Needs Help: Genre Turning Point

Note: This thread was proposed by The Mayor of Simpleton.

The problem: Genre Turning Point is an Audience Reaction about game-changer works that redefined their genre. It's listed as an Audience Reaction, I guess because what constitutes a turning point is up for debate? However, the concept seems more like Trivia (dealing with behind-the-scenes trends than reactions to a work) and similar tropes like the X Killer tropes (Franchise Killer, Creator Killer, Genre-Killer, and Trend Killer) and (as pointed out) Follow the Leader are Trivia, despite those tropes also technically having a similar tie to the audience. The entry for Genre Turning Point on Audience Reactions just says this:

• Genre Turning Point: A work redefines its genre.

Which doesn't say much about how this is an Audience Reaction.

I noticed many examples being written like Trivia (where 13 wicks are already located), and I decided to do a wick check to see how many examples were written like that.

Wick check: Link here, but here's the quick results:

• 16/50 examples were written as an audience reaction (mentioning how the audience felt or something similar), or 32%
• 28/50 examples were written as Trivia (not mentioning the audience at all), or 56%
• 1/50 examples were misused, or 2%,
• 4/50 examples lacked context or were unclear, or 8%, and
• 1/50 examples were unclassifiable, or 2%

Analysis: So there actually were a lot of examples that were written like an Audience Reaction, mentioning how the audience saw the work as a game-changer. However, there were many more examples that didn't mention that, and were written like Trivia. I believe this confirms my suspicion about Genre Turning Point being a Trivia concept, and even with the YMMV-like entries that doesn't change that the concept is written like a Trivia item.

Possible solution: I recommend moving this trope from YMMV to Trivia for the mentioned reasons. I believe this concept is Trivia, and is insufficiently opinion-based for an Audience Reaction.

What does everyone else think? Any agreements or disagreements, or alternative options?

Paging ~The Mayor of Simpleton to the thread.

Move to Trivia to be like the tropes it's compared to.

Maybe require contextualizing "everyone was doing like this, but after its release the following works started to use these elements..." if it's something we can do.

Since more examples are written objectively than subjectively, I agree with moving this to Trivia like other pages related to changes to genres. Kind of seems like we have a case that's the opposite of Fan Nickname here (Trivia mislabeled as YMMV instead of an Audience Reaction mislabeled as Trivia, not that we don't still have cases of the latter like God Never Said That and Beam Me Up, Scotty!, but that's a conversation for another day).

Thanks for pinging Gaston! I wanted to get this thread out of the way so I moved some threads around on the queue.

Anyway I stand by what I said.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 18th 2022 at 4:29:01 AM

I actually think it's right for this to be YMMV. People cite statistics to back up their argument but there is often debate and disagreement about when a genre shifts. Follow the Leader, for comparison (since it was listed), is far less up for debate since there's a pretty clear indicator of if/when works start copying another work: compare market saturation of works similar (in narrative, genre, tone) to the "leader" before / after it's release.

But genres are much larger and shifts take way longer over time, typically after Follow the Leader has happened enough for a new standard to be set.

Basically, I think keeping it YMMV is actually saving us from having edit wars between users arguing for their work to be the defining genre turning point by allowing multiple opinions, some even in opposition to one another, to exist.

like the Film.Three Hundred example (pasted below in a folder) from GenreTurningPoint.Live Action Films reads like Zack Snyder Fan Myopia to me and I might contest it if it weren't YMMV.^note Not saying it didn't make use of CGI, but the suggestion that it "revolutionized" special effects seems to be inflating the actual impact of the film on the industry to me.

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 18th 2022 at 10:49:05 AM

Here's my next question then—should the "X Killer" tropes be YMMV then, since they're so similar to this one, and what constitutes a "killer" can be just as much up for debate?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 19th 2022 at 7:10:13 AM

If people disagree if a work counts as Genre Turning Point, it would be a compelling reason to leave it as YMMV, thought that'll turn into an issue of most examples not being written like one.

FWIW I follow these pages and I have never seen an Edit War AFAIK.

I think the "could be a flame war" argument applies to similar pages that are already trivia such as Genre-Killer and Creator Killer. Just because there can be some debate on the matter doesn't mean we should just dump it onto YMMV. Sometimes bad examples are bad examples, and either this and all similar items are all YMMV or all trivia, nothing in-between.

I'm in favor of moving this to trivia btw.

I think most are fine as written. While the examples don't state "some people" / "some segment of the audience", it's implied in the fact that the trope itself is YMMV, imo.

Hm, I'm not fully sure. I don't necessarily think this trope needs to be treated the same as those tropes. Noting when something transitions from one thing to another is harder than noting the end of something as the "X Killer" tropes do.

But, it's not like those tropes are without their own issues on what can qualify. You started a long term clean up thread for just that (this isn't meant as a "gotcha"; I just think it'd be weird to bring up that thread without acknowledging you started it, like trying to tell you something you already know, you know?). A mixture of misunderstanding the tropes, unclear definitions of what constitutes a genre or franchise, Fan Myopia, and unclear boundaries on when 1 trend ends and another begins makes the constant clean up necessary.

It honestly reminds me of the issues that the short-lived Wildfire Franchise had. There are aspects of all of these tropes that is based on objective facts and data, even if 99.9% of tropers don't have access to them. But the fact that most tropers are going in and writing these examples without that knowledge means we're mostly going off of public perception and consensus.

And honestly, declaring something a trend/franchise/genre killer is documenting how a large part of the audience reacted to a work (negatively). So by that definition, "X Killer" tropes would fall under YMMV purely because they document an Audience Reaction.

I guess I'm ending with yeah, there's an argument that "X Killer" tropes should be YMMV, too.

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 19th 2022 at 8:42:56 AM

You do make very good points. Maybe someday I'll start a separate TRS for the X Killer tropes and argue for YMMV moves for them—or more. I remember Glowsquid saying something in the X Killer cleanup thread about the problems with the X Killer tropes, so it's something else to consider.

Now I just feel dumb for arguing Genre Turning Point should be Trivia.

EDIT: Found what they said, and it was about misuse:

I'll save that for a separate thread though.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 19th 2022 at 9:05:52 AM

• Franchise Killer is when a series stops after poor reception of the last installment and isn't subjective.
• Creator Killer is when a creator's reputation is Ruined FOREVER, which is subjective (and may be redundant to Fallen Creator)
• Genre-Killer is when some large scale thing becomes a Dead Horse Trope, which many not even agree on.

The point being, let's handle those tropes separately, and in own threads, since this thread is about Genre Turning Point.

Right, I had said those would be a separate thread and I'll discuss when we get there.

Anyway, is Genre Turning Point YMMV, or Trivia? Right now I'm leaning toward YMMV—I think amathieu13 made very good points, and I kind of regret TRSing this.

Honestly, I'm starting to lean toward YMMV now because of what was said about "turning point" being less clear-cut than "killer", and what was said about the former being harder to pin down.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 19th 2022 at 9:01:17 AM

Don't feel bad. I can see why you'd want to get all these in line with each other given that these tropes are kind of related concepts. And there is some ambiguity / arguments to be made on both sides.

But personally, I think Genre Turning Point should stay an Audience Reaction trope.

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 19th 2022 at 10:03:53 AM

If "were written as Trivia" are fine, with low ZCE rate we may not need to do anything.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 19th 2022 at 6:08:25 PM

Yeah we can probably close this.

Holler to close

Why holler? The clock is set, and this discussion is early enough that someone else may tune it.

I'll go ahead and close, but I'll leave the wick check up in case it ends up being needed later.