To-do list:
- Disambiguate Mix And Match between JustForFun.X Meets Y, JustForFun.Recycled In Space, Recycled with a Gimmick, Genre Mashup, Genre-Busting, Mix-and-Match Critters, and possibly other pages.
Mix And Match is a trope where you "Take one existing show genre, add another, and presto! you've got a brand-new genre." Sounds simple enough, right? However, I've noticed that several elements about the page suggest something's wrong with either the trope's concept or execution.
- The quote in the opening is one out of four sentences making up the entirety of the description. Of the other three, one describes how Star Trek's plot is a Wagon Train to the Stars, which is a combination of The Western and a Space Opera, while two describe its relationship to other tropes.
- All the on-page entries are in the form of simple math equations (e.g. A concept + B concept +... = Z result), which is barebones context at best. The entries are also all misuse according to the description, which just says the combination of genera makes a new genera; several inputs are tropes and works, and all of the outputs in the examples are works.
- A quick check of off-page examples reveals a lack of focus as to what the trope name refers to. Variations I saw include using the equation format, saying a character has a combination of multiple distinct traits, misuse for X Meets Y, and saying that a thing can be a mix of multiple kinds of components.
- The discussion page
has noted that this trope has had issues as far back as 2012; one thread notes that Mix And Match reads like several miniature work pages, while the other explicitly says that it feels like a Just for Fun version of Genre-Busting and wonders why it's in mainspace.
- The tropes listed in the "See also" sentence (X Meets Y, Recycled In Space) are already in Just for Fun.
Possible Solutions
- Move to the Just for Fun namespace.
- Disambiguate between X Meets Y, Mix-and-Match Critters, and other similar tropes.
(Incidentally, I was told a wick check wasn't required for this type of TRS action.)
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 10th 2023 at 12:27:21 PM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Opened.
I think we can disambiguate this. I don't think it does anything that JustForFun.X Meets Y, JustForFun.Recycled In Space, and Recycled with a Gimmick don't already do.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 8th 2023 at 2:25:33 PM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
~Vandagyre Paging you again, by the way, this time to the thread in question.
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
the Retromancer
Disambig
the Retromancer
Genre Mashup and Genre-Busting to the disambig as well
Edited by Amonimus on Jul 8th 2023 at 11:05:02 AM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
How sweet it is
Another for disambiguating
Memetic Loser Mother
Just stoic wisdom.
Captain Cryptic
OP here, I'm open to disambiguating.
"My job here is done." "But you didn't do anything."
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
She / Her
He/Him
Disambig for sure.
Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project
Disambig
This page dates back to the sytes.net days, at which time the description talked about combining "show types" to produce a new show, meaning the outputs being works made more sense then (yet weirdly, two of the outputs actually were new genres with works only being named as examples of said genres). The Internet Archive has no captures of the page on tvtropes.org until 2007 (and the sytes.net version has no captures after 2004, a surprisingly big gap), at which point the current "description" was now in place and the rest of the page hadn't changed much.
I suspect the description's use of "genre" as the output was either an oversight, mistake, a poor attempt to reflect the wiki branching out beyond TV (as "...a brand new work" wouldn't work as well), jumping to conclusions based on those first two examples, or a misunderstanding of why the page was indexed on what would now be Genres. If I had to guess, I'd imagine the idea behind putting it on that index was that mixing genres could itself be a genre, but since genres aren't hard-and-fast things and similar pages like X Meets Y are JFF, this should probably be JFF too.
Of course, if this were to be Just for Fun, you could argue that it would basically be "X Meets Y, but the inputs are genres rather than works". There's a bit of a conceptual difference between identifying works that elements of a given work are like, and a work mixing elements of different genres, but we have Genre Mashup and Genre-Busting for the latter (and the latter page links to X Meets Y, not this page, as "creating new genre out of two old ones"). So basically, I think the only real addition this long post has to add to the discussion is to what Amonimus said.
Edited by MorganWick on Jul 9th 2023 at 3:25:50 AM
The earliest capture reads like a Forum Games OP than a trope page.
Disambig
Professional Wick Checker
Disambig.
Disambiguate.
How about just making it Just for Fun?
Astolfo my Man
Disambig. for me.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Calling in favor of disambiguating.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
The page has been disambiguated, so 145 wicks to go through.
He/Him
I think Ability Mixing also counts as one, given how I've seen a few magic/power based examples during my dewicking.
Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project
Just stoic wisdom.
<100. I added Hybrid Genre to the disambig.
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail
To-do list:
Mix And Match is a trope where you "Take one existing show genre, add another, and presto! you've got a brand-new genre." Sounds simple enough, right? However, I've noticed that several elements about the page suggest something's wrong with either the trope's concept or execution.
Possible Solutions
(Incidentally, I was told
a wick check wasn't required for this type of TRS action.)
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 10th 2023 at 12:27:21 PM
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall