Not Tropeworthy: Vapor Wear

Do we have enough existing examples for a redefinition to work? Yarding the concept of sexually loose characters obviously not wearing underwear was mentioned earlier in the thread because we don't already have enough examples that specify that detail, so TLP would be needed to gather examples for that definition.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 23rd 2024 at 8:24:13 AM

Yeah, I'm not sure we have enough examples for such a redefinition.

Or at least not enough meaningful examples.

&& : Really? Maybe not in the sense of "wearing no undergarments at all", but I have the impression that there must be tons of examples where women not wearing bras has implications of sexual availability or seductiveness. Or have I misunderstood your point?

Edited by GnomeTitan on Apr 24th 2024 at 11:14:18 AM

If you can find, or write up, enough examples of such with enough context, we might be able to redefine the trope along tose lines, or start a TLP for such a trope.

I'm saying we need to already have enough examples on the wiki for a redefinition to work. We can't do that based on a hunch that there might already be enough examples.

If there are already enough examples as you've said, sandbox them.

Edit: This thread for Suddenly Sexuality is an example of how not to redefine a trope, and featured the kind of scenario I want to avoid here — the thread tried to redefine the trope to fit examples that didn't already exist on the wiki, so the trope ended up getting cut.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 24th 2024 at 4:49:38 AM

Like a TLP could be made if you have examples to share, but the process here requires us to already have such usage on the wiki.

Correct.

I see. So that was what the posts above were referring to. I misunderstood them as talking about examples existing in works, rather than already being written up on the wiki. That's why I was a bit confused.

Yeah, I do think modifying the trope to define it as "outfit with areas in it that give away that there's obviously no underwear being used as Fanservice" could work. This is because this kind of outfit already does show up in other instances of clothing tropes where clothing with holes in it that do show that there couldn't be underwear underneath are used as Fanservice, such as the Navel-Deep Neckline trope or variants of the Sexy Slit Dress where the slit in the dress is so high up that it's obvious that the character isn't wearing underwear. (funny enough, this redefinition of the trope could make it a super-trope to the tropes previous listed)

Are there enough on-wiki examples to make such a change worthwhile?

I still think yarding that concept is the best idea, unless someone wants to scare up enough examples to run it through TLP themselves.

I managed to gather (with help from all of you) a few tropes that could be considered Vapor Wear. I think that instead of making it a disambiguation, it would be better to make it a super trope because there are nine tropes that show exactly where a character does not wear underwear (bra and panties in the case of women). The tropes are these:

• Cleavage Window
• Going Commando
• Impossibly-Low Neckline
• Navel-Deep Neckline
• Sexy Backless Outfit
• Sexy Slit Dress
• Sexy Soaked Shirt
• Sideboob
• Underboobs

Now to complete, there are two tropes left that have not yet been created that I think could enhance this trope.

• About the 'hip vent' where a character wears pants, dress or overalls in which there is a side opening that starts from the hip◊.
• Another trope about characters (mostly female) who wear a blazer shirtless outfit, highlighting their cleavage◊.

Going Commando is definitely not a subtrope of Vapor Wear, because it covers all cases where somebody doesn't wear underwear, while Vapor Wear only covers the cases where you can see that they aren't.

Just because there are numerous tropes that can be tied to this in some way (I would also throw in Naked in Mink and Diamonds in the Buff) doesn't mean that we can't disambig, and I still doubt there's enough to the "trope" to make a supertrope worthwhile. If it got really big, like say 20 tropes, I would say maybe consider converting to an index, but as is, I still say disambiguate.

No, I do think Grandefarao's got a point in that this trope could have its definition reworked into a supertrope to various other Fanservice outfit tropes. A list of said tropes could look something like this:

- Cleavage Window (if the window is large enough to show that there couldn't be a bra underneath

- Diamonds in the Buff

- Impossibly-Low Neckline (unless in cases that the character is wearing a strapless undergarment underneath)

- Intimate Open Shirt (if there's nothing underneath the shirt)

- Navel-Deep Neckline

- Naked in Mink

- Sexy Backless Outfit

- Sexy Slit Dress (if the slit is high enough to the point that there's obviously no underwear underneath

- Sideboob

- Underboobs

These tropes listed do have something uniting them- these tropes do feature the fact that there's obviousl no undergarments underneath the outer clothes, and that aspect adds the Fanservice. Therefore, Vapor Wear still holds tropable value, and even then, there are some other stuff that hasn't been made into its own trope already that could be listed here (such as clothes with slits in the hips, or clothing that is transparent, in the case that there's no undergarments underneath)

I'm thinking. This is in line with the topic of Vapor Wear; as I have an interest with fashion and fashion history, and with the concept of "underwear as outerwear" that started with Marie Antoinette's chemise dress that lead to Regency era women wearing high-waisted white dresses; men in the '50s wearing white t-shirts, and now the t-shirt is everywhere; and now there are talks of women wearing sports bras in the streets, and men wearing short shorts again, which trope would be best use the "underwear as outerwear", and underwear evolving into outerwear, be placed? Or should "underwear as outerwear" be a trope on its own?

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Apr 27th 2024 at 6:02:31 PM

That sounds like it would be a sister tope or subtrope of Lingerie Scene, and best off as its own trope, as wearing underwear as outerwear and not wearing underwear at all are two distinct concepts

Lingerie as outerwear sounds like a missing sister trope to Walking Swimsuit Scene and Walking Shirtless Scene. I guess it's off-topic for this conversation but perhaps a TLP proposal should be made.

Going back to post 39, a supertrope still has to be meaningful in itself, and I don't really see this working as a supertrope, because I don't see enough meaning in and of itself.

As for post #43, there IS meaning in there. It's about something that connects all of those tropes together- it's about clothes that show there's obviously no underwear underneath being used as Fanservice. Heck, most of the tropes that I could consider Vapor Wear to be the supertrope to have really only remained tropeworthy by virtue of BEING Fanservice tropes. If it weren't for their Fanservice value, it's unlikely that they could remain tropeworthy.

If the tropes I listed have managed to remain afloat due to their Fanservice value, then Vapor Wear does deserve to stay to cover instances of Fanservice-y costume design where it's obvious there's no underwear underneath, but the exact manner of how the skin is exposed is not covered by any of the previous tropes listed.

Edited by DeadlyEspresso on Apr 27th 2024 at 1:48:54 AM

To that, I go back to the precedent of Does Not Like Shoes. There it was determined that even though there are multiple tropes about going barefoot, there wasn't enough tying them together to make a supertrope about them make sense. It was ultimately turned into a trope about explicitly preferring to go barefoot, which is not called a supertrope to the other tropes. Just because there's a concept tying a bunch of tropes together doesn't mean that said concept is actually tropeworthy, especially if there isn't a unifying reason for said concept.

To also quote People Sit on Chairs:

Just "going visibly without underwear" doesn't have any extra unifying theme that isn't already covered by Going Commando, while the tropes proposed as subtropes to it, do. If anything, I would propose they becomes subtropes of Going Commando and not Vaporwear.

I’m a bit dubious about making those tropes subtropes of Going Commando, mainly because they are all appearance tropes, while Going Commando doesn’t have to be visible at all. In fact, the way Going Commando is often played in fiction is that it’s somehow revealed that a character is doing it, and it comes as a surprise to others, because their clothing wasn’t revealing.

As for having Vapour Wear as a supertrope, I’m not at all sure that we need a supertrope to those fashion tropes. Or maybe, if we need one, it should be more general, a trope for revealing clothing in general (and that trope’s not Stripperiffic, because that carries sexual connotations and has a somewhat disparaging name).

Edited by GnomeTitan on Apr 27th 2024 at 8:38:16 PM

Maybe not all aspects, but all of a subtrope's examples still have to fit the supertrope as well, which means all of a subtrope's aspects have to be covered by the supertrope as well. If they don't all fit the supertrope, then the subtrope isn't actually a subtrope.

Edit: Reworded because I misread at first and then reread it.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 28th 2024 at 12:33:11 PM

Yes, it's supertropes that don't need to conform to subtropes, not the other way around.

Part of the point of a supertrope is that, if you don't know what subtrope an example goes under (or it doesn't exist yet), you can put the example in the supertrope and call it a day. So yeah, they don't work as subtropes of Going Commando.

There are already a few supertropes for those tropes anyway, though it doesn't look like all of them currently fit under a single supertrope. Not sure they need one. On the other hand, usage stats:

Clearly people like the trope name, and I'd like to find something to do with it besides just disambiguating. Unfortunately, the usage is so all over the place I don't see anything better.