"Works About X" indexes

^ Right and if what's important about an index of animals is the meaning one can convey by making all of the characters animals, how is the index functionally different from World of Funny Animals? or World of Mammals?

That, too.

Since there seemed to be some agreement on a moratorium on new "Works about X" indexes while we hash this out, should we make a single-prop crowner to make it official?

There are plenty of animal-centric works that don't fit those tropes, like all the examples I just mentioned.

Of course there are. Funny Animals, Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!, Mouse World, etc. This was not supposed to be an exhaustive list. The point I'm making is figuring out the answer to the question of "what is the point of having a cast that focuses on or is exclusively animals" is what we should cover since this is a site about cataloguing patterns that imbue a specific meaning to a narrative, setting, or character portrayal. Works can feature animals for a whole slew of reasons that range from the meaningless to the very important.

Instead of grouping works that include inconsequential and consequential representation, we need only focus on the consequential and amongst the consequential, we focus on the meaning it conveys. That's usually what a trope page is for, so these kinds of indices are redundant.

I agree on the single prop moratorium vote.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 6th 2022 at 10:41:57 AM

"Works about X" covers a lot more than just animals. There's characters, themes, primary topics, etc.

Sure, but the ones attracting controversy are the animal ones...

yes...I know that. I'm using animals as an example for the purposes of this conversation since what started this thread was a trope about a bear and it was proposed that a solution to the issue was for us to consolidate them all into a single index about animals. My argument stands for the other types since the underlying issue is the same.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 6th 2022 at 11:19:54 AM

Yes, the discussion has been about the animal/creature ones, but the proposed rule would cover a lot more than that. That is my issue.

Could you elaborate? I really don't see how, for instance, grouping works by primary topic/theme has an issue of "grouping by inconsequential stuff".

Sure. To reiterate: my overall argument is that these pages would be better served with genre pages if the main argument in keeping them is that "the X that's featured makes the works included in the list go over similar themes and tropes."

Take Toy Tales for example. Can cover anything from the Toy Story franchise, a documentary about the toy making industry, a song or poem that uses an extended metaphor about a toy to discuss issues of human agency, a children's book about a young child who loses their favorite toy and goes on a search for it. All of these works feature toys but they're not really thematically connected. The toy connection is superficial since the meaning and use behind the toys in each work differs.

(Taking actual examples from the list, the use of toys in Angelic Layer, The Nutcracker, and Ted, differ pretty drastically: in Angelic Layer the toys are in-universe toys that are used in a Pokemon-esque battle game, in The Nutcracker the toys come to life but it's All Just a Dream and they were really mundane after all, and Ted is a toy that gains legitimate sentience and functions in-universe as basically a real person to the point that he has sex (with human women), has a job, and has US citizenship.)

And you wouldn't even know that from the index itself since it's just a list of works. Even when certain tropes consistently show up, for example, "toys gain sentience/come to life", if what you wanted was a list of works that consistently use that trope then you'd be better off going to that trope page (Living Toy or Love Imbues Life) rather than sifting through the index.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 6th 2022 at 12:47:26 PM

This is pretty much my thoughts, and at the risk of putting words in somebody else's mouth I have the same impression from WarJay77's posts.

Yeah, I more or less agree with that. I think the toys one was actually the first one where I was like "Okay, maybe we don't need this tho?".

Okay. What about lists that are directly about certain themes, e.g. Immortality Works? Stock characters, e.g. Ninja Fiction? A non-fiction topic, like Books on Trope?

Responding to a point from earlier in the thread:

Our Vampires Are Different doesn't say anything about how central vampires are to the overall work. Could be just one of many things in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink or Monster Mash, or a Monster of the Week.

There was a holler for a crowner to be hooked to this this thread. But I don’t know if the thread is ready for that? Also, I am not sure if something like this should be decided on Trope Talk.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 7th 2022 at 12:24:38 PM

This feels more like a TRS decision than one for trope talk. Well be deciding the fate of several trope indexes and that's really not for what trope talk is for.

I wonder if we could do what we did for the List Of Lists, which is to create a Sandbox list of them and do a TRS on that.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Feb 7th 2022 at 9:05:31 AM

I think TRS'ing a list would work. I'd suggest grouping them into categories (eg. "people", "animals", "fictional creatures", "objects") since there's some positive sentiment towards the fantastical ones.

I once again am significantly against any index that simply serves as a list of related works with no obvious theme besides "contains an X". This is especially true since we already have genre and medium indexes, and works that share common tropes can be found by going to the trope article.

All we're doing with Tropes About Dogs or whatever is backing our way into People Sit on Chairs using indexes instead of tropes. "Work contains a dog."

@Twiddler, I can do the same thing to those lists too, but that's quite a lot of work you're asking me to do without providing a counter point to the argument: what are these indices providing that a genre page, or a trope page about a specific recurring trope/stock character like Ninja, or even an index listing all of the tropes related to the topic like This Index Will Live Forever doesn't also do, but better since they detail not just what, but why and how these things are similar in the works listed?

I don't feel strongly about Books on Trope since it's a meta index that groups together Useful Notes pages that do a similar thing as what the site does: name and classify tropes. That's not quite the same as listing works by "things that show up in them" since, again, the focus isn't on the tropes that are used in the portrayal of the thing, but the thing itself just existing in the work.

But now I'm just repeating myself.

In any case, I support TRS-ing this if that's how this needs to move forward.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 7th 2022 at 12:32:11 PM

Aheh, sorry. I wasn't expecting anything super in-depth. I appreciate the explanations you've already done!

My counterargument is basically the one I've already given re: Vampire Fiction — tropes alone don't typically tell you how central something is to a work's premise. Take Ninja Fiction — ninjas are a common stock character. Just having Ninja listed as a trope, or a work listed on that trope page, doesn't tell you whether the work is about ninjas. They could be mooks, Gratuitous Ninjas, part of a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, just one of many characters, etc. The index provides context beyond that.

Ideally, these "Works about X" indexes should be about works that, well, are actually about X in some way, and not just "Work contains X", even if it has an important role in the plot. (Small Role, Big Impact is a thing, after all.) I think some of these existing indexes take an overly broad approach in what sort of works are included, and could use some cleanup.

I've sometimes wondered if the naming pattern is contributing to this issue. "X Media" is more vague compared to "Works About X". (And note that practically all the existing pages follow the former pattern, not the latter.)

So. There’s another one now. It seems to include both “works about primates” and “works that have a primate as the main character”.

So what is the difference between this ideal and a (sub-)genre index? That's how I see much of it. Paranormal Romance is a genre index, not a trope page.

These are genre-neutral. For example, Vampire Fiction may contain vampire horror media, vampire Paranormal Romance, or sitcoms about Friendly Neighborhood Vampires.

See, the broadness is one reason I don't think these indexes are helpful. You don't know what the works are actually like, all you know is that they have a vampire/ghost/cat/toy/etc in a role of importance somewhere.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 7th 2022 at 9:57:01 AM

So should we come up with a new rule called "No New Generalized Indexes" or something like that to curb the rampant proliferation of "index" drafts like Ursine Fiction?

I say yes, we should. Enough people have said why they’re not necessary.