5th Mar '15 9:40:02 AM by Memers
No, the other one.
#131: Mar 5th 2015 at 10:13:29 AM
Conclusion: Playing with a Trope.
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#132: Mar 5th 2015 at 1:51:11 PM
Genre Savvy won't allow Real Life examples any more.
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#133: Mar 6th 2015 at 1:27:30 AM
It's like that for a reason - "Genre Savvy" relies on the fact that one's in the story. Real Life, although it's been jokingly troped by us tropers, technically doesn't have story, to begin with.
#134: Mar 10th 2015 at 2:09:37 PM
So I'd say the biggest hurdle at this point is when the characters aren't drawing on their knowledge of stories and tropes, but the writers are.
Like The Incredibles example from earlier. It's really tempting to put Genre Savvy in there because Syndrome was clearly written by someone who's aware of the genre... but Syndrome isn't, he's just aware of the rules of his own universe.
It's not quite the same as "just plain savvy" and closer to Seen It All, but I don't think we've got an exact fit for that kind of savviness. And it might help clean up some misuse.
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#135: Mar 10th 2015 at 2:19:37 PM
That sounds like a specific form of satire where the creator makes characters aware of Genre conventions, of which Genre Savvy would be a subtrope.
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Memers
Since: Aug, 2013
#136: Mar 10th 2015 at 2:21:29 PM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
A Genre Savvy Writer who purposefully points out the tropes and writes around them or directly into the wind but does not use the characters themselves to point out the genre? That might actually make a good subtrope.
Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki Kun might be a more meta example as it features a writer who actually points out what he writes and such going into lengthy discussions on shojo manga stereotypes and how he writes the world around him in those stereotype by genderflipping the characters.
edited 10th Mar '15 2:26:28 PM by Memers
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#137: Mar 10th 2015 at 2:25:07 PM
Not sister or sub; a Genre Savvy character cannot be written without a Genre Savvy Writer. So the writer needs to be genre savvy in order to create characters that are.
I really like the flavour of putting Writer in the name, only 60% convinced I like Genre Savvy Writer.
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Memers
Since: Aug, 2013
#138: Mar 10th 2015 at 2:29:48 PM
Defining it might be kinda hard though I think.
Massively prone to missue for any work that just follows Genre Conventions.
Chair Man
#139: Mar 10th 2015 at 5:28:46 PM
@Crazysamaritan: Better than a Bare Bulb sounds close to what you're saying about a creator making everyone aware of genre conventions.
Btw how would this trope relate to Medium Awareness?
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#140: Mar 10th 2015 at 6:21:28 PM
No relation. Genre Savvy has nothing to do with the Fourth Wall.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
That means examples overlap, not the tropes. And it isn't as frequent as you'd expect. I'd estimate less tan 30% of any examples of those tropes count as Genre Savvy.
edited 10th Mar '15 9:47:20 PM by crazysamaritan
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#141: Mar 10th 2015 at 6:54:29 PM
Except that a sizable percentage of the misuse happens because of characters that either Break the Fourth Wall or are Medium Aware because those characters are almost always Genre Savvy or Wrong Genre Savvy (or even Dangerously Genre-Savvy) because of that. If we ever change the description further we should probably address those kinds of characters as either counting for the Genre Savvy family of tropes or if they should go on different pages.
edited 10th Mar '15 6:57:19 PM by ObsidianFire
#142: Mar 10th 2015 at 8:16:24 PM
Cleaned up the GenreSavvy.Fan Works page. Changes below.
Fan Works - Cut
Most of these are cut because there is no mention made of meta knowledge, just that the characters are acting savvy
- Fate/Stay Night: Ultimate Master: Ben takes the fact that the Holy Grail grants any wish with a grain of salt, thinking it's a Jerkass Genie. Talking to Illya, he pumps her for info on Beserker, knowing that, while she's more than she appears, she's still a kid who'll brag when prompted. It helps he's Taught by Experience.
- Avenger has shades too due to Ben's influence. For example, if she fights, she knows Ben will jump in to help.
- Similarly, Archer is quick to identify Ben as a Wide-Eyed Idealist and try to take advantage of it.
- There's the wacky but surprisingly good House/Zombie Apocalypse fic The Rampant Disease, in which House and Co. invoke every trope in the book — only some of which end up being true.
- Often present in MS Paint Adventures forums, especially in the Fan Adventures. A sample suggestion, explaining what's going on to a new character, is clearly very genre-savvy.
- In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fanfic The Long Walk, Michelangelo is pleading with OC Breech Loader to do something for him.
- In Equestria: A History Revealed, Nightmare Moon proves to be Genre Savvy enough to realize that her failure to eliminate all semblances of hope in the Equestrian Civil War would be her downfall. This leads to her plotting to setup the Battle of Canterlot, a penultimate battle in which Celestia's return to Equestria and steady stream of victories would be cruelly interrupted in an ambush of her forces with an army three times their size. This would cause the citizens of Equestria to regain hope once Celestia had returned and seemed to be winning, before crushing these beliefs by systematically wiping out her forces in one fell swoop. Luckily, it doesn't turn out this way.
- In one Code Geass fic, Lelouch, upon learning he's not the only one with Geass quickly realizes that the Emperor must have it as well. Why? That's the worst possible scenario for him.
- A Naruto ficlet has Naruto attempt to use magic to turn Kakashi into a chicken. Why? Because Kakashi refuses to teach them anything even after Naruto warns him that he'll continue pranking Kakashi until he does. Sakura insists it's impossible to turn someone into a chicken. Sasuke on the other hand.
- Harry in The Havoc Side of the Force fully expects people to screw him over the first time he does a job for them. Also, when his cover is blown after anonymously saving over a hundred slaves, he decides to leave immediately. Padme tries to reassure him that everyone present has her complete confidence, but Harry just dismisses that, saying that only meant the Hutts would learn his identity in hours instead of minutes. He's right on both counts: Bibble had the ship Harry was getting in payment stripped of almost all it's weapons, shields, and engines. And Aayla Secura (one of the slaves) sending a transmission to the Jedi Temple led to a ship trying to ambush Harry right where he should have come out of hyperspace (he had Anakin pull them out a little early so they would be ready)
- While planning her father's death in A Third Path to the Future, Emma Frost considers including some way of telling him that she was responsible but quickly discards it on the off chance he survives.
- Just before revealing his angelic nature in order to stop a mass relay from hitting them in Alpha and Omega Book 2: The Fallen Shinji remarks to Rei that she's about to learn something about "human ingratitude." Sure enough, immediately after two separate characters nearly kill Shinji before he's locked away to await execution.
- In Gensokyo 20XX, the characters display this from time to time. This is mostly the case in in 20XXI and 20XXII, where they are imprisoned, where Suika is one of the first to pick up on the fact that their prison is meant to break them by depriving them of certain comforts, i.e good food, as well as things to tell time. Likewise, when Kaguya and Mokou are also imprisoned, Mokou also picks up on their captors and the warden are none too merciful, referencing the Scarpia Ultimatum, Morton's Fork,and Sadistic Choice tropes and how they applied to their setting. In that vein, Yukari noted she could gap herself out but then she could be found and thrown back in and it was also noted that where they were imprisoned was not a place where one could share suspicions and secrets openly.
- In 20XXIII, Ran did note an inner core or refuge wouldn't protect anyone from a nuclear bomb or strike, stating that sort of the thing would likely be crushed or get someone pinned under a roof beam (which does happen), as the blast would be stronger and neither could it fit any supplies or at least a whole family, as well as pointing out that whole entire purpose for When The Wind Blows was to criticize that sort of thinking. Unfortunately, neither Yukari (going insane) or Chen (being a child) listen to her and they build said inner core or refuge right under a roof beam, as she advised against it. In that note, after the nukes were dropped, the characters did note that survival in the aftermath would be difficult and that life would not be as ti was and neither do or would emergency services arrive and neither do the characters, save Sakuya, expect for them to.
- In Wish in One Hand, when Anya tries to get Cordelia to make a wish, Cordelia realizes how bizarre it is that a stranger gave her a family heirloom and keeps trying to make her wish for something. As a result, Cordelia wishes for Anya to "go far far away and never come back."
Fan Works - Keep
The legitimate examples that make reference to some source of meta knowledge
- In the Mass Effect Self-Insert Fic Mass Vexations, Author Avatar Art goes through pretty much the entire fic noting the events of the game as they go on. He ends up lampshading just about everything he notices, including making an offhand comment about one of the game's Playing with Syringes examples.
- Several characters in Total Drama Battlegrounds, though Heather deserves special mention after seeing Rodney die in one of the virtual reality challenges:
- Luminosity: Bella realizes that her life is a Romance Novel. Relying on her status as the protagonist may be part of why she makes some risky decisions.
- In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Eliezer's characters are frequently utilizing their knowledge of fiction tropes, although each character is savvy in only a few genres.
- When McGonagall tells Harry what really happened to his parents (Harry had been raised by his aunt and her husband with no explanation), Harry starts asking her which plot hooks might be left dangling, frequently making analogies to The Lord of the Rings.
- Hermione does frame events around her as if she were in a story (early on, she wants a romance between her and Harry), but she's more often seen trying to convince Harry that he isn't in a story, and that he should stop trying.
- Draco likes to compare his own behaviour to the heroes in the opera/play performances that his father takes him to see.
- Daphne Greengrass, like most of the girls, views events like a romance plot, and tries to invoke her own romance with Neville during one of the battles between the first-year armies.
- Dumbledore likes to frame himself as the wizard Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, and conversations between him and students are often framed in "young heroes" and "mysterious old wizard" terms.
- Quirrel and Harry often discuss the finer points of how to manipulate others, referencing stories and contrasting them with reality as they do so. "The role people play" is an element of Eliezer's writing that comes out frequently in this character.
- Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has the titular duo, though in different ways: Calvin knows a lot about sci-fi movies, while Hobbes knows the outcome of pretty much any adventure Calvin drags him along on.
- Arcanus in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Whispers is stated in-universe to have become this by reading a lot. He demonstrates it by lampshading a case of Innocent Innuendo.
- On the flip-side, he also demonstrates Genre Blindness by claiming love and friendship have little merit... in a series built on them.
- Another Sherlock Holmes/Doctor Who Crossover with Genre Savvy characters is Children of Time. Holmes himself is quite savvy, with the air of Seen It All. Professor Moriarty is Dangerously Genre-Savvy, a nice little byproduct of becoming Time Sensitive. And Beth Lestrade is quite firmly One Of Us, an obsessive Sherlockian and a geek for several more fandoms, with a habit of making Fandom Nods and inducing Holmes to deliver a few Take Thats.
- Navarone from Diaries of a Madman is quite genre savvy, and is well aware of the cartoon logic the world sometimes operates on. It particularly applies during the Crystal Empire arc, where he recognises Sombra is carrying the Villain Ball, and takes full advantage of the cliched tactics of cartoon villains.
- Captain Kanril Eleya of Bait and Switch and related Star Trek Online fics displays flashes of this on occasion. In the side story "An Anomalous Nightmare", she rapidly makes the connection between the strange behavior of her crew and the Negative Space Wedgie the USS Bajor is stuck in.
- Part of the explanation is, she's a fan of Turn of the Millennium Earth science fiction (although not Star Trek because that would be silly).
- In Bond Breaker, the main character Shade is well aware of this sort of thing, frequently averting classic anime tropes like walking into a bathroom in use, and even manages to manipulate some rules of the world he's in at the time to the advantage.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Power Girl fan fic story Origin Story, Xander Harris was a comic book geek. Alexandra Harris has all of his memories. She is thus often able to predict what the various Marvel Comics heroes will do before they think of doing it. She also knows a lot of secret identities.
Fan Works - Unsure
Don't know about these, some might count, some might not, and some of these might need to be moved to different tropes.
- Nili's Lord Of The Rings fanfic A Taste of Disaster shows how genre savvy Legolas, Aragorn, Elrond and company get after Aragorn and Legolas have been through a few action/adventure fics. Hilarity Ensues.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Fan Fic "A Rising Light", this is one of main character Mike's defining traits, often crossing over with Deadpan Snarker and occasionally bordering on Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
- One of the hallmarks of being a resident of Angel Grove in Of Love and Bunnies is that, living amongst Power Rangers for so long, they're used to the weirdness and can predict when strange things will happen and what effects they will have.
- Axis Powers Hetalia: Switzerland in the 1983: Doomsday Stories is shown as rather familiar with World War III conventions. And is arguably the first to figure out that Austria's decades-long Hope Spot that Hungary may have survived would not end well. He was right.
- Pinkie Pie displays a brief moment of this in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War, while observing, along other ponies and griffins, the final duel between Rainbow Dash and Gilda. When Twilight asks her why is she excited, this is her response:
- John Watson does a lot of Lampshade Hanging in The Doctor's Doctor (you can practically see the author with her tongue firmly in her cheek):
- Jade in Akatsuki Kitten: Phoenix Corporation Overhaul actually knows exactly which author she's being written by, and what the author's sense of humor tends to lean on. This leads to instances where she quotes a movie, and reprimands herself for being surprised at the outcome.
- In Queenof All Oni, Jade, after her Face–Heel Turn, is FAR more Genre Savvy than many (if not all) of the villains from Jackie Chan Adventures canon, partly due to her witnessing and/or exploiting their Genre Blind moments before the re-emergence of her Superpowered Evil Side, and she even exhibits Dangerously Genre-Savvy moments. Some of her Genre Savvy moments include: taking Daolon Wong with when she breaks the Enforcers out of prison, remembering what happened when Shendu left loose ends lying around, cleaning out their lair before Section 13 can react on the info Valmont gave them, and one of her best was when she nearly managed to get the masks the heroes had (SOLO), in a Batman Gambit by remembering how the Dark Hand had used Jackie Dark to gain access to the captured talismans, and if it weren't for an OC Section 13 agent with Blackand White Morality (even to the point of FIRING a gun at her!), SHE WOULD HAVE PULLED IT OFF WITHOUT A HITCH!!
- Just about every character in CRISIS: Equestria has some level of Genre Savvy, from very mild to dangerously so, and on both sides of the conflict too. Pinkie Pie's entire shtick revolves not only around being genre savvy, but changing the genre she's in during battle and taking advantage of the new rules.
- The Infinite Loops will eventually do this to anyone caught up in them... if not because of the time loop then because of the Mutually Fictional aspect.
- In the NSFW story King of MolMol, Kanako Urashima apparently knows how every girl fits into the harem genre.
- Neither Jonathan nor Andrew are particularly worried when Xander dies in A Spark of Genius due to the simple fact that Xander has become the main character in a DC comicbook and they never stay dead for long.
- When Dawn makes an offhand joke about shooting zombies in a strip club with Xander in I wouldn't exactly call that sitting, Faith (who unknown to the duo is one of millions watching their adventure live due to a miscast spell) tells her Watcher to check for a strip club in Oxnard because "[she] knows foreshadowing when [she] sees it."
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#143: Mar 11th 2015 at 2:46:46 AM
Regarding writers pointing out genre conventions without making the characters explicitly draw knowledge from in-universe exposure to fiction:
Wahtever it is, it is not Genre Savvy , nor a subtrope. It could be Lampshade Hanging, it could be Breaking the Fourth Wall, it could be People Sit On Chairs - or something else. If you have a good case for "something else" you should take it to YKTTW.
For some reason, anyway, this seems to be the major cause of shoehorning. Tropers get the feeling that "character X acts too appropriately to the genre conventions" and can't come up with a better trope than Genre Savvy.
In many cases, I suspect it's actually not conscious trope use, but sort of the opposite: the author takes the genre conventions so for granted that he/she doesn't notice that the characters are behaving in this way. So that would be a case of bad writing rather than any trope.
Let me see if I can come up with an example: It is well known to any D&D player that trolls regenerate and that you have to burn their bodies to kill them permanently.
Suppose Bob is the hero of a story set in a universe where this holds. He meets a troll, kills it, and proceeds to burn its body. How does he know this?
a) He's a D&D player (assuming the game exists in his world) and has read what the Monster Manual says about trolls - Genre Savvy.
b) He has fought trolls before and learned the hard way - not Genre Savvy, just learning from experience. (Or he learned about trolls in school, or was told by his mentor...)
c) He just seems to know, and the author points this out, but doesn't explain it. This could be a number of tropes in action, but not Genre Savvy.
d) He just seems to know, and the author never explains why, but just seems to take if for granted. This may just be sloppy writing, in which case it's not even a trope.
edited 11th Mar '15 2:49:45 AM by GnomeTitan
#144: Mar 11th 2015 at 9:17:59 AM
This is exactly the types of examples I'm seeing. The amount of examples that are some variation of (a) is small compared to examples of types (b), (c) and (d).
Film has been cleaned. Let me know if anything should be put back on the page and why it should be.
open/close all folders
Film - Cut
Most of these are cut because there is no mention made of meta knowledge, just that the characters are acting savvy
Bob: Yeah, and back to us!
- There's Nothing Out There, which had the premise of a single genre-savvy character surrounded by genre-blind people in a horror film and trying to convince them of what's happening.
- Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday opens with a great moment of genre savviness. As the movie starts, a woman is being chased through the woods by Jason Voorhees, as usual. Once she reaches a small clearing, though, she jumps to safety and it's revealed that she's a part of an FBI operation and this is a trap. Cue gunfire. Now, Jason is usually Immune to Bullets, so that wouldn't help anything. Except then, a small army of agents armed with every caliber and variety of firearm imaginable suddenly pops out of hiding, opens fire in a hailstorm of bullets, and doesn't stop firing for more than a minute, until the last agent's out of ammo and Jason's body has pretty much been torn to shreds. Due to an egregious display of New Powers as the Plot Demands, this doesn't actually kill him for good, but it does show that law enforcement really did their homework this time around.
- In the Halloween series, Dr. Loomis is able to anticipate most of Michael Myer's actions. Sadly for him, he isn't savvy enough to stop any of the killings though.
- The Jean Claude Van Damme movie Double Impact has a hilarious moment when a Mook is genre savvy enough to look in the opposite direction of the noise the main character makes, however said character even anticipates his genre-savviness and knocks him out.
- Played for endless laughs within the Austin Powers trilogy, particularly any scene with Dr. Evil and his son. Austin's father Nigel also has a lot of fun with this, such as when he's being escorted at gunpoint
- Subverted in the Mortal Kombat film, in which Liu Kang refuses to bow to a "mere beggar" whom his grandfather identifies as the god Raiden. Liu's grandfather begs Raiden's forgiveness and explains that America and too much television has made him crass — yet, not two minutes later, Raiden asks Liu to attack him and Liu promptly gets trounced. Apparently Liu has, in fact, not been watching enough television.
- Peter Venkman in the Ghostbusters movies and cartoons, in addition to being the most street-smart (if Book Dumb) Ghostbuster, also tends to display some genre savviness. In the second movie in particular, he's savvy enough to realize that ranting and raving about a demonic painting attempting to possess a baby at midnight on New Year's Eve is only going to make them look crazy to the psychiatrists at the asylum where they have been sent, and so goes along with events in a calm and rational manner until someone wises up to let them go and deal with it. It's a matter of some frustration to him that his colleagues don't seem to have realized this.
- Preacher in Deep Blue Sea at one point exclaims, "Ooh, I'm done! Brothers never make it out of situations like this! Not ever!" Ironically, perhaps, he's one of only two survivors at the end of the movie. Interesting to note, originally he died and Saffron Burrows' character lived, but test audiences disliked her character so much (reportedly screaming "DIE BITCH!" at the screen) and liked his, so they re-shot the ending.
- Cabin Fever's Paul spends several minutes carrying around his bleeding, infected girlfriend, without so much of a cringe of worry. But later, when he succumbs to the wiles of babelicious sexpot Marcy, who isn't a stickler for safe sex, Paul immediately runs off to the bathroom to "wash himself off" with a bottle of listerine, even though Marcy seemed perfectly healthy. He seems to know that having an affair is 100 times deadlier in his kind of movie then helping a sick friend. As you'd expect, Marcy soon develops disease symptoms, meaning that she gave Paul more than just a good time.
- John McClane in 2007's Live Free or Die Hard turns out to be pretty Genre Savvy: for example, at one point he asks whether there's some sort of "Henchmen 'R' Us" where the Big Bad gets all of his Mooks from. But then, he has been through roughly the same plot three times before, with only the details changed, so you'd be a bit worried if he hadn't spotted a pattern. As brilliantly parodied by Ben Stiller on The Ben Stiller Show with Die Hard in a Supermarket:
- The first movie has Hans show the slightest bit of Genre Savvy as well. When Holly comes to him with requests, one of them starts with, "We've got a pregnant woman out there..." and Hans immediately rolls his eyes, as if to say, "Oh lord, she's going to go into labor, isn't she?" until Holly clarifies she's not due for weeks.
- Hans virtually accuses McClane to his face of being Wrong Genre Savvy, for expecting to ride off triumphantly into the sunset like a Western hero!
- Nick Cannon's character in the Day of the Dead remake. Could also be considered Death By Genre Savvy, as someone dies moments after he says this (but it's a teaser, so that's up for debate)
- Genre savviness abounds in the 1985 film Rustlers' Rhapsody, a parody of The Western that spoofs everything from its stock characters to clean-cut "singing cowboys" like Gene Autry to gritty "spaghetti westerns". The singing cowboy hero has gone through the same western formula so many times that he's able to see exactly what's coming. However, this time, the villains get Dangerously Genre-Savvy themselves. Realizing that good guys always defeat bad guys, the villains hire another good cowboy to fight the hero. It turns out that the other good cowboy is also a lawyer, so he's not good enough to defeat the hero.
- The Operative in Serenity shows an awareness of genre conventions while fighting Mal.
- Unfortunately he fails to realize that Inara is not a helpless Damsel in Distress.
- Eddie Valiant, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, had a special kind of Genre Savvy. His past dealings with Toons gave him insight on how they worked, and allowed him to manipulate multiple situations to his advantage, such as using the Duck Season, Rabbit Season trick to get Roger to take a drink and ripping a road marker to trick Lina Hyena into running into a brick wall. Judge Doom had similar abilities, allowing him to capture Roger at one point, by tapping "Shave And A Haircut" in a bar Roger is hiding in, knowing that Roger's old-school humor style wouldn't let him not finish the line.
- Of course, Doom's in-depth knowledge of Toons comes from the fact that he is one himself.
- Smith in The Matrix Revolutions, specifically near the end of his climactic brawl with Neo. Even though Smith — thanks to the Eyes of the Oracle — can see how the fight will end, he still thinks Neo might be tricking him into defeat when The Protagonist gets up to offer himself as the sacrificial lamb one final time.
- By Army of Darkness, Ash knows that, just because a Deadite is down, doesn't mean it's dead. This is largely due to experience, though, as he gets caught by the same trick in the first film.
- In Road To Morocco, Hope and Crosby try the old "pat-a-cake" routine (used to great success in the series' earlier films) on the villain's henchmen, only to get clobbered:
Bob: Yeah, and back to us!
- Jim in 28 Days Later candidly points out why driving into a dark tunnel after a zombie outbreak is a stupid idea, even if the driver isn't in the mood to listen to him:
- Selina also knows just exactly what kind of movie she's in.
- She ends up being partly Wrong Genre Savvy, however in that she ends up falling in love with Jim.
- Nero in Star Trek, thanks in large part to the research he did about the Enterprise and Kirk in his own timeline. Granted, once he destroyed Vulcan and completely altered the timeline, all bets were off.
- Of course, he already messed up the timeline on arrival...
- M in Quantum of Solace shows a good bit of genre savviness herself, recognizing a Bond One-Liner:
- M is rather aware of what James Bond is all about in most of her appearances, and not above an one-liner or two of her own;
- Q and Bond in Skyfall play with this, with Q saying things like:
- And later when Bond seems disappointed over his gadgets:
- In GoldenEye, the villain Janus is very Genre Savvy, though this is justified as he's a former MI 6 agent. He lampshades this throughout the film, such as when Bond asks him where Natalya is, and he replies, "Ah, yes. Your fatal weakness."
- He's also savvy enough to have Bond hand over his watch after capturing him, and asks, "So how is old Q? Still up to his usual tricks? Still press here do I?" before using the watch to deactivate the explosives Bond has placed.
- However, he isn't savvy enough to take away Bond's pen grenade... or to just kill Bond when he has the chance.
- In GoldenEye, the villain Janus is very Genre Savvy, though this is justified as he's a former MI 6 agent. He lampshades this throughout the film, such as when Bond asks him where Natalya is, and he replies, "Ah, yes. Your fatal weakness."
- The two cab drivers in the diner in The Hudsucker Proxy, who are smart enough to provide a running commentary on Amy's (staged) attempts to meet Norville.
- Ned from, of all things, 17 Again. Particularly strong when he tries figuring out what triggered Mike's transformation.
- Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, in addition to being a textbook genre buster, is also a study in genre savviness. Its main heroes undergo something of an education in this trope as the movie progresses: Jules' character arc starts with cheap burger commercials and ends with an Aesopian and lofty shift from gangster to drifter. Vince's tragic end, while primarily connected to the Idiot Ball, also can be seen as either Genre Blindness or perhaps Death by Genre Savviness, or perhaps both. The most interesting example the movie gives of this trope however, is Butch, who after escaping from Zed's basement, is savvy enough to know that he will never survive a proper gangster film if he runs off like a coward. He therefore decides to go Genre Shopping, starting with various violent genres, (Crime Thriller, Gangster, Horror) until he ends up with Samurai. He chooses wisely, not necessarily for survival purposes (Toshiro Mifune dies in his movies as often as not), but because, live or die, Butch is now destined to Take a Level in Badass.
- In the comedy film Evolution, African-American scientist Harry Block is asked to snag a mutated alien from a meteor-crash site, and refuses as seen in the page quote, which is the TropeNamer.
- Paris (Orlando Bloom) in Troy has a flash of this near the end. The Greek fleet has disappeared, leaving a giant wooden horse behind. Paris tells his father to burn it. He doesn't listen.
- Earlier, Achilles refuses to fight Hector, because you can't have the two greatest heroes fight each other on the first day. This fight has to wait for a more climactic point of time.
- Carl in Van Helsing, with one of the film's best lines: "If there's one thing I've learned, it's never be the first to stick your hand into a viscous material." This turns out to be very good advice.
- By the third film of Universal's series beginning with The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Ghost, Kharis the mummy has come to realize the films essentially repeat themselves, and that it never ends well for him (which the actor manages to bring across without dialogue and using only his eyes). So when his summoner begins to go on about becoming immortal and claiming the MacGuffin Girl for himself, Kharis kills him.
- The Fallen himself from Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. He believes (or at least knows) that he could be defeated by a Prime, so he refused to go to Earth until Optimus was taken care of. And when the Matrix of Leadership revives Optimus, he immediately attacks Optimus and rips the Matrix from his chest and teleports away, leaving Optimus critically injured.
- Sam in Transformers: Dark of the Moon displays these moments throughout the film. The moment he realizes the Decepticons are active, he immediately goes to warn Optimus and the Autobots. He sees through NEST's attempts at hiding in plain sight and when he is dismissed purely because he's a civilan, he contacts Simmons and finds out why the Russians stopped trying to get to the moon. He was the one who figured out that the Decepticons were going after Sentinel and the remaining pillars.
- Likely the reason Sentinel survived his encounter with Optimus, when others didn't, is because he used a shield.
- The Autobots realized that Sentinel and the Decepticons won't live up to their end of the bargain and likely try to destroy their spaceship to kill them all in one shot. So they sent up their ship empty and sure enough, Starscream obilerates it, declaring them dead. Which would allow the Autobots to pull their Big Damn Heroes moment later without anyone seeing it coming.
- Elijah Price from Unbreakable is how someone could use Genre Savvy to discover the world's first superhero and become the world's first supervillain.
- Lake Placid 3. Susan is trying to turn on a chainsaw to cut down the massive croc that's trying to break into her husband's car when her son tells her she has to press the red button.
- Inside Out: Erotic Tales of the Unexpected has a segment called, The Traveling Salesman, in which a traveling salesman's car breaks down near an old farm. As his car breaks down, the salesman remarks that this is just like all the jokes. When the farmer offers to let the salesman sleep in his barn for the night, the salesman remarks that he knows that he'd better not mess with the farmer's daughter or he'll have to face a preacher and a shotgun. The farmer replies, "Nope, just a shotgun."
- Insidious. To paraphrase Something Awful, "this is one of the few haunted house movies where the protagonists try moving."
- In the 1974 film Death Wish, Inspector Ochoa notes that he suspects the vigilante to have served in the Vietnam War. This serves as a genre savvy moment, considering the various vigilante novels and films featuring Vietnam veterans acting as vigilantes. note
- Subverted in the second Home Alone movie. Just before Harry and Marv decide to chase Kevin up the stairs, they remember that one of the booby traps they encountered in their last showdown involved getting bashed on the head with swinging paint cans. After fooling Kevin into dropping the cans, the duo proceed to rush up the stairs... only to get hit by a large pipe.
- Carriers puts a lot of emphasis on how much it sucks to be Genre Savvy in a setting where anyone who isn't savvy is going to wind up dead.
- In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, before his operation that will transform him into a duplicate of the U.S. President, Zartan checks the machine for any nanomites that will be used to control him, not putting it past McCullen and Cobra Commander/Rex to do so. Sure enough, he finds one and crushes it in front of them, stating that he'd "like to keep to control of [his] own mind."
- In The Amazing Spider-Man, when Peter tries to break up with Gwen and refuses to tell her why, Gwen immediately figures out that her father had asked him to as a dying request.
- Despite initially dismissing Peter's claims, George Stacey does tell an officer to check up on Dr. Conners.
- When the NYPD finds the Lizard, they immediately surround it and fill it with hundreds of bullets. Unfortunately...
- Dodger General Manager Branch Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) in 42 is Genre Savvy to the point of almost being a Mary Sue, as he clearly anticipates the numerous racial tensions and social backlash that will occur when he adds an African-American player into Major League Baseball.
- Star Trek Into Darkness:
- Marcus knows exactly how charismatic Khan could be, hence his "shit, you talked to him" reaction to when he found out Kirk knew Harrison was really Khan.
- Spock has the sense to ask Spock Prime about Khan, which gives Spock the information needed to defeat him.
- Kirk knew that Khan helping them was more than likely them helping Khan.
- Chekov is notably uneasy when asked to don a Red Shirt by Kirk (even the music gives a danger cue). And then, a few scenes later, the joke is reversed: two actual red shirts are told by Kirk to take off their red shirts because they need to go undercover. The two extras look visibly relieved (and, sure enough, they both survive).
- not in the novelization, they don't.
- After Khan slams the Vengeance into Starfleet HQ, Spock quickly rebuffs a comment of No One Could Survive That!. Especially after Khan leaps out of the bridge and down 30 meters to the ground.
- Marty of The Cabin in the Woods is so Genre Savvy that he manages to figure out not only how to survive, but also that their entire fate is being manipulated. It is revealed, however, that the only reason the rest of the cast is particularly Genre Blind is because said manipulators are basically drugging them.
- Pacific Rim:
- Raleigh blasts a downed Leatherback, repeatedly, just to be sure. His brother was killed the last time he assumed something was dead.
- He also makes sure to rip out Leatherback's EMP generator and Otachi's acid sack the moment he knows how dangerous they are.
- Aereon apparently takes the fact that The Chronicles of Riddick's only half over into her calculations at one point.
- In [1] during the final battle, Godzilla figures out where SpaceGodzilla is gaining his power and immediately attempts to destroy it.
- In Godzilla (2014), while the military has its share of dumb moments, they seem to realize pretty quickly who the good guy is, using all their ordinance on the M.U.T.O.s and only firing on Godzilla once (which was justified: the ship firing at first had just been jostled by the big guy and was likely just reacting, with the rest seemingly doing the same). Once it has been established that Godzilla isn't interested in harming humans, the Navy is actually seen providing an escort fleet.
- When the male MUTOs cocoon starts acting up, the scientists decide to kill it ASAP, sacrificing scientific discovery in favor of safety. They then demand an immediate visual on the body. It didn't work, but at least they were smart enough to not mess around with something so powerful.
- When the monsters start to get close to civilization, the military immediately abandons any attempt to keep the existence of Kaiju a secret.
- Unusually for a 'natural disaster befalls American nuclear family' movie, when the shit starts to go down, the parents get their kid out of the city ASAP, though given the evacuation route, it's hard to say whether this put Sam in more or less danger.
- X-Men:
- In X-Men: The Last Stand, when the army learns Magneto is on the warpath again, a sequence shows them trading in their metal equipment and weapons for plastic variants, so he can't exert his influence on them. A scene in the final battle has him discovering this and muttering "Plastic...they've learned."
- In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Scott Summers sees Victor and runs. Immediately.
- In Dracula Untold, the bearded monk figured out that Vlad was a vampire by noticing his aversion to daylight and confronted him with a silver sword. He then sliced away the covering of the stable wall, exposing Vlad to sunlight and revealing his vampirism to his people.
Film - Keep
The legitimate examples that make reference to some source of meta knowledge
- The entirety of the Scream franchise is based on the characters being Genre Savvy, to the point that they make comments like "I know what happens to the black dude, and I'm getting out of here." Randy Meeks was a veritable fountain of knowledge about how to survive a horror movie until he found a giant Idiot Ball and turned his back to a dangerous area. In fact, most characters who die are the ones who make stupid mistakes. The characters know this, and discuss mistakes that should never be made, such as going off on your own.
- Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, which contained this little gem: "I've seen enough horror movies to know that any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly."
- In The Faculty, several of the students (being sci-fi fans), realise that the strange goings-on at the school resemble the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Though they correctly work out that the 'infected' are actually part of a greater 'queen' organism (and what happens should they find and kill it), they fail to realise that the queen is actually The New Girl and not one of the more obvious suspects. The 'queen' even asserts that they should stop resisting her, since this plot ended in them winning even in fiction (the pod people in the aforementioned Body Snatchers). Though Genre Savvy, Casey comes up with a quite amazing conspiracy theory regarding aliens: he asks whether sci-fi itself is a tool for the authorities to inure the public to the existence of aliens, just so nobody would believe it if it really happened. Stokely is unsurprisingly not convinced in the slightest, but thinks it's a cool idea.
- Hot Fuzz plays off one of the characters' detailed knowledge of action cop films.
- Pretty much all of Galaxy Quest. When the characters realize they're in a real space battle, they try to use sensible, real-life tactics, and fight the tendency to act like the characters they play — which backfires, because they're much more effective once they start acting their parts. The Plucky Comic Relief is the most Genre Savvy of the bunch, leading to him being convinced he's doomed because he used to play a Red Shirt. He manages to survive and gets upgraded to a main character with the rank of security chief. Guy actually starts out as the only Genre Savvy member of the crew (and Only Sane Man) before they all wise up.
- In possibly one of the most well-done moments of villain genre savviness ever, once shown the "historical documents", Sarris is the only nonhuman character who realizes that he is dealing with actors who have been mistaken for real explorers. This implies that unlike the Thermians, his own race produces entertainment.
- Which creates a bit of Fridge Horror, when you realize the Big Bad empathizes with humans much easier than the kind, gentle Thermians.
- In Last Action Hero, Danny Madigan, the kid from the real world, having seen so many action movies, knows all the clichés and plot devices when he winds up inside one. Jack Slater, the fictional Hollywood action hero who lives in the movie, refuses to believe him, suffering from Genre Blindness.
- In Jeepers Creepers, the heroine runs down the Creeper with her car and skids to a halt a short distance away. When her passenger asks if it's dead, she says, "They never are." Then proceeds to throw it into reverse and run the creature over several more times. Unfortunately, it still doesn't work.
- Also as Darry is climbing down the drain pipe looking for a dead body, Trish tells him, "You know the part in scary movies when somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates them for it? This is it!"
- Many of the recurring characters in Kevin Smith's films seem to be genre-savvy. One glaring example is Azrael from the film Dogma, who, as his Evil Plan for the destruction of all reality comes together, is asked how he did it and what he needs to do by the imprisoned good guys. Azrael's response:
- In Time Bandits, Kevin, at least, knows what's up when they meet Robin Hood. He even tries to explain to the dwarves afterwards that of course Robin is going to hand out the treasure they stole to the poor.
- Pretty much the entire point and struggle of Stranger Than Fiction revolves around the lead character (who hears a voice narrating his life) trying to figure out what kind of story he's in. If it's a comedy, he'll live; if it's a tragedy, he'll die. For help he visits a professor of Literature, who asks him bizarre questions like "Are you the King of anything?" and "Do you have magical powers?" His negative responses eliminate fantasy, mythology, historical fiction and other genres in order to find out the type of story he's in.
- In Stay Tuned, a TV addict played by John Ritter buys a TV set from the Devil, and he and his wife end up Trapped in TV Land. Every show is a hellish parody, and all of them are specifically designed to kill them. At one point, he and his wife end up as animated mice being hunted by a robot cat. After finally getting some respite, he starts to wonder what a "real" cartoon mouse would do... and promptly orders a robot dog from the ACME company. It arrives immediately, and chases away the robot cat.
- Both the main characters in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang use their knowledge of the plots of mystery novels to foresee the events which will occur in the movie. At one point there is a false end where the female lead says something along the lines of, "this isn't how it ends, this can't be how it ends. Usually at this point there's a big action sequence where the hero kills a bunch of people for no good reason." Shortly thereafter the hero becomes engaged in a big action scene where he kills a bunch of people.
- In Dead Snow, a Norwegian film, the characters are hiking into the snowy mountains (without cell phone reception, of course) when one of them remarks "How many movies start with teenagers going on a trip without cell phone reception?" This does not actually deter them, which is unfortunate considering they all wind up slaughtered by Nazi zombies. In a Crowning Moment Of Funny, another character says "Friday the 13th (1980)" only to have a third say, "Yeah, because they didn't have cell phones."
- The Genre Savvy character actually causes some problems for the other characters, as he tells everyone not to get bitten when he realizes that they're under attack by zombies. One character later saws his own arm off with a chainsaw after being bitten because of this, even though it's never been established that being bitten by a zombie leads to zombification.
- Barney in Evil Laugh, thanks to his horror movie expertise. Though it seems that he doesn't know about Death by Mocking.
- O'Connell in The Mummy Returns. Upon learning about the Scorpion King and the army of Anubis hidden in a lost oasis, he immediately concludes (correctly) that none of the expeditions send there have ever returned, and that if awakened they will wipe out the world. He later has to point out that mummies don't use doors.
- The soldier mummies anyway. From the climax of the first movie, the ones leaping around and scaling walls like Spider-Man. The shambling slave mummies? Sure, locking the doors would work for a while.
- Marty in Back To The Future Part III. He's seen enough Westerns to know how to survive in the Wild West for real despite having no prowess with gunfighting whatsoever.
- Also, notice his cynical response when young Doc assures him that the painted horse-riding indians at the drive-in will disappear the instant he travels back to the very time period those characters come from. No way in hell was he going to have a smooth arival in 1885 after that assurance, and Marty seemed to realize that.
- Both brothers in The Boondock Saints.
- In Sleuth both characters try to use their knowledge of detective stories to their advantage.
Film - Unsure
Don't know about these, some might count, some might not, and some of these might need to be moved to different tropes.
- The plot of Lady in the Water revolves around the characters realizing that they've stumbled into a Fairy Tale. This gets subverted when things go horribly awry because they're acting out the wrong roles in the story.
- One person in Diary of the Dead was Genre Savvy enough to suggest that people could survive the Zombie Apocalypse from watching how he and his party had survived. The characters were making a horror movie using some classic tropes and then lampshading them when they happened for real.
- Subverted in The Return Of The Living Dead in which Night Of The Living Dead was loosely based on a true event. Frank, the medical supply warehouse manager, later tells his boss, Burt, how to dispose of a zombie, based on what was done in the movie; unfortunately, it turns out "the movie lied!"
- Jentee of Magical Legend of the Leprechauns is perfectly aware that the circumstances around him are a romantic tragedy waiting to happen — to the degree that when the protagonists in love come to him for help, he suggests that committing suicide might persuade their warring families to resolve their differences. Turns out he's right.
- Penelope and Stephen Bloom in The Brothers Bloom, a rather Genre Savvy movie altogether.
- Tallahassee, Columbus, Witchita and Little Rock's survival in Zombieland is entirely attributed to Genre Savvy. Say them with me now — Rule # 1: Cardio, Rule # 2: Double-tap, Rule # 3...
- Discussed by comedian Daniel Tosh of Tosh.0 when reviewing The Human Centipede, stating that anyone who had ever seen a horror movie would've taken one look at Dr. Heiter and just walked away.
- In Labyrinth, once they've made it to the Castle Beyond the Goblin City Sarah explains to her newfound friends that she'll have to confront Jareth alone "Because that's the way it's done." As it turns out, Jareth may have a touch of this too, when he notes in his climactic Circling Monologue that he's "exhausted from living up to [Sarah's] expectations" of his behavior throughout the story (which took off, after all, from a Fairy Tale play she likes).
- Elmont shows a surprising amount of this during his battle with Roderick in Jack the Giant Slayer:
edited 11th Mar '15 9:18:48 AM by ObsidianFire
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
#145: Mar 11th 2015 at 10:43:30 AM
Die Hard should be kept, but re-written. John McClane discusses the Western genre with people during the film, and they cast him as "John Wayne", which leads to his famous line, "Yippie-ki-aye, motherfucker."
Labyrinth is more confusing: Sarah has the book with her when she practices the line used at the climax during the opening, even opening it up to search for the rest of the line. It's clear she's getting the lines from the book, but the book seems to be part of the story, like The Neverending Story.
Back To The Future needs re-writing: "he's seen enough westerns" is WMG, but in the second movie, he watches a western whose trick he borrows as a Chekovs Gun in Part III.
Dracula Untold is a legit example, the missing part is legends about the mountain/vampires.
Most of these I haven't seen, and the few that I have, I think I need to rewatch to write it accurately.
edited 11th Mar '15 10:53:55 AM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Memers
Since: Aug, 2013
#146: Mar 11th 2015 at 10:47:50 AM
I can't view the film folders due to some bug, reported it. But yeah agree with .
There are probably a good amount that need to be rewritten.
Discar
Since: Jun, 2009
#147: Mar 11th 2015 at 5:15:25 PM
I think Austin Powers and Serenity could also stay, though they might need to be rewritten.
Oversized Garden Ornament
#148: Mar 12th 2015 at 5:36:23 AM
—> Is it being Genre Savvy when you're referencing fiction you created?
I'd say so, yes. The in-universe creator obviously has genre knowledge (even if he/she is the creator of the genre) and is applying that to real life.
An exception would be if the creator is creating the fiction based on events in (in-universe) Real Life, and then applying that knowledge, because that's just a roundabout way of learning from experience. Suppose, for example, that in-universe there has been a spate of zombie attacks, and the in-universe author is writing a novel about zombies based on those. If he (or anybody else, for that matter) is applying knowledge from that novel to defeating zombies, it's basically the same as if the knowledge had been learned from news reports.
edited 12th Mar '15 5:38:09 AM by GnomeTitan
#149: Mar 12th 2015 at 5:38:57 AM
Serenity I can buy (though it's more Wrong Genre Savvy), but Austin Powers is more the "he's not Genre Savvy, the writers are and he's just Seen It All" so it should absolutely go.
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#150: Mar 15th 2015 at 12:22:11 PM
Where do we put characters who have learned from history books rather than fiction? I've read a few works where a character quotes thinks like The Art Of War and even though they have no personal experience, they're awesome because they read.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
SingleProposition:
GenreSavvy
25th Feb '15 7:54:10 AM
Crown Description:
This is an advisory crowner to determine whether further discussion is necessary Does the inclusion of the following paragraph in the current definition of "Genre Savvy" make the trope too broad?There are two finely-distinguished varieties of genre savvy. The first comes from being familiar with fiction. A good example of this is the Scream series, where the genre savvy characters are savvy because they've watched horror movies. The other kind comes from being a character in some sort of serial fiction, and having a good memory. For example, many modern comic book superhero characters exhibit a lot of savviness, simply because they can remember all the weird things that've happened to them, and thus are not surprised when yet another evil twin shows up.
Background information: That paragraph was added in December of 2011 with no discussion anywhere that I can find any record of.
Please vote UP if you believe that valid arguments can be made for keeping that section and that discussion should continue; DOWN if you do not.
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Haruhi is less Genre Savvy and more "Genre Shaper". You know, "she is god" and all.
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