This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Cassy: What about calling it "You fail astrophysics forever"? Or is there already a larger category with a similar name?
Willy Four Eyes: I think this trope name sounds better...It brings to mind the "Windmills do not work that way!" line from Futurama. I'd really not like to overuse the "You Fail X Forever" Trope categories...at least not for now. *shrug*
Large Blunt Object: I feel You Fail X Forever is kind of overused, and since "astrophysics" is actually an inaccurate blanket term for these tropes this title is more appropriate and descriptive (yes, the inspiration was "Windmills do not work that way!").
I put this up unilaterally rather than bothering with YKTTW (it was inspired by and composed at the same time as Space Is Cold) so if there are serious complaints/flaws, edit away, but I think it's a useful category.
Cassy: OK, I get your points guys. I had actually missed the windmills reference even though I know it, shame on me. I confess I have a soft spot for the "You fail X forever" categories, the titles make me laugh all the time. It sounds so... definite and it gives me an image of a troper pointing threateningly at a film director, Phoenix Wright-like. "You fail biology forever! You fail logic forever! You suck!" "Noooooooo!"
- Question to Large Blunt Object: just out of curiosity, what would be a more accurate category?
Large Blunt Object: Um. This one? Astrophysics, as far as I know, covers the how and why of celestial phenomena, relativity, gravity, electromagnetism, all manner of stuff, but rarely does it encompass "what happens when you chuck a monkey in a vacuum". Space Does Not Work That Way does.
And hell, some people seem to like it.
Cassy: Hahaha XD! Congrats!
GALX: Can't find exactly the right trope to put this. I just watched Episode 5 Series 3 of Enterprise where someone explains that the shuttle has taken damage blocking an inlet, so the engines don't work properly. They were in a vacuum ...
Haven: What does the picture have to do with this trope? It's good pulpy sci-fi, but it's not much of a demonstration of what this trope covers.
Mercy: No? Well Your Mileage May Vary, but I'd say that "pulpy sci-fi" pretty much embodies this trope, since it favours dramatic but wildly unscientific depictions of space. Specifically:
- The monster represents the hideous indestructibility of bad-science space tropes.
- The red-shirt's cracked helmet is a Shout-Out to Explosive Decompression.
- The Captain's futile plasma-gun (itself a bad-science trope, see Frickin' Laser Beams) represents the helplessness of science to combat stupid sci-fi to the point where complete falsehoods are widely accepted as accurate.
- And the Hot Scientist explains the joke...
Haven: Okay, but that's all about bad science fiction tropes, and the picture still has little to nothing to do with space, the specific topic of this article.
Carley: How do we feel about a new subtrope involving ships with artificial gravity shaking at small impacts? The ship shakes, but the gravity should shake in the exact same way so that the people inside would feel no effect. You might still feel turbulence in an atmosphere, where you're dealing with friction and a gravity well, but even then it's probably not going to look remarkably like someone shaking the camera. Is there already a trope like this?
Mercy: That's a tricky one, since so much depends on how you imagine "artificial gravity" working. On a spaceship or space-station using rotational pseudo-gravity, for example, a sufficient impact would make the floor lurch under your feet. Star-Trek refers to "gravity plates" which presumably "pull" objects straight down, and again you'd probably feel the floor lurching about. Of course space-opera often features "acceleration compensators", and if they were fast enough to react to instantaneous accelerations, they might neutralise the effect of impacts, but that's even further in the realms of Applied Phlebotinum than artificial gravity.
