Misused: Foe Yay

About one decade ago, TRS decided to turn Foe Yay into a disambig based on, well... not a wick check, that's for damn sure, as everyone just sort of decided it and that's how the TRS used to work. I only bring this issue up because it's relevant to what else I'm about to talk about.

Foe Yay has some problems. ~3,800 of those problems, to be exact. Despite being a disambig, despite it saying on the page itself to not use it as a trope, guess what? People use it as a trope. Some people didn't even know it was a disambig until I pointed it out, likely because the page itself allows examples (something I've never seen another disambig ever do). Also, as pointed out to me earlier today, it's also indexed on YMMV.Homepage.

I checked 62 wicks here, and here are the results:

• Mutual love: 7/52
• Villain has feelings: 12/52
• Hero has feelings: 1/52
• Fans ship them: 4/52
• Shipping Goggles / Subtext: 15/52
• ZCE: 19/52
• Other: 5/52

As you can see, the usage is sort of all over the place. Normally this would be an ideal circumstance to suggest disambiging it, but for obvious reasons that's not something I can do this time. Based on the tropes on the disambig, the only one we don't currently have for this concept is the unintentional subtext version - basically, the villain version of Ho Yay, which this trope's name is emulating, and yet that was the usage that was never given an official trope to be moved to. IDK if it'd be a good idea to make such a trope or not, but we have at least 15 examples to throw on a TLP draft.

Otherwise, yeah, I'm really at a loss. My only real idea here is to just straight up torch the damn thing, since it's an absolute mess and most of the concepts are already covered by other tropes that already exist. If we just clean up the misuse, people will keep on misusing it.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 25th 2022 at 3:46:01 PM

Hmm I think "unintentional hero-villain subtext" is worth TL Ping and I am not exactly sure why the old TRS thread didn't think of giving that concept a new trope (I didn't read the thread in full yet though).

As for what to do with Foe Yay itself, I think we should just get rid of the example subpages and it turn into a proper disambig.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 25th 2022 at 4:05:16 AM

I still think the only real way to ensure it's never used again is to cut the page outright. IDGAF about the inbounds here- in the decade since it was made a disambig, people have stopped realizing that it's a disambig and won't catch onto that just because we do the cleanup. It'll keep getting used. Even new disambigs catch use all the time, and this one is ingrained.

Could we call the potential new trope Foe Yay Subtext in a similar vein to what we did with Foe Yay Shipping?

That might actually be doable, since while Foe Yay's wick count is high, it's not as overwhelmingly high as Ho Yay's wick count, and there are threads currently on TRS for pages with five-digit wick counts (Ho Yay has a five-digit wick count, while Foe Yay's wick count is in the four-digit range).

That also might be doable considering the fact that the previous thread wasn't done properly is why we ended up with the problem that led to this thread's existence.

We already have Foe Romance Subtext.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 25th 2022 at 2:54:33 PM

Since it's a disambig page, the example list should just be removed along with wicks. Not sure about cutting the entire page, it wouldn't change the amount of work during cleaning.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 25th 2022 at 11:04:19 AM

I'm not concerned about the workload now, I'm concerned about the work load a year from now when it inevitably gets wicks again.

Oh I'm dumb. In that case, maybe carding through the "unintentional subtext" examples and sorting out anything that seems too reliant on Shipping Goggles could tell us if there really is another subtrope here worth making.

Edited by Hello83433 on Mar 25th 2022 at 4:06:44 AM

Regarding the inbound count being high, the inbound count for Five Bad Band was also high, and that was also cut entirely instead of disambiguated.

In fact, it was cut while dewicking was still in progress to deter the addition of new wicks; the only other time I've seen a page get cut before being dewicked was with Rock Opera Plot, which was a wick-starved page that didn't take long to get out of the TRS backlog.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 25th 2022 at 3:25:29 AM

I just wonder how tropeable "unintentional romantic subtext between two enemies" is when we already have "fans make the relationship between two enemies romantic". While they are different (a fan can make two enemies get together in a work and still think that they didn't have any chemistry in the canonical story), I'm just afraid that the former might devolve into "villain stares at the protagonist with a SlasherSmile once".

Whether the concepts get yarded/tlped or not, I'd support an outright cut (and a PRLC trip if needed) over a disambig. The trope has been in this weird Schrodinger's cat-like scenario for a decade or so now, and wasn't even taken off of the YMMV index. It's just asking for more misuse if we keep it around under the same name.

Edited by Tonwen on Mar 25th 2022 at 3:40:05 AM

Agreed. I think we should cut, maybe even PRLC it to stop the misuse.

I support tardiness the concept.

Oh yes, I'm also for straight up cut.

Side note though, any way to track if people still use it even after it becomes a redlink?

Thinking about it, yeah let's cut it. Tropers outside the cleanup who see a redlink in trope list may incline to move or cut examples when they see them.

The related/ page would still be accessible.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 25th 2022 at 4:45:43 AM

Exactly, and I was actually thinking of cutting it early if the consensus ends up being in favor of cutting instead of just removing the examples and leaving the disambiguation.

Edit: Also, I don't think adding it to the Permanent Red Link Club would be necessary if it's cut since Main/ isn't open to editing anymore (it still was when the previous TRS thread was closed).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 25th 2022 at 3:53:46 AM

Also, to cover the issue of what the trope is supposed to be... I see no reason to make a new trope for "Ho Yay but between the hero and the villain", Foe Yay Shipping covers the fandom side of it, and plain old Ho Yay covers the in-universe side, at least to me.

Ho Yay is only for same-sex relationships, though. It works for some of it, but not all of it.

That's not an argument in favor of a proper "Foe Yay" trope; I'm also not convinced it'd be useful. But it's not Ho Yay.

Ho Yay is not for inuniverse, that's Homoerotic Subtext, which I don't know why we would need a hero/villain specific of that?

Edited by Hello83433 on Mar 25th 2022 at 4:57:44 AM

Oh, yeah, also that. I missed that part.

Same-sex intentional examples sound like they would be a case of Homoerotic Subtext and Foe Romance Subtext applying at the same time.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 25th 2022 at 4:09:07 AM

Seeing as those tropes exist, I don't see anything unique to Foe Yay at the moment that really needs to be yarded.

Mutual Love= Dating Catwoman

One-Sided attraction by the villain= Villainous Crush

Fan shipping= Foe Yay Shipping

Subtext= Foe Romance Subtext

The only one that really seems to be lacking a trope is the hero crushing on the villain, maybe, unless I missed something.

I really don't see the point of yarding any more tropes when Foe Yay is already split between 7, especially since the disambig page is going to get cut, and yarding is a free action at any rate.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 25th 2022 at 12:41:49 PM

I think the closest we've got is inverted Villainous Crush.

Edited by Orbiting on Mar 25th 2022 at 5:37:06 AM