x3 No? The current trope is clearly specific to casting.

Realized what I may have been thinking about is Self-Adaptation (unless it's limited to scripting).

Ah, could be.

I just realized there's a very small degree of commonality between this and Enforced Method Acting: the latter is almost always the result of the director working ahead of schedule, but this trope's description doesn't really imply that that's the showrunner/director's goal. If we expand I feel like we should do a soft split of some kind reflecting that, like "Chosen off-schedule" vs. "Chosen in the nick of time". For off-schedule we could do more collaborative examples, like a composer being convinced to, well, collaborate. Still figuring out how that would/could match the adaptation stuff though.

Edited by Coachpill on Jul 22nd 2023 at 3:08:58 PM

I don't see why we necessarily need to limit Creator-Chosen Casting to projects that are an adaptation of something...

Me neither, though the adaptation element is still a huge roadblock. If we look at it from a different perspective it's still kind of speculative, even if Self Adaptations aren't in the mix.

That's why I suggested we expand the trope to not limit it to adaptations. It makes it much easier to identify examples, and isn't holding back the trope at all.

My main hindrance though is whether the casting history that we have to choose from will stay within the same lines.

Maybe we should instead make a trope backwards; instead of recording so at few in which a creator had control over casting for their work, make it about cases where a creator WANTED to cast someone but was rejected by the studio or whatnot for whatever reason?

Isn't that just What Could Have Been?

No, I said the thing it was being misused for is a chairsy concept.

As far as I can tell the definitions that have been seriously debated on this thread are:

• The creator makes casting choices for an original work. This is what the trope is being used for, and that's what I considered chairsy because it's what you'd normally expect in that situation.
• The creator of a work makes casting choices for an adaptation of that work. This is the current intended definition. It is notable because it shows that, even if it's not a Self-Adaptation, the creator has a strong enough opinion on the matter to not only voice it but actively influence the adaptation.
• The creator of a work has creative influence in general on an adaptation of a work that is not a Self-Adaptation. Proposed by Amonimus in post 21. Arguably, the current definition is The Same, but More Specific of this one.

There's also been some talk about not getting the casting choice you want, but so far it hasn't gone much of anywhere. It does help suggest some other potential definitions when combined with my first post, though:

• A creator handpicks someone for a role in a work, whether original or adapted, that they do not have full creative control over. This touches on what I said in my post about not having to go through the audition process.
• A creator wants a particular actor for a work, whether original or adapted, but may or may not get it. This arguably folds into the previous definition if the "does not get it" outcome is redundant if suggested , but could still be salvaged if we restrict it this way:
• A creator of an original work wants a particular casting choice for an adaptation of their work, but may or may not get it. Call it Creator Preferred Casting.

Thoughts?

Edited by MorganWick on Jul 23rd 2023 at 2:45:26 AM

For creators of the original work having ideas for casting in adaptations, it might be covered by Hypothetical Casting in addition to What Could Have Been. I'm not completely sure about whether it fits Hypothetical Casting, but you're right that What Could Have Been would cover it.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 23rd 2023 at 5:51:21 AM

My bad, thought you were talking about both directors and creators not being credited and how the trope is reductive to both of those things either way. I should've been clear that I don't think the trope itself is chairsy, but I see the description as a huge double-edged sword because of the implication that creator's specifically-cited choice isn't the final one. Assuming that's definitively not the case, Hypothetical Casting is more of a contrast than a comparable trope. Executive Meddling could really be either, which is why I don't think the trope should be reductive to novelists and the like (composers and maybe cinematographers, at least within specific reason, are people I think could/should count more).

The second "may or may not" suggestion seems doable, mostly because it clarifies the distinction between "specific actor" and "handpicked actor" that muddies up the description. American Kirby Is Hardcore updates the ante for cover art, so handpicking kind of reflects the inverse (director starting out with no specific vision, but keeping track of preferences), which eases back on the redundancy a bit IMO. With that in mind, I don't know about the creator wanting the actor in question to discuss things with, say, the art department, but if we call it Creator Preferred Casting it leads in a more artistic direction (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's harder to contrast that with Self-Adaptation since the creator wouldn't really "choose" under those circumstances).

Edited by Coachpill on Jul 23rd 2023 at 2:13:30 PM

Bumping this thread.

So safe to make a crowner or should we wait for more options.

That depends. Does anyone have a list of crowner options? If so, post the list and holler.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 27th 2023 at 12:34:50 PM

Since I created the trope in the first place, here's what I would do: Have Creator-Chosen Casting consist of examples chosen by the work's original creator, like in My Dad the Rock Star (where Gene Simmons personally handpicked Lawrence Bayne to voice his Author Avatar) while creating a separate trope, like "Director-Chosen Casting", for ones the director had in mind.

Edited by Narita90 on Jul 30th 2023 at 8:05:33 AM

Here's what I've got for a crowner, looking through the thread. All options mutually exclusive (and the crowner should be marked to note that):

• Expand the trope to include other creative figures such as directors and producers, move the requirement that the casting choice be for an adaptation
• Rewrite trope without renaming, making the trope be about creative figures such as directors and producers choosing an actor to be casted in a role while reworking the original definition into a new trope
• Limit to cases where the actor chosen by the work's original creator, while splitting director choices to their own trope
• Rename without changing the definition

Thoughts? Anything that should be changed, added, or removed?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jul 31st 2023 at 10:58:24 AM

If anything, there's kind of a reverse-wick cleanup that needs to happen, for all the wicks that were purged when the trope's previous non-expanded description was in place.

Is that possible? How does one track which wicks got cut specifically?

I was thinking about this, and the best thing I considered was finding the two editors who took it upon themselves to cut all the examples, and go through their editing history? Not very convenient or easy though.

There's also looking at the edit history for any and all YMMV pages to see if there are any cut Creator-Chosen Casting examples, but again, not convenient.

We could probably send that through a Short-Term Projects thread.

Sounds like a good idea.

Should I start the Short-Term thread, or should the description rewrite happen first?

Description rewrite can go first. We can launch the short term project after thats done.

Bumping cause I created Sandbox.Creator Chosen Casting (mostly just copy pasted the original description so we can make a rewrite from there).