Not Tropeworthy: Nobody Over 50 Is Gay

Nobody Over Fifty Is Gay is just a list of "people over 50 who are gay". It's supposed to list aversions, but "work doesn't have a gay character over 50" isn't a narrative decision anyway, so both are People Sit on Chairs. There are lots of examples on the page, so it doesn't really seem that uncommon.

Edited by garyghi on Jan 7th 2020 at 6:48:58 AM

Opened. Yeah, that's the same issue that doomed tropes like A Man Is Not A Virgin.

I'll support a cut.

Cut.

Yeah, I always felt weird about this one. Some works just don't have characters over 50, and some works don't mention any characters' sexualities, so it feels odd to list aversions. Old gay people have always been around, and it doesn't really seem as uncommon in fiction as the description purports.

I support cutting. Regarding the very real cultural attitudes/homophobia in the description "an older person who's very out and proud despite growing up conservative cultural attitudes" or something might be workable.

It was "supposed" to be cut years ago. I tried to make an inversion in TLP — preteen characters who are gay — but was told that exceptions-only tropes were being weaned away.

Cut.

Cut. I agree with what Berrenta said about A Man Is Not A Virgin.

Cut

Cut.

Cut

Cut. This doesn't serve any narrative purpose.

I could see this being a thing, if limited to actual examples rather than aversions. Like if it was re-tooled to characters expressing the view that old gay people don't exist, or expressing shock up on meeting an older gay person. Some of the quotes seem to be examples of a related stereotype that gay men are youth-obsessed (sort of the gay equivalent of Ma'am Shock), which seems tropeworthy as well. But I don't know if there are enough examples to salvage.

But as it is it's just a list of older, gay characters which isn't really a trope.

Agreed.

Would that have too much overlap with Mentor in Queerness and Lover and Beloved?

It's a workable idea, but can be made at any point in TLP regardless of what happens to this trope.

Cut.

Snip snip.

Or for the flipside of my initial idea, something like "older gay character who is still closeted because they grew up with this notion." This is another workable idea using the current title (the Will and Grace lampshade on the page kinda plays to this), but it may be easier to cut this and start the whole thing from scratch.

Edited by Synchronicity on Feb 3rd 2020 at 8:24:20 AM

I say we hold off on cutting, though I agree that it needs to focus on actual examples. This isn't such a ubiquitous trope that only playing with examples would be feasible to list.

But the thing is, actual examples would just come in the form of "work X doesn't have any old gay characters", which isn't interesting to know, or meaningful at all, or even usually relevant to the story. It's discussing the absence of something, so the only examples will be...well, the absence of something. Tropes should be about what's in the work, not what isn't in it.

Our best option here is to retool the trope to be about discussing this or making it an in-universe mindset, something that can be done so much easier with a TLP draft and a fresh start, than trying to salvage what it currently is.

That's a trope in TLP.

Agreed.

I can't really come up with a reason to keep this, as a storytelling building block. It doesn't really come up very often, at least in media that I've watched.

That being said, it's definitely more of a Trope in Aggregate and I'm not supporting a cut, but maybe losing or tweaking the examples. Website Them has a pretty good article on this. The description is right on this starting to become a Discredited Trope as more and more people are coming out.

Edited by MegaJ on Feb 3rd 2020 at 7:56:11 AM

Hmm, I'd be fine with giving it an Example Sectionectomy...

I agree with what WarJay said in post 20, regarding how a work not having middle-aged or elderly gay characters isn't a trope; it's a lack of a trope. Aversions are fine for Omnipresent Tropes, but I fail to see how this is one.

If there's a trope (or even multiple tropes) to be made regarding stereotypes or misconceptions about older gay characters, and the roles those stereotypes or misconceptions have in works, I think that would be a matter for TLP. In its current state, Nobody Over 50 Is Gay is just a list of older gay characters, which is Chairs.

In addition, Nobody Over 50 Is Gay is listed under No Straight Examples, Please!^note Is that supposed to be a pun? with a note stating that only aversions are allowed (but it doesn't say it allows subversions, parodies, etc.), meaning the actual examples that were previously brought up don't actually exist, or at least they aren't supposed to exist, since they'd technically be misuse. Because of this, if there are any straight examples elsewhere on the wiki, some evidence that they exist and serve an actual narrative purpose would be nice, otherwise I don't see how this is salvageable without TLP.

For what it's worth, Infant Immortality was split, renamed, and overhauled because of how aversion-heavy it was. I'm not sure which thread led to that decision, but in this thread, that page's issues were best summed up by Septimus Heap after he opened the thread:

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 4th 2020 at 2:33:06 PM