Tropes common in foreign media but rare/nonexistent in Anglophone media.

EDIT: Augh, pagetopper: previous post was talking about how malls are in decline in the US, but bustling in Asia; the description of The Mall only mentions the former.

I think we have to be wary of putting the cart before the horse. The wiki catalogs tropes as they appear in fiction, and the "real-life basis" part of the description should ideally be fairly minimal. The prevalence of The Mall as a nostalgia thing crops up often in Western media (Stranger Things, which I see as American 80s Nostalgia: The Show, had it as a centerpiece for season 3), so I can see why that is in the description. If we had enough examples of it being a bustling center of commerce/frequent hangout spot in recent Asian works, I can see work being done for that trope on that front.

Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 5th 2020 at 11:30:17 AM

If The Mall is overly anglocentric then by all means expand it. That's what we want: inclusivity, not exclusivity. That said, long digressions about the applicability of the trope in various cultures would be for an Analysis subpage.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

In many cases there is a cultural interchange where there is a distinction to the trope in another culture but doesn't quite need a new trope for it. Conversely, some tropes do get a cultural subtrope because enough of those types of examples are sliding into the trope as it currently is.

But also, we shouldn't go on long tangents about Asian malls unless what we're saying also applies to how malls are presented in Asian media.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

That too. If the cultural significance of shopping malls is in any way relevant to understanding or writing media, a Useful Notes page should be created for that subject.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The issue of making distinctions based on culture of origin effects some pretty fundamental aspects of the site. The fact that we classify Anime as separate from Western Animation doesn't really make sense, especially because it later required the creation of categories for animation that is neither western nor Japanese, like Asian Animation. I don't a real reason why animation made in the US and animation made in France can both be categorized under Western Animation, but animation made Japan and animation made in China are so fundamentally different as to require different namespaces.

Animation made in France is counted as Western here. Everything that isn't western or anime goes in the animation catch all

Macron's notes

I know French animation is Western Animation, that's what I said I think the post. I was mistaken about Asian Animation being its own namespace, but the point still stands that we divide animated works into "Japan" (a specific country), "the West" (a cultural grouping that is broad and often vaguely defined), and "other".

Edited by TheMountainKing on Aug 27th 2020 at 2:53:33 PM

Sorry, misread.

The organization of these categories that is far from perfect but it's at a bit neater than having them all in the same category (makes finding what you want a lot easier). Plus it's really not worth the effort to manually everything to Animation/ with the system we have right now. Having everything else in an animation category is isn't the best but I don't there's a better way to rectify that..

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 28th 2020 at 12:12:27 PM

Macron's notes

I don't see how it makes finding a work easier at all, especially because we don't make these cultural distinctions for other mediums. All live-action films go under Film, all prose fiction goes under Literature, etc. but you are right that it won't change because it's too much work to do so. It's a bad decision made so early in the site's history that it's never going to be changed. I'm just pointing to this as evidence of how deep seeded to bizarre idea that media form Japan is special and should be categorized sepia rarely from media for every other country is on the site.

I meant that if one was specifically looking for anime/manga or western animation examples they can easily find them under the current system.

Macron's notes

As in on separate folders on trope pages. What if I want examples from Chinese novels? Should they have there own folders?

Well, we don't have much of those, and Google Searching is a thing?

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

I’m not actually advocating this position, I'm using it to argue against the point made above.

As much as is possible, TV Tropes follows established cultural paradigms. We aren't trying to invent our own method for organizing works. The global culture demonstrably recognizes anime as a distinct form of media from other kinds of animation. That's good enough for this site.

Almost as important, we've got this system in place and there are thousands of works already categorized. Reorganizing them because someone doesn't agree with the filing system is just not going to happen, not when TRS is loaded with other issues that are far more urgent.

Maybe if we can get the TV Tropes 2.0 thing going at some point in the future, we can look into a large-scale reorganization of media categories, but until then, we're stuck with what we have.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Chinese novels aren't really a good comparison. No one is going to look specifically for them. Anime/Manga pretty much is it's own category due to how widespread it is and how many unique tropes and elements that makes it stand out from western animation.

Macron's notes

There's also nothing stopping someone from making a Chinese Literature index. That doesn't mean we need a unique namespace for it.

I do worry that it would be difficult to get good English language articles for such works, but that's a completely separate issue. If people are willing to put forth the effort, great.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 28th 2020 at 9:54:07 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'll continue to try arguing that separate namespaces based on country of origin should be changed, but I'll remember to use this as a way to make the adjustment easier.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.