Is "Wacky Wayside Tribe" a bad trope? If not, how to do it right?

It seems like the wiki is rather cynical towards the Wacky Wayside Tribe trope. I used to think that TV Tropes in general always thought of the trope as nothing but lazy padding. But when I checked the description just now, it said that "A Wacky Wayside Tribe, if well done, can also help flesh out the world and give a sense that there are things going on that don't revolve around the main characters."

This is how I usually feel about the trope. I think it can be a good way of showing viewers more about the world, and it can produce some entertaining characters. I enjoy seeing the protagonists go on a journey and come across quirky characters that they wouldn't have otherwise met.

Why, then, does the rest of the description act like the trope is such a terrible thing? And what exactly are the criteria for a good example?

As I understand it, a Wacky Wayside Tribe is just a kind of padding in the form of a Random Encounter, whether that's with an actual tribe or group of people, a location, artifact, et cetera, and what makes a given example "good" or "bad" seems to mostly come down to how well it's written (interesting or entertaining to read) and how well it fits into the setting and tone of the larger story, and what it contributes to the narrative (world, character arcs, themes, main and subplots). Which can be very subjective, of course. What also doesn't help matters is that some viewers may jump to considering everything that doesn't solely move the main plot or isn't about whatever specific thing(s) they personally like to be objectively totally useless padding that shouldn't have even been a thought in the writers' minds, but we're not catering to those people.

It's a description from the wild early days of the wiki. You will notice that it never bothers to explain what the trope actually is, despite that being the main function of a description.

I would argue that it does explain—albeit only in the second paragraph.

That said, that description does look to me to be somewhat negative in its slant, and more devoted to complaint than description. It might be worth raising it in the relevant section of the "Wiki and Forums" area as something potentially worth revising.

(To answer the question given, I think that a "Wacky Wayside Tribe" can likely be done well. Doing so would presumably be a matter of considering what effect it has on the story—such matters as: how it affects the pacing of the story; how it impacts the tone of the work; how it fits amongst the plot threads underway; what, if anything, it contributes regarding the characters, local cultures, or setting; and perhaps more besides!)

I'm a bit obsessed with the forgotten genre of Traveller Stories (everything from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Gulliver's Travels to Il Milione and Around the World in Eighty Days) and I've never really been sure whether those constitute Wacky Wayside Tribes or not. "We visited a group of strange people while trying to get someplace else" covers a lot of ground, and it gets fuzzy when "trying to get someplace else" is just an Excuse Plot for worldbuilding and social commentary.

The trope Wacky Wayside Tribe isn't only about "quirky tribes or groups of people briefly encountered by the protagonists that could be portrayed in a marginalized or offensive manner"; it's about a "random encounter" variety of padding, of which the aforementioned groups could be a type. The Toy Story 2 example on the page gives Zurg, the Generic Doomsday Villain of the Buzz Lightyear Show Within a Show and is just a diversion from the movie's actual plot of getting home to Andy- Zurg doesn't have anything to do with portraying a culture in fiction and is just one character.

Don't get me wrong; I judged the trope by the name the same way you did and had to read multiple examples before I felt like I knew what it was actually about. The whole thing of the trope name referencing just a particular form of the trope feels a bit "old TV Tropes"-ish, so it could be due for discussion in TRS. Not that I have any solutions to propose.

Also I wanna say, bringing up the bit from Toy Story 2 is an example of doing this trope right, since it's a great bit of levity in the film.

i think as another example, tamatoa from Moana is totally a WWT — while he's a foil to maui, he has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and basically just shows up to sing a song and be an obstacle for the heroes to overcome — and he was one of the movie's most praised aspects since he's so fun and acts as a great source of levity. especially if you're doing a traveling story, a WWT isn't always a bad thing if it adds to the world and serves a purpose within the narrative. i do think it has a bad reputation for being associated with padding or filler, but Tropes Are Tools! even those aren't bad in a story, because you don't always want to rush right from one plot beat to the next, you know?

Edited by NoUsername on Jul 10th 2023 at 5:13:02 AM