Not Tropeworthy: A Protagonist Is Ryu

I was inspired to make this thread after seeing Crossover-Enthusiast's post in the ZCE thread.

Looking through the wicks, I noticed that we got a lot of ZCE issues there as well, like other name-based tropes that went through TRS.

Looking at the results, I feel this is beyond saving. Motion to cut.

Cut.

Yeah, this just seems to be a trope conglomeration nobody even used right. Cut.

Seems way too specific and misused. Cut.

I always wondered if this was something the site made up, since it's very messy even for a trope in aggregate. Certainly not seeing any distinct archetypes in the examples.

I think tropes like Stock Shōnen Hero can cover some of the personality traits (Hot-Blooded, in a rivalry, chivalrous etc). There's probably a kernel of tropeworthiness in the original "dragon-named protagonist", but it's likely far removed from what the trope is now.

Snip snip.

Yeah, I think whatever content this trope has is already covered by Meaningful Name.

Cut and maybe move the examples with context to Meaningful Name.

A Cut is Rye

Cut. Clearly something we manufactured rather than something that exists in the wildm

Meaningful Name works fine, I agree.

Still in favor of cutting, but just noting that I don’t see how Meaningful Name covers this unless the dragon symbolism is very blatant. Just being a Hot-Blooded protective dude doesn’t seem like enough even for those with name context.

No offense, but I feel like cutting should be a last resort. Are we sure there aren't any other options?

I agree, but any potential options should emerge in the wick check as it’s supposed to be representative of how the trope is being used on the wiki. So we can retool or make new tropes in accordance with the results. In this case though, most of it is ZCE (bad) or “this guy has the character for dragon in his name” (not tropeworthy by itself). Only 7/50 or 14% list *some* attributes of the trope, which is not promising.

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 31st 2020 at 10:56:14 AM

I back a cut.

@11: I mean, you can theoretically make an analysis page about just about any name and assign a bunch of vague character attributes based on the name's etymology and whatnot, but that doesn't make it a trope. The fact that very few of the examples actually fit the listed traits makes this one even more meaningless.

But what's even worse about this page is that most of the associated attributes seem only tangentially related to the name's meaning, and are already covered by Stock Shōnen Hero anyway.

Cut

It's Animal Theme Naming but but more specific. We could merge A Protagonist Is Ryu onto that page (dragons already appear a few times on Animal Theme Naming anyway).

Edited by Albert3105 on Mar 31st 2020 at 1:44:03 AM

@Imperial: I mean, if you have any suggestions besides cutting this, feel free to share them; but to me, it's clear this trope is suffering and is barely a tropeworthy concept to begin with (it's far more likely to be a pattern TVT invented rather than an actual narrative pattern), so cutting and moving any decent examples to Meaningful Name is a perfectly valid move.

It's fine to be against cutting things as a first resort, but is there any other option here?

This is a Naming Conventions trope. Just as superheroes and comic book characters tend to have an Alliterative Name, so does the Stock Shōnen Hero and other fighter characters tend to be named some variant of "Ryu". If something is a convention of a genre, and is far more common in fiction than in real life, it's a trope, methinks.

There are many good examples on the page; why not just crosswick those and delete the ZC Es?

to cutting.

Even just in the anime folder alone, half of the examples state that the character "isn't the protagonist", or isn't actually called "Ryu", and others lack the actual qualities apparently associated with the name, such as both examples in the Literature folder and most of the other non-Anime examples.

That...doesn't actually leave us with a large pool of valid stuff.

In other words, it's not just important that their name is "Ryu"; they should also have the personality traits associated with the name, or they're not this trope. And those traits are very specific and seem to only show up in Shonen works.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 31st 2020 at 6:54:34 AM

I know some of the works on the example section and none of characters have anything in common besides being named Ryu (or having it be part of their name). Now if they were all associated with dragons and such then that could be a thing but as of right now it is no different than having a list of people named John.

I also don't think the name Ryu is that prevalent in shonen work for there to be a distinct pattern.

Look at Cherry Blossom Girl (formerly sakura girl). That's a clear established character motif that goes beyond the name Sakura.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 31st 2020 at 7:41:33 AM

Yeah. There are things there that could be tropeworthy (Ryu/dragon symbolism, a rivalry between a dragon-associated character and a tiger-associated character, ect.) but in its current state it's just a big mess.

Right; if the trope was just "characters are named Ryu", then yeah, the main page would be fine.

It wouldn't be a tropeworthy idea at all, but at least we'd have examples of it.

But that's not what's going on here, it's all much more specific than that.

There are tropeworthy ideas within A Protagonist Is Ryu, but the trope would need to be retooled.

Neither the name nor the description really works, so even if we can make a trope out of the current page (which I'm not seeing), this one is better of gone.