Discussion Main / AudienceAlienatingEra

This new name is just kinda strange, I prefer the simpler older one.

A Hide / Show Replies

After watching Todd in the Shadows' review on Katy Perry's Witness album, it's a missed opportunity that we didn't rename this trope as Flop Era.

ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔|I DO COMMISSIONS|ᜇᜎᜈ᜔ᜇᜈ᜔

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: I was cleaning up the examples for this . . ., started by feotakahari on Sep 7th 2011 at 7:29:52 AM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Complaining, started by katethegr8 on Jan 28th 2015 at 5:27:12 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by MasterHero on Oct 14th 2018 at 8:29:59 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by MasterHero on Nov 8th 2018 at 7:22:35 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Misused, started by MasterHero on Jun 9th 2020 at 5:37:26 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Many entries in the Dork Age article seem to be written just to express annoyance for annoyance's sake. Seriously, someone once wrote Brian Michael Bendis' Superman before that story had just started publication. I think I know how to specify when does an entry in a long-running franchise qualifies as a Dork Age:

1. It has to be a critical and financial disappointment

2. Any changes it brought to the series must be undone by later installments

3. Whenever it's referenced by other entries, it has to be done in a negative manner.

What do you think?

Edited by MasterHero Hide / Show Replies

So, would any of you consider the current state of game shows as being in the most severe Dork Age the medium has ever seen?

Someone. Anyone. Please sort out the video game section. Even with the unfortunately loose definition of this trope, its become a lot of complaining about things you don't like. I don't know enough about most of it, but to be a dork age, as I understand it, some sort of change in direction needs to happen. A couple of bad games does not a dork age make. I just don't know enough to know which is which.

this is offensive an totally subjetive. Even the "dork" age tite implies mockery. This comics may not be perfect, but, hell, none of them are

There is nothing wrong with the way the current Oz entry is written. However, I still want to save the original version here:

• Oz, the terse, taut HBO drama about, shanking, prison rape and the impossibility of redemption, started off mightily strong for its first few seasons, kickstarted a few careers and got a lot of attention... and then, following the murder of Big Bad Simon Adebisi completely ran out of ideas and floundered pathetically for its final two seasons, going through all the horrible motions of the Dance of the Dying TV Show. New characters were introduced only to be unceremoniously murdered and forgotten, relationships sparked up and died out as abruptly and obnoxiously as a loud fart in a quiet church, characters were wildly derailed, carefully crafted storylines were trashed and hurled away until the show's fans were almost begging for the poor show to be put down. And then, in the midst of this Seasonal Rot, the program completely lost its shit and tipped itself headfirst into a raging Dork Age like none of us had ever dreamed possible. What could be worse than the aforementioned Rot, you ask? Wee-elll, there was the short-lived storyline where one character was used as a medical guinea pig and given drugs that caused him to rapidly age and become an old man. Yes, friends, the taut prison drama about forced mansex and shivs made out of toothbrushes had so badly run out of ideas, they introduced a storyline featuring magic aging pills. Whatever drugs caused this nonsense either wore off or all the writers got arrested or something, because next episode this hilarious nonsense was Handwaved out of existence (and magically undone WITH MAGIC) so hard and so fast it created a vacuum that sucked the show right off of the air.

• For two games, Mortal Kombat was one of the most successful fighting games out there. The third game had a more mixed reception, but was still popular enough. And then came the Polygon Ceiling. Mortal Kombat 4 was a more-or-less unfinished game that failed to transition the series to 3D, and Mortal Kombat Special Forces was so horrible it nearly killed the entire franchise. Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance pulled the franchise out of the grave, only for Deception and Armageddon to rebury it thanks to poorly-implemented gameplay mechanics, no competitive balance, an influx of silly minigame modes, scrappy characters, and an increasingly incomprehensible storyline. And then Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe took out the gore (the only thing that made MK special), a move that bankrupted already-struggling Midway. Fans and critics agree, however, that Mortal Kombat 9 has done a lot for bringing the series out of its Dork Age and back to its roots.
  • Mortal Kombat 4 was far from being an "unfinished game that hit the 3D ceiling and failed to transition the series to 3D". Sadly enough, this mistake is very usual, mainly because it was the first 3D game and nowadays the game is no longer that impressive. Mortal Kombat 4 was very well received, and it's gameplay was very faithful to the 2D games, thing that Ed Boon (Mortal Kombat main producer) wanted all along. It's funny people consider it an "unfinished game", since Midway EVEN released a 'prototype Mortal Kombat 4 game' to see what worked in 3D and what didn't.

It's probably at least a partial Repair Dont Respond, but that still leaves it in quite a mess.

Linkin Park, circa the album that What I've Done comes from (and for that matter, anyone famous who released something that year in a mad pandering-to-common-denominator-audiences cash scramble, thus alienating their fans, it seemed).

"The first Pirates of the Caribbean film was a relatively sensible story with minor supernatural elements and subtle humour. Then Dead Man's Chest comes along and all of a sudden we have an Evil Corporation, giant sea monster, deals with the devil, sea gods etc. And of course loads of slapstick comedy was added in with facepalming results. At World's End was a bit better though."

This isn't exactly making a great case for "Dork Age"; it seems to be simply listing elements of the second movie with very little explanation as to why they're bad. Is it really self-explanatory that adding a sea monster to a semi-cartoonish Disney movie about pirates is a no-no? Further, all of these persist into the third movie, though it is being called "a bit better" here. Methinks we haven't pinpointed the variable that makes you happy.

And frankly, comparing the first movie's "subtle humor" to the second one's "facepalming slapstick" makes me think that somebody didn't watch the first movie too intently. Honestly, go watch the first movie and just count the number of times people get smacked in the head.

I'll admit that I'm a big fan of the movies, but I do have to say that I have yet to encounter anyone with complaints about the sequels that don't ultimately amount to "ew, it's a sequel! It has sequel cooties!" I can acknowledge when somebody makes a good point against movies that I like, but I hope in this instance I've made a logical enough case to justify taking this particular entry down for now.

Hey. big fan of the site. no idea how to edit. just wanted to chime in in case anybody want to add this under "real life" examples... gibson guitars have been in a mega-retarded dark age for the last ten years. All of their new guitar designs have been lame novelties, and in general their branding has gone from advertising to real artists to 40-year old suburban dads having a midlife crisis. No real musician I know would be caught dead playing a Gibson guitar. If they want a vintage sound, they go for Fender or Epiphone, if they want modern sounds, the go for Ibanez, Schecter, or a custom luthiered guitar. Look at the "robot" guitar, or the Firebird X and tell me it isn't as dork age as 300 Wolverine clones attacking a pouch factory.

Granted, I'm not familiar with all the examples, but many of the Music examples seem more like one-album 'change of pace' stuff rather than an attempt by the artist to change their style permanently. I'm not sure they fit this trope.

Occasionally, artists will do something different, just for one album, as a change of pace. Even Weird Al Yankovic has done so, with the 'Peter and the Wolf' album. It was not an attempt to change from parodying and style-parodying recent work to parodying classical music, it was just a change of pace.

And maybe some of the examples in the Music section are really just changes of pace that were never intended to stick. They have to be considered on a case-by-case basis, and those that were never intended to stick should be removed.

Really, Dork Age is about a failed attempt to stay fresh. The people involved make a change, and after the change receives some negative backlash, they stop doing the failed new thing and, in many cases, go back to doing what they do best.

Does anyone consider the current Grounded arc in Superman a Dork Age? It's not even finished yet and it's here? The fact that this is an ARC as far as I know and it being treated as an editorial mandate notwithstanding.

Sometimes life just sucks. You have to learn to take the good with the bad. Why should you expect anything different in the mediums?

Huh. Did I misread something? Ignore, I'm sleep-deprived.

Edited by 94.9.133.108

Would Endless Eight count as an example?

You got some dirt on you. Here's some more! Hide / Show Replies

There is absolutely no way a Game Boy Color link cable can connect to Game Boy Advance software. None. That's completely out of the Pokémon developers' hands.

Tentatively removing this:

• The fifth season of The West Wing, while handicapped from the beginning by Aaron Sorkin writing the plot into a corner before leaving, is rarely spoken of by fans aside from an excellent episode involving the Supreme Court. Things got back to the usual quality the next season before a truly outstanding final season.
  • Um...no, things did not. Sorry, but this point doesn't even allow a Your Mileage May Vary. No one who understands the concept of quality and has seen both a Sorkin episode and a post-Sorkin episode could say that season six returned the show to its usual standards. The West Wing remained far, far below Sorkin-era quality for its last three seasons. However, the question of whether seasons six and seven still qualified as "good" despite the quality drop can be discussed.

Because the Justifying Edit makes it an intensely ugly entry. I don't actually watch The West Wing, so I have no idea who's right here. Decided it would be best to move everything here. If there's someone there who has watched the show and knows whether or not the fifth season is actually a Dork Age (thereby solving this whole debacle), that'd be great.

Edited by Crowbar Hide / Show Replies