Thread current status:

It has been agreed by crowner to merge the Light Novel/ namespace into Literature/.

LightNovel namespace index -- excludes redirects

It has been agreed by crowner that Light Novel examples are to be sorted on trope pages as follows:

• If you're adding an example with LN in mind, place it in Literature.
• If you're adding an example from an Anime/Manga, but unsure if it was present in LN, place it in Anime/Manga.
• If you're adding an example from an Anime/Manga, but know it also happened in the source, place in in Literature.
• If you're adding an example from an Anime/Manga, and sure it did not happen in the source, place it in Anime/Manga even if the work is already listed in Literature.
• If you're moving an example, for example when renaming or handling redirects, and don't know much about other versions, instead just leave it where it was.
• If you know all versions of the work, move examples to the medium they're first featured in.
• Webcomic examples with adaptation go to either Webcomics or Anime/Manga following the above logic.
• Web Serial Novel are still Literature.
• There is to be no dedicated Light Novel folder or subpage on trope pages.

Edge case rulings:

• Due to extreme differences with the original Web Serial Novel, Overlord (2012) will be the hub page for the Overlord Light Novel and its adaptations. Overlord 2010 will cover the WSN.

Original post below.

come up

twice

The issue is pretty straightforward: where do we put examples from Light Novels on trope pages?

General options previously proposed:

• Put them in Anime and Manga since they're commonly adapted into them.
• Base things on the original medium, and group them with Literature.
• Take a Third Option and create a Light Novel folder.

Points about this media space that are commonly raised:

• The manga and especially anime adaptations tend to be more available and more familiar to the Western audiences that comprise most tropers.
• The adaptations into manga and anime are usually very faithful Compressed Adaptations, so most trope examples apply to all versions.

ETA: Related issue that came up:

• Should the Light Novel namespace be merged into Literature?

Here's a link to pages that are in the LightNovel/ namespace.

Edited by Tabs on Nov 22nd 2022 at 9:50:41 AM

I should also mention that the practice of putting light novel examples in anime & manga folders predates the time when LNs started being distributed in the west in the mid 2010s. Back then, LNs were subjected to No Export for You and many westerners were familiar with only the anime or manga adaptations, so really, the practice has become The Artifact now that LNs have become a lot more accessible.

I wouldn't mind giving LNs its own folder, but let's see what other people say first.

Like I said before, I don't mind Light Novels being in either Anime & Manga or Light Novels.

I don't really agree with them having their own folder as I disagree with them having a namespace separate from Literature to begin with but that's a conversation for another day.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 28th 2022 at 6:42:43 AM

As long as the namespace remains separate, it makes sense for them to get a separate folder as well, as the "third option" in the anime vs. literature debate.

LNs are literature; they belong in the literature folder.

Lazy copy from the ATT:

If a trope is present in an original work and its adaptations, it should be listed under the original work's media category. In this case, it's Literature.

What often happened in the old days was that whatever troper added the example didn't know that the anime was based on a light novel.. Subsequent tropers, seeing LN tropes listed under the anime category, followed suit because "monkey see, monkey do."

Edited by RallyBot2 on Jul 28th 2022 at 6:51:40 AM

Give them their own folder. After so much time allowing them in Anme and Manga, we're never going to be able to convince the main troper body to put them in literature if they aren't in the literature namespace.

Use own Medium folder for examples, or if not just use the medium of origin (Literature) disregarding the adaptations.

I don't usually see Light Novels in the Literature folder so I usually put them in the Anime & Manga folder regardless of with or without an adaptation.

Edited by TheTropper on Jul 28th 2022 at 12:02:55 PM

Either Anime & Manga or their own folder. Unless the namespace is removed, its own folder should be the default, imo.

Namespaces and folders aren't the same thing.

And I still think it should get its own Folder by default anyway because it has a Namespace. They do relate, after all.

I mean, it's not completely unheard-of to lump similar media namespaces together: we still tend to put all web media except webcomics into Web Original. And lumping light novels with Literature is at least putting them with the most similar "primary" media namespace.

Put them in the Literature/ folder.

For a point of comparison: Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers was originally published serially in 8 segments, and comes in at a bit under 320k words. This means that each installment was ~40k words. Per some quick googleing, that's a hair on the low side, but within range of a typical Light Novel volume. Would you want to split Dickens out into a Serial Novel/ folder?

One thing a LN is not: Manga. While the illustrations usually share artistic stylizations with anime and manga, they are ancillary to telling the story. Again back to Dickens: Many of his novels had sketches by "Boz". They are about as numerous as the illustrations in a LN, and have just as near a relation to Victorian sketch cartoon styles as LN illustrations have to manga styles.

I'm generally okay with multiple namespaces being listed in the same media folder. What I'd push back on is splitting a single namespace into multiple media folders.

Using word count to define what namespace a novel should go under is a flawed argument. The situation here was never about namespace or word count, but about what folders we should put light novels in.

Honestly, I prefer the duo approach of either Literature or Anime & Manga, which is dependent on whether or not a light novel gets an anime or manga adaptation. If it does, it goes under Anime & Manga. If not, it goes under Literature. The reason I prefer this approach is because light novels, for a really long time, were subjected to a lot of Adaptation Displacement than any other medium in existence, and anime subculture thinks of light novels as being synonymous with anime and manga.

We should't base the wiki around western preconceptions of other cultures. It's not just because light novels are conflated with mangas by some tropers because of Adaptation Displacement that the wiki should be molded around that. My opinion is the same as . If it has an anime adaptation that overall follows the plot faithfully, we put it in the Anime & Manga folder. But if the light novel doesn't, we put it on the Literature folder. In the same way an illustrated novel isn't a comic book, an illustrated Japanese novel isn't automatically a manga.

After having read the posts, I have to agree with Cyto and morning. Plus, in my modest opinion, adding a separate Light Novel folder or subpage wouldn't bring that many benefits, and if anything it would cause a lot of confusion due to how many of those light novels are adapted into anime and/or manga.

Funnily enough, the Lightnovel/ namespace exists because a troper kept insisting the opposite. They didn't like the Haruhi Suzumiya (which was in Literature/ at the time) sharing a namespace with books from other countries, and insisted the fact that the books had both words AND pictures meant they were manga. Lightnovel/ was created as a compromise to stop them complaining.

I do agree that this particular namespace should be done away with and everything in it folded into Literature/ (hey, we did with with Letsplay/ and Wiki/...).

But as to the topic at hand, light novels examples belong in the Literature folder since they're, you know, novels. After all, poetry, gamebooks, and Where's Wally? examples go in the Literature folders despite having actual differences from normal books, which light novels don't. The works of Roald Dahl are also listed under Literature, and they have a comparable reading level and illustration quotient to Japanese light novels. That said, there's nothing particularly objectionable about putting them in the Anime folder if the troper is thinking of an adaptation which doesn't have a separate page.

There's many light novels that have illustration at all. There's only minor cosmetic differences between light novels and other novels. I don't think Light Novel/ should have its own namespace but I think we need a separate thread for that as this one is about folder organization (but I could be wrong about that).

I still think that having light novels with anime/manga adaptations stay in that section and have light novels without anime/manga section in the literature section works the best. People aren't going to look for the anime and manga adaptations of popular light novel series like Haruhi Suzumiya and Sword Art Online in the Literature section. Examples specific to light novels can be put in the literature section. Visual Novels are often split between their own folder and Anime/Manga depending on the trope and it how it manifests in the original and its adaptations so this would be similar.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 31st 2022 at 8:13:34 AM

And as I said before, times have changed. Back in the late-2000s and early-2010s during TV Tropes' early years, LNs were never exported from Japan so many people here were only familiar with the anime adaptations. Once LNs started being distributed in the west in the mid-2010s, this created some dissonance among the hardcore anime fans who insist that LNs, being from Japan and having manga illustrations, should always go under the Anime & Manga namespaces. They seem to don't like LNs being lumped in with western literature.

Edited by CytoZytokine on Jul 31st 2022 at 8:06:30 AM

Oh, that attitude is as old as anime fandom. It's the reason we call Japanese cartoon "anime" rather than just... "Japanese cartoons". Likewise, we refer to Japanese comics as "manga". Heck, I've had someone tell me outright that manga and comics are different things; when I pressed them, they said the difference is that manga are Japanese and comics are American. This was a YouTube comment, so take that as you will, but the attitude it still there.

For what it's worth, in Kinokuniya, light novels are put in closer shelves to manga than other western novels.

Yeah, Barnes & Noble and a local comic book chain shelve them with the manga, too.

But yeah, the insistence of one particular troper on having their way is a reason to thump the troper for being a Rhymes With Witch, not give them their way. I've been wondering for a while why they were two different namespaces to begin with.

Well, now that we know the crux of the issue spawned from one troper complaining and somehow getting their way, I say it's time we reverse that decision and put LNs back where they belong: Literature, because that's what they are. After all, TV Tropes runs on community consensus, and it baffles me how just one troper managed to influence LN placements in the years since.

Okay, so from the sound of things we've really got two related issues to crown (I'll add this to the OP as well):

1. multiple-choice: policy for example placement on trope pages, for the case of cross-media examples or where the troper doesn't know which versions use the trope. Probably picking between "Anime & Manga", "Literature", or new "Light Novel" folder.
2. Y/N: merge Light Novel namespace with Literature.

Edited by StarSword on Aug 1st 2022 at 8:46:03 AM

If we going to decide on doing the namespace merger, we are going to need more discussion + a thread title change. If we are going this route, it's best to have a crowner for the Light Novel/ namespace first and then make another crowner to figure out how LN's should be categorized on trope example lists.