Basic Trope: A reviewer who typically scores what they review on a meaningful scale, gives a review score outside the scale, or declines to score it.
- Straight:
- Alice normally ends her reviews with a 1-10 recommendation level. However, in her review of Legends of Troperia, she gives it a 0 (or 11) out of 10.
- Alice, unsure what score to give Legends, declines to provide a review score.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice gives Legends of Troperia "∞ (or -∞) out of ten."
- Alice refuses to score Legends, saying it doesn't deserve a score.
- Legends breaks the scale so hard, Alice restructures the entire review scale.
- Alice rates Legends a "NaN out of ten"
- Downplayed:
- Alice ends her reviews with a 0-10 score. While nothing has ever reached the hypothetical minimum of 0, Legends is deemed bad enough to earn this ranking.
- Alice rates Legends 10.01/10. She considers it better than her gold standard, but only very slightly.
- Justified:
- Legends of Troperia is deemed so good (or bad) that it sets a new bar for everything else to compete with.
- Legends is a very love it or hate it work, or well-respected but hard to get into, and Alice doesn't think rating it on her usual scale would accommodate her more nuanced opinion.
- Legends is a remake, and Alice can't decide whether to score it in a vacuum, or in terms of someone who already owns the original.
- Inverted: Alice retroactively changes old review scores to reflect new standards.
- Subverted: "Legends of Troperia is the first thing I've reviewed to break the ratings scale. Unfortunately, my hosting platform doesn't accommodate anything outside a standard 1-10."
- Double Subverted: "That's why I'm changing platforms."
- Parodied:
- Alice gives review scores of either 11/10 or 0/10, and no in between.
- Alice uses Diegetic Interface to show the ratings scale. Whenever she operates outside its bounds, she finds an over the top way to destroy it.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice does video reviews, with a sliding bar showing her current score throughout the review. The sliding bar consistently hovers around the 10/10 mark, sometimes going over before dipping back down.
- Averted:
- Alice does not use a review scale.
- Legends gets a score falling within the boundaries of the currently existing review scale.
- Enforced: "We need an easy way to make this review stand out. Let's break the scale."
- Lampshaded: "Yes, Legends forced me to do something I've never done before. I'm ignoring the ratings scale."
- Invoked: This trope is invoked by default. For it not to be invoked, the unusual score (or lack thereof) would have to an error.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- While tempted to break the review scale, Alice scores Legends of Troperia at a simple 1 or 10, to keep her review scores meaningful.
- While Alice can't decide whether to give Legends a high or low score, she settles on one or the other, or splits the difference.
- Discussed: "I seriously considered ignoring my review scale here, but ultimately decided against it."
- Conversed: "You ever notice how Bob's reviews never go above a 10/10?"
- Deconstructed: Alice's failure to restrain her review scores to a tight scale gradually makes them meaningless.
- Reconstructed: Feeling review scores are an oversimplification anyway, Alice makes a running gag out of everything she reviews being the new best (or worst) thing ever.
- Played for Laughs:
- Alice gives Legends a meaningless review score, like "(3i+2)/10" or "Lampshade Hanging out of ten."
- Alice, notorious for her strict adherence to the ratings scale, gives the otherwise unremarkable Legends an 11/10.
- Played for Drama: Legends of Troperia is Overshadowed by Controversy. Not wanting to give the work an endorsement, or struggling to separate her opinions on the work with the controversy, Alice declines to give Legends a final score.
I don't know what to make of this page. I give it a Broke the Rating Scale out of ten.
