Not Tropeworthy: Detached Sleeves

This seems like a textbook case of People Sit on Chairs.

Detached Sleeves are an ordinary style of clothing that don't convey any general meaning, and the opening paragraphs don't even try to convince us otherwise. The list of examples is just a list of occurrences of characters wearing detached sleeves.

Whew. In the name of Pele, almost all examples are ZCE too.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

This looks like one of the many appearance and nothing more pages.

Fortunately we have a thread just for dealing with them : https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13545690040A55560100

We can just close this back up and hand it over to there.

It's a fashion / appearance trope, very impractical and fancy. And occasionally Fanservice by creating Zettai Ryouiki on the arms like Opera Gloves.

It's quite trope worthy.

edited 6th May '15 12:21:17 PM by Memers

Unless it says something about the wearer's personality or somesuch, I say killed it.

edited 6th May '15 12:49:32 PM by Karxrida

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Not everything has to be connected to a person's personality, things can be purely visual too.

The fact that it's fancy, non standard, quite impractical, sometimes painful etc. makes it very trope worthy.

edited 6th May '15 1:10:06 PM by Memers

There's no real connection between the examples other than the detached sleeves themselves. That makes it less of a pattern and more something that exists. Opera Gloves and Zettai Ryouiki at least have some association with something else, even if there's a lot of use outside that as well.

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I vote kill it. There's no pattern, because there are so many reasons the garment could have them: historical accuracy, Rule Of Cool, to demonstrate the character is a trendsetter...

No pattern of use, no trope.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Tropes need meaning. It doesn't need to be reflective of a personality trait, but it needs to have some meaning. Not just be a random article of clothing.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

"Detached Sleeves are an ordinary style of clothing that don't convey any general meaning"

Now, I'd say it does say something, just not about the character. They're not ordinary, they don't exist. They're also wildly impractical. Any work having these is clearly going for a Rule of Cool situation, with it being a subtrope of Impossibly Cool Clothes.

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Rather than cutting it outright, I think this and a great many other Appearance Tropes need to be made into Trivia items as simple design elements, unless the work specifically lampshades them or gives them meaning.

Err, they do exist....

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Not in ordinary, day-to-day clothing.

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But they do exist and they don't have any pattern of meaning.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Just because you don't see something very often does not make it a trope.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

They exist yes but impractical to a fault, requiring tape or ties to stay up and tend to be painful after a while in addition to being over the top fancy and a way to show some skin but not too much.

It's a very impractical design element to many signature outfits. Especially when you look Yuna◊ from Final Fantasy X or San Zang◊ from Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce. The former's outfit is literally a kimono with the sleeves cut off and she walks up and down the world wearing those tied around her arm. The latter actually fights using those sleeves as a weapon, a lot of the fighting royalty in Samurai Warriors warriors too wear these despite the fact that it is so impractical.

You don't see it often at all.

edited 7th May '15 9:29:30 AM by Memers

So you've established that they exist and that they are impractical in real life.

What's your point? How does that a trope make? I find them less tropable than, say, cufflinks, to pick some other sleeve-related object. Or one of my favourite features, greebles.

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A trope needs both a pattern of usage and to give some extra information to the audience. Otherwise, it's just a thing that happens — the very definition of PSOC. If there are all sorts of reasons why a character can wear detached sleeves, then there's not a pattern of usage. If they just wear them to look different, there's no additional meaning. Either way, this thing isn't a trope, and simply repeating "Yes it is, too!" isn't going to persuade anyone any differently.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

It's an impractical design element chosen by a costume or character designer. It's something different from what is normally done, impractical etc.

Unique Costume nonstandard design elements such as Too Many Belts and Detached Sleeves are very much trope worthy. As trope worthy as so many other visual only non-costume tropes like say Serkis Folk.

Heck Costume design itself can make or break a character. Especially in Japan where generic is bad and even the fictional school uniforms are 100% unique to the work and even get awards on design..

edited 7th May '15 12:44:27 PM by Memers

I'll try to expand a bit on the problems I see with the page.

A lot of Japanese media makes good use of Impossibly Cool Clothes, and in my opinion they put the most effort and detail in trying to characterise somebody through clothing, hairstyles, hair colours, etc. It seems natural that you'll notice certain trends with their own niche connotations develop over time, like in this case Detached Sleeves giving us some kind of Zettai Ryouiki vibe or some kind of rebellious, not afraid of being impractical, Combat Stilettos vibe. I can understand what Memers means when s/he points these things out.

However this confusion of meanings is what I fear makes this page little more than a fashion watch for fiction at the moment.

To start off, it conflates detached sleeves that fall squarely into Impractically Fancy Outfit territory with those more conservative examples that you see in real life - the ones that are still joined at the armpit and just reveal some shoulder skin, like Cloud Nine or Quorra.

The second confusion is with the Zettai Ryouiki aspect. The trope doesn't distinguish between times when the sleeves are there to show a bit of skin and the times where it has no special meaning and they're just incidental to the character's clothing.

I vote to kill this page and move the better examples to other pages, as appropriate. Where I'd move em would be:

If Impractical and To Show Skin: to Zettai Ryouiki, Impractically Fancy Outfit, Impossibly Cool Clothes or Battle Ballgown

If Practical and To Show Skin: to Zettai Ryouiki, Rule of Cute, Rule of Sexy or just not a trope.

If Impractical and Incidental: Rule of Cool

If Practical and Incidental: Not a trope.

edited 7th May '15 12:08:15 PM by rej

I would say Too Many Belts is a form of greebles. It's a design element that's added and repeated for the sake of adding complexity and making something that's fundamentally simple seem more advanced. Can't say the same about Detached Sleeves.

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Actually, if they are still attached at the armpit then that isn't 'Detached' that's far too practical. Detached Sleeves are completely separate and held on by tightness, glue or a tied string tied like a tourniquet.

And really I think it's a unique enough element that it is easily a subtrope to those especially Impractically Fancy Outfit.

edited 7th May '15 2:01:26 PM by Memers

I agree that cutting out all the practical, semi-attached examples would be a step in the right direction, since there are quite a few of those. The page would still be far from conveying a unified meaning, though. Again, there are many incidental examples that steer more towards Rule of Cool or Rule of Funny than any of the animesque Zettai Ryouiki examples, like in the Fifth Element, Spongebob or School of Rock.

edited 7th May '15 4:53:31 PM by rej

I thought Zettai Ryouiki was just various lengths of socks, not impossible lengths?

edited 7th May '15 5:02:21 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?