On another note, the video game subsection is a mess. It was thrown in when prison sequences was merged with this trope, and it's hard to tell which examples count and which don't.
In YKTTW, I was dealing almost exclusively with media like comic books, TV shows, or movies, which don't leave as much room for ambiguity on whether or not they fit my idea; namely, a prison-centered installment of a series that is otherwise not prison-centered.
However, video games leave more room for ambiguity. Obviously, a stage is not an installment, but I could imagine some of the video game examples might give off the feel of a Prison Episode if both the game and the prison part are long enough.
How should we figure this out? A crucial factor that might be missing here is familiarity with examples; should I go to the discussion pages of each example's work page to discuss this?
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart Hide / Show RepliesIf you ask me, if a level or stage of a game takes place in a prison (as in more than a flashback or a 5 minute sequence) then it should count as a prison episode because, within that game, it IS a prison episode. Obviously in almost all cases a game is not going to be anywhere near a TV series or Comic Book series length, so an allowance must be made for that. For instance, take Fable. At one point your character is captured by the Big Bad and thrown in his prison. You then spend a considerable amount of time escaping this prison and rescuing your mother. That, IMO, would count as a prison episode because it's a significant part of gameplat (ranging from an hour to possibly two of total gameplay). On the other hand, a game like The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay takes place ENTIRELY in a prison and thus would not be a Prison Episode. Does that help?
When I edited in the videogame section from Prison Sequences, I did a quick sorting of the examples there into those that belong in Prison, and those that belong here. I also hacked off a lot of verbiage, and fixed the wicks.
Now, I might have been wrong about one or more examples, and the videogame list can certainly need a loving editing hand (I know too little about videogames for that), but the section absolutely belongs here.
Tell you what. I`ll go to the discussion pages of each video game example's work page, mentioning the points each of you made along with my own, and see what conclusions people there come to.
Edited by HiddenFacedMatt "The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon StewartThere we go. Done.
Well, at least for each entry that potholed to a works page.
Well, I think.
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon StewartThe problem we have here though is that we can't decide if something fits the description of this trope until we decide what the trope is. So when the Trope Repair Shop opens back up again, I'll open a thread and see if we can't come to a conclusion on what this trope doeds/should mean. Bear in mind this may or may not fit in with the definition as you originally defined it in your YKTTW, particularly if we decide it really does cover prison levels of video games as well as prison episodes of series.
Well, to me it's pretty clear that "episode" must be used pretty loosely here on TV tropes (as you can see in the tropes under the Episodes index).
An episode to me is simply a reasonably well-defined part of a larger work, that has an internal structure (or whatever way we can keep it separate from Scenes. That's why I listed The Borders of Infinity from the Vorkosigan Saga here instead of prison — it is a small part of a much larger work/set of works.
So this arguably transcends Prison Episode — it concerns almost every episode trope we have. All of them potentially has this problem (which at least to me isn't a problem).
Okay now I'm confused as hell, because by your definition, Matt, the example you added today (9/22) doesn't match your criteria at all.
What do you mean @ battosaijoe11
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon StewartOne question comes to mind in trying to crosswick this;; in series with a main trope list, and trope lists for parts of the series, (such as the Toy Story series) do I just add to the parts with the prison episodes, or the main lists as well?
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart Hide / Show RepliesIMO it is only necessary to do it with the relevant episode(s). Usually, there are subpages because the main page became too unwieldy with tropes.
Would music videos that take place in a prison (example: "No One Like You" by the Scorpions) count?