Misused (new crowner 11-9-2020): Suddenly Sexuality

The description for Suddenly Sexuality states that it is "A character who pulls a flip-flop in terms of proclaimed sexuality or suddenly, for no apparent reason, feels strongly enough about it to become the Token Minority of their particular series for that particular sexuality."

A lot of examples don't seem to fit this definition, instead focusing on the reveal of a character's sexuality being literally "sudden", without mentioning if/how it contradicts an established sexuality. There is also a problem with bisexual examples of the trope, as the revelation of attraction to the same gender does not contradict previous attraction to the opposite.

So, only 32% of examples are definitely correct under the page's definition, while 30% are of the "literally sudden" type, which is probably within the margin for error enough to say that they are roughly the same. 10% were examples in which the character is explicitly stated to be bisexual. I was unable to properly classify 24% of examples as either category (these mostly potholes that lacked sufficient context to tell) and 1 example was a ZCE that just listed the names of two characters.

The roughly equal amount of correct and incorrect uses suggests a need for at the very least a clean-up, and possibly a rename. even the "correct" definition has problems, primarily that it is not actually unrealistic or even uncommon for gay people to have opposite gender partners before coming out, while this treats it as inherently bad writing.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jun 13th 2020 at 6:43:17 AM

This got unlocked but wasn't bumped, so I'll do that.

Okay...then just take out the flip-flop part of the definition and problem solved.

Edited by Rakuraku on Jun 14th 2020 at 11:14:30 AM

The problem with that is that both the description and most examples treat the trope as inherently bad, which is justified if the trope is about objectively contradicting previous continuity. But if it's just about not having "enough foreshadowing", which has the problem of being inherently subjective.

Part of what sparked this thread was that people on the Bi The Way TRS thread were proposing creating a trope that was essentially the "literally sudden" definition of this trope but presented as a good thing.

Honestly, this page has grated on me for ages.

I would redefine to fit the misuse. If this is too subjective, perhaps it should be made YMMV.

I agree, YMMV makes sense here. We already have Strangled by the Red String which is a similarly subjective "no foreshadowing/development" trope, so it'd work.

I'm worried that even as YMMV the trope will become a magnet for complaining, even more than it already is. Having the trope just be about a character being revealed as LGBT "without enough foreshadowing" just doesn't seem like a very useful trope. It doesn't seem equivalent to Strangled by the Red String, because a romance is something that is pretty much always expected to have build-up and be important to the story, the simple fact of a character's sexuality isn't. I'm again reminded of the proposals in the Bi The Way thread for a trope essentially just like the one you're proposing, but written with the assumption that it's a good thing.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jun 15th 2020 at 9:31:46 AM

I'd ask why specifically LGBT, but I guess it'd kinda have to be since the default assumption would be that every character is straight (not saying that should be the assumption, but it is)...and yeah, I get your point.

I did not find a single example in my wick check that wasn't about a character being LGBT. Even if the trope could theoretically have examples where a character goes from showing no interest in anyone to interest in someone of the opposite gender, I have never seen the trope actually used that way.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jun 17th 2020 at 9:28:06 AM

What about renaming to fix the strange grammatical error of using of an adverb to modify a noun? (I say "strange" because I honestly don't recall seeing this error anywhere else.) We previously fixed a spelling error (Millitary-Rank Superhero/villain Names was renamed to Military Rank Names; "military" was misspelled with an extra L) and word misuse (Role Reprisal was renamed to Role Reprise; the word "reprisal" was being misused).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 15th 2020 at 11:03:55 AM

You're correct, but that seems like it's the least of the trope's problems. Not saying we can't do it, but we should discuss fixing the trope's deeper issues first.

In the Bi The Way thread we floated an idea of Casual Sexuality Reveal (or similar) for when a character is revealed to be LGBT without much fuss or foreshadowing. Could that catch the 'literally sudden' examples and the 'bisexual' examples?

I suppose we could also pull an Adorkable and create a YMMV for the opinion of 'this character's sexuality came out of nowhere', but I echo the concern about complaint magnet.

If we are keeping the 'contradicts previous sexuality' in some shape or form, I do think it has to be retooled to be more neutral, and acknowledge that sexuality is fluid. But tbh I don't like it that much, and it does not seem very tropeworthy to begin with.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 15th 2020 at 11:55:14 AM

Now that I've had a closer look at the page... is this even a trope? This seems like the same thing as Bi The Way, except the character's sexuality involves being attracted to one gender.

I remembered something that relates to both the grammatical error and the fact that most wicks are for LGBT characters. I actually wasn't the first person to bring up the grammatical error, nor was whoever mentioned it in the Tropes Needing TRS sandbox. Someone in the TRS meta thread wondered if the word "suddenly" was used instead of "sudden" because the trope was originally going to be called Suddenly Gay, but whoever chose the name changed "Gay" to "Sexuality" without changing "Suddenly" to "Sudden".

Edit: Neglected to mention that I also feel that making this YMMV would turn it into a complaint magnet.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 15th 2020 at 12:09:11 PM

Sudden Sexuality Reveal definitely feels like a trope, but it should be in-universe rather than an audience reaction, as several people have noted. Characters going "wait, you're gay?" (or any other sexuality) is very different from viewers complaining that a character's sexuality came out of nowhere.

I can kinda see the value in the audience reaction, but we try and stay away from tropes that are about the author screwing up by making something too sudden. Technically "bad sudden sexuality reveal" would probably be covered by Ass Pull.

Less sure about Casual Sexuality Reveal.

This does tend to feel like a magnet for criticism. The first time I saw the trope being used was for Questionable Content in reference to the character Faye, who never once showed an attraction to women and had a few arcs involving relationships with men, falling in love with the female character Bubbles. Is it true that her sexuality seemed abrupt and never had any hints or development prior to her relationship growing with Bubbles? Yeah. But is it really worth complaining? As the comic itself later points out, not everyone has this long, anguished realization process and angst. It does seem to attract some cases of "why doesn't this document the Universal Experience" when there is no such thing. It's hard to argue for this being sloppy writing sometimes, and for it to be a trope to keep around.

That was in-universe, though (I think; been a while). Everyone—including Faye—was like "wait, you like girls?"

It was a Late(-ish) Coming Out

I'm coming around to the idea that neither definition is actually workable. Would the people who have been saying that support a cut?

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jun 19th 2020 at 2:27:01 PM

I think the misuse is a legit Audience Reaction along the lines of Strangled by the Red String. A character coming to terms with their sexuality is usually an important character moment that in real life often takes a lot of introspection and grappling. But sometimes fans feel like this happens without any development. Expand the definition to fit misuse and make YMMV.

I definitely can imagine the potential for complaining about LGBT representation, which we certainly don't want. However, such complaining is not demonstrated by the wick check, and I would like to see evidence of that before we all jump on board for a cut.

Issue is that the trope currently centers on how the character's sexuality is revealed to the audience, so it isn't necessarily about them discovering it for the first time in-universe. The amount this trope would have to be changed to work as a YMMV trope in the way you described (it's not just a matter of moving examples, most of them make no mention of how the audience feels and would thus have to be cut), when legit examples of the phenomenon could just go under Ass Pull or Shocking Swerve.

The solutions we have now are:

1. Redefine to include misuse and make YMMV

2. Cut

I'm not particularly happy with either of these. Anyone got any others?

What about the proposal to make it an inuniverse reaction?

I'd be cool with that.

I'm fine with having that on the crowner.