Needs Help: Adorkable

Be sure to lock the crowner when calling. Went and did that.

Anyways, time to toss in some name options. I'll start with...Cute Nerd, maybe?

Thanks, had a feeling it was something obvious like that.

Dorks Are Cute or Nerds Are Cute

Edited by MacronNotes on Oct 1st 2022 at 11:17:23 AM

Adorably Nerdy?

I like Dorks Are Cute since it feels like a statement the work is making. Nerds Are Cute sounds like Nerds Are Sexy while is too similar to Adorkable so it could attract the same gushing IMO.

I like Dorks Are Cute, too.

Apart from the confusion with Nerds Are Sexy, for the ones using Nerd, there does seem to be a distinct difference between 'dorky' and 'nerdy' in this context. To me at least, 'Dorky' doesn't as much imply academically inclined. I'm thinking of one entry I saw where it's quite the opposite, but the Pop-Cultured Badass does have a habit of getting uncharacteristically gushy over his pop culture loves and in that context behaves like a dork. That could be misuse, though.

I feel dork is a bit of a nebulous term and is oftentimes conflated with nerd but the defining characteristic appears to be being social inept so Dorks Are Cute would socially awkwardness being shown as endearing or whensomeone who seems put together socially has a "dork" moment.

But anyways yeah dork seems like a better fit than nerd.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 10th 2020 at 9:57:55 AM

What about just "Adorable Dork (Moment)"? That's kind of what Adorkable used to stand for until it became its own word.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jun 10th 2020 at 3:11:11 PM

A bit too in-line with Adorkable, and I find the other suggestions to be both shorter and sound better.

I like Dorks Are Cute as a name for the new split trope.

So the in-universe trope is about awkwardness? Not nerdiness or innocence? How to distinguish?

for Dorks Are Cute.

The name Dorks Are Cute works.

Well... hopefully there be time and space to define the in-verse trope here or in TLP.

We seem to agree that Dorks Are Cute would be a good name.

To me, this trope is about someone who is considered a dork/nerd/geek (which I think is often defined by their interests, hobbies, dream school/dream job or career and social life), yet still portrayed as cute or attractive to others. It would be the authors' intent and obviously it mainly manifests by how other characters react to them. So — awkwardness and nerdiness, yes. Innocence — not necessarily. Are nerds/geeks/dorks considered innocent? I don't know.

Edited by XFllo on Jun 13th 2020 at 10:45:20 AM

"Innocence" is a bit dependent on what you're referring to by it- I'd say a lot of "dorks" in media are innocent when it comes to sex because despite being considered cute and attractive, they're still awkward and nervous and probably inexperienced in romance. But other forms of "innocence" they don't necessarily have to have; and they don't need this form of innocence, either, tbh.

But basically their dorkiness should be endearing to other characters. Even if they're not taken seriously, other characters find them cute and approachable because of their dorkiness. So that's another thing we need to pay attention to; is a dorky character liked by other characters because they're dorky? Or are they just a dork who happens to be liked by other characters, and also just happens to be a dork?

I'll throw in a vote for Dorks Are Cute (assuming I didn't already and forgot about it).

So... what's to be done:

From crowner: Split Adorkable into YMMV and an in-universe trope for the "Dorks are cute" concept. Keep Adorkable as the name for the audience reaction and have the objective trope under another name (TBD)

Dorks Are Cute has lots of votes, nobody objected.

• Adorkable description needs to be adjusted (to mention it's an Audience Reaction)
• Start a TLP draft for Dorks Are Cute
• Start copying good examples from work pages to the draft; possibly adjusting the wicks.
• cleanup:
  • remove ZCE from work pages
  • move good enough examples to YMMV tabs
  • check examples on trope subpages

Anything I missed?

Seems like lots of work.

Anyone feels like grabbing the TLP draft?

Can we add Adorkable on the index for Audience Reactions now? And should we start moving wicks to YMMV tabs?

I'd rather wait on moving Adorkable wicks to YMMV until Dorks Are Cute is launched, so legitimate examples of the latter aren't missed. Also, a lot of examples are ZCEs or just misuse (e.g. it's wicked on every subpage of Overwatch), so not all of them should be moved to YMMV.

Yeah; we'll have to go through all the wicks twice if we don't have the split made yet.

I don't think we should make this YMMV yet, but wouldn't YMMV.Home Page be a better fit than Main.Audience Reactions? The characters are objectively in the work; it's the idea that they're dorky and cute that is based on opinion.

Edit: Edited to fix bad wording. I took a nap and haven't been awake very long.

Another edit: I was thinking this could be added to YMMV.Home Page when we make it YMMV (I've made some tweaks to this part of the post, and might later on as well):

• Adorkable: Fans think a character is dorky in a cute way. YMMV because not all fans will think this.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 19th 2020 at 10:16:29 AM

Well, to get this ball rolling (11k wicks yikes), I threw up a slipshod draft for Dorks Are Cute onto TLP using Macron's In-Universe examples listed here. I'm giving the participants of this thread carte blanche to add examples and tweak the description (I kind of cobbled it together from the contents of this thread and Adorkable) as they see fit.

I agree that we shouldn't move wicks until the new trope launches, but it might be good to at least change Adorkable's description and indexing now so it doesn't keep attracting bad wicks.

Go for it.

Edited by naturalironist on Jun 22nd 2020 at 5:32:54 AM

Synchronicity, you're my hero for making the TLP draft.