Tropeworthiness and Narrative Significance of Some Title Tropes

As previously discussed here and here, there have been concerns that many Title Tropes function as Search-Generated Index or serve no narrative purpose whatsoever. Not helping that examples on the pages of tropes listed in title tropes, either have context, or little to no context.

Among the notable and brought-up title tropes are:

• All subtropes of Character Title, except Versus Title, but its significance can be further discussed.
• All subtropes of MacGuffin Title.
• One-Word Title and its subtrope, however, an argument have been made that it has minimalistic appeal and is memorable, though this isn't a requirement of the trope, and it's only mentioned briefly in the description. That said, the trope requires providing context.
• Title of the Dead.

And other more. So what are y'all's thoughts? How can we fix this?

What term would I search for to create an index that duplicates Character Title (for example)? Most of these seem to be about the structure of the title and what part of the work is important enough to get that kind of focus, rather than having actual words in common.

I also disagree that Protagonist Title, Antagonist Title, MacGuffin Title, etc are chairs just because the title is "expected" to be about the most important part of the story. Asserting that the most important thing is the protagonist, rather than the antagonist, or the thing they're fighting over, or the situation they're in, is meaningful in that it suggests what the audience is expected to be paying the most attention. A story with a Literary Allusion Title or a Central Theme Title signals the lens the author has mind and is basically a flag saying "please think about the subtext". Possibly they should be treated as almost Omnipresent Tropes, but that's hardly the same thing as "chairs".

(Long Title, on the other hand, is probably not a trope - it's just a list of titles grouped by word count, including everything from "purple prose titles" to "titles which are amusingly informal complete sentences".)

(I see there's also an argument that pages like Title of the Dead and The Joy of X are tropes because they're highlighting a resemblance to another particular work; that seems like something for a ReferencedBy/ page, though, since it's kind of the title version of Fountain of Expies.)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Jan 3rd 2023 at 7:44:08 PM

Also, that "expectation" is a trope by itself. Narrative purpose is not in fact a requirement for something to be a trope.

Isn't that the point of most titles? That's literally the norm with the exception of poetic/literary titles and Non-Appearing Title, etc., which are noteworthy bc they either serve a purpose or are against the norm/expectation.

This why Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer, for example, is a thing — it's expected for an important character to appear in a trailer, but when they don't appear it's surprising/against expectation. The same goes for titles.

Eh, then why are Beauty Mark, Bi The Way, and Always V Sexy, etc, no longer tropes? It's because they served no purpose other than "X exists".

...you didn't actually respond to the section you quoted.

More generally, though, a trope is a meaningful pattern. The three you mentioned are Chairs because they're all "thing that exists in reality also exists in fiction" - the pattern doesn't mean anything^note arguably Beauty Mark isn't inherently Chairs, but it is when it's used as a list of hot actors with moles. Hero Protagonist is expected. Foreshadowing is expected. Worldbuilding and Fair-Play Whodunnit are expected, within their genres. Strictly Formula is expected by definition. Being expected is generally evidence that a pattern is a trope.

It seems to me that something like One-Word Title provides its own context - it wouldn't be a zero-context example, just a zero-paragraph example - while something like MacGuffin Title can be contextualised by explaining what the macguffin is and why it's important. One-Word Title might be similar to my thoughts on Long Title, though.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Jan 4th 2023 at 9:51:55 AM

I've never really seen most title tropes as actually being tropes, though I've always been more on the side of "they should be indexes" instead. They're important to understanding the work, but a lot of them are impossible to supply context for (especially something like One-Word Title, which is self-explanatory unless you feel like describing what the title means, which isn't a requirement) and are one of the very few things I'd say actually are self-evident just from being on the work page. So, making them indexes would preserve their purpose without forcing people to try and shoehorn them into a work trope list.

Admittedly, my argument is more about logistics than about the meaning of a trope. I can see why these things would be consider tropes, I just think they're damn near impossible to actually contextualize.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 4th 2023 at 4:34:03 AM

but wouldn't that would make them a Search-Generated Index?

No? A search-generated index is specifically for indexes full of pages you can find just by using the search feature because their only similarity is that they have specific words in them. A page like One-Word Title or Protagonist Title can't be a search-generated index because each title is different... it's just that you can rarely ever explain their meaning unless they're somehow not obvious.

Oh yeah you’re right. Had a brain fart I suppose :}

A lot of our tropes are self-explanatory, but we still have to state the obvious. I don't think it's a problem to have a example like:

• One-Word Title: The media's title is composed of one word: [Title].

Like, I get it. I was the one who wrote the paragraph on top of Zero-Context Example so I'm well aware of the fact that we are meant to explain even the most redundant context. But in this case... Is there anything to gain?

Normally the point is to show how a work uses a particular trope. Hence why we need to explain it, because that's the entire point of even having examples. So even redundant context is necessary because context can change between works and what seems obvious isn't always.

Title tropes, however... If you're already on the work page, you already know how the title fits the trope. If the tropes specified that it conveyed some meaning then yeah there'd be merit to discussing what that meaning is and how the title conveys it. But if the trope is literally just "this title is just one word", and you're already on the work page, you already have the context because you already know the title. The title is the context.

Like I said, I understand why they're classified as tropes. Titles do convey meaning and are used to impact the narrative and how people perceive it. But if the only necessary context for any of them is just the title itself, it feels entirely pointless to expect people to shove these tropes into a trope list anyway.

Noaqiyeum I think I did? Well, anyway, there are arguments against the tropes you listed being expected. Hero Protagonist isn't always expected/the norm when Villain Protagonist and other morally ambiguous protagonists are becoming common nowadays. Foreshadowing isn't always expected bc many authors pull an Ass Pull without prior foreshadowing. Strictly Formula depends on the media; books and animanga don't usually follow this pattern, and so on.

Yes, some tropes are expected to happen bc without them there won't be a story (e.g. Inciting Incident and Settings). But even then these serve a purpose.

I agree with Warjay. If the example is just listing the title is that even an example when you can tell what kind of title it is from the work's name? And even if it's an example-less index, do we need a list of all works with an antagonist, for instance, in the title? What's the purpose of this?

On the contrary, a Double-Meaning Title example relies on context to explain what are the multiple meanings the title refers to, just like in Pun-Based Title you have to explain the pun (even if it's obvious, it still needs context).

Right, I don't want to ignore that many title tropes do need explaining since the information isn't obvious just by reading the title itself. That's fine. I get those. I stand by those. I'm only against the ones like Excited Show Title, One-Word Title, Questioning Title? and Overly Long Title because there's no explaining you can even really do for them: They're just literally self-evident.

Then by the same token, Character Title isn't expected because Informal Dialogue Title is trending. (Hero Protagonist did not become a trope retroactively only when the first Villain Protagonist was imagined.) You're still missing the point that "being expected" is unrelated to tropeworthiness.

Mind, I don't disagree about the problem of providing additional context for every example - that might be a reason to make an exception for titles in the ZCE rules, and/or a reason to group some of them together as Common Title Structures And What They Mean, or something. I think a decent way to think about what context a title trope needs is to consider what background would be necessary to explain it if it became an Artefact Title; that may not work for things like Excited Show Title, but it seems like it would for a lot of the tropes in question.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Jan 4th 2023 at 1:39:59 PM

I'd agree if that context was actually part of any of the tropes... but it's not. The "why" behind the title is incidental, and the trope is just "the title is formatted in this specific way". Thus, while it's never impossible to explain these titles, doing so doesn't supply context for the actual tropes.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 4th 2023 at 9:09:25 AM

I think the context would be how or why the thing being pointed out is the most important part of the work. With some, like the Character Titles, it's sometimes obvious, albeit not always. Like, in an adaptation or a sequel — maybe an Antagonist Title was picked because the antagonist proved more popular or because the creator wanted to tell the story from a new perspective.

Some Character Titles tropes being merged together under one broad trope with sub-bullets isn't a bad idea.

Yes, but only if there's a reason behind the title name, otherwise it's just "X is titled after the antagonist", which we want to avoid. Though sometimes it's hard to find reason, like for instance, only rrasons for One-Word Title so far are minimalistic appeal and catchiness. So, is every example gonna list those 2 reasons as context?

I think that the whole context thing is a bit of a logical cart-before-horse. Title conventions don't stop being tropes just because it's hard to supply context.

Like I said, I get why they're tropes, but they're not compatible with our context rules, as despite people pointing out context ideas, none of them are actually related to the tropes definitions, meaning that any possible context doesn't actually qualify as context for the actual tropes we're discussing, since the tropes have no described meaning or pattern to them outside of existing.

And unlike, say, appearance tropes, I'm not saying that these things are chairs. I'm more just disputing that they have any place in an example list, especially the ones that literally don't have any relevant context to describe. (Note the word "relevant". You can talk about the meaning of the title all day long, but these tropes don't care about the meaning.) Either there's a flaw in the context rules when it comes to tropes like these, the tropes need to be given proper meaning in TRS, or they're simply unable to be treated as normal tropes.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 5th 2023 at 4:39:26 AM

Title of the Dead is a reference, but it's also descriptive by nature (you can expect some undead shenanigans), so it's not that bad.

I don't really have an issue with The Namesake types of title tropes (like The Place, MacGuffin Title, or Character Title) since you can immediately identify that the namesake will be important plot or theme-wise in some way. I think the necessary context for these would be why they were important enough to be the title (being worthy to pull The Sword in the Stone is the crux of the plot. Gotham divorces itself from Batman-the-character by being named for Batman's city instead. Rebecca weighs so much on the narrative despite not being present. Luca is about Luca's coming-of-age story, so it fits) etc.

I do think the ones based on length and don't otherwise have inherent meaning like One-Word Title and Long Title are probably nothing.

So there seems to be some discussion about One-Word Title maybe not being tropeworthy. Should I do a wick check once I'm done with Asian Store-Owner?

I think One-Word Title might be tricky to make a wick check for because the only real context is the title itself, and I've seen a number of examples be commented out as zero-context examples when there isn't really much to say other than "this is the title, it is one word long." The very first sentence of the trope's description admits as much.

My question then is, if I were to bring it to TRS, what would I do? Would I do it without a wick check then? If I did a wick check, what would I check? I want to TRS this but I'm not sure how.

(Minor clarification, this would actually be third in line, project-wise, for me. I'll probably do Camera Screw after Asian Store-Owner, then One-Word Title.)

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jan 5th 2023 at 2:21:22 PM

I think if what you're going for is "not tropeworthy," then you might not need a wick check. Just cite the discussions and concerns related to the trope and the solutions.

I've been sorting all the current Title Tropes into four categories depending on whether they have relevant context (and can therefore be handled with the current example rules) or the work's title is the context. There are also potential search-generated indexes and special cases (when the trope is not restricted to work titles).

Everything is, of course, up to further discussion.

Also, take into account that, for some tropes, context is short, one line or a few words. That doesn't make the trope zero-context and is very different from a list of titles.

Legend:

• *titled after narrative devices
• **titling format
• ***context is a list of installments, but can be rephrased into paragraphs

All of this is collected in this sandbox.

P.D.: I think I got what WarJay meant by relevant context but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit: I think we should center our discussion on the second and third categories.

Edited by Asterlix on Jan 11th 2023 at 8:11:42 AM