An honest conversation about Chairs: What is a Trope and how do we judge them?

This was inspired after a long string of TRS threads where the tropeworthiness of a concept was called into question. I've seen both broad and narrow ideas of what exactly is a trope. Including, but not limited to:

• A storytelling device
• A pattern of devices used in media
• Something used in fiction to convey meaning
• Using something to communicate a story
• A way of doing something in media
• All of the above
• And etc.

I know that People Sit on Chairs has been used as a theoretical litmus test to see whether a concept is a trope. It seems to focus on how a trope must have meaning beyond "a thing happens." This should be simple, but the definition of "meaningful" doesn't seem to be solid. I've seen strict and loose interpretations of what "meaningful" entails, as well as trope concepts where chairs isn't even applicable. Is chairs still a valid test? Does it encompass the whole concept of "trope?"

I ask all this because many statements I hear whether a concept is tropeworthy are beginning to feel... arbitrary. That's not a good feeling to have. I know we are not wikipedia, and I'm not asking for a rigid definition or a perfect policy. But I think we need to find some guidelines and boundaries again. I am honestly interested in learning what's happened.

What do you all think?

edited 14th Mar '17 6:34:33 PM by pokedude10

The objective of a trope is to convey meaning to the audience in a short amount of time. That can be done by referencing patterns observed in other works (or relying on real life) that the audience is familiar with. The biggest obstacle, and why you find many distinctions seem arbitrary, is that humans engage constantly in apophenia; finding patterns where there are none. This is why the explanation that a pattern is "chairs" is not an accusation, but an attempt to explain reality.

In addition to meaning-tropes, we also have audience-tropes (where people's shared/diverse experiences are common ground for discussing the work) and trivia-tropes (where the method of story creation is imitated several times over). They are all different patterns in works, and our objective is to find why they exist, not just list "random information".

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Tropes (the kind that go on the main articles) always:

1. Are the result of an intentional choice
   • Tropes are patterns adopted by writers, producers, directors, and designers whether they are consciously aware of them or not. The "intentional choice" could be something like, "We need a sheet of stunt glass for the actor to get thrown through," or "Let's get a white actor for this role, which is Asian in the book," or, "Let's jiggle the camera around to make the shot look more realistic."
2. Form a significant pattern
   • Sometimes, trope ideas get proposed that are too narrow or too unusual to gather any significant body of examples. "Wearing Purple Socks On Thursday To Show Sadness" is way too narrow to be a quality trope. A good sign of this is that there are more aversions than straight uses.
3. Have meaning, whether it be to the narrative or to the production
   • There must be some purpose to the pattern for it to count as a trope. If you can't think of any context for examples of the trope, that's a good sign that it lacks meaning. Sometimes stuff just happens: although it forms a pattern, that pattern lacks any narrative or production intent.
4. Be distinct from other tropes.
   • This is where The Same But More Specific comes in.

When someone accuses a trope proposal of being People Sit On Chairs, that means it's lacking the third attribute. If it lacks the second, it's Too Rare To Trope. Lacking the first usually throws it into Audience Reactions territory, although there are a few exceptions.

The distinction between Trivia and a main-page trope is a distinct element: is it visible within the work as presented to the audience, and/or does it rely on context external to the work to be recognizable?

edited 15th Mar '17 6:41:14 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

In addition, I would say a good frame of reference is to consider both Playing with a Trope and Trope Families. Think of actual examples of the trope being subverted, deconstructed or notably averted. Think of companion tropes that are narrower, broader, or simply related.

I remember one time I took a trope called Paintball Error to TRS, and got it renamed to Paintball Episode, in large part because the trope was skewed towards complaining about mistakes in portraying paintball games rather than just being about the characters playing paintball. In the discussion someone felt that Paintball Episode was essentially people sit on chairs, and my response was to list similar tropes like Christmas Episode and Baseball Episode, and then common, specific and varied ways the trope manifests, which I copied and pasted right on to the trope page.

Basically anyone can make the accusation that a proposed trope is People Sit On Chairs, but if that comes up the response needs to be basically the same thing. List good examples with subversions, list comparable tropes and give broad theoretical examples that could go in the description. The more versatile the trope is the healthier it will be.

By the last bit, a Shout-Out or other reference, such as Product Placement, is Trivia unless explicitly called attention to. "Relying on outside elements" is too vague to be useful in any definition.

Check out my fanfiction!

I think one of the reasons we have a Trivia/ namespace discussion thread is because there's some gray areas. Title Tropes are usually considered tropes, for example, but some are trivia.

But to make a statement specific to Chairs...: I think it's also important to note when there's almost a trope, but it is over-specific. In that case, the less specific article may be the "missing supertrope," and it might consume the original article that was over-specific. They're both tropes, but there's only the one article that covers both of them. (This is basically The Same But More Specific "in reverse.")

I just felt like Trivia was too off topic so I tried to say something. Yes, it is another way to look at The Same But More Specific.

edited 15th Mar '17 1:15:01 PM by WaterBlap

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

The expectation of a Shout-Out is that the audience will notice, which sets it apart from many other trivia tropes. They are also often fourth wall breaking, which is in and of itself a trope.

Note that your observation is the obvious converse of The Same But More Specific: if a trope idea is too narrow, it usually means that there is a broader trope that encompasses it.

edited 15th Mar '17 12:43:06 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Because "title" is one of the Paratext, right? A "text" that's not supposed to play in the work's actual content but is closely attached to them.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

A title is a part of the work, and often means quite a bit for the story.

That still doesn't explain what that other part has to do with defining a trope, though. At most it means it could be an indication of whether something is trivia or not. And I have seen people use it as direct evidence, on its own, that something is trivia.

Check out my fanfiction!

Thanks for the responses, this has really helped clarify/classify some of the boundary issues. Some questions:

@Fighteer

• If I understand right, you're defining the metric for "meaning" as "context." If a trope was a sentence: "Thing happens, in order to do x."; "Thing happens" is not a trope alone and is considered chairs. If that's right, I think we're on the same page.
• On that same thought, what if that context "in order to do x" is not meaningful enough? (I've given and seen that sentiment.) It's what the Chairs page calls "narrative significance." Thoughts?

@KJMackley

• I love Playing with a Trope, it's one of the best educational pages here.
• I like the process on working through P So C. Thank you.

@WaterBlap

• So if a trope has a theoretical "missing supertrope", that shouldn't automatically assume the "almost trope" fails to pass Chairs?
• The "gray areas" are something I don't like having, but it sounds like they might be fairly narrow exceptions

@AnotherDuck

• I'll admit, the thread over Audio Description, and by proxy Paratext was one of the inspirations for this thread. Given the "grey area,." I think I'm starting to lean your way on that issue. But that's for the other thread.

edited 16th Mar '17 12:07:31 PM by pokedude10

"Meaning" and "narrative significance" are closely intertwined. To go back to the original case for PSOC, "sitting on chairs" lacks both of those in most cases. Let's take a few hypothetical examples:

• In a work, the actors need to sit for a scene, so the props team rustles up a bunch of chairs. There's no meaning; it's just part of the background. There's no narrative significance, because the fact that they are sitting on chairs doesn't drive the plot, raise any questions about the story or characters, or in any other way influence the work.
• Let's say that a particular character has an affinity for a certain type of chair. The writer gets the prop team to obtain a particular brand or style of chair, and the character is always seen in it whenever they sit. But the chair has no importance to the story and is never brought up by anyone. A few viewers might notice, but most would never consider there to be anything unusual about it. It has meaning, but no narrative significance. We describe this sort of thing as Narrative Filigree.
• On the other hand, a character might have a particularly visually ornate chair, one that the audience will most definitely notice and associate with them. They may take visible pride in their chair, or get resentful if someone else tries to use it. The chair is a defining element of their characterization and may have special functions or powers. This is a trope, one we call Cool Chair.

edited 16th Mar '17 1:05:49 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

(Of course, chairs appearing out of nowhere is a trope: Hammerspace)

I'd also tie "A pattern of devices used in media" and "A storytelling device" together with statistics: If the pattern is statistically significant and clinically relevant, one can safely assume it was put there for a reason.

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

Sitting on chairs is definitely a pattern, one you find in most Western media (Eastern media may feature people sitting on tatami instead). Usually, when someone sits, it's on a chair. But being a pattern alone is insufficient to make a trope.

As we've said, it must have narrative significance — that is, it's an intentional choice that conveys some information to the audience or has some relevance to the story or the execution of the work. For our purposes, it must also have context that is more than simply "Trope Happens". In other words, you must be able to describe any given instance of the pattern in terms of what, specifically, its narrative intent is and how it's used.

• Lady in Red: Alice is a lady and wears red.

This is an example of insufficient context. It conveys no information to indicate that Alice wearing red has any narrative significance. In fact, it is a strong indicator that the trope itself is PSOC: a pattern without any relevance to the story.

edited 16th Mar '17 12:45:13 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Sitting on a chair also happens in Real Life. It thus isn't statistically significant - should have specified that "statistically significant and clinically relevant" was in comparison to RL. If people in fiction tended to sit more frequently under a chair instead of on it, then that might be a trope. Tropes in Aggregate and things like the Artistic License pages are tropes in one way or another.

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

So, tropes that are The Same But More Specific versions of other tropes should have some different, or enhanced, meaning than the general trope, right?

Like... Ok, whatever, 'cause this is this first example that comes to mind:

Girl Powered is The Same But More Specific, version of Gender-Restricted Gear, but a valid trope because it makes girls a Game-Favored Gender, instead of just different from boys in some other way.

Which is the "added qualification is clear enough that the result serves a distinct narrative function from the original" quality.

... Should The Same But More Specific get examples on its page to help make that clearer?

edited 16th Mar '17 1:45:03 PM by Malady

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

Frankly, I can't tell the difference between Girl Powered and Gender-Restricted Ability by the description.

Edited to add: One of the defining aspects of a subtrope-supertrope relationship is that examples should always go to the narrowest trope if applicable. There should not be any examples of a female Gender-Restricted Ability, since those should all be in Girl Powered. By process of elimination, this leaves only Guy Powered examples in the supertrope, which means that it now, by default, means Guy Powered. (I suppose there could be some Bizarre Alien Sexes examples where the power is limited to something that is neither male nor female, or powers available only to neuters...)

Logic, folks.

There's also the question of whether the restriction applies to biological sex or social gender.

edited 16th Mar '17 2:21:08 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

And that's why I didn't want to use that as an example... And link to my thread about Girl Powered. ... And with a mod advocating a TRS for it... I should go make one... Tricky on mobile Firefox, tho... LAZY

ANYWAY... If those tropes had those definitions, that would be why the hypothetical Girl Powered would be a valid trope even if it were a The Same But More Specific of the hypothetical Gender-Restricted Gear, right?

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

Girl Powered is for devices that only work for females. Gender-Restricted Ability also covers magic or superpowers that aren't devices. So saying "there shouldn't be any female examples on Gender-Restricted Ability" is ignoring that Girl Powered is narrower in two ways.

By your logic, it would be Gender-Restricted Gear that shouldn't have any female examples, because they should all be on Girl Powered.

However, works that have Girl-powered Gear may also have stuff that only works for guys, so those works would be properly left on GRG:

• Work:
  • Only females can use the A,B, and C.
  • Only males can use D,E, and F

would be a completely correct example on Gender-Restricted Gear.

edited 16th Mar '17 3:23:33 PM by Madrugada

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

And by the way, I did NOT "advocate for a TRS thread". I pointed out that trying to slide changes to a trope through in a Trope Talk thread was not acceptable, and that if you thought you could make a case for changing it, you needed to go to TRS.

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

Not you, I meant Fighteer!

'Cause (he?) couldn't see a difference between them... Unless he's not a mod, in which case, it was understandable.

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

I'm not going to push it. TRS is too full now. Just noting that it's not as clear-cut as all that, and the title of Girl Powered gives no particular indication that it's about gear or equipment as opposed to innate or trained powers.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

To jump back to the main topic, this idea is why I, personally, hate Troperithmetic-created tropes. I don't find value in X+Y=XY! I'd rather we just list those tropes separately. I want some additional context that modifies the subtrope, so that when you find a trope made from X+Y, you learn the result is actually XYZ! Some additional component that exists when you look at a more narrow version of trope X (not just X+Y; any time we propose a subtrope) is important when I'm judging for Lumper Vs Splitter options.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I think some people use "narrative significance" a little too narrowly. If it's something that's meant to tell the audience something, even if it's just telling them a joke or wanting them to feel something, it has narrative significance, and then it's a trope if there's a pattern of it. Because that's what tropes are all about: relaying a message to the audience through a recognisable pattern.

Check out my fanfiction!

A useful synonym in many cases is probably subtext, but even that word is generally more narrow than what trope refers to.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Ok, I think it's starting to come together for me.

"Narrative Significance" is about relaying a clear message to the audience while having bearing on the plot (Not Narrative Filigree). Because of Trope-supertrope relations, the narrowest trope is the most correct/fitting. When a subtrope becomes too narrow, the "narrative significance" usually becomes too weak OR the pattern is too rare, thus becoming too narrow or Too Rare To Trope. (ie: The narrowness of a trope is inversely related to "narrative significance".)

I think what makes the chairs claims feel arbitrary is the message created by "Narrative Significance" is seen as more-or-less important to different people. There's no way around that other than being able to clearly relate how the pattern relates the narrative significance of a message.

Am I on the right track?

edited 16th Mar '17 5:12:11 PM by pokedude10