Too many tropes being labeled "Medium-specific"?

If they are indeed wrong then by all means alter the description to cater to every medium. I've got no qualms at all in cases like those. I'm just afraid that such a principle will enable genuinely insular tropes to sound generic, which they're not.

In short, I'm all for it, but should be at a case-by-case basis.

(That being said, I reiterate that I mostly had the short "afterthought" passages in mind. I see no harm in those, a short nod to the medium that uses the trope the most. It is relevant and unintrusive.)

edited 25th Sep '11 8:35:57 AM by Catalogue

There are very few actually insular tropes. Just tropes people think are insular. Those tropes are always healthier when they aren't treated as insular and treating them as insular stunts their growth. The only time tropes are truly insular is if there is a technical limit that keeps them medium specific.

Yeah, I don't think we're at odds here. I'm just reminding that theoretically there will probably be exceptions.

EDIT:

Okay, so, let's take Sweat Drop as an example. Is that good enough? This can happen in all sorts of media. If it's not, will we divorce it from its Japanese origins entirely? Are we allowed to — via 1-2 sentences — note that it was popularised in manga and is still used primarily in manga-inspired works?

edited 25th Sep '11 8:46:51 AM by Catalogue

As far as I know, the "west" doesn't use a sweatdrop to indicate the same thing that Japan does. So its not "anime specific", but uses outside Japan are almost certainly influenced by their use in Japanese media.

There are going to be some tropes that are actually medium specific (lots and lots of Videogame stuff, for starters), and others that have culturally specific connotations.

Also, one thing people need to remember is that the US has spent the last 50 years exporting our pop-culture across the planet, which means a lot of tropes that would really be specific to our culture have become more widespread.

I'm all for making descriptions more general, but lets not pretend that medium or culture specific tropes don't exist, because they do.

And that the US also steals a lot of things that should be cultural specific from other mediums. The whole global medium sharing thing has erased a lot of things that should logically be medium specific.

I have notice though, that there's a tendency to label a lot of tropes that are thousands of years old and common in all cultures as cultural specific, especially labelled anime specific. We need to learn to avoid that and that's why I would rather just describe the tropes rather than assign them cultures. We're finding out now that 99% of those cultural assignations aren't true.

I agree, but this has fostered a mentality that there can be NO Medium (and certainly no anime!) specific tropes among certain tropers (not you, but this IS happening), and I'm trying to push back and say that there are. Not that we shouldn't try to fix the actual problems, but this crusade against any sort of medium specificity is completely missing the point.

And just as, if not larger, problem then anime-specific trope descriptions are people putting non-Videogame examples on tropes that cannot exist without interactivity. (yes some also work with Pn P RP Gs and the like, but most examples are videogames, and its a pain adding this disclaimer everytime I post about it.)

This is true. The video game stuff does bug me. As a medium, it has the most medium specific tropes. Sometimes it can share those tropes with Tabletop Games, but not always. They have the same level of interactivity after all.

Re: Guest-Star Party Member:

The trope is being able to mechanically control someone for a short period of time but not wanting to give them your resources because you know that they're not a permanent fixture in your party.

If that's the trope definition, it needs to be put across more clearly in the trope description. From reading it and re-reading it, I get almost none of that out of the current description. There are some oblique references to other tropes about that sort of thing, but they read more like "Sometimes this trope is accompanied by these other tropes," rather than being an integral part of it.

I think the trope is simply about a character, who joins the players party temporary.

Everything elese in the description is just explaining how this trope can be used and how it can influence the gameplay. I think the description can be shortend a bit to keep focus. But this is not the topic of this thread.

Actually, it *is* the topic of this thread (or more specifically, whether or not the trope is truly and properly video game-specific.)

I can't see any other medium where a player gains control of a character they don't normally have control of. So I don't see how it's not inherently videogame specific.

My problem is that "gains control of" as a required element of the trope isn't at all clear to me from the description. Seems to me it needs a rewrite one way or the other - either to clarify that it is, in fact, medium-specific, or that it isn't.

(Oh, and even if "gains control of" is an essential element, that can still sort of be present outside a game. I.e., in a military chain of command, you can give orders to a person of lower rank.)

edited 26th Sep '11 10:28:28 AM by suedenim

It seems clear to me, but I think that's because my brain immediately jumped on what the trope was describing and I still can't figure out how your example fits at all. I'll see about tweaking it.

Guest-Star Party Member is a medium specific subtrope of the general case of a character temporary joining the main cast. I think the interactive aspect makes it different enough to justify a own trope.

If we have the supertrope, it is ok to have a more limited subtrope. If this supertrope does not exist we should either broaden the existing trope, or create the supertrope.

edited 26th Sep '11 12:41:30 PM by Osmium

I think creating the supertrope from a new YKTTW would be healthier as the current trope has no non-videogame examples and it is distinct.

Wouldn't it be Gameplay specific? Can't tabletops do something where they give you control of an NPC.

Yes, but we don't need to make that clear every single time we discuss this.

Or I guess we do, because people keep bringing it up.

Many Videogame tropes will also apply to tabletop RP Gs.

That's why it's supposed to be Gameplay Tropes.

Ah, it's Game Tropes.

edited 26th Sep '11 1:08:43 PM by Deboss

Actually, that one doesn't work in Table Top. You don't have the same control of party members. Some Video Game tropes are specifically Video Game tropes.

True, stuff that requires electronics like Save Point tend to only be used there*

@Shima: It doesn't in most tabletop games. I have played in groups where the players controlled multiple characters at once, including some that were intentionally temporary

Another trope that needs some help: Aspect Montage.

Now that we have the general description improvement thread and the more specific fan myopia thread, is this thread necessary? I'm honestly not sure.

Anyway, I made a minor edit to Aspect Montage. How's it look now?

I point out that if somebody is associating a trope with a medium and says it tends to appear in a medium more, not exclusive just more, they are probably still wrong. It's probably best described as appearing in a particular genre more and that genre developed in one of the mediums. So one should say "Occurs most frequently in Zany Cartoons" rather than "Occurs most frequently in animation".