I don't really understand why the "Idiot Ball" trope isn't YMMV - or for that matter, the "Ball" tropes in general

Hi, I was looking for a way to point out the idiocy of certain characters in a series I'm watching, so I looked at relevant tropes; but I assumed from the get-go that I'd add this in the YMMV page for the work, as it's basically just my personal interpretation of why the decisions picked by the characters could've been, in my own view, smarter.

And, looking through the examples on the "Idiot Ball" page, it seems evident to me that "character acting like an idiot" is a subjective mileage, as pretty much any single example I see could probably have people bickering, with a group justifying the characters' actions. Same goes for all the other "Ball" tropes, that seem to me to just be tropers' personal takes on how X or Y act goes against what they perceive their character as. It'd be one thing if these were tropes about the characters realizing, In-Universe, that the behavior is abnormal (as YMMV does clearly outline how that's an appropriate exception); but not only do none of the examples mention anything about character reactions, the Ball trope themselves outline that it's an audience reaction.

Yet, for some reason, they're treated as a main page tropes. They appear on trope pages, and can't be added to YMMV since that space is only supposed to receive "subjective" tropes - which these seem to be clear examples of to me.

Now, browsing deeper, the Ball Index mentions these are "often Tropes Hidden from the Audience", which vaguely points to them being a "gray area", but that seems like flimsy reasoning at best to justify these obviously subjective tropes be main space ones.

Am I missing something? Why is "Idiot Plot" outright banned as flame bait, "What an Idiot" a clear Darth Wiki YMMV item, yet all these tropes about "characters acting [in the audience's view] differently from how [the audience perceives] they usually behave" (and specifically "Idiot Ball", which definitely seems like grounds for subjective bickering) allowed as "real" tropes?

Thanks for any help.

It's one of the oldest tropes on the site and based on the oldest forms of media discourse. The trope should be main page but media literacy is a crapshoot so examples are increasingly petty. It should be a character acting unnaturally stupid in order to get the plot moving, but it's treated as a character being a little stupid period.

It's thus in a grey area like Big-Lipped Alligator Moment where it's definition is too abstract to work objectively. Broken Aesop seems to be going in the same direction.

The "ball" tropes are technically completely objective because you can objectively say a character broke character somehow. It's not supposed to be subjective but in practice it's easy to blur the line. And yes, it and all the ball tropes are badly misused.

That said, What An Idiot got kicked to darth so I don't see a future for a YMMV Idiot Ball.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 18th 2024 at 11:28:57 AM

In principle, Idiot Ball and related "ball" tropes can be tracked to discrete writing decisions. Sitcoms in particular employ the trope as a means to generate conflict for a particular episode. It's a well-understood phenomenon: someone has to be stupid to drive the plot because sitcoms derive most of their stories from ridiculous misunderstandings.

If the trope is being used outside of this context, then it's a potential signal of definition creep, and could need to be reined in.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 18th 2024 at 11:38:42 AM

I dunno... I can see to an extent what you guys are saying, and I suppose if it's a category of tropes that have been here all these years, then it is considered objective enough to be main page?

I guess the basic thing that's a sticking point with me is that, the way I perceive this, and barring specific instances where the creators acknowledge these, these are all audience reaction metrics, that concern how characters are viewed by the audience and the gap with how they "should" be acting; and audience reaction stuff tends to be considered YMMV otherwise, with main page tropes usually being straightforward descriptors of elements within the world and plot itself. In other words, if it's not acknowledged in the plot that the character is being dumb, it feels like it's the audience extrapolating from their own expectations or personal interpretation.

So a trope like "Dark And Troubled Past", for instance, is fairly easy to justify from the events described within the story itself, as compared to other characters not having that characteristic, with only the "amount" of Dark and Troubled being subject to varying interpretations. Another example would be qualities like being beautiful or friendly as part of the trope (e.g. "Amazonian Beauty", "Affably Evil") - while there's some amount of subjective leeway concerning what beauty and friendliness are, and what personal standards can allow, if they end up as tropes, it usually means that they can be pointed to as acknowledged in-story, and/or comprise straightforwardly describable elements relevant to the plot or to characters' perceptions.

However, the "Ball Tropes" entirely rely on the audience to make those types of judgment calls. To take the "Idiot Ball" example once more, it requires justifying all the following:

• that the actions of the character are idiotic in the first place (with qualitative concepts like "stupidity" and "intelligence", like "beauty" or "friendliness", being very much prone to personal bias, as well as divergences in standards and definitions, in real life);
• that they can't be viewed - without stretching the limits of reasonable interpretation - as having good reasoning or in-universe justifications behind, that are not idiotic;
• that the character is not usually an idiot, with this idiocy of theirs being notably different from their usual "levels" of intelligence
• that the character arc or character quirks can't be used as excuses for this momentary difference in quality;
• that this gap in intelligence is not just unusual, but specifically artificial.

And again, all of the above is never justified in-universe. It's all just the audience gauging "how stupid exactly" a character is being.

Again, I don't know, I'm not a regular contributor - I'm probably overthinking it, and I'm sure there are good reasons that are unfamiliar to me, probably having to do with media analysis, with this being the way it is. I'm just raising the subject because it feels like these tropes don't really have the same standards of inclusion as usual, more "normal" tropes.

No, I can see what you're saying. The best examples (rather, the valid ones) are the ones that actually describe how the character normally acts, why they did something dumb, and how it impacts the plot as a result. It's completely accurate to say that sometimes plots require a character to act out of character, and if you know how they usually act up until then you can pretty easily identify when someone is acting odd. That's why other character-breaks, such as Out-of-Character Moment, O.O.C. Is Serious Business, and Out-of-Character Alert, are objective — the character doing something they wouldn't normally do is something you can identify.

Admittedly, it's not a perfect system. I have seen examples that are just "complaining when something stupid happens". I've seen characters who are already meant to be dumb be given the trope when by design it shouldn't apply to them. I've seen people ignore the OOC requirement, or otherwise just be bad at identifying what an OOC moment would actually be. And yeah, sometimes it's entirely a mistake of the writing and not an intentional tool to make the story progress, though you can sometimes tell the difference if the rest of the story continues with them acting normally, showing that the Idiot Ball was a temporary dip in intelligence rather than an actual issue with writing the character or something along those lines.

What it boils down to, I guess, is that it does require the plot to have progressed. So that helps to keep it objective, as people need to identify not just that someone broke character but that the plot required them to break character. That the plot would have gone differently if they just acted normally.

I see, thanks. The comparison with OOC tropes is a good one, I guess that helps put things into perspective a bit.

I'm not sure how much I really grasp these types of tropes, but I can see why they're here a bit better now, at least.

It's related to issue with Depending on the Writer, the emphasis takes to assuming such things is sloppy writing rather than character driven even if the end result is the same. It becomes about the troper speculating on the reasons something happens due to outside influences and not because a character can behave a little different from day to day, despite the fact the names on a script can be arbitrary next to assistant writers, direction, performance and improv changing that script.

Edited by EmeraldSource on Jan 18th 2024 at 3:42:54 AM

I wouldn't call it "arbitrary". If a character does something they wouldn't usually do (say make a mistake they know full well to avoid) and the plot progresses as a result of that action, then it qualifies. The "plot progresses" thing is kind of a requirement here. Without it, that is when it becomes arbitrary and subjective, but objectively speaking creators will have characters take actions to progress the story and sometimes those actions don't always make sense for the character doing them.

I have a personal adage that the separation between "main page" and "YMMV" tropes aren't so much a black/white split as much as a greyscale gradient, because there is always some level of subjectivity when it comes to identifying storytelling tropes in media, as well as some level of truth/reflection of reality in YMMV/audience reactions. However, the separation is still in place because there is still a meaningful difference on mechanics and intent; what manifests directly from the text itself, and what is extrapolation from outside opinion.

So while I do think that Idiot Ball tends to result in some editorializing that can come off as YMMV and complain-y, the trope itself is valid as a main page trope as an objective element. If a Reasonable Authority Figure who has been established by the narrative to be patient, considerate, and reliable, but then has a moment of weakness where they end up making a really bad decision out of impulse that has consequences, that's not up for debate. Audiences can (and often will) meme about them for their gap in logic, but a character suddenly being rash and doing something poorly-thought out that results in negative consequences is not an audience reaction nor a matter up to personal opinion.

Edited by number9robotic on Jan 18th 2024 at 4:29:16 AM

I think most tropes have cases that are ambiguous or borderline. In the case of Idiot Ball, there are clear cut examples, but also some borderline cases, where a character makes a mistake that moves the plot forward, but one can't be sure if it is out of character.

The thing is, they do fall under Tropes Are Tools in the sense that a writer will sit down sometimes and say "all right, for this plot to happen, I need this person to be an idiot" or "all right, we need these people to fight, so I'll make this character be an asshole."

They're not audience reactions, they're fundamental building-blocks that are used to tell a story. Sure, people can disagree over whether something applies, but that is true for virtually all tropes - who says that a Reasonable Authority Figure is reasonable or that the All-Loving Hero is all-loving? What if the All-Loving Hero is subject to Alternate Character Interpretation to the point where the majority of the fanbase doesn't think they're all-loving? And what if we have trouble figuring out what the author intended, and editors start to argue over it? In some cases, people might even reasonably argue over who the Big Bad is or other tropes where the author's intent is normally self-evident. Lots of people argue over what's an Expy or an Alternate Company Equivalent, but there's no question that authors do sometimes write them deliberately.

In general I feel that we're too quick to throw up our hands and move tropes to YMMV just because there are areas around the edges of them that people might argue over.

Part of this is also that the purpose of many tropes is to evoke a reaction from the audience - the Reasonable Authority Figure, say, is written to make the audience see them as reasonable. But for any trope like that, you can sometimes have a situation where the audience doesn't react the way the author intended - either they reject the idea that a so-called reasonable authority figure is being reasonable, or they seize on a character that was intended to be unreasonable and decide they think their behavior is reasonable after all. And when it reaches a certain point it can become hard to discern what the author intended in the first place - were we supposed to see the rapid way they promoted the main character despite their failures as a reasonable recognition of their effectiveness in a difficult situation, or as unfair nepotism? Or both? Or was it deliberately ambiguous?

I think that if a trope is still, generally, a tool that authors use intentionally, and we can still, generally, make a reasonable stab at guessing that intent, then it shouldn't be a YMMV trope.

Edited by Aquillion on Jan 21st 2024 at 10:53:58 AM

I guess the issue isn't really about Idiot Ball being subjective (it is definitely something that objectively happens), but rather that it can't help sounding like complaining.

More often, it's the tropers that's the problem rather than the trope, and it is usually visible in old tropes with massive examples.

I think one thing that might help is having the definitions highlight the existence of positive uses (ie, "but done well") where the ball is Justified and enables organic plot development.

I actually added a small paragraph of this sort to the Distress Ball a few weeks back when a trope finder query got me thinking about its relation to Badass in Distress - clumsy use of the trope can have badass Alice suffering from a sudden bout of bumbling helplessness so Bob can rescue her, but catching the distress ball can also have a hero "slip up" in a reasonable way or be faced with a genuine threat of some sort that gets the better of them.

The event's place in the story is similar- a cheesy Rescue Romance between Alice and Bob is the cliche, but even that can be elevated: In the aftermath novice superhero Alice's confidence is shaken from realizing she's Not So Invincible After All, Voice with an Internet Connection Bob has PTSD from having to face danger firsthand without Alice's combat powers, and there's a weird new layer of mutual resentment to their relationship from having their reliance on each other highlighted.

That sort of stuff needs to be pointed out as much or more than the idea of it being "A character does something OOC because the plot says so"

If it's justified, can it even qualify? The tropes are specifically meant to be unjustified. Because if they are, it's not just "plot demands it".

One of the things that come to mind looking at this family of trope is that Out of Character is something invented by fiction creators. In reality, no-one is under any obligation to stay in character. So very smart people can be ignorant about something or have extreme lapses of judgment, brave people can run screaming, etc., depending on stress, or a high-stakes situation, or any number of other factors.

That's why it's almost futile to gauge what is "unjustified" behaviour and what's not.

Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash on Feb 6th 2024 at 11:16:24 AM

But in a narrative people are expected to act according to their personality. Breaks aren't always a writing flaw but thats when there's a reason behind them. When we're talking about fiction we shouldn't be analyzing things on a level of realism, but on a level of what's been established prior because, well, no fictional character will ever be as complex as a real person is.

Even then there's nuance. There's a difference between a brave character facing the one thing they fear and a brave character just randomly becoming a coward for an episode with no explanation or lasting purpose. A smart character can do something dumb thanks to stress, confusion, intoxication, or even just sheer arrogance — or they can simply be stupid in a scenario where they should be at the top of their game.

It's entirely possible to judge what's justified and what isn't. It's the very context of the story. But in a justified break, it's usually not just done for the sake of the plot alone; they're not holding the ball because they're still following the work's logic.