Why is DeadHorseGenre limited to only music genres?

Pretty simple question. Dead Horse Genre focuses exclusively on just music and doesn't mention any other medium, and for the life of me I can't figure out why. I was writing a bit about romance comics — a genre that used to almost rival superhero comics in popularity around the 50's but has become almost completely extinct in the western market since the 70's — and while I wasn't surprised that there isn't a genre index for it, I was surprised that in probably what would be the most obvious list to document extinct genres, it has nothing for anything aside from certain genres of music... which don't even sound like "dead horses" as much as just, like, easy targets (since when is "Mainstream Radio" or "Manufactured Bands" genres people actually identify as 'dead'?)

Based on my preliminary searches on the Discussion page (specifically this thread), it seems like the page was subject to some work a while back (around at least a decade ago from what I can infer) to limit what subjects could be discussed lest it be flooded with complaining, but now it's just really confusing. Any better explanation or further thoughts?

Edited by number9robotic on Feb 1st 2024 at 3:52:14 AM

You know, for some reason I thought this might have been what Deader Than Disco was renamed to, but it looks like that might have actually been Condemned by History. The page has been around at this name since at least 2008 (so dating back to the wiki's Wild West days and possibly a time when branching out outside TV was relatively new) and people have been wondering why the page at this title is specific to music for almost as long (the oldest copy of the discussion page on the Internet Archive contains most of what's on today's Archived Discussion, including the part I'm referring to).

I also don't understand why Dead Horse Genre had to be limited to popular music with lyrics.

This trope definitely needs to be expanded to include those outside of music, especially given that visual media, including those without an audio component, aren't immune to this phenomenon.

It's listed on Tropes Needing TRS and only has 105 wicks. Probably wouldn't hurt anything to do a wick check.

Does this need a wick check? I'm not even sure what parameters I'm to judge it on because it appears to be used more as a descriptive sinkhole when talking about genres rather than for entries of specific works.

Almost anything that's not Not Thriving or maybe a Trivia/YMMV move needs a usage check. You can sort out how many links are "descriptive sinkholes" vs. being used as an example on works, as well as how many of the genres it's used to describe are music or non-music, plus the stuff discussed on the TNTRS entry.

I do think it would be a better to describe how genres manage to fall in popularity like how Deader Than Disco used to be (popularity-rise rather than reception-wise). It seems a sister trope to Condemned by History and Genre-Killer.

I did a wick check, which confirmed that the use is inconsistent: is Dead Horse Genre supposed to be...

• A genre specifically disliked by critics, regardless of what the mainstream thinks of it? (See Critic-Proof for when the public buys works in it anyway.)
• A genre that used to be popular, but has since faced backlash or at least fallen out of favour? (See Condemned by History for when it gets backlash.)
• The genre equivalent of a Dead Horse Trope? (In other words, a genre that's almost never played straight, and attempting to do so will likely get you eyerolls. Not sure how the "Playing With the trope is in itself a trope" part of Dead Horse Trope plays into it though... in fact, Discredited Genre [Discredited Trope] would be a better name for this variation.)
• A genre that used to be mainstream (or at least visible to the mainstream), but is now extinct or relegated to fringes? (We could limit it to genres where no new works are produced whatsoever, but I think that would be too restrictive because that would mean a lot of "dead" genres are saved by indie creators, and the only candidates for dead genres would be genres that are too expensive to be viable for indie projects, like toys-to-life games and movie genres that require high production costs to not look like garbage).

Also, where does the genre equivalent of Forgotten Trope go? I wasn't even aware that romance comics used to be a thing.

The current messy state of Dead Horse Genre aside, I agree that we should have a way to document dead genres that don't fall under Condemned by History (a genre may fade away and be forgotten without getting significant backlash, or it may be contentious enough at its height not to meet CBH's "widely loved, then widely hated" requirement) or Genre-Killer (a genre may fade away without being killed by specific works). I don't know the best way to approach it though.

Edited by MathsAngelicVersion on Feb 7th 2024 at 9:38:51 PM

Since you have done a wick check, it would be great to put Dead Horse Genre to TRS.

Agreed, looks like it's just as much of a mess as I figured it was.

I'll probably take it to the Sandbox.TRS Queue soon.