What qualifies as a work?

I know we have a policy of not troping real life.

So what counts as a work? I mean, we have plenty of nonfiction, for example Documentary and Non-Fiction Literature. I know that there is some creative license, but still.

Also, I know that some Blogs and Other Sites have pages. I also know that some, such as This Troper and Sammy Classic Sonic Fan, have been sent to the Cut List.

I know that there is a policy against discussing real life behavior. But website pages like Reddit, often discuss the behavior of their denizens.

So what is the policy on what a work is?

edited 3rd Dec '15 3:56:22 PM by hamza678

Under no circumstances do we trope the behavior, personality, or appearance of real people, nor do we apply narrative tropes to their actions. That's the baseline for this sort of thing. We've seen way too many articles made about blogs, collaboration websites, and that sort of thing where the tropes are about the members and their behavior. That is verboten. Call it to our attention ASAP so it can be culled.

What about Blogs, Web Video and similar works. Like, we can trope things like CinemaSins or Das Sporking, since they are not talking about themselves, but rather analyzing a work.

edited 3rd Dec '15 4:14:10 PM by hamza678

As long as the trope examples are about the content of the blogs/videos, they are fine. Those are absolutely works.

edited 3rd Dec '15 4:14:36 PM by Fighteer

What about non-fiction?

What are the rules for it?

Many of those videos also have the presenter(s) acting out a character different from the real life actor. Sometimes the difference is slim, but it's there. Not all have a stage persona, though, so it's something to be careful about.

Non-fiction has certain rules, namely that you may not use tropes to describe the real people discussed or portrayed in them. Tropes may apply to the narrative structure of the work, its production elements, and such. Even fully documentary works are designed to tell a story — to frame real life events with a narrative, and that narrative is fair game for tropes.

I was doing searches on this site and found this thread. I know this is an old thread but I had a question to ask out of curiosity.

So does this mean you can't use tropes for people in a non-fiction work's page at all? Let's say there's a documentary series or a history book - is it against the rules to say something like (to give a basic, generic example) "The Protagonist: King Fillername X is the main character of the work." or no?

Real life does not have protagonists and antagonists; it just has people doing things. As humans, we apply narrative structure to real events retroactively through media: politics, history, biopics, and so on.

The Crown is a fictional work that is based on real history. The characters in it are played by actors reading from scripts. It is fair game for troping because everybody (hopefully) understands that Matt Smith is not the real Prince Philip.

The World at War is a documentary covering the events of World War II. It uses real footage and describes real people doing real things. It is not a work of fiction. Our rules say that we cannot apply tropes to the people and events it depicts. However, it constructs a narrative to frame the events, and that narrative can have things like protagonists and antagonists. Thus, one could write a trope example stating that a documentary frames the Allied powers as the protagonists, but not that the Axis powers are Complete Monsters because that is a moral judgment of real people.

American Football is a real life sport. The players in it are not acting; there is no script and no pre-written narrative. They are not portraying fictional characters or dramatized versions of themselves. Therefore, we cannot apply any plot or character tropes. There are tropes employed in marketing the sport, but we don't write work articles for those.

Professional Wrestling is a sport, but it is substantially fictionalized. The wrestlers are (usually) real athletes but they are playing as characters, not as themselves, and they are following a script written for them, not freely competing against each other. We can apply tropes to the plot and characters because they are largely fictional. We cannot apply tropes to the actors as if they are characters.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 5th 2022 at 1:36:12 PM

You would say something like "The documentary frames them as The Protagonist".

If someone being interviewed for the documentary talks about real life events as if it were a trope, you would cite them as saying it.

Basically, do as much as possible to phrase these as the non-fiction work's stance or narrative and not us troping real life.

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 5th 2022 at 12:45:57 PM

& Alright that makes sense, thank you both for letting me know. I have a copule of other questions related to that, mostly on historical documentaries that are not fiction.

1. With that example of The World at War you gave, Fighteer said you could write a trope example about how a non-fiction frames a real historical person. So you would write an example as (to give a basic generic example again) "The Protagonist: Fillername is the focus character of the book"?

2. If YES to 1. — troping the people depicted in the non-fiction work would be allowed if you clarify that it's how the work depicts them? E.g. I assume "Messianic Archetype: Fillername was like Jesus because [XYZ]" would not be allowed, but does it mean "Messianic Archetype: The author compares how Fillername did [X] to how Jesus did [Y]" would be allowed?

3. If NO to 2. and/or 1. — I notice there are many documentary non-fiction works on the website that do have tropes for people and events. My question here is, are these breaking any rules under the moderator's noses, or are these articles perfectly fine? Some examples:
   • The Story of Civilization, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and The Great Game are straight-up history books that don't (intentionally) fictionalize events.
   • The Histories, Parallel Lives, and Gesta Danorum are historical chronicles of events that, even if they may make a mistake or two, still are intended to be recordings of real events and not fiction.
   • The Diary of a Young Girl, Homage to Catalonia, and Storm of Steel are biographies and diaries from real people, recording historical events.

The answers to 1 and 2 are, broadly speaking, yes. Just be careful to write all examples in the context of "this is how the work presents X", not "X is this".

Regarding 3, works that are strictly biographical and do not apply retroactive historical judgments or narrative framing structures should not be troped at all. This can be a tricky line to draw since all writing contains at least some narrative intent.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 5th 2022 at 2:12:26 PM

Well this has been rather informative. But I think it would be helpful if someone made an Administrivia page on troping non-fiction works, so curious users don't have to dig up an old forum thread on the topic like I did. I ask here since I'm not sure if "common" (non-moderator/non-admin) users are allowed to make Administrivia pages.

So, uh... let's talk about Literature.Im Glad My Mom Died.

ATT consensus was to cut, but the discussion got mod-directed here.

The article, as written, should be cut because it tropes the Real Life subjects of the biography and makes no mention of any use of narrative structure.

Biographical works are potentially tropable for how the author treats the subject, such as by having a protagonist and antagonist, by employing foreshadowing, and so on. They are explicitly not allowed to be a back-door for troping the real life topics.

I'll cutlist it then with your post and the ATT thread as references.

Okay, so in my previous posts here and in that other thread about Reality TV one might glean that I am vaguely in support of Im Glad My Mom Died (and other nonfiction memoirs) having a page and even troping RL, but I have just come back from a trip with a lot of audiobook-listening opportunities and I can now fully argue for it.

If it was a Wikipedia-style biography of McCurdy's life I would absolutely agree it's not tropeworthy. But it's not — these are specific moments from her life carefully chosen and elaborated on to tell a narrative. She discusses several tropes and industry terms as well.

Like I said upthread, nonfiction works can absolutely trope real life within the framing of the nonfiction work, and I think the same thing can apply here. I present Sandbox.Im Glad My Mom Died for review. I've been careful to clarify that these tropes are how the book frames them and not real life.

Thoughts? More trouble than it's worth?

(TIL Wikiword formatting remains after the page is cut)

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 18th 2022 at 3:26:32 AM

Keep in mind, the original page literally only talked about how abusive her mom was. It didn't make a good case for itself.

The discussion appeared to be leaning towards "the work itself isn't tropeworthy at all".

Which was in part based on the state of the page and how it was presented. I'm just saying that at the time there was no evidence that it was tropeworthy.

I still think the book is too entangled with real life to be tropable in the sense that you are suggesting. I skimmed the sandbox you created and the line is very thin. Yes, it's McCurdy's own narrative about her life, but it's still entirely about real things and people from her biased perspective, not a third-party documentary or biopic.

(Note that when I use "bias" here, it is not in a pejorative sense.)

In other words, rather than being a documentary work, it falls into our category of gossip.

If you want a more objective take, I'd be interested in knowing how many other autobiographical books have TV Tropes articles, so we can compare.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 19th 2022 at 1:44:12 PM

So Synchronicity / Fighteer, about that question of mine relating to Administrivia, what is/are your answer(s)?

I agree it would be nice to have we need guidelines about "works that ostensibly depict real events" written down somewhere, whether that's a documentary or reality tv.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Diary of Anne Frank were previously brought up as potential discussion points.

Edit cos I forgot I made another one: some autobiographical graphic novel pages I made:

• The Best We Could Do: Has NRLEP trope (Abusive Parents, I Was Quite a Looker) but they are called and depicted as such in the artwork. Has some plot and narrative tropes, no art tropes.
• The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist. Some of the tropes I put down are art tropes (Splash of Color, Briffits and Squeans) and the tone is more self-deprecating, but most are narrative and it also follows the "anecdotes about my life, career and famous people I've interacted with" format McCurdy's book does.

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 19th 2022 at 3:39:52 AM

So, um, is anyone allowed to make an Administrivia page or only a few people?

Some other autobiographies/memoirs:

• The Fire Never Goes Out: includes art and narrative tropes (Alternate Self, Body to Jewel, Elemental Motifs, Medium Blending, Wingding Eyes)
• On Writing: combined memoir and essays about writing. there's a couple Discussed Tropes from the latter (Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory, A Rare Sentence) and a Foreshadowing example about how the author recounts events. Wham Line, which describes a real event, fits the framing of the event, I think.
• Unbecoming: A Memoir of Disobedience: tropes all seem to be directly about real events
• Gender Queer: A Memoir: tropes all seem to be directly about real events. Big Sister Worship and Coming-Out Story seem to be more narrative-related.
• My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness: some art tropes (Action Bar, Author Avatar, Deliberately Monochrome, Dull Eyes of Unhappiness). How We Got Here is about how the events are told. Wham Line is a ZCE, but from what I recall, the line in question is framed as a wham.