Unclear Description: Enthralling Siren

Well, better late than never, so I just did.

It's safe to call this now!

What's the issues, if any, with the current description for Our Sirens Are Different?

Which I forgot was a redirect, but still.

Edited by Malady on Aug 29th 2021 at 9:15:12 AM

^It seems mostly serviceable, if disorganized. Mostly, some parts that are about generic beings with enthralling powers need to be cut or made more specific, the description is also rather disorganized, and some parts could use expanding.

I hope this doesn't come across as presumptuous for someone who just found the thread, but I took the liberty of starting the sandbox — just the description, at least. I decided to reshuffle things a bit to have one paragraph purely to talk about physical appearance, one purely for their powers, one for their behavior and characterization, and one for the confusions with mermaids and harpies. I also did some expansion on some points.

First sentences of these paragraphs seem redundant?

Edited by Malady on Sep 2nd 2021 at 8:15:28 AM

Fixed.

Read up to "very attractive to very attractive"

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"This second type"... I think you mean "third"?

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Seems like something to move higher, closer to the bit about their appearance in general.

Edited by Malady on Sep 4th 2021 at 2:10:56 AM

Fixed by doing the following:

• Changed "second type" to "third type"
• Changed "very attractive to very attractive" to "somewhat attractive to very attractive"
• Moved the sentence you quoted to the first paragraph

Edit: Replaced "somewhat" with "mildly".

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 4th 2021 at 6:35:49 AM

Are you certain? It seemed more logical to me to keep descriptions of their powers grouped together.

Beyond that, the first paragraph doesn't talk about the appearances much; that's mostly the second one. I'd originally meant that one as a quick intro more than anything — although looking at it now, it might honestly have been best kept for a laconic or something similar.

Edited by Theriocephalus on Sep 4th 2021 at 8:56:11 AM

- Aww, I liked it! It was funny!

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The edit under consideration: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Sandbox.OurSirensAreDifferent#edit30564196

Ah, I guess I meant how there's like, two Glamour wicks and they could be combined into one paragraph or something, since the bits are both talking about physical appearance.

Mobile writing doesn't allow easy checking of what I'm talking about. :(

Edited by Malady on Sep 4th 2021 at 7:17:32 AM

Wait a moment. Rereading this, I just realized what this sentence was originally getting at. The full sentence, from the current page, is:

The idea is that sirens range from being very attractive, period, to being just attractive from the point of view of sailors who have been at sea without female companionship for a long time, to being hideous but using illusions to making themselves seem attractive. My mistake was that I removed the commas and made the structure less clear. It's a perfectly sensible sentence structure, and I think it should probably be restored — although the commas should at least be put back in place.

Also, I still think that it makes the most sense to keep the descriptions of their powers in one place.

Edited by Theriocephalus on Sep 4th 2021 at 9:53:58 AM

I get what you mean now. I changed that paragraph again, but I added a few more words to clarify that the paragraph is referring to the character's perception instead of sounding redundant:

Edit: I moved the sentence related to abilities back to its original paragraph, instead of it being in the first paragraph, per what you said about keeping the stuff about their abilities in one place.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 5th 2021 at 7:52:00 AM

Ok, maybe the paragraph topic order, which is currently "appearance, then powers"...

Be changed into Appearance, Appearance being part of their powers, then power of the iconic voice?

Just so we don't have two Glamour wicks talking about the same thing?

A.k.a changing the middle to something like:

Edited by Malady on Sep 5th 2021 at 6:59:50 AM

^^All right, thanks.

^I see your point about redundant wicks. I changed things around a bit to keep thing more compact; does this look better?

That's good. Thanks!

Well, if we've got the description more or less sorted out for the moment, should we start moving over examples?

I don't see why not?

Is this only for things called "sirens"?

And, we should explicitly state that Sirens Are Mermaids is a Sub-Trope?

Edited by Malady on Sep 5th 2021 at 1:26:55 AM

Aight, did a preliminary move. I decided to be conservative for a start — I only kept examples that are either direct interpretations of the mythical Sirens or very clearly inspired by them. I'd like some thoughts on some of the examples left over — a lot of "beautiful woman monster with hypnotic singing" might be allowed in despite not being explicitly named sirens, and I also wasn't certain what to do about things like rusalkas, loreleis and the like.

Well, I'm of the camp that these Our Monsters Are Different tropes are all about the name. If something isn't named right, it doesn't go here.

Beautiful Magical Singing Women are already covered by combining other tropes, what Our Sirens Are Different brings to the table, is an In-Universe name to gather it together and stuff.

Sorta Not Using the "Z" Word-y...

Edited by Malady on Sep 6th 2021 at 10:17:36 AM

Yeah, I can see your point. Does anyone have other views?

I can't think of anything else to add.

I guess we should note Inhumanly Beautiful Race as the last component, even if we only have a single specimen?

Oh hey, it already wicks Enthralling Siren!

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Wait, Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff" is for when something's basically a classic monster, just named, differently, right?

Edited by Malady on Sep 12th 2021 at 8:46:52 AM

Looks good to me.

Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff" is when you've got a mythical creature and call it by the name of another mythical creature. How come?