Needs Help: Spiritual Successor

Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of making the page YMMV, and also voted against making if definition-only. I didn't upvote or downvote any of the other options.

i guess i'm just confused as to what making this YMMV would even do

especially because JustForFun.Surprisingly Similar Stories exists to cover individual tropers' opinions and because I feel like many of those listed in Spiritual Successor are just one tropers' perception and not representative of an Audience Reaction per se.

IF it's created, we'd have:

• Follow the Leader - work Y was created to specifically crib off of work X
• Surprisingly-Similar Stories - people see similarities between work X and Y
• YMMV.Spiritual Successor - ?

Edited by amathieu13 on May 2nd 2022 at 12:36:57 PM

Yeah... What's up with that?

I don't get the point of making it YMMV besides people really liking their subjective comparisons to be kept, which we already have other places for.

Well, I downvoted it and upvoted everything else.

If we make it YMMV, isn't that redundant with Spiritual Adaptation?

Ugh. The first sentence of that one's description hurts my brain. I don't know what the difference is, and frankly I feel like just saying it, too, needs to be tossed down the garbage disposal, but I don't have a good reason why.

I think we should have only had one option each for definition-only and disambiguation, with notes saying they aren't mutually exclusive with each other. Doesn't help that the two definition-only options don't mention where examples would go (only the purely disambig option does).

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 2nd 2022 at 2:23:36 PM

Should we do the crowner over then?

Spiritual Adaptation is not quite the same.

To paraphrase the description: "Spiritual Successor, but the succeeding work doesn't share the original's medium" i.e. work X was a book and work Y is a film.

Theres also some murkiness depending on whether or not you take the "successor" part of spiritual successor to mean "expands on ideas and themes in Work X" or "indirectly does a Whole-Plot Reference of Work X". If you think the latter (and I'd bank on there being examples to support either reading otherwise we wouldn't be TRS-ing it), then yeah they're the same. If you think the former, then theres technically a difference.

But functionally they could be the same. Theres def enough ambiguity in the description for them to end up the same. And after all, an adaptation need not be a direct recreation of a work. Hard to say without a wick check of Spiritual Adaptation

Edited by amathieu13 on May 2nd 2022 at 3:51:15 PM

I'll go ahead and do it.

Is there room for moving at least some creator intended/acknowledged examples to trivia?

Isn't that Sincerest Form of Flattery? And again, it doesn't have a wick check for moves.

I admit I don't feel like supporting any of the new options, since the only difference between "making def-only" and "disambiguating" is that the former will forbid examples from it while still giving the page a barebones existence with a definition, and the other simply quasi-cuts it while still forbiding examples.

I'll politely abstain from voting for the new crowner.

The YMMV one is still there, though.

I'm surprised definition-only has consensus while disambiguation doesn't, since they aren't mutually exclusive. If we go with the former without the latter, I suppose we could go ahead and add the list anyway; it's having the latter without the former that would prevent us from adding text other than "Another page sent you here; correct any link to point to the correct page" and the like alongside the list.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 2nd 2022 at 1:35:57 PM

What I know is that I usually remove non YMMV tropes are listed on YMMV pages as YMMV and I sometimes run into cases of Spiritual Successor listed with tropers thinking that it's YMMV, likely confusing it with Spiritual Adaptation.

There's something that I've noticed on the adaptations' description though

quote: While a Spiritual Successor is for any plot that is reused without the same setting/characters, a Spiritual Adaptation is when the plot and even characters are used in a different medium. This often occurs because the creators in the new medium are not the same creators/producers of the original medium, which means they don't have access to the intellectual property rights of the original storyline.

The confusing part for me is the entire Any Plot reused without the same characters/settings while Adaptation is the same characters/settings in a different work. By that logic, could one argue that something like A New Hope is a Spiritual Adaptation of The Hidden Fortress while something like William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet is a Spiritual Successor to the original? (or maybe it's more of a Setting Update?)

If we get really cynical, originality isn't real. But anyway, I think some of the tropes in disambig options could cover both of mentioned comparisons.

I've only ever seen it on YMMV pages to begin with.

I've seen it on Trivia pages a few times.

The trivia seems valid for cases in which it is the same principal creator of the original work making, well, a successor of their previous work. Think how Mighty No. 9 is a successor to Mega Man or RiffTrax is a successor to Mystery Science Theater 3000. These aren't cases of Sincerest Form of Flattery, since it's the same creative team or at least part of it, and the only other term I can think of them is, well, Spiritual Successor. Can it get around being definition-only when it's these kinds of examples?

I think the same-creator examples deserve some sort of item. Like how Jack Douglass's Be Funny Now! is clearly based off the YIAY series on Jacksfilms, but does not explicitly use the YIAY name.

Maybe something like Unaffiliated Spinoff? But that might be too narrow and misleading actually.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 17th 2022 at 8:03:40 AM