Unclear Description: Organ Autonomy

Animate Body Parts's description has only two sentences and though Organ Autonomy's description is longer, it feels like they're about the same thing: a body part with a mind of its own that may or may not be connected to a full thinking creature. It's really unclear what the distinctions between the two tropes are and there are even examples posted on both tropes that are almost duplicates, with the same context but worded differently.

As an example, this one is from Animate Body Parts:

In Monster Pulse, this is practically the entire premise. A mysterious energy somehow "infects" people and brings a randomly-chosen body part or organ to life as a separate, autonomous being. Unlike most of the examples on this page, they don't have human-level intelligence; they can vocalize and understand orders, but are only a little bit smarter than a well-trained animal.

While this one is from Organ Autonomy:

Monster Pulse: Practically the entire premise—these organs aren't just autonomous, they're physically separate from the original body! And yet, somehow, the walking, talking organ continues to perform its function just fine—Bina still has blood moving around in her body, West still gets nutrition, etc.

Then Organ Autonomy goes on to describe body parts which are "considered part of the same person who can just move them from a distance," which is very different from the "minds of their own" it mentioned earlier. This is an example that fits that line:

This explicitly exists as a fundamental law of reality in the Discworld series. Of course, in a world where the Law of Narrative Causality is also a fundamental law, it's hardly incongruous. In Pyramids, the mummified King Teppicymon XXVII awakens as an undead, but can't see. He fumbles his way to the canopic jar that contains his eyes, so he can return them to their proper place; through the disembodied eyeballs, he sees his own hand reach into the jar to collect them.

What should these two tropes actually cover?

Edited by PangaeasMostWanted on Mar 9th 2019 at 2:06:47 AM

It's not entirely clear but based on their descriptions, Organ Autonomy requires someone to "own" the detached organ, while Animate Body Parts lacks that requirement.

Animate Body Parts doesn't link to Organ Autonomy at all and Organ Autonomy only mentions it's "related" to Animate Body Parts without saying how. Both pages should probably mention each other and at least say how they're distinct.

Based on a casual glance through the examples, both pages are trying to cover "anthropomorphizing parts of the body". One of them should instead be "detached body parts are still under the command of a single person". One sometimes leads to the other, but that probably makes it more important to define a difference between the two pages.

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