It's not subjective, true, but that's not what is being done here anyway. The Did Not Do The Research subtropes are being shifted out of the work pages for being Natter-bait. See discussion here
.
Anybody else read the topic as "Somewhere an Equestrian is Crying 'Subjectivity!'"? :)
The subjectivity in these sorts of topics isn't so much in getting the facts wrong, it's in the dividing line between should be covered by Willing Suspension of Disbelief and what really counts as an error (though this page isn't one of them, that's why I don't like the "You Fail X Forever" titles - the name implies a raging hostility over what often amounts to some really miniscule errors). It gets really messy when a field of study has conflicting theories, and people get into a natter argument within an example over whether the show used the right one. Also, even if a clear-cut factual error's made, pointing it out on the works page itself just sparks fan Justifying Edits like crazy.
"And for the first time in weeks, I felt the boredom go away!"
Zzzzzzzzzz
They were flagged as subjective to put the "don't put examples on the works page" banner. We're working on getting rid of the subjective label.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
♏
^^ Ha! Thought I was the only one.
I'm liking the banners being on Did Not Do The Research pages. Hopefully they'll discourage the idea that getting something wrong is automatically a trope.
Support stupid freshness, yo.
Zzzzzzzzzz
They may not be tropes exactly, but they are not subjective.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
♏
But the banner doesn't say it's subjective. Is the banner that's in place now being removed?
edited 7th Oct '10 8:02:15 AM by macroscopic
Support stupid freshness, yo.
Perpetually Confused
Thats coz the banner was just changed.
They were flagged as subjective to put the "don't put examples on the works page" banner. We're working on getting rid of the subjective label.Except they are. Unless the story's practically a documentary, it's going to inevitably either screw up some detail somewhere, or deliberately fudge the rules to make the plot work. That's what Willing Suspension of Disbelief is for. "This story got some factual detail about some subject wrong" is People Sitting On Chairs: the subjective part is how fine a comb you brush through the plot to find the problems. Beyond a certain point, people are going to disagree on whether a particular nitpick should count, especially when it comes down to controversial fields like psychology or physics where there's at least one crackpot theory, or huffy skeptic, to cover practically any possibility a story uses (write a story about DID? DID doesn't exist according to these experts! Write one that says it doesn't exist? DID does exist according to these other experts!).
For example, does Star Trek make physicists cry for giving a Hand Wave to relativity, or is it Shown Their Work because the Cochrane warp drive closely resembles the Alcubierre warp drive? Or does that even count, since the real-life theory only came after the show, or do the remaining differences between the Alcubierre drive and the fictional Star Trek drive mean it makes Alcubierre cry too, or is it exempt entirely because clearly it's relying on a fictional branch of physics we haven't yet discovered? That's the subjective, natter-spawning part.
edited 7th Oct '10 8:59:24 AM by BritBllt
"And for the first time in weeks, I felt the boredom go away!"
The Shadows Devour You.
Sounds more like something that requires discussion to me. If only people didn't ignore the discussion page...
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.
Totally agreed about people ignoring the Discussion pages. <_<
Hmm, let me put it another way: almost no one would seriously complain that Somewhere An Aerodynamicist Is Crying because Superman can fly, or Santa has flying reindeer. But why not? Because we know that's not the point, that the writers aren't lunatics who believe that people and reindeer can fly, they're just using Rule of Cool, Magic A Is Magic A or Applied Phlebotinum to make the story work. And that's where the subjective part comes in. There's an understood line where these research/crying tropes give way to the MST3K Mantra and Willing Suspension of Disbelief, but people will disagree on where that line's drawn: fans will come up with convoluted rationales for even the most blatant mistake, while haters won't suspended disbelief for even the slightest deviation from reality.
edited 7th Oct '10 10:18:32 AM by BritBllt
"And for the first time in weeks, I felt the boredom go away!"
Zzzzzzzzzz
"Subjective" means that it is a matter of opinion whether something applies. The Fail Forever and Are Crying tropes aren't subjective. You can look at the work, and look at the actual subject and say "Yes, they got it wrong, or "No, they didn't get it wrong."
Whether it matters that they got it wrong isn't in the purview of the Fail Forever and Are crying pages. Whether it did or didn't break the willing suspension of disbelief for any one person is both subjective and irrelevant. They either got it right or got it wrong.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Either way, they can go on the Trivia tab, as they are not storytelling tropes — beyond the fact that most times, they aren't things that matter a single dingleberry in storytelling except that they dump some people out of their Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
^^ Okay, so did Harry Potter get the fact that there's no such thing as magic wrong? Does Superman get the fact that people can't fly wrong? Where do we draw the line? Some people don't draw the line anywhere short of absolute realism, and hate science fiction and fantasy on principle. I know people who actually will dismiss such works with "people can't fly" and "people can't cast spells by waving around wands". For them, whole genres fall into the category of Critical Research Failure. But tor genre fans, the line's drawn somewhere higher.
Either way, they can go on the Trivia tab, as they are not storytelling tropes — beyond the fact that most times, they aren't things that matter a single dingleberry in storytelling except that they dump some people out of their Willing Suspension Of Disbelief. Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean. People differ on how easily they're dumped out of their suspension of disbelief. On the one hand, it's easy to say that a specific fact was wrong in the story: they cited pi and got the number wrong for no in-universe reason. That's simple enough. But then we get into gray areas like sounds in space: are they a research failure, or a narrative convention used for the audience's benefit? And then there are breaks from reality that the story actually depends on, like magic existing or FTL travel. That's where the line starts depending on how easily a particular viewer's snapped out of the story.
And then we have the franchises that have been going for decades and the writers have long since covered what might have originally been a research failure with a million and one All There in the Manual rationales by now. Star Wars and the Kessell Run goof is a famous one.
edited 7th Oct '10 11:39:21 AM by BritBllt
"And for the first time in weeks, I felt the boredom go away!"
The Shadows Devour You.
Subjective it is then. Convinced me at any rate.
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.
No, Trivia is better. It will forestall some pointless arguments about what is subjective and what isn't.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Lost in Space
Not to put too fine a point on it, but these multiple namespaces need to get collapsed. As it is, it's very difficult for a novice troper to know while editing a page whether an example goes in Just Bugs Me, Fridge, Subjectives, Natter, Trivia, Analysis, etc., ad nauseam.
Heck, it's difficult for me to keep it straight, and I usually end up simply deleting questionable examples rather than going to the effort of copying and pasting them to subpages.
It's also the case that subpages don't show up on your watchlist automatically, so it's very difficult to police an article that I'm curating if I didn't notice that it got those pages created.
edited 7th Oct '10 11:46:11 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
it might be nice if they had a little tag at the top of them when you clicked on them that said what they were for.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
adopting kitteh
FTR, I don't see how the Fail Forever "tropes?" are subjective.
Where do we draw the line?There are pretty lot of places to draw the line, but if you want to go down the slippery slope, let me tell you, the next-to-last line is drawn at Anthropic Principle (ie.: "things are the way they are because they are"). Do not confuse it, however, with the MST3K Mantra.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but these multiple namespaces need to get collapsededited 7th Oct '10 5:47:22 PM by SilentReverence
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?
I see the Awesomeness.
What do we do if someone invokes one of the Fail tropes internally? When the subject it's on is misunderstood by one of the characters, somebody corrects them. Is that lampshading one of them? Hm, perhaps a horde of Thats A Common Misconception tropes should be YKTTW'd.
Fight smart, not fair.
adopting kitteh
If a subject is just misunderstood then that's it, at most it could be troping conversation, or conversational troping, or whatever. If one character musinderstands the subject, something happens because of that, and then he is called on it for it, then that's a You Fail X Forever, just seen in-universe. At least that's how I see the trope(?) working.
Sorry some of your content was filtered by some wannabe program version: people simply being wrong about subject X is not You Fail X Forever.
edited 7th Oct '10 10:48:13 PM by SilentReverence
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?
A better idea is happening in this thread. Imma lock this one so we can consolidate the discussion.
edited 7th Oct '10 10:51:30 PM by FastEddie
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
This is not, to my eyes, a subjective trope. Somewhere, an Equestrian Is Crying describes a situation where a horse is not cared for in a realistic manner and yet the horse neither gets upset about it or hurt by it. Why is it on subjective tropes?
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.