Needs Help: The Lost Woods

To-do list:

• Move examples that aren't from video games to Enchanted Forest. Examples of video game areas can stay under The Lost Woods. Namespaces that have been cleaned are listed in Sandbox.The Lost Woods Wick Cleaning.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 17th 2022 at 8:06:56 AM

Anyway, my preferred course of action isn't the same as the OP's. I'd actually rather tweak the definition to make it less video game-oriented, and move the video game-specific stuff to Analysis.The Lost Woods. There'd be less wick cleanup to do if we did this, but some would still probably be needed.

I'd rather keep it as Video Game Settings and split off Enchanted Forest, to me there seems to be enough distinction for "magic forest as a level" (looping areas, fog areas, restricted movement space, tree/ghost enemies) from just "magic forest in a story".

Given the amount of misuse (?), I agree with OP and Anominus. Make the existing page about levels, and split off Enchanted Forest into a setting trope.

Well, if we do split off non-video game examples, I think Enchanted Forest is a perfectly good name.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 25th 2022 at 6:05:08 AM

The Lost Woods is a name for the broader trope and not the video game setting trope.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 25th 2022 at 6:47:16 AM

I support the spilt between the video-game specific portrayal and regular enchanted woods stuff

Thanks for making the OP!

The trope is basically split between its two definitions, so I felt the split (giving the old name to a Video Game Settings trope and a new name to the more general definition and splitting off usage) was the lowest intensity fix.

Although I am questioning how healthy the Video Game Settings are at the moment, that's for another thread.

Put me down for a split.

What do you mean when referring to the health of Video Game Settings? I clicked on the Related pages of a random assortment of video game setting tropes and they all had wick counts that were at least in the triple digits.

Are you referring to the wick counts we'd end up if we split The Lost Woods between video game levels and non-video game forests?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 25th 2022 at 10:29:08 AM

ZCE issues mainly, a lot of them are prone to be jotted down like so.

"Level, it has X"

Though I'd need to do more wick checks to see if usage is better or worse than I think, I can show on this wick check that there was a near 50/50 split between the pure level trope entries and ZCE level trope entries (excluding the 4 videogame entries that had enough context to qualify for the current general definition).

And this as well.

Edited by Tonwen on Apr 25th 2022 at 10:31:56 AM

I believe that refers to previous discussions about Video Game Settings page having too many tropes that aren't inherently videogame related, and inversely tropes written as videogame levels having too many non-videogame examples, The Lost Woods being used as a prime example, so it goes first.

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 25th 2022 at 6:58:51 PM

&Ah, OK, that clears things up.

I definitely support the split — I'd been thinking of proposing something like this myself — but I would prefer to keep the current page as the "mysterious magical forest" trope and split off the video game level concept to a new page. The majority of the on-page examples currently focus on the former concept, while the latter ones are a minority. Also, since most inbound wicks focus on The Lost Woods' "main" current definition, refocusing it to just be about video game forest levels would create a lot of unnecessary work.

On one hand, it makes sense for inbounds and such, but I'm pretty sure the name is part of the problem, given that it's a video game level and isn't all that descriptive of what the trope is really about.

More work but potentially fewer headaches in the long run, although we could make crowners for which of the concepts gets to keep the name to make it fair.

Or if neither keep the name, that's an option too.

Edited by Tonwen on Apr 25th 2022 at 11:03:07 AM

A reminder that the Trope Namer is The Legend of Zelda, so "Lost Woods" may be more commonly known as a game location (plus it being current use). We may end up renaming both split-offs.

I'm not entirely comfortable with using the title "The Lost Woods" for the concept "forests in video games", since anyone familiar with the Zelda series will associate the name with the concept Unnaturally Looping Location.

I vote to split as well.

I just don't think "Lost Woods" is a good name for "foresty video game location" beyond the trope namer. I think it's a better name for the "enchanted forest" trope, but if that's unclear then we should rename both.

Maybe Magical Forest or Mystical Woods for the general trope.

No idea for the Video Game tropes besides sticking level or zone at the end of one of the aforementioned suggestions but that's boring. Don't know how else we would make the difference though

A split is fine, though I agree with not making The Lost Woods be the video game one. The title doesn't tell you anything about it being a game setting trope; it'd just be misused again if we kept it as a VG trope.

Agreed. Put "level" in the video game-specific trope's name and keep this one for the general trope or maybe rename it too, I'm fine with whichever.

Why would there be a separate trope for video game levels?

Well, video game stages of employ certain game specific gimmicks that can't be replicated in other mediums and a magical forest is a common video game setting.