Discussion Main / MuseAbuse

Re: edit to remove the literal case of Muse Abuse from Neil Gaiman ("Calliope", under Comics), the reason given was: "We should probably stop submitting examples of literal cases of a metaphorical phrase. Unless I misunderstand completely, this trope has nothing to do with the muses of Greek mythology."

I've reinstated the example as that particular story does use the literal muse to explore the idea of Muse Abuse as inherent in creative work. I understand why it might not seem like a good idea to include it, though, and no, the trope (as launched) was not intended to be about literal cases. So for instance a case where one of the classical muses is abused but it is not for the sake of artistic inspiration (as it is in "Calliope") would not be an example of this trope.

(By the nature of Wiki Magic, and more importantly how the troper Hive Mind works to refine tropes, though, I'm not going to lay claims to special authority for having come up with the trope - apart from anything else, it suffered from Needs A Better Name and Needs A Better Description quite badly at the outset, and both of those issues were fixed by other people's contributions before launch.)