Fanservice tropes and underage characters

Septimus suggested in this ATT discussion that it might be time for a unified discussion on the topic of fanservice tropes and underage characters in this forum. I've decided to go ahead and run with that suggestion because it potentially affects a page I'm building for the wiki in notepad.^note Specifically the question of whether stripperific can apply to a 14 year old girl whose transformation leaves her in a strapless bra with sleeves and a jetpack and pants. Yeah, I felt creepy just writing it but I thought that, if it counts... Anyway clear policy would help a lot here.

So I guess the question boils down to this: should we be adding fanservicey tropes like Stripperific, Ms. Fanservice, etc, and/or is there a cutoff point that isn't just "underage" where such tropes should not be applied to a character, say, if they look younger than about 16 no adding fanservice tropes for them?

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Wasn't that a big no? Even if they aren't actually underage, I would still suggest to remove those tropes because, well, we're damn sexualizing a child here, and pretty much an instant cancellation if those edits stayed.

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I don’t think it is wrong to neutrally point out that an underage character is Ms. Fanservice (especially since a ton of works star kids or teens; heck this is one reason to Dawson Cast) but one doesn’t have to be creepy/gushy with context.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 7th 2021 at 9:45:35 AM

It should come down to creator intent. If a character is being played for fanservice, then that's what's happening, and we should be objective in recording that. Dubious and poorly-written examples come from people projecting their own feelings into their writing and treating it as an Audience Reaction / excuse to gush rather than an objective assessment of the intent behind a design.

I can see fanservice tropes applying to young characters in works aimed at audiences of a similar age. For instance, you cannot tell me that Adrien Agreste/Cat Noir, who in-universe is a model with tons of fangirls, is not intended to be attractive to the tweenage girls watching the show.

Part of this is calling into question the type of content being troped. We also have Age-Inappropriate Dress where such an example can go without coming across pervy (the name admits it doesn't feel right).

But mostly this is about context and the level of information given, while trying to account for some Values Dissonance. Describing outfits and the suggestive elements in detail can get uncomfortable but no fanservice example should get any more specific than "the swimsuits in the Beach Episode" (I'm look at you, Avatar). But the average Teen Idol is intentionally meant to be attractive to a target audience without necessarily being about showing skin, such as an episode where everyone is in formal wear.

Edited by EmeraldSource on Apr 6th 2021 at 11:28:28 AM

Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!

Well, fanservice isn't necessarily about showing skin. Formal wear, formfitting clothes, body language, wind blowing through their hair, all these and more can be sources of fanservice.

Just to bring up Fischl again as a point of reference, these are the two examples I had to comment out from her character profile (they're now deleted).

• Ms. Fanservice: Let's see, long legs? Check. Broad hips? Check. An outfit that's little more than panties and a flowing corset that barely covers her breasts once you remove all the sheer material? Checks across the board.
• Stripperiffic: Just look at her outfit. It's a leotard with parts of it replaced with sheer material, a skirt that doesn't even go all the way around, and sheer gloves and stockings. It hardly looks like something suitable for adventuring.

And yes, while Genshin Impact doesn't reveal the ages of its characters, we do see that these characters fall under three body types, with Fischl falling under the teenager body type. It's also said by her familiar Oz that she is under the drinking age, which according to in-game lore, is 18 in Mondstadt. That's a very good indicator that she is underaged. The fact that some tropers are misusing Fanservice tropes to project their own "hot" image of Fischl because of her Age-Inappropriate Dress is really off-putting.

Honestly the problem above is creepy writing in general. I'd feel uncomfortable showing someone that article no matter the age(s) of the character(s) in question. The description reads as if the person is masturbating while writing it.

As for the age cutoff, I'm not sure a hard rule is necessary, but I'd say that sixteen and up is probably fine given how prevalent (and thus generally acceptable) fanservice for such characters seems to be. It's just bowing to reality. Below that we have to look at intent.

For example, Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender is fifteen, but when the team does a costume change in season 3, the show itself plays up the attractiveness of her new outfit, complete with dramatic pan-up and blushing from other characters. You can't tell me that's not intended as fanservice.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 7th 2021 at 7:02:19 AM

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

The way I see it there are several issues here:

1. ) What counts as fanservice? A character dressing as a maid or a princess for one episode can be seen as fanservice even if the outfit itself is not fetishized at all. A character wearing an outfit that barely covers their private parts is a different kind of fanservice. And a fan-favorite character from previous seasons making an appearance in the current season can be a third type of fanservice - though I am pretty sure this one does not count for the current discussion.
2. ) What counts as underage? Technically, both someone who is 17 and someone who is 7 are underage, but the former is a lot more likely to get a pass than the latter, especially since people grow up differently and two people that are the same age can appear different ages.
3. ) Who is the target audience? If you have a series aimed at teenagers, then a teen character used for fanservice seems more or less fine; if the series is aimed at adult people, however, and the same teenage character is used for fanservice... well, that's a different story.
4. ) Then we get to issues with the different types of fiction:
   1. imagine an animated series where the characters technically grow up, but the character designs do not change (or change very little). Technically they could be in their twenties, yet look exactly the same as when they were 16
   2. Deliberate Values Dissonance - if the work is set in a world where life is short, 20 is considered old, and 30 is practically ancient, then most characters will likely be underage by our standards, but not by the standards of the work
   3. then there are things such as a Really 700 Years Old character who looks underage, or a character who is an adult but belongs to a race that has a life span of 10 years and so is technically always underage by our standards.

What I am trying to say is that "fanservice" is a very broad term and there is no one rule that fits all cases. It is best decided on a case-by-case basis. Author intent, if known, can help but is not enough - just because the author intended to create a character who is Ms. Fanservice does not mean he succeeded...

I'll say what I said before; we should document the relevant tropes objectively, not go out Righting Great Wrongs because the culture a work originates from doesn't have standards as strict as ours when it comes to how young characters are portrayed.

• Making an arbitrary age cutoff means that you can get weird scenarios where, for instance, four characters in a game get alternate summer outfits, and you can list the relevant fanservice tropes for three of them - but not the fourth, because they're right below the age cutoff. That would stick out like an Obvious Rule Patch.

• If works aren't running afoul of child pornography laws, then simply documenting what is in those works would not run afoul of said laws, either. If works are running afoul of those laws, then they shouldn't be here.

• The target demographic for many works are teenagers, and works aimed at teenagers feature teenage characters and will use said characters for fanservice.

• Choosing to ban applicable fanservice tropes means that we are good to note things like the scene of a boy raping another boy in The Kite Runner, and that boy growing into a depraved adult who adopts children to rape/sexually abuse them, but draw the line at noting a fanservice moment involving teens because it's not Played for Drama.

• You'd be asking every editor to look up a character's bio before adding a fanservice trope. For many cases, such as Fischl as mentioned above, there are only hints at the character's age, which you'd need to thoroughly read their bio to find (which means you'd be asking people to potentially spoil themselves in order to add a fanservice trope). Other characters, such as Lyn from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, have variable ages (15 in the original, 18 in the international release) - do we just not allow it then, or are we fine because the writers changed a number in her bio?

I'm just.. a guy....

AGuy, if you're going to keep flipping out every time someone brings something like this up, you can take a long vacation. Enforced if necessary. Your aggressive opinions are disrupting conversations.

First, TV Tropes does not apply "regional" standards. We are a U.S. based site and we apply the standards applicable to the U.S. whenever there is a conflict. If someone wants to start a Japanese version of TV Tropes, they can wank over preteen panty shots all they like.

Second, the goal here is to establish a community standard that makes people feel comfortable to visit this site. Gushing over underage characters is, if not exactly illegal, creepy as fuck. The question is where we draw the line. Japanese works revising their official ages in localizations to make them more acceptable to Western audiences is no less creepy.

In my opinion, if the work intends to depict an underaged character in a sexualized manner, fanservice tropes can apply, but examples need to be written objectively and not as if the user is typing with one hand. If the work sexualizes characters who are significantly underage (preteen or younger), the P5 may need to take a look.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 7th 2021 at 10:45:34 AM

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

I'm a bit confused as to how I'm "flipping out" or who I'm "flipping out" on. Where is the aggression?

In addition, you seem to be implying that I am saying it's okay to jerk off to underage characters in trope descriptions, when that isn't what I said.

I'm just.. a guy....

Right. And once again, I'll bring up Fischl as an example.

In-game, her outfit is never meant to be portrayed as "sexy", but elegant and gothic, because it fits her Chuunibyou nature. She portrays herself in a different persona she is trying to be.

That's the reason why I commented out and inevitably deleted the two above examples I cited in my last post, because they tried to enforce the idea that Fischl's outfit is "sexy", which combined with the issue of Fischl being underage, was in direct violation of No Lewdness, No Prudishness (specifically rule 2 of the No Lewdness section).

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Apr 7th 2021 at 7:59:35 AM

That sort of gushing and misuse of tropes shouldn't be tolerated even for a character like Lisa. There are other places for people to write smut.

I'm just.. a guy....

The problem with fanservice tropes in general is that by default, they assume the character is dressing or behaving in a certain way to provide a "service" to - i.e. to titillate - the audience. Or, if they're invoked in-universe, to titillate some other character.

That's why IMHO they shouldn't be applied to underage characters, unless it's very clear that the trope is used in-universe, and even then I think it should only be applied to older teenagers.

Some of these tropes have non-fanservice alternatives that can be used to describe things in a non-sexual way; for example, compare Vapor Wear to Going Commando. That may be a solution.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Apr 7th 2021 at 5:58:45 PM

It's hard to rationally argue that an underage character cannot dress in a sexually provocative way. That's half of the problem. The question is how we can describe it on the wiki.

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

For teenagers I'd consider using at least some fanservice tropes in-universe as long as the examples are purely descriptive and not too detailed. For example, if other characters react to a 16-year old girl's dress by calling it the equivalant of stripperific, I think that trope could be used.

But if it isn't taken that way in-universe (for example, it may take place in a fantasy world where all unmarried women wear very skimpy clothes), then I think it's inappropriate to use the trope, because then it would describe the troper's reaction.

Maybe we need more non-sexualized counterpart tropes to the fanservice tropes, that merely describe the way somebody dresses or behaves in a neutral way?

Edited by GnomeTitan on Apr 7th 2021 at 6:57:41 PM

You're asking for more Personal Appearance Tropes in that case, which leads to the opposite problem of not enough description and meaning.

I think a big issue here is the broad nature of fanservice and I'd like to TRS it someday soon to convert it to a full index with no off-page examples. Nothing good can come of allowing Fanservice to broadly exist as something people list on the page when there's more than enough specific tropes on the index that connect more specifically to the canon depictions of the character.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 7th 2021 at 1:02:51 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I'm inclined to agree. Rather than try to pick nits over how old a character has to be before tropers can gush over their sexual characteristics, we should cut out the gushing entirely. Of course it would help if certain media stopped dressing teenagers in fetish outfits, but we can only control one end of that equation.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 7th 2021 at 1:13:38 PM

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

I don't think there should be an age cutoff, though examples for children with childlike bodies should be treated with suspicion as pedo-pandering.

I also disagree with banning off-page examples for Fanservice. There is a whole category of media criticism devoted to how characters are portrayed sexually. Sexual fanservice affects a work's tone and themes and is a common point of criticism. Removing those entries from work pages would take away valuable context from works and their audience reactions.

I do think we need a style guide for how to write fan service entries, and perhaps a cleanup thread to remove one-handed examples. For starters, entries should focus on clothes and camera effects, not characters' bodies. Having large breasts is not inherently sexualizing and that in its own is not necessarily fanservice.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

I think fanservice can, for better or worse, be such an important part of a work that leaving it off the work page would make the description incomplete.

A classic example is Charlie's Angels, which was both a fairly good detective show, a pioneering work with strong, female action heroes, and the original Jiggle Show. The show can definitely be described without even mentioning that the protagonists are attractive women in skimpy clothing, but you'd omit an important part of the show's appeal (at least to the male part of the audience). In fact, you might be omitting the reason why it became such a hit in the first place. (Even Farrah Fawcett herself thought the reason the show was so popular was the way she dressed).

And if fanservice can be important, then we need fanservice tropes to describe how the show produces this effect.

What is not needed is gushing about the characters' appearance (or, even worse, about the actors). What is also not needed is the kind of misuse where the fanservice is entirely in the troper's own eyes (such as in the examples which started this thread).

Edited by GnomeTitan on Apr 7th 2021 at 9:21:19 PM

Not to be that guy, but... To be fair, banning off-page examples is banning, well, examples. Not all wicks. So you could discuss the fanservice, you just couldn't make a trope-example bullet-point for it.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Yes, that could be a solution, but I'm not sure it's a very good one. At worst, it would just move the gushing and sexualization from the example sections to the work description.

EDITED: I think the problem is not that fanservice examples are allowed, it's the way people use - and misuse - them.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Apr 7th 2021 at 9:26:54 PM

That is pretty much my stance - we should not be afraid to document those things, as they are indisputably part of what the work is supposed to convey to the audience. Noting a blatantly gratuitous bikini shot of teenagers under the relevant tropes doesn't mean we're the ones sexualizing things, any more than noting the obvious racist overtones in The Birth of a Nation (1915) means we're pushing racism.

On the other side of the coin, we're supposed to document things as they are presented - in the work itself, not in someone's head while they're bored at night before going to sleep. We're not a place for someone to give the world a preview of their upcoming smut fic. We should note how things are presented, but beyond that, people should keep their lecherous thoughts to themselves.

To use the topic of boobs, as you mentioned - someone declaring a character to be Ms. Fanservice simply because she has large boobs isn't suitable. There are, however, plenty of tropes related to boobs, which we should feel free to apply when relevant.

• Someone going on about how hot a character is because she has large boobs? Cut that. We don't need people projecting onto the work because they can't control themselves.

• Noting that a character's boobs are emphasized by unrealistically designed clothing as the camera focuses on them and the painstaking detail in their animation, while characters in-universe fawn over her for it? Those are all relevant tropes, and don't stop applying just because a character is young.

Edited by AGuy on Apr 7th 2021 at 3:39:05 PM

I'm just.. a guy....

If we can at least cut out the gushing and describe the fanservice in matter-of-fact tones, it would improve things markedly.

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