Not Thriving: Faux Interracial Relationship

The description is really short, it has only 11 examples, and, according to this, it has only 11 links to it. Should we unlaunch this trope back into the Trope Launch Pad or just cut it altogether?

Opening.

I myself vote to unlaunch this trope.

I'm in favor of keeping it, since it identifies itself as mostly a Dead Horse Trope and as such wouldn't be expected to have many examples. The examples it does have seem solid, and as a fan of classic literature I appreciate tropes found mainly in older works being listed anyway.

A few of the examples could use more context.

Has over half a page of examples. I think that's too many to just cut without any other problems.

A little confused on the trope in general. Would Shrek be an example?

Probably not. The trope's intended for race, not species, and Shrek has the whole "magical species change" thing to complicate it.

Honestly, I vote for killing it.

Just because we can find it happening a handful of times, doesn't make a plot point as bizarrely spefitic and rare as "mixed race couple turns out not to be mixed race after all" a trope.

edited 11th Jan '18 4:44:53 PM by shoboni

So the options are sending it back to TLP, cutlisting the trope with no TLP draft, or doing nothing for now.

The description is a bit weak, but eleven examples is definitely not Too Rare To Trope. If a trope is genuinely rare, then there's only going to be so much we can do for it. But that doesn't make it not-a-trope.

And if it's genuinely rare, then sending it back to TLP is unlikely to help. In that case, we might want to look for a broader trope it can be merged with. But if there is no such trope, we may simply have to leave it as is. Our goal is to document tropes—even rare ones.

Of course, if it's not actually that rare, then TLP is the cure. But I tend to think this one might be rare.

So the proper course here depends on several factors. (Not least of which would be: is it actually a trope? I suspect it is, but I might be wrong.)

I disagree.

This is a bizarre thing with so few examples (and even with the small pool invalid or shoe-horned examples already present) that it may fall under Too Rare to Trope.

Edit history shows it goes AT LEAST goes back to 2012 and that the creation edit isn't even visible so it's older than the oldest listed edit. Only gathering 11 examples with some of them questionable in that long period of time doesn't bode well for it being common enough to trope.

edited 12th Jan '18 9:34:16 PM by shoboni

I can see this trope to be expanded to include more "groups" other than races. Could be lineage, species, Fantastic Racism.

Also status, think your dating a commoner but he turns out to be a prince and such ala Spaceballs.

Race such as Shrek and kinda Zelda OOT.

Gender such as Persona 4.

edited 13th Jan '18 9:15:42 AM by Memers

We could expand it to somehow to account for any Shocking Reveal in a canon relationship regarding the assumed dynamics of the couple.

That could work to make it less oddly specific and more tropable.

edited 13th Jan '18 11:05:08 AM by shoboni

That may be more tropable, I have no idea.

That seems a bit too broad. Well, it could be tropable, but it would be a supertrope to other tropes as well, like Surprise Incest or Unsettling Gender-Reveal.

edited 15th Jan '18 1:53:30 AM by TrueShadow1

I'd say expand this adding "Races" in fictional sence as well, and not just RL ethnicity. Suitable All Along? The Khaavren Romances example already is Fantastic Racism one, so there is precedent on this very page.

edited 22nd Jan '18 7:41:18 AM by ChivalrousDelphine

Boosting this since I think it's important to deal with and the thread is at risk of dying.

I'm still up for expanding the trope somehow to avoid Tropes Are Not Narrow

edited 31st Jan '18 11:26:13 AM by shoboni

If it truly is a Dead Horse Trope, then it would make sense to not find many examples in the current pool of media out there. The relative number of examples to total number of works (potential examples) keeps shrinking after every year, after all.

That said, metaphors for race, such as fantasy species, should count given Tropes Are Flexible. It shouldn't need to be said, imo, but there's so little to the current description that it implies an arbitrary requirement on RL ethnicity. This seems to be the case with the Five Hundred Years After example, anyway. Something like class and gender, however, would have different implications, and it has a different RL history to it anyway. Different settings permit one of those whereas others can't without breaking the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. For example, in A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, the protagonist was raised in a different class than the Dysquith family but he actually is directly related to the family, making him the same "class" by birth as them but he's treated totally differently from nobles per se. Also, in works set in the early 1900s like Downton Abbey, ideas of inter-class relations and interracial relations were totally different so a "faux mixed race" character would be treated more like someone of a "different race" rather than a "different class." My point is that it isn't necessarily the same.

There may be a missing supertrope for the general concept, but I'd think this could be grandfathered in as other tropes have in the past. Note that there are over 350 inbounds already.

Also, part of the problem concernc connections to related tropes, or rather the lack thereof. Of note, only one trope is mentioned in the description (Maligned Mixed Marriage). But we've had other tropes launched since this page was created and should be mentioned (though I'm not sure whether there actually have been).

Crosswicking is also an issue. With 11 examples and 11 wicks but 6 indexes, that actually comes to about five crosswicks (for examples). Part of the problem there is that three of the examples don't have work pages, to say nothing of the two house-cleaning indexes.

And if this appears to be an instance of People Sit on Chairs, then we should simply cutlist it.

Chairs means it’s just pointless to talk about, this certainly is not pointless.in any way. Just IMO it is too specific since it could apply to any allegory for difference, we have all come up with examples of race, sex, species, religion, politics and such.

Too Rare To Trope?

No, there are legit examples on the page.

Many works just use allegories or do the same thing in another area and end in the same result, which is the thing I think should be included.

Persona 4 for example sets up a potential gay relationship between Kanji and Naoto but it’s revealed that Naoto is a girl to Kanji’s relief thus the bait and switch. It goes on to discussion of gender roles on a guy like crafts and a girl liking detective stuff and how sexist the Japanese police are which is why Naoto crossdressed but the bait and switch is still there.

edited 1st Feb '18 7:23:14 AM by Memers

That sounds like either an inversion or subversion of Sweet on Polly Oliver rather than something we don't already have. My point remaining the same, namely that the gender or sexual orientation stuff is different from the race stuff.