Topic on Forum:Trope Talk

I noticed that there are a lot of tropes that start with "The" for no particular reason except at most making linking on pmwiki easier and then other people copying that format. Characters seem to be particularly affected, so I'm making a list of those. I think in the name of consistency the definite articles should be left out, as there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for which tropes have it and which don't.

• The Aggressive Drug Dealer
• The Alcoholic
• The Aloner
• The Apprentice
• The Archmage
• The Artifact
• The Atoner (not in the proper category)
• The Beard
• The Brigadier
• The Bully
• The Caretaker
• The Champion
• The Cheerleader
• The Chew Toy
• The Chooser of the One
• The Comically Serious
• The Confidant
• The Conscience
• The Consigliere
• The Ditherer
• The Ditz
• The Driver
• The Dragon (not in the proper category) (THE WORST TROPE NAME EVER. PLEASE CHANGE IT.)
• The Dutiful Son
• The Engineer
• The Everyman
• The Ferry Man
• The Fighting Narcissist
• The Gadfly
• The Gambling Addict
• The Ghost
• The Gift
• The Gimmick
• The Heart
• The Hopeless Replacement
• The Hunter
• The Hyena
• The Immune
• The Imp
• The Informant
• The Ingenue
• The Insomniac
• The Jailer
• The Jester
• The Lab Rat
• The Last DJ
• The Load
• The Man They Couldn't Hang
• The Mark
• The Medic
• The Men in Black
• The Messiah
• The Millstone
• The Munchausen
• The Muse
• The Music Meister
• The Obstructive Love Interest
• The Old Convict
• The Omniscient
• The Paragon
• The Pawn
• The Peeping Tom
• The Philosopher
• The Piano Player
• The Pornomancer
• The Prankster
• The President's Daughter
• The Prima Donna
• The Quiet One
• The Quincy Punk
• The Real Heroes
• The Reliable One
• The Resenter
• The Scapegoat
• The Scrounger
• The Short Guy with Glasses
• The Slacker
• The Sponsor
• The Spook
• The Spymaster
• The Stoner
• The Stool Pigeon
• The Storyteller
• The Strategist
• The Team Normal
• The Team Wannabe
• The Teetotaler
• The Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer
• The Usual Adversaries
• The Vicar
• The Voice
• The Watchmaker
• The White Prince
• The Woobie
• The Worf Effect
• The World's Expert on Getting Killed
• The Worm Guy

I left out from the list The Adjective, The Verbed, and The Personal Name.

That has always driven me nuts as well. Personally, I'd like to see them all have the "The" removed since we are not using PmWiki.

This is actually correct.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the

b —used as a function word to indicate that a following noun or noun equivalent is a unique or a particular member of its
class <the President> <the Lord>
...
a —used as a function word before a singular noun to indicate that the noun is to be understood generically <the dog is a
domestic animal>
b —used as a function word before a singular substantivized adjective to indicate an abstract idea <an essay on the sublime>

I have to agree with Ken (well, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, too). The use of "the" in all these trope names is proper. Otherwise, just as an example, you will have to find a way to explain somehow that "Spock" isn't a page on the Star Trek character but a page about characters which share many of his traits, at some point before the reader goes, "The hell? Why is Spock in this show?" upon seeing it in a trope list.

And besides, removing the initial article in some of these names could create confusion between tropes and works. For instance, there's already two works called Bully.

So, why not to mark them accordingly? Especially given that they need to be made different from each other anyway.

I already talked with Geth N7 about the inevitable confusion between tropes and works due to namespaces not separating them anymore.

Are you saying that nearly all the tropes that don't start with "The" should have it added? The situation is currently highly lacking in consistency. I don't any of the definitions you quoted is relevant here except the last one.

Also this one from the dictionary you linked to: i —used as a function word before a proper name to indicate the distinctive characteristics of a person or thing <the John Doe that we know wouldn't lie>

Consider also that various dictionaries and Wikipedia have entries for, say, "Dog" rather than "The Dog".

An example that I hope shows my point about tropes not needing to have a definite article automatically tagged to the front:

"Character X is the Big Guy of the team. Character Y is also a Big Guy, only he works for the other team."

Are you saying that nearly all the tropes that don't start with "The" should have it added?

No, generally only the ones that are unique in the context in which they are used should have a "The". "The Big Guy" on a team implies that there can only be one of them; we wouldn't say "The Red Shirt" or "The Straw Vulcan" because there is nothing about those that implies uniqueness.

The use of "the" will get a little fuzzy since often something is unique in some contexts and not others, making it a judgment call about whether enough uses are unique to require a "the" on the trope name, so I wouldn't recommend globally changing everything that doesn't have "the". If you want to argue that a specific example needs it, sure, go ahead.

I don't any of the definitions you quoted is relevant here except the last one.

The other definitions apply to some of the examples. For instance, the one about abstract ideas applies to The Worf Effect.

An example that I hope shows my point

"The big guy" is unique within a certain context. So if you're talking about a context where there can't be more than one of them (about a single team), you use "the", while if you're talking about a context which refers to a second team, you use "a". You could also say "character A is the Big Guy of the other team" and you could not put "a" in that.

The other definitions apply to some of the examples. For instance, the one about abstract ideas applies to The Worf Effect.

The definition talks about "substantivized adjectives". Neither "Worf" nor "effect" is an adjective, substantivized or not. Also, anything is unique within a certain context as long as the context is small enough. That doesn't mean that we need to bring that into trope names. And even if the context is arbitrarily tiny, the definite article can vanish when it's preceded by a word in the genitive case.

(By the way, I noticed that The Immune had sneaked accidentally and wrongly into my long list of tropes (which, by the way isn't and isn't intended to be exhaustive) in the original post. "Immune" is an adjective.)

My suggestion is that we go with WWWD? (What Would Wikipedia Do?) when considering whether trope names should have definite articles.

I stand corrected on the Worf Effect. It would fall either under the uniqueness definition (if more than one existed you could say "a Worf Effect") and it could arguably fall under 2B. Also, you are right that "The Immune" would fall under the one about abstract ideas.

It's still correct usage, though.

I think in addition to "The" being used to indicate uniqueness, it should be kept in some other tropes. "The Ghost" to me implies that the trope isn't the character simply being a literal ghost (at least compared to simply "Ghost").

Which in turn to me implies that it's just a bad, non-indicative trope name. (looking at the definition in that article) ...and it is.

I do support the name change of one trope which isn't on this list: "An Aesop" to just "Aesop".

Seriously, why is that indefinite article even there? It just seems so bizarre and out of place, no matter how I look at it.

"An Aesop" is because "Aesop" would be confused with the person responsible for Aesop's Tales.

But the only reason that confusion would happen in the first place is that we're using the term "Aesop" instead of "Moral" or "Lesson" or similar. Given that we already have an English word for it, why use "Aesop" in the first place?

(Of course, "Moral" would result in its own confusion--ironically, if we shifted to that term we may need a 'The' on it to indicate that it is a noun and not an adjective.)

What about "Moral of the Story"? That's a common and easy-to-remember phrase.

Since that's a phrase and not a word, it also wouldn't fit in any of the sentences where people use "Aesop" right now. "This film has a Moral of the Story which teaches that...."

I honestly have no idea whether just using the word "Moral" would cause any problems. Maybe we should wait until we have a larger group of regulars and then see what people think.

Well that shouldn't be a problem. Just have "Moral" redirect to "Moral of the Story".

I agree. Just having Moral redirect to Moral of the Story should cause no issues.

The Virus

I disagree with that one. A virus is simply a crippling or deadly epidemic. The Virus is a force which corrupts.

This doesn't prove the trope name is good as is. In fact, this only demonstrates that the name is bad.

I want to necro this thread because I'm a bit worried about The Apprentice. I'm not really happy with (trope) being part of the page name, because tropes are traditionally the main article. So we're going to need some kind of rename here.

I remember thinking about this a couple of years ago, and not coming to any conclusions. I mean, I must not have, because there's no reply in this thread from me. I do get the use of "the" to indicate a class. What I don't understand is when "the" is necessary to create a class. On The Starscream it's obviously necessary, but I don't get the first word of The Peeping Tom because that's already a class and not a person? And then I was thinking The Ingenue didn't need it, but wikipedia seems to refer to in the text as "the Ingénue" but the page is plain "Ingénue" (well actually wikipedia:Ingénue (stock_character))?

Are there any answers better than "TL;DR English is terrible, deal with it"?

"The Peeping Tom" is a class. "Peeping Tom" is a person: w:Lady_Godiva#Peeping_Tom

The Neidermeyer. I'm not sure if Neidermeyer is iconic enough that someone gets what the trope means based on name recognition (I didn't recognize the name). Also auto correct might hate Neidermeyer just as much as his own men hate him. Writing this post was a lot more inconvenient than it should have been.

The Neidermeyer already has redirect names. We can make one of those the official name. Or we can come up with a new official name. Hated By His Own Men. Captain Queeg. TvTropes also has Colonel Irritant,  Officer Jerkass,  Tyrannical Commander as names for the trope.

Another one that is missing from the list is The McCoy, which to my disappointment, as far as I can tell, has NOTHING to do with the Hatfield–McCoy feud.