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Appeal to tradition clarification

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Toffolus Since: Aug, 2019 Relationship Status: Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!
#1: Aug 21st 2024 at 10:43:43 PM

Hey! So one thing a lot of people have noticed in Jujutsu Kaisen is that many of the characters who appeal to a traditional mindset tend to be depicted in a negative way (they aren't welcoming of new ideas/complicated techniques, they prefer methods be done in "the old fashioned way" and in the case of the Zenin clan, many of their members are downright misogynistic). However, characters who are moreso "progressive" (they like adapting new techniques, they hate the traditions of Jujutsu society, etc) tend to be depicted in a more positive manner. Would this fall under a subversion of appeal to tradition? It's just that when I read through the trope it moreso reads that it refers to examples that are in-text rather than the meta-narrative

MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#2: Aug 21st 2024 at 11:40:32 PM

If it does count, it's Not a Subversion, but an Inverted Trope instead. A subversion would be if the work made you think it would be engaging in an Appeal to Tradition but it turned out not to be the case.

Aquillion Since: Jan, 2001
#3: Aug 22nd 2024 at 11:55:00 PM

I think that Appeal to Tradition is an in-universe trope by default; it can be meta, but nothing in the description or examples suggests that it normally is. Someone who appeals to tradition in-universe but is clearly intended to be seen as wrong out-of-universe is just a normal / played-straight example, not an inversion; you might mention that it's in-universe but I don't think you even have to - again, it's just not a meta trope by default, it's about someone in a work making an appeal to tradition, regardless of whether they're right or wrong and regardless of whether the reader is intended to see them as right or wrong.

An inversion would be Appeal to Novelty or somesuch.

Edited by Aquillion on Aug 22nd 2024 at 11:55:25 AM

MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#4: Aug 23rd 2024 at 12:08:35 AM

I suppose I should say, if it counts as a played-with out-of-universe example. In-universe, as you say, it would just be a straight example.

StarSword Captain of USS Bajor from somewhere in deep space Since: Sep, 2011
Captain of USS Bajor
#5: Aug 23rd 2024 at 9:06:42 AM

Yeah, those are just straight examples: a character can still argue for a trope without the narrative agreeing with them. Something similar happens between the Sith Inquisitor PC and Darth Thanaton in Star Wars: The Old Republic: He makes a lot of fallacious appeals to tradition and hierarchy to support his attempts to kill the Inquisitor, but narratively he's just a massive hypocrite who considers them a threat to his own power. (Especially when you consider the fact his own rise to power in the comic books was functionally identical to the Inquisitor's.)

Trust me, I'm an engineer!
eroock Since: Sep, 2012
#6: Aug 24th 2024 at 3:09:04 AM

Wouldn't the trope require the work to show the flaw in the backwards thinking of the character? After all it's a fallacy trope.

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