This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Look Irony up launched as Irony: From YKTTW
The irony of tvtropes.org launched as Irony: From YKTTW
Working Title: Definition of Irony: From YKTTW
I have to object to the "Verbal Irony" section. It says you have to mean the opposite of what you say (which isn't entirely incorrect), but the words themselves reveal that the writer had this confused with a simple lie. What's more, (most) sarcasm is a form of irony, not something different; indeed, irony is in any competent definition of "sarcasm". To help you out, by the way, a lie is when you do mean exactly what you say, but what you say isn't true. Irony is when you don't mean exactly what you say. If you say you're feeling fine when you're really angry, and you WANT people to believe you're feeling fine, that's not irony - it's a lie. In fact, saying you're feeling fine when you're clearly angry is closer to being irony, though of course the intent is a factor too. —Heroic Jay
Lord TNK: I wrote that verbal irony is not meaning what you say, and I wrote at the end that wanting people to believe is a lie and not verbal irony. Did you even take the time to read it properly, or just skim it and assume I didn't know what I was writing?
- I added a few extra parts to the paragraph about being upset. Does that clear it up?
- Heroic Jay: No, it doesn't clear it up in the slightest because you're still making the same mistake. If you're deliberately trying to make people believe that you're calm when you're upset, you're not using irony; you're just lying. You are saying that you're calm and you're meaning that you're calm - you're just not being honest about it. I think you misunderstand the term yourself, frankly. I also believe that your About a Boy example is completely wrong, but it's hard to know without being familiar with the source material. And you're also still saying that sarcasm is not irony; I reiterate that any dictionary definition of sarcasm that I've ever seen in my life contains the word "irony".
Lord TNK: I wrote that denying you were angry in an angry was NOT irony. You're reading it wrong. I explicitly stated that it's irony when it's instead denial where you want the fact that you are angry to come across.
- And I don't take kindly to caveat just editing the WHOLE page, and THEN trying to ykttw that we split it. I'm restoring it, and he should take it up in discussion before he tries to change the whole thing.
- CaveatLector: It doesn't really matter what you "don't take kindly too". You're coming perilously close to "article ownership" here. If you have a problem with my edits ADDRESS THEM. The article as it is written right now is a clusterf*ck.
Vampie Buddha: May I ask why this is under Useful Notes? Useful Notes is supposed to be historical, geographical, and cultural information which helps us understand foreign media better. Irony, on the other hand, is an actual, formal, bona fide trope. It would be better to list it in Universal Tropes and Omnipresent Tropes.
Any objections?
By the way, good writeup.
Lord TNK: It's also to explain how to properly use it (which is why the section it's under is for language). So those would be additional indexes.
Lord TNK: Caveat Lector is trying to re-write the whole thing, and just delcaring he/she knows better, and refusing to at least bring it up in discussion first (that user has done this in other tropes, and I believe even got banned for it). Any help here?
Caveat Lector: Has done this before? (WHERE?) Believe got banned for it (WTF?! I just discovered this site no more than a couple weeks ago!) Lord TNK, you seem to have a big problem with lying. Please try and get over yourself. You want a discussion of the changes, FINE:
The prose of the article, which I assume is YOUR prose from how strongly you are reacting, has the style of a mediocre high schooler at best. It not only sounds "conversational", but it nears a first person dialogue and almost seems like a bad lecture is being given. "Now irony can overlap with those, but just by themselves, they are not irony. This is where the confusion of the meaning of the work usually starts. People try to apply it where it doesn't belong." Does this actually sound like good style to you? Really? Also starting a page with What irony is not" is totally silly because the page is on IRONY and not WHAT IRONY IS NOT.
Then there's this gem: "In a nutshell, this is the use of constant questioning in order to reveal the truth of any position. You know how kids like to ask "Why?" no matter the answer? This is the more sophisticated version. You keep feigning ignorance of the topic, in order to force the other person to explain it further." Which is JUST PLAIN WRONG. A child asking "Why" is not Socratic irony. Socratic irony is feigning ignorance in order for a person you are arguing with to dig themselves a hole logically. It's based on the SOCRATIC method. Perhaps reading a bit of PLATO would help you understand this.
If you had even paid attention to the article at The Other Wiki, you would have noticed that "cosmic" and "historical" irony are not only SUBTROPES of "Situational Irony", but that the article breaks TheOtherWiki's cardinal rule of not citing sources. In other words, there's no way to tell if somebody made that sh*t up.
Look at THIS: "Again, you have to mean the opposite of what you say." NO! Verbal irony does not work on a juvenile and unsophisticated idea of "opposites". When The Robot Devil asks Leela for "her hand" the fact that he meant "her hand in marriage" is NOT the opposite of her literal hand. It's just another meaning. THAT'S THE POINT. "The use of words in a manner inconsistent with their literal intention." There's nothing about "opposites" or "sarcasm" here.
The article as it stands now reads like a horribly cobbled together group of incorrect facts garnered from butchering the article at The Other Wiki. For Christ's sake, before you deign to claim any authority on this, you might want to try reading Aristotle, who goes into this topic AT LENGTH. And coming on to YKTTW or onto this discussion page and simply whining and lying about a fellow troper just won't cut it. I'm changing the article back to something COHERENT. AGAIN.
Lord TNK: I'm not even going to respond to any of that. You know why? You deleted the index, without putting another it its place. What kind of troper are you to think a page doesn't need and index?
Caveat Lector: Like I said, one who is slightly new at this. And now that I've told you why I made the changes, you're unwilling to participate in discussion? Really?
Lord TNK: Okay, if you're new here, your user name, and the way you keep insisting you know a definition better, is similar to someone who did get banned for just this. You think you know better, take it up on ykttw, and be cordial about it.
- And no, I wrote you were to discuss it before you changed things, not after. That's why I'm not responding to that, because it's just telling us you know better than us, when most of what I wrote was already discussed on ykttw before I launched.
Caveat Lector: I followed that ykttw, and it yes, it was discussed...and then you summarily ignored the discussion when you launched it. The page you have here shows little to know resemblance to the discussion that took place there. Also, I am not "disagreeing" with an "us". The only person that seems to be opposing any changes to the article whatsoever is YOU (singular). And once again, this is not about me just saying that "I know better". The changes I made were based on making the page more coherent and more in line with the style present on most of the other Trope pages. The article as written fails to make much of any sense. and AGAIN, if you were to look at the wiki page and actually read it, you would see that Cosmic and Historical irony are merely forms of situational irony in particular contexts and that no sources are cited here. As far as "just knowing better" goes, you are the one who has cited nothing whatsoever, not even a broad citation such as Aristotle (who basically set down these concepts for the first time). What we really have here is you holding onto some sort of ownership for this article, which does not give a reader a firm grasp on what irony actually is. Now, I'm tired of simply arguing at you (as opposed to with you, because you still only dismiss what I say with this "disagreement" ridiculousness), so if there IS a place where we can take this to get more opinions (and YKTTW is NOT supposed to be for that, or so I thought) then let's do it so we can actually get a decent article rather than rambling nonsense.
Lord TNK: First of all, look up Walls of Text. Second, I did not ignore it. I gave a description, and I was told it just covered one type of irony. No one objected to me expanding it, which is what I did. And you misread my comment about ykttw. I did not mean for you to follow that discussion. I meant for you to start your own about redoing the description.
But before you do that, I do agree and index for the different types would be better. Let me work on that first. Okay?
Caveat Lector: "look up Wallsof Text". Your inability or unwillingness to read is a personal problem. Deal with it on your own time. The fact that I do not dumb things down and condense them for you does not mean your first response to seeing something I say should be "OMFG SO MUCH TO READ!!". But yes, OK, but why don't we work on that TOGETHER (i.e., why don't you let me help with some edits?) Despite the vitriol here, I definitely see you've done some good work on a good number of trope pages. But this is supposed to be collaborative.
Tragic Irony seems at best to be a bastardization of Dramstic Irony. I think that it is, simply, an unfortunate coincidence, something that is not ironic. Rain on one's wedding day would be ironic if it were held in the Sahara Desert, during a long drought or indoors, where the sprinkler system had started an artificial "rain."
Lord TNK: You obviously missed the point of walls of text (hint, read the second paragraph). And you lost a few points by stating what you "think" tragic irony is. That is part of what I meant by Personal Dictionary. You can't go by what you think something means. That's why I've been asking people what irony means before I even brought this up on ykttw. That's part of the reason I won't accept you just changing the whole thing out of the blue. You just assume I made this up all by myself, when I went by several sources just to double check. I'm a history major. I know all about research and checking my sources.
Yes, this site doesn't require notability, but when it comes to Useful Notes, it's kind of frowned upon for any troper who Did Not Do The Research. Not that I'm claiming you did, but that you seem to be thinking I did that.
Either way, I'm still going to split this. later on.
"Caveat Lector" was not the one who wrote about Tragic Irony, sorry about the confusion. Please, do not blame him if the comment is wrong.
Caveat Lector: Mysterious commenter, I think it helps if you begin your posts with your tropername...
Lord TNK, I'm sorry for assuming you did not do the research, but it would be helpful if you actually talked about that research. I am a Ph.D. student in Classics, so I've studied irony quite a bit in the past and am a big fan of Aristotle's Poetics. My revisions in the article were based upon what I've previously come across, and from my experience it seems that you (and those you've talked to, apparently) have misunderstood irony and its forms. I'm sorry if I sounded harsh before. I can be a bit blunt at times.
Lord TNK: Okay, I have been thinking on how to rewrite this, and I just need a few days to get things done. What I will likely do is split this into different pages, use your descriptions to summarize, and then go into greater detail for the individual pages.
Inkblot: So it's not "something that Alanis Morissette understands"? But what about this?
So, about that Futurama entry...technically, wouldn't the devil ending up on the bad end of a deal with the devil be ironic?
Heatwizard: There's a lot of these examples that aren't irony. The Seven Beauties thing? Not irony. Those are just bad decisions of which you've been shown the outcome. The Weird Al thing? Not irony. The history of mankind is not ironic, just CIRCULAR. Cyclical. The Eight Bit theater one is not double irony, only single irony.
I'm sorry, I just...everyone I know continually misuses the term, and it drives me INSANE.
...But of course, in hindsight, misuses of the word irony on the page about irony and the misuses of the term is in fact an amazing demonstration of irony, which would be right at home on this very page.
I need to go lie down.
