It is kind of a trope title buzzword, but with some exceptions like Idiosyncratic Mecha Storage, I don't think buzzwords are necessarily a bad thing.
Trust me, I'm an engineer!In some cases, it may be intended as something that makes the work unique, not in that every example of it is unique. So for the episode titles and cover art tropes, it may be saying that the themes are a unique element of the work. That usage seems to pop up a lot, actually. It's an idiosyncrasy of the work itself.
Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 26th 2024 at 3:38:55 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Yeah, I think that’s the intent for ones like Idiosyncratic Episode Naming and Idiosyncratic Cover Art. Even if any of them are clearly misusing the word, I’m not sure if that’s enough for a rename (but see the rename of Role Reprisal to Role Reprise for similar reasons).
I agree that trope buzzwords aren't inherently bad, but I also think that's reliant on the buzzword meaning the same thing across all its uses. "Gambit" is used to mean "a high risk high reward action" on both Batman Gambit and Wounded Gazelle Gambit. "Idiosyncratic" isn't one of our Loaded Trope Words, but given how many tropes it's used in, it's totally mistakable for one.
There's also the issue of, like Role Reprisal, if someone may have made an earnest mistake on the definition of the word.
Edited by MissConduct on Oct 26th 2024 at 6:44:47 AM
Some of them seem to use "idiosyncratic" as shorthand for "themed idiosyncratically for the work". It's not good usage, but I don't see that it's causing misuse.
IMS seemed to have started off as hoping to collect various ways in which they fold up, but eventually had to accept that most of them just kneel. (It was seven years in TLP.) It may also have been added in the same vein as the "Our Xs Are Different" tropes, which have been found to be better at attracting context over tropes simply named "Xs".
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.Idiosyncratic Episode Naming is very old
and I do get the sense it was meant to be "idiosyncratic to the work". Precisely because there's no common scheme to episode names across all works, things like Friends' The One With stand out as vaguely quirky. It may have become subject to bad snowclones over the years, though.
I think the issue is that the relationship between "Idiosyncratic" and media discussion is not well defined by the site, which simply broadened the scope it's applicable to rather than being a misuse of the term. For example, Idiosyncratic Episode Naming can be:
- The work compared to other works: Avatar: The Last Airbender called their seasons Books and their episodes Chapters.
- The installments within the work: Friends always named their episodes "The One With..."
- The Myth Arc compared to the Filler: In a Half-Arc Season the important episodes make a reference to ghosts or demons
- A Once a Season episode being different: A specific character returns and it's always a single word
- A sporadic episode has a name has with no story reason other than being different: Every couple of years there is a title that is Breaking the Fourth Wall just because it can.
"An individualizing quality" is pretty much an impossible definition for a site that is all about cataloguing recurring patterns, so that's why it was used as a broad "trying to be different" concept. When it comes to universal things like work names, individualizing qualities of a name is pretty well in line with the definition and purpose of the term Idiosyncratic.
That said, I think some of the tropes it's being applied to simply have better options available because it's a lot more specific than episode names. Like Idiosyncratic Cultural Gesture could be Fantasy Cultural Gesture and nothing would be lost.
Edited by EmeraldSource on Oct 27th 2024 at 11:01:35 AM
Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.I think "Idiosyncratic" is being used totally normally here?
The episode titles are idiosyncratic, they're named in an unusual way that's unique to this series. This is what it seems to mean in all your cases - "idiosyncratic to this work", which seems a perfectly reasonable use of the word.
In all these cases its discussing something that's unique to one individual series/game/movie/whatever. I don't really see the problem?
Edited by Urbenmyth on Oct 27th 2024 at 1:51:37 AM
I disagree. When TV episodes get titles at all, they're normally titled after their own content, without regard to what other episodes are called. There's no broader pattern being filled out, in other words.
That said, I do agree with the point that this would be more accurately encapsulated with a trope name like Episode Theme Naming, but unless we have proof of misuse, there's no actual reason to.
Edited by StarSword on Oct 27th 2024 at 1:38:17 PM
Trust me, I'm an engineer!

So, the TRS thread
for Idiosyncratic Mecha Storage, among other issues that trope has, the fact that the word "idiosyncratic" in the title made no sense for the trope. "Idiosyncratic" means "something that is very unusual or unique to one individual", but IMS's definition was "Mechs that can make themselves more compact, usually for storage purposes," and most of the correct examples were either for humanoid mechs kneeling with their heads down or curling up into a ball, which is neither unusual nor specific. Someone else brought up how Idiosyncratic Cover Art was also very weird, since it describes itself as "Multiple releases in a franchise use the same style for cover images, some together may even make a bigger image", which is basically the exact opposite of idiosyncratic, as each cover follows a theme.
So, I went looking for all our "Idiosyncratic" tropes to see if there were any other weird cases like IMS and ICA, and I found an incredibly mixed bag with regards to how well "idiosyncratic" works in the title. Of note, some tropes have very low inbound counts relative to their wick count, which gives me the impression that those ones are not popular offsite terms. From largest inbounds to smallest:
Ironically, the way we use the word "idiosyncratic" is, itself, very idiosyncratic. So what do you guys think? Do you guys think either the misuse of the word or how it seems to mean something different with almost every trope is a problem?