This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From Cassandra Confession Discussion
Susan Davis: I'd like to nominate Purloined Letter Confession as a replacement name for this trope. Cassandra, while widely disbelieved, wasn't deceptive... and Poe's "The Purloined Letter" is arguably this trope applied to something other than a Secret Identity.
Seth: I would like to veto that since i have never heard of that story.
Tabby: But the letter was actually disguised as something else -- turned inside-out and with someone else's seal on it, if my memory of the Wishbone adaptation is correct -- while what's happening in this trope is the unvarnished truth.
Seth: If that's true then it isn't even an example of the trope.
Robert: Cassandra told truths no one believed, which fits this trope well enough. I think there are some cases where a character tells the truth without deceptive intent, but isn't believed because the truth is too outrageous, which would also fall under this trope.
Fast Eddie: Finding myself in a territory where I might be disagreeing with Robert. A scary place, indeed. The intent of the trope is truth presented as a lie. Cassandra is not on. No intent to lie. Purloined Letter is not on. No intent to truth.
We need a kinds-of-lies category. This is one of them: truth as a lie.
Seth: I like this name, its mnemonic and while not spot on i think it works. That and i can't think of a better one (Just please dont use "Purloined Letter", i would never remember that)
If you really fixed on the name change idea how about Sarcastic Confession, its just as mnemonic and it fits the trope to a T. (Since Rob rewrote his entire post - including reference to mine - i moved this before Roberts post for clarification chronological order and all that)
Robert: I'd say if it's true it can't be a lie, but it can be a deception. Which categories we want depends how finely we want to dice them.
If we go by narrative function, natural categories would be
- Outright Lie - knowing falsehood spoken with intent to deceive
- Metaphor - knowing falsehood spoken without intent to deceive
- Metaphor mistakenly taken literally - standard comic device
- Spin - carefully selected truths, intended to deceive, the hallmark of advertisers and politicians.
- Truth - plain truth, spoken without deceptive intent.
- Cassandra - Truth that is not believed.
The trope on this page is a sub-type of spin - plain truth, deceptively presented to imply it's false. If they intended to be believed, they'd present things differently.
We could conflate it with with Cassandra - they're both instances of a truth not believed, though for different reasons - but the two concepts serve different narrative purposes, so I'd prefer to split them.
If we do, Sarcastic Confession would be a good name for this page. Cassandra Confession would be the page for examples where someone tries to tell the truth, but isn't believed, and we might also want The Cassandra for the character who does this regularly - the prophet-of-doom-crying-in-the-wilderness type.
Oh, and 'scary'? Disagreeing with me? Since when? I could introduce you to dozens of people who've done that, not all of them dead.
Fast Eddie: Not all of them dead? So reassured. :-)
I think you are on to something meaty, here, with Deceptions as an index. Your breakdown is right on ... frack it. I'll put up Deceptions with your splits, and we shall see what comes.
Mr Batty: I swear, I've seen a sarcastic confession semi-backfire at some point. Any sufficiently naive or trusting character could accept it as truth, like a Fool or a Ditz. Obviously, no one believes the Fool, which sets up ten types of irony, and interesting reactions all around. I'm going to try and find some of these. Can anyone think of an example of this?
