Not Thriving: Tandem Parasite

Expand. I'm honestly surprised we didn't have a trope for someone being an active detriment to group physical work.

Edited by 4maskwolf on Oct 25th 2022 at 5:10:52 AM

I'm fine with expanding.

Expand

Is someone who fails to contribute to a group effort not already The Load?

I'm reluctant to broaden the trope from a Visual Gag to a character trope when crosswicking has saved it from not thriving.

The trope is not who fails to contribute, it's the one who's not even trying. And The Load mainly describes a character who's a part of the heroic team but only slows them down.

Their connection can be brought up if we rewrite.

1) "Failing to contribute" vs "not even trying" is semantics to me - I wasn't trying to describe a different thing than you are. If that's a relevant distinction, then I guess there might be a missing supertrope to yard.

2) But that still isn't this trope, because it's not a character trope, it's a Visual Gag (see the page image - it isn't characterising Batman or Superman, it's superdickery played for laughs) based on how only the person in the back can get away with not contributing because the one in the front is necessarily facing the wrong way and preoccupied with steering.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Oct 26th 2022 at 9:12:27 AM

The current trope is a Visual Gag, yes. But the expanded version wouldn't be.

...right, which is my point. That isn't an expansion, it's replacing the trope with a different one.

The two non bike examples brought up, Archer and Laurel and Hardy, are both comedies, so when I said expand I thought we would keep it to gag examples.

Gah; I accidentally said "proceed past the discussion page" when I meant "discussion stage". That's been fixed (I posted that after getting very little sleep, which has since been rectified).

So...it's been 3 days. Should we call?

Aren't there concerns over how we should expand the trope?

I see that. Evidently I should have read in a bit more. Apologies.

I think there are two expansion ideas. Is this right?:

• Expand to cover non-bike visual gags about skimping team work.
• Expand Tandem Parasite to be about characters letting other people do the work in group projects in general.

Maybe. Not sure if these are really exclusive.

Yeah, I'm not seeing much of a difference myself

Is it safe to hook a crowner with those two options (which I don't think would be mutually exclusive, but correct me if I'm wrong), or do we need more time?

I mean, if the two definitions essentially mean the same thing, what would be the point of a crowner?

Expanding to "shirking teamwork in general" would include Visual Gag examples, we probably don't need two options. So I guess we could we can move forward with expansion without a crowner.

Although I am not sure I am for expanding anymore because I think Noa is right that we are turning the trope into a completely different one. This trope isn't used much anymore but its not Too Rare to Trope and it seems distinct enough to stand on its own.

Just had to tweak the description a bit and update the Laconic, so locking up.