Duplicate Trope: Never Land

We have both Neverland and Teenage Wasteland, neither of which appears to link to the other. I can see a few ways they theoretically could be distinguished from each other but as they stand, any such distinction isn't made clear.

Teenage Wasteland: "A world where the children rule over the adults, if they exist." Neverland: "This is where an entire area, often an Adventure Town, is entirely populated and governed by children."

The geographic distinction "world of teens" versus "place of teens" would be a weak one in my eyes. I would be more interested to see a cut between societies that don't have adults for some reason and those where they exist but are being suppressed by the youth.

There's a kind of implication from the names that Teenage Wasteland is a hellhole and Neverland is a utopia, but given that a lot of the examples are likely to be grey areas — Crapsaccharine Worlds or deconstructions of youthful irresponsibility — I'm not sure that's enough of a basis to split them.

How would you classify settings where adults are forcibly evicted or otherwise kept out? Then you've got young people running society and using their power to make sure there are no adults around.

I think hellhole vs. utopia are different enough to be distinct tropes.

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So where does a land of teenagers that's just a regularly functioning society go?

I feel that Never Land could be folded into Teenage Wasteland as part of its list of options, though it is pretty close to option 2.

As noted above many of these examples fall into grey areas. Just a quick scan through Teenage Wasteland shows a number of examples where nothing is explicitly bad because society is run by kids, just that the environment is harsh which is difficult for many societies. Further there is some definite overlap in examples between both trope.

Perhaps the description could be updated to reflect that these examples are not inevitably portrayed as bad. A title change would also be needed if we went this direction. Something like Teen Run Government or Teen Run Society.

How's this: rework Neverland to be a neutral Super-Trope for "setting ruled by children", with Teenage Wasteland as a subtrope that portrays the more negative aspects of such a place.

Could just as well be the other way around if people prefer that.

What's the estimated share of works without a negative display of this setting?

Edited by eroock on Oct 27th 2018 at 10:50:14 AM

I don't know that anyone's worked that out, and by a cursory look the two tropes have never been strictly split that way — people have just added examples of "place full of children" to both of them indiscriminately.

So you'd have to go through each page and subjectively decide whether each example was positive, negative or neutral (or unstated). That's why I suggest making one of them a catch-all and gradually tidying the other up into a subtrope for examples that fall definitively into either Crapsack World or Sugar Bowl territory (depending which one we make the subtrope).

EDIT: But honestly, the more I look at them, even the positive examples tend to be some level of deconstruction; it's a Crapsaccharine World, or the kids are naive to the danger they're in or the fate of the adults, or whatever. So I'm not even convinced that's a good reason for a split, it feels more like a case of Tropes Are Flexible.

Edited by johnnye on Oct 27th 2018 at 7:41:40 PM

I could see having one catch-all and then specific sub-tropes. While descriptions can easily be moved around, as it stands Teenage Wasteland is best set up for being the catch-all. Would we want to create an additional trope?

I imagine something like Teenage Wasteland as the super trope, Neverland having the Sugar Bowl examples, and a new trope having the Crapsack World examples. We could put examples that fit into neither stay in Teenage Wasteland.

Yeah, split.

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Agree with course of action in Post 11, except that the name Teenage Wasteland sounds rather negative and is better suited for the dystopian version. Perhaps we should create the supertrope anew, and transplant the definition of Teenage Wasteland there?

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I proposed above two other titles Teen Run Government and Teen Run Society. So, to have the fewest actions, we could rename Teenage Wasteland, bring the new version of Teenage Wasteland to the launch pad and then split examples from there. Does this dound like a good plan then, should someone set up a crowner?

As a side note how does one find the post number? Is it just manual counting or ...?

How about Kids Rule The World for the new supertrope?

P.S. mouse over the timestamp and it will show you the post #.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

That works. Keep both current trope names. Definitely not Teenage Wasteland for the supertrope.

Edited by Lymantria on Dec 9th 2018 at 5:13:14 AM

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I would like to see a wick check if enough "neutral" examples exist to consider making a supertrope out of it.

I am working on a wick check now, but It'll probably won't be until tomorrow that I am able to post it as I've been a bit busy.

~Tropers/Rymyll_the_Wanderer, where's the Wick Check?

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I'm in favour of the Super-Trope, although we may wish to vote on names. Unless the Wick Check can show multiple clear examples of either subtrope, I'd rather they become redirects.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Do we have a trope for "dimension where people do not age"? Cause that's what I thought Neverland was at first.

Sorry, I kind of completely lost track of everything.

Here are the results of my wick check. There seems to be at least some neutral examples. Either the the details and the effects of the government are not explored or the government is no more or less worse than any adult government.

Edited by Rymyll_the_Wanderer on Jan 25th 2019 at 9:26:44 AM

Clock is up with no progress; closing.

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