Scope of Freakiness Shame

The description of Freakiness Shame starts with "[a] character has some fantastical characteristic, such as wings, horns, or a tail, of which they are deeply ashamed[,]" a definition that has been consistently used in the description. This trope was formerly known as "But Your Wings Are Beautiful," referring to the example in Negima! Magister Negi Magi. Yet, I noticed there're a few examples involving relatively abnormal, but still humanly possible, features. Are these examples within scope? Some of these examples are listed below; the features in question are bolded by me.

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I think I'd end with this media category. There should be enough examples—not to mention the trope page even has a Real Life folder!

Edited by SamCurt on Jul 26th 2023 at 9:46:06 AM

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

Notably, there was some question as to whether or not mundane freakiness counted even in the original YKTTW, before it obtained its current name (which appears to have been a Fast Eddie fiat).

According to the description, part of the trope is "Later, some other character (commonly, her love interest) catches a glimpse of these and assures the character that their wings, or horns, or tail, or whatever, are not in fact ugly but very attractive." The original trope name, But Your Wings Are Beautiful, reflects this. "Freakiness Shame" implies a much broader definition.

Given we have Appearance Angst, I think it makes sense to keep Freakiness Shame limited to fantastical.

A lot of those examples are based on scars and likely fit under Scars Are Ugly.

But Your Wings Are Beautiful predates Appearance Angst and is more specific so I don't think we have to limit to fantastic examples but if it's less confusing that way we can. I think mundane features can count if they look "freakish" in some way to others.

The focal point of the trope is that the character has a physical feature they think is ugly but someone else finds it beautiful.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 27th 2023 at 9:26:31 AM

Macron's notes

True, the third paragraph and the name focused so much on the freakiness aspect that it threw me off. If that's the focal point, then I agree with not just limiting it to fantastical. But it'd probably be better if we could rewrite it a bit to make that clear.

(I also think Twiddler's right that the original name illustrated the trope better.)

If the most important point is "someone else finds it beautiful", then the fantastical requirement might be overly artificial—the mundane/fantastic distinction is important in some cases, but under this interpretation, it's just a feature the character considers ugly or freakish.

But then, changing the definition needs TRS... but under what reason? It can be counted as "heavy misuse," but for that situation "expand to misuse" and "split tropes" are both possible solutions.

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

"Reversing Eddie fiat" is IMO a justification in and of itself, TBH, if it's true that's what actually happened - I remember the original name (and agree that it was probably more clearly distinguished from other tropes) but not how the rename occurred.

...Eddie's fiat crops up in the weirdest places sometimes, don't it?

Yeah, this trope name is not that indicative.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The old name wasn't that great either (and I think it was changed because it sounded like dialogue) but it did indicate what the trope was about more than the current name does.

A wick check to see how this trope is used on the wiki might be warranted..

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 27th 2023 at 1:15:31 PM

Macron's notes

I started a wick check.

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

I got the sense that the new name was an Eddie fiat from the discussion page which has a lengthy discussion of the name change from after the fact; Septimus Heap defended the change then as getting away from dialogue titles. I don't think any intentional redefinition happened at the time.

An update on the wick check: After checking 16 wicks (out of 52), I can say there might be a case to change the title—a lot of the sample examples in the Characters/ namespace is just "Alice feels ashamed of her [fantastical feature]."

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

Once you're done with the wick check, and assuming the pattern stays, you can add it to the TRS Queue arguing for that.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Wick check finished, and the "no attractiveness statement" misuse turns out to be very high, at 43%, more than twice of the correct use (20.75%). I have filed this for TRS Queue.

In the meantime, please check Sandbox.Freakiness Wick Check for the complete wick check report.

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova