Dead Trope Cleanup Thread (Dead Horse, Discredited, Unicorn, etc.)

So awhile back I asked if Discredited Trope should have a cleanup page and the consensus was that it, along with the other “Dead” tropes need a cleanup thread to remove shoehorned entries and misuse.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Nov 7th 2021 at 11:33:47 AM

This is from Discredited Trope

• Dr. Feelgood: They still exist, but are far more discreet because, due to legal crackdowns and the like, blatant and open ones often find themselves arrested, stripped of medical licensing, sued, or all of the above.

First off, the example doesn't even say that this trope doesn't happen anymore in real life. It just says that these kinds of doctors are becoming more discreet. Second, this site is about documenting fiction. Even if something is unlikely to happen in real life, that doesn't mean it won't happen in fiction.

The Murder Simulators entry in Discredited Trope is bashy towards moral guardians.

Cut. The biggest issue with Discredited Trope is people forgetting that this is documenting fiction, not real life.

• Happily Ever After: Varies between being considered a discredited trope and an Undead Horse Trope. It is frequently subject to parody, and frequently avoided in favor of a more bittersweet Twist Ending.

I doubt Happily Ever After has been phased out. Plenty of optimistic works still end on a happy ending. (Kids works especially ).

Edited by miraculous on Nov 8th 2021 at 7:11:52 AM

I think that can stay as that type of happy ending “they lived happily ever after” is never played straight any more. Also I cut the Dr. Feelgood entry (and cut the section describing it as such from the main page) and rewrote Murder Simulators to be a tad more neutral. Dr. Feelgood has a real life folder, despite being a morality trope, so I’m taking that to the real life example thread.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Nov 8th 2021 at 10:13:39 AM

And this.

• Age-Gap Romance: While still common, the idea of an older man dating a young woman. (traditionally the most common version of the trope) is no longer seen in a positive light by most people, especially if A) the young woman is under twenty-five and B) the man is more than five years her senior. An older man who dates young women is often viewed as immature, shallow, chauvinistic, predatory, going through a mid-life crisis, or any combination of the above. Likewise, any young woman who would date an older man is assumed to be a Gold Digger and/or suffering from daddy issues. Thus, modern uses in media will put greater emphasis into the problems the age disparity can cause, with the storylines depicting these relationships ending in an affair and/or a breakup more often than not. On the other hand, an older woman dating a younger man is less likely to be viewed as predatory in present day society, though the drawbacks of such a relationship (the woman being immature and the man looking for a Meal Ticket) may still be pointed out.

So this is weird as it admits it is still common. I'm not even sure why it's an example as this is still very common in fiction or hell real life.

Well it’s probably on the way to being discredited as age gap romances are increasingly seen as creepy or predatory.

Uh this trope already depicts the age as an issue or something that has to be explored in the work. Which is in the description.

So that mostly what it is already...

Its not for just age differences.

Does it count then if it isn't discredited right now but will be discredited in the future?

Edited by TheRandomSurfboard on Nov 8th 2021 at 10:25:28 AM

I don't think so.

We can't really predict the future.

Damn. I thought a cleanup thread for these pages wasn't needed. Shows how much I know.

Not long ago I axed the following from Discredited Trope after advice from the "Is this an example" thread.

• Hearts Are Health: Commonly used back in the day in cartoony Platformers to determine a players' Hit Points, but considered very cliche as more modern games have more or less abandoned this mechanic in favor of other health systems like regenerating shields or just something else entirely. Grandfather Clause keeps this trope alive of course through older game franchises, and the fact that the heart continues to be a recognizable symbol.

I had nuked it since a) it didn't seem to be commonly used back in the day in the first place and b) it still seems to be used more recently?

Dead Unicorn Trope lists some examples that fit better on Common Knowledge, and also some things which aren't even tropes.

Could you please give some examples?

I was thinking, how do we determine if a trope has been discredited? Is it based off of Audience reaction? Because there are plenty of tropes that have been criticized, but are still played straight.

We have a trope for a Discredited Trope that is still often played straight. Undead Horse Trope

I think the point is that there are many questionable examples in DUT where it is merely "completely false in real life, but played straight in fiction", e.g. Droit du Seigneur, or Tinfoil Hat. A few questionable examples in "Other":

• Jelly bracelets, worn as a fashion item by teenage and preteen girls back in The '80s, and at the Turn of the Millennium. They were bands of jelly-rubber or silicone, often stacked like bangles or linked together to create a new look. Somewhere along the line, they attracted a rumor that they were a signal of what sex act(s) the wearer was willing to do, if someone were to break the bracelet, a different color for different types of sex acts from kissing to lap dances all the way up to anal sex. (This rumor was especially troubling at the Turn of the Millennium, when they were adopted by preteens and even younger children.) Although even to this day, they are referred to as "sex bracelets," and "everyone knows" that they signal availability for sex acts (and because of these rumors, they have been banned at some schools), no credible reports exist of people (of any age or sex) actually using them in this way. Indeed, jelly bracelets are nearly impossible to break with one's bare hands, a key component of this particular urban legend (the 2019 Short Film Shagbands got around this by having a boy use a switchblade to break the bracelet).
• Rainbow parties, where girls wearing different colors of lipstick supposedly perform oral sex on boys to leave a "rainbow" on their penises, became a moral panic in the early 2000s. Despite there being no credible reports of actual rainbow parties ever happening, they turn up as plot devices in crime procedurals with some regularity.
• Pregnancy pacts in the late 2000s and early 2010s, where groups of high school girls make a pact to intentionally get pregnant, perhaps "inspired" by films like Juno and Knocked Up. This was told about in movies and other works like the 2010 Lifetime movie The Pregnancy Pact. While there really was an unusually high amount of teenage pregnancies in Gloucester, Massachusetts (eighteen total in a single high school in 2010) which inspired the Lifetime movie, there was no pact between the pregnant girls and they had little to nothing to do with one another, and little of this pact existed elsewhere^note It should also be noted that teen pregnancy is rapidly decreasing; according to the National Center for Health Statistics, teen birth rates went from 61.8 per 1000 females in 1991 to 17.4 per 1000 females in 2018.

All three are clear-cut examples of "ideas played straight in media, but no credible examples happening in real life". These sound like they are ripe for removal.

Also:

• There have been rumors of female Olympic athletes intentionally getting pregnant, and then terminating the pregnancy about 2-3 months in, just to get a boost from the hormone surge caused by the pregnancy. (What that hormone boost was supposed to do is to increase the volume of the athlete's blood, thus theoretically improving her athletic performance, similar to other methods of "blood doping," but more difficult to detect or prove.) To date, there have been no credible instances of athletes doing this. It also might not be very practical, as pregnancy hormones cause side-effects like Morning Sickness and fatigue^note Not in all pregnant women, but why take a chance?, neither of which are really conducive to athletic performance or endurance, even as they taper off when the pregnancy is terminated.

I never saw this (straight or no) in real OR fictional media, and it's just an urban legend and nothing more. Can this be deleted?

(Edit: Scrolled further down "Other", and... hoo boy, sooooo many shoehorns. More on them when I get the time.)

Edited by Coolnut on Nov 9th 2021 at 5:22:09 AM

This is on Discredited Trope:

• Collision Damage: Considered an outdated video game cliche, with many modern platform games discarding it due to improved technology allowing different and intricate enemy attack animations. It's still used due to Grandfather Clause by the older game franchises, and if modern games ever do use it, it's usually done by coating the enemies in something harmful like spikes, to justify the contact damage.

Is this really discredited?

I don't think so. It's still used in action-adventures/platformers and people don't whine about it AFAIK.

Might tropes such as Liar Revealed and "Fawlty Towers" Plot count as dead horse tropes? I remember seeing a lot of movies centered around these tropes in the past, but nowadays, they are seen as shallow attempts at dramatic conflict. And even when it does happen, the characters make up in no time at all.

I don't know how Black-and-White Morality is an Undead Horse Trope, especially how common they are in older works, children's works, all-ages works, and The Moral Substitute (including those not suitable for children).

Edited by Nen_desharu on Dec 1st 2021 at 1:22:35 PM

Should I add sympathetic portrayals of Bed Trick as a Discredited Trope since it’s now seen as a kind of rape?

Isn't that what an undead horse is? A discredited trope that is still used?

But was it ever discredited?

Plenty of works have used it and will continue to.