rename: Main/Nurse Jenny

I'm surprised this hasn't come up before, but Nurse Jenny is in serious need of a rename. I can never remember what it refers to, and it has the same issues as most other character named tropes.

Same Face Each Place?

It refers to Pokemon! Nurse Joy & Officer Jenny. There are very few Animes or Video Games more well known than Pokemon.

edited 5th Oct '09 1:07:35 AM by GameGuruGG

That does require...I'd say it requires prior knowledge but you also have to be involved enough to see a reference to a nurse and then go through your personal database of nurses in fiction, cross reference with the name Jenny and then connect the dots and realise it's a splicing of two characters from Pokemon- an anime you may have heard of but quite likely have not seen.

And if you haven't seen Pokemon, you are left with mentally scrolling through a list of everything you know about nurses. Not helpful.

I like penguin's name.

edited 5th Oct '09 1:08:56 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

It's freakin' Pokemon! You have to be freakin' Mario or Dragon Ball Z to be more well known than it among either the Anime or Video Game genres.

I do admit Penguin's name is very much made of awesome though, and should be the name. I'm just shocked that no one gets that it references Pokemon.

edited 5th Oct '09 1:17:48 AM by GameGuruGG

Doesn't mean you watched it! It's freakin' Pokemon, you expect me to know all the injokes?

It's not an injoke. Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy are regulars!

Oh well, I've stated my grievance and did admit that Penguin got an awesome rename there. I accept that rename. Nurse Jenny can go off into redirectville.

edited 5th Oct '09 1:22:32 AM by GameGuruGG

Game Guru GG, I'm 50 years old. I was —way—- out of the demographic for Pokemon when it came out, and I've never seen or played it. Not everybody who comes to this site is a young gamer.

And some tropers who are roughly in that demographic actively avoided it. (I'm 26, so I was about 4 or 5 years older than the primary target demographic, but I'm definitely a gamer, so close enough.) Barney Hatred is a powerful motivator.

edited 5th Oct '09 7:32:19 AM by dilbert719

I am also outside the Pokemon demographic and have only seen a handful of episodes (I don't think any featured a Nurse Joy or Officer Jenny, but I found the series so repellent that I may have blocked the memory). I have played the games, but I didn't get the reference. I don't think they name the NP Cs in the game, or if they do I don't remember.

edited 5th Oct '09 10:21:06 AM by ccoa

Just because you never watched or played it doesn't deny the fact that it's still one of the most popular Animes & Video Games out there.

Conversely, just because it's one of the most popular anime /game out there doesn't mean enough people know the minor character well enough to recognize a reference at at least two steps removal (It's simply a name, there's nothing to make people think "Oh, Pokemon!" and it's not actually the name of any character — it's two character's names combined.)

I never said the trope shouldn't be renamed. I'm only shocked someone doesn't get the reference.

*sigh*

I know about Pokemon, used to love it, back at the tail end of the last decade, but once I left it behind my only exposure to the series is via SSB(kinda like my current exposure to Mario, but that's for another thread). I get the reference, but it's kinda obscure. I only ever really got into first-gen honestly. Ever since, it's been off my radar. Hell, I don't even play the first-gen games anymore.

But yeah, a rename might be nice, but it's not needed. Crowner it?

I think the "Nurse" part is especially unhelpful because it mentally files it with medical staff or sexy-nurse fanservice for me, at least.

@Game Guru: This might be a good time to read up on Fan Myopia.

Trope names that only work on the basis of intimate knowledge of a particular show are undesirable regardless of how popular or widespread the Trope Namer happens to be.

Hell, i'm aware of pokemon and the reference in the name and i still think it's awful. There's just way too many logical jumps required between trope name to trope definition (as SSOT pointed out). There's no way anyone not familiar with pokemon would guess how this connects to the trope.

GG has conceded the argument, there isn't need to continue arguing against GG. In any event, what would be a better name, then?

Honestly, You ALL Look Familiar seems so close to this that it may be worth considering a merge.

Still, I remember hearing in some animes like people use lines like "They say that somewhere out there, there are 5 people who share your face." (This number rises each successive time it is said, though.) This is said whenever one of the main characters notices that every old man in town is a virtual clone of the butler you see in the very first episode, and that almost every character in the series who isn't a major character is likewise a clone of the same small set of characters. I was about to suggest pulling a trope title out of that line about the number of people share your face, but saying that, it really just reminds me of You ALL Look Familiar again.

It seems like we can broaden You ALL Look Familiar to be about more than just video games and merge, while noting this is usually a game trope.

The only real distinction I get from You ALL Look Familiar is that it is nearly always done for time and budget reasons...which is also true for some instances of Nurse Jenny. Merge looks good to me.

Some of them, you might also want to split off to Loads and Loads of Roles, Acting for Two and/or related tropes, which is actors playing multiple parts in the same work.

edited 5th Oct '09 1:18:08 PM by Elle

Hmm...this sounds a bit like Character Clones.

Oh come on GG, not everyone watches anime! I saw a couple of episodes, I know Team Rocket and such but you can't expect me to be aware of every single facet of that show!

(Face Palm) I'm going to ignore Landstalker who apparently didn't get Wraith Magus' memo...

Either way, looking at the entry on You All Look Familiar... Apparently the difference between it and Nurse Jenny is that the latter hangs a lampshade or justifies the former.

edited 5th Oct '09 7:43:12 PM by GameGuruGG

Some of the ones in You ALL Look Familiar are also Lampshade Hung, like the page quote. Still not enough of a distinction.

Well, if you are going to merge them, why don't we use the name Same Face Each Place for it?