Unclear Description: The Man

Looking at the draft, I like this description and understand it clearly what it was supposed to be. It'd rather long for a trope though.

Would sending it to TLP to gether examples be a good idea if it stays? The wicks are all over the place, and the trope may fall into Not Thriving if cleaned up.

I don't think my disambig suggestion is very solid, as I was unsure what the trope is even about at the time, and tropes mentioned in the draft or in TRS later would be better directions.

Let's see what we have left after cleaning the wicks. That said, leaving the page up while doing an example-gathering drive on TLP is always an option; that was done with the Funny Fan Voice thread.

Edit: Also, if the trope is renamed, the old name will become a disambiguation page between the new name, ComicBook.The Man, Film.The Man, and other tropes with "the Man" in them, like The Man Is Sticking It to the Man, rather than becoming a redirect.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 28th 2022 at 6:07:55 AM

I still think we should disambiguate and “TLP tropable concepts” which is…well, apparently what “rewrite the page is” now? I think the disambiguation suggestions linked to in the crowner are bad, as discussed. I just don’t see how any of these crowner options are actually different from each other.

I do not think the sandbox should be swapped in without a trip to TKP first. It's extremely long and overly wordy which can be definitely cut down, and I'd like to see TLP's feedback on whether it's still confusing and going off on too many expository tangents about the meaning of the term, etc.

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 28th 2022 at 8:20:19 AM

The disambiguation-only option lacks consensus, so we probably won't be doing that. When I said I would turn the old name into a disambiguation page if we rename and rewrite The Man, I didn't mean I would enact the disambiguation-only option via mod fiat; I meant it would be turned into a hub between whatever we rename The Man to as well a works called The Man, and maybe tropes whose names reference the phrase "The Man" like The Man Is Sticking It to the Man and The Man Is Keeping Us Down. We've made disambiguation pages with previous renames like Spot Of Tea and The Missingno.

I wouldn't list The Man Behind the Man because its name isn't referencing the term that provided the trope name for The Man and simply contains the wording "the man" for unrelated reasons, and I wouldn't list any tropes that don't contain the phrase "the man" at all (which is most of the tropes in the disambiguation-only option).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 28th 2022 at 9:30:50 AM

I guess I never saw it as a “disambiguation ONLY” option because that had never been suggested. And I still don’t see how “rename and redefine” at the same time is actually different from an entirely new trope.

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 28th 2022 at 9:47:24 AM

We'd be overhauling the trope if we rewrote it without renaming. If you think the rewrite would be turning it into a different trope, the same would be true even if we still called it The Man.

TRS has redefined tropes in the past, usually without changing the name.

I know it has. My point is that renaming it and redefining it at the same time is…kind of different to replacing the page’s trope description.

The sandbox is basically something that was identified as maybe a tropeable concept, but it has no relation to the current definition. And “rename” is strongly in favor and suggested on the draft itself. Which creates a new page. We’re keeping basically nothing from the current state, apparently not even in the form of a redirect.

So what does this new draft have to do with The Man page fix? If we’re turning it into a disambig either way apparently and the only difference is what goes on the disambig and whether or not this entirely new trope exists, which IMO is really more of a TLP issue and the idea of making it without gathering feedback from it first has me leery.

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 28th 2022 at 10:15:16 AM

I'm going to push back on the idea that the rewrite is not represented in the old definition. In fact, re-reading the description, it does a fairly good job at defining what The Man is. The old definition is:

The Man is a much less specific villain than The Syndicate or the Ancient Conspiracy, a personification of establishment itself, even if no one person or organization makes up that establishment. You've heard of him. He controls everything. Emperors, ancient conspiracies, gods, Absurdly Powerful Student Councils. They are all under his control according to the resident New-Age Retro Hippie...This trope does not refer to any man, it refers to the Man. Often, this is just a stand-in for capitalism and its many contradictions that benefit only a certain few.

What you get from that:

• the man is an authority figure that controls everything
• may be a person or a group of people or a personification
• can be a stand in for ideas and ideologies
• something the new age retro hippie rails about

All of that is present in the redefine. The only differences are that the redefine shifts focus away from The Man as an entity (given its ambiguity) and puts it on invoking it as a rhetorical argument and the redefine is more explicit about the ambiguity of whether or not The Man actually exists being an inherent part of the trope.

That's why there are some examples that can also fit the redefine already and why this isn't the same as creating a completely new trope.

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 28th 2022 at 12:26:14 PM

I mean, what it keeps is the description of "The Man" as a concept that exists outside of this wiki. But it's a redefinition. There are plenty of related tropes on this site that have similar concepts present in the descriptions and discuss similar topics, because they're related.

The new trope is "A character blames some vague entity for their oppression." Cool, but the original trope was....well ??? But seemed to be more on the "This entity exists in the work." Even if all else is the same, it would be shifting a character trope to an action/event/behavior trope.

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 28th 2022 at 11:27:26 AM

...yes?

My point is that this is not the same as Bald Women, which was vaguely defined as "bald women in media for various reasons," that was disambig-ed and spawned 3 different tropes (Bald Head of Toughness, Bald Mystic, and Baldness Means Sickness) that were not really represented in the definition but were represented in the examples. Three different tropes that were vaguely alluded to, if mentioned at all, in the original. We didn't redefine Bald Women but broke it down into clearer tropes.

This is a trope that is poorly defined but the main idea and its use (invoked by characters like hippies, used to represent ideologies like capitalism) isn't really changing.

Like, are you advocating against the idea of a redefine broadly or just in this case? Because this wouldn't be the first time a trope was redefined via TRS

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 28th 2022 at 12:36:12 PM

Well, I hope its use is changing, because its use was all over the board and exists most commonly as a Wiki Word magnet.

And I really, really think this has to go to TLP, because the issue with original page is "this doesn't make any sense at all" and "The Man" as a concept is vague and ill-defined. The best way to make sure the new trope description is not confusing to people is to get more than the tiny handful of people who looked at the sandbox here to give it a once over.

I have no issue with redefining tropes. It's just that the way I conceptualize that is more like what we did with Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World, which kept the trope name and most of the examples and we just slotted a whole new description in. Not making an entirely new page with a new definition and a new measure for use, with a new name, with what will be primarily new examples, since so many of the on-the-page examples for The Man suck, and calling that a redefine?

I feel like that's saying:

"We're going to redefine the word 'Chair' from 'A piece of furniture intended to be sat on' to 'A piece of furniture on which multiple people can sit together, and also the new word we're going to call a 'chair' will 'couch' and we'll all stop using the word "Chair" now.'"

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 28th 2022 at 11:42:11 AM

...is that not what the crowner is for? I mean, i know people don't like changing old tropes, but the draft for the new version is linked. If people disagreed or thought it still wasn't clear, then I'd hope they wouldn't vote for it???

And the wiki check showed a lot of misuse was actually not about potholing it any time the phrase "the man" showed up. 52% was using it to try to describe an authority figure of some sort, which is technically what the trope was supposed to be. The issue is, again, in the ambiguity of what that figure even is, which is baked into the concept itself. Thus the shift.

To be clear, I'm in favor of renaming it to make it clear this is no longer about an entity, which should hopefully avoid that issue.

Eta: I don't agree that the issue was "this doesn't make any sense at all." I know that's how you understood it when doing the wick check, but looking at the examples and the definition, I think the issue was "we're trying to create a concept trope as if the concept has a consistent form, when it does not. What is consistent is the way the concept is brought up in works so that's what should be troped."

I think that's why I don't necessarily see this as anything more than the retooling of an existing trope, but you see it as the creation of a wholly new one. That's fine. Can agree to disagree and see what others have to say.

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 28th 2022 at 12:51:53 PM

I suspect a lot fewer people are going to read that draft that is ideal, and TRS in general has a far fewer people giving input and critique to change drafts than TLP has.

My question is mostly along the lines of "What does this new word "couch" got to do with "Chair"? I guess it will take all of the use of this "couch" definition that had gotten shoved on "Chair" but we still have the issue of "Chair" to worry about."

But apparently, my original suggestion of "let's stop using the word "Chair" and make new drafts for any new words we need like "Couch" " was, uh, apparently deemed a terrible idea and also exactly what we're going to do while calling it something else, and I am terribly confused as to what even happened in this thread.

I don't even think I disagree with what's happening, I'm just very confused how we got here and what we're calling things and why.

For what it's worth, if you look through the Wick Check, most of them still wouldn't apply to the new draft, even ignoring the Wiki Word problem. It's also got actual character referred to as "The Man" and has nothing to do with blaming anyone for anything. It's used to refer to all kind of authority, all kinds of evil, and very frequently, not a lot of anything at all. So massive cleanup would be required and many (most?) of the wicks can't actually migrate.

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 28th 2022 at 12:05:12 PM

With how little "correct" examples there are listed, it may be sent to TLP for hunting and review anyway, so it wouldn't make a difference if we're redefining or making a new trope.

As I said, let's see what we have left after we narrow the wicks down to ones that match the rewritten definition, and if the wick count ends up being low, an example drive could be started on TLP like what was recently done for Funny Fan Voice.

Yes, it should. And I'll add a suggestion that hasn't really been appealed to; that after sending the definition to TLP (before or after we decide on a new name, since that option is clearly winning), The Man is cut.

I know, 2k inbounds is a lot, but they'll be caught by the automatic disambiguation.

I'm thoroughly against keeping the name because "You're the man!" and "Because you work for the man!" are very different meanings, idiomatically.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Mar 28th 2022 at 1:54:38 PM

I wouldn't mind cutting it. I just figured it was off the table because it usually is unless the trope is not thriving.

By the way, another potential definition was brought up- a character who serves as an embodiment of “the establishment” or some other malevolent authority despite not being the actual leader of said authority. I think that can be TLP-ed as its own trope, as I have seen many stories where the overall conflict is character vs society or character vs institution, but because the antagonist is too nebulous and impersonal to hate, an employee of the establishment is used as the direct villain who embodies the vices of the establishment. Essentially, a Big Bad who is easy to hate but is also just a cog in a much larger machine. I know this was not voted on, but I could take it to TLP as a draft unrelated to this discussion. Does it sound workable?

i saw that description and it felt familiar.

Realized that is very similar to a draft that you actually started some time ago: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=i1wfyb844s7r763zmjslxja2

I think that idea is mostly already represented in this draft and can be more fully incorporated with some adjustments, should you choose to pursue it

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 28th 2022 at 6:35:17 AM

Personally, I think this idea can be made distinct from that one. MHMV is villain NOT affiliated with the Big Bad but is worse/more detestable, while this idea is Big Bad, but working for a large, faceless organization and represents them and their evil.

Simply cutting Main.The Man after renaming the trope would be doable, per what was said about the auto-disambig system directing people to the pages for works.

I think we can call. Can we?

I also just noticed there's a movie and a comic that share the name of the trope. Maybe we should do a disambig after we rename.

Edited by ImperialMajestyXO on Mar 31st 2022 at 3:13:09 AM

Any naming suggestions besides Blaming "The Man" and "The Man" Argument or we need a day to think about it?