Working Title: But The Trees WERE Epileptic: From YKTTW
—- WVI: I'm finding the evocation of this trope to be ridiculously overused. It'll get to the point where you're reading about Stewart Little, and someone will chime in with "This series is about a talking mouse. SERIOUSLY. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP". I mean, I get it guys. I've seen fiction before. Stuff like this should be exclusively reserved for stuff that actually seems like someone would have trouble believing you; that's the point.
Charred Knight: I agree, the only time I remember using this was for a scene in the Mai-Hime manga which was a Lotus-Eater Machine so over the top that I wanted to empasize someone made something that crazy. I should state that this should be used only for extraordinary circumstances, for example people put Mario in the game version when a lot of NES games where like that. It's just the video games for the NES where more creative than today where almost every game is set in a fairly realistic world. —- Kriegsmesser: I would like to formally request that tropers stop potholing to this quite so much. We have It Makes Sense in Context for a reason. —- Sikon: Ten points for the Evangelion reference. —- 01d55: Sorry about the two minor edits that aren't marked as such. I thought the "as draft" checkbox triggered preview post functionality, but I guess not. —- Twin Bird: Does this page really need spoiler tags?
Ununnilium: Depends on the spoiler. —- Ununnilium: Not actually a twist:
- The entire being of Optimus Prime from the Transformers can be stored in a Five and a Quarter inch floppy disk.
Neither is midichlorians. Some of the stuff in the part with the FMA manga might not be, either, but that stuff confuses me. —- Fencedude: Pulled out the Bleach entry. I don't even read the manga anymore and I saw that one coming a mile away. —- Sikon: For the last time, partially obscuring swear words is ugly and pointless.
Air Of Mystery: (sighs in a Charles Bronson-like manner).
Fast Eddie: Swiss cheese! —- Adam 850: BTW, I suggested the name here after columnist Dave Barry's catchphrase in his articles. He'd often write "I'm not making this up" before pointing out something ridiculous. —- Ununnilium: From Harry Potter, taking out:
- Ditto with the revelation that Snape was doing it all for love. Love of Harry's mother, even.
...because that was hinted at pretty well, IMHO.
Dr Dedman: Seconded, that bit may form the core of a trope to come "the mysterious sound the dog made in the night". (Characterization by what is NOT said). More than a few people noticed (I did about book 4 or 5) that Snape NEVER says anything about Harry's mom. Connect it with Petunia's "that horrible boy" and that was NOT a big shock.
Mrs. Weasley's Ripply moment WAS out of left-field.
Random 832: You have to remember though, at the time we had (or thought we had) Word of God that Snape did not love anyone.
Bob: I removed the Lucky Number Slevin example. It is to plausible to really be considered an I Am Not Making This Up. —- Ununnilium: Pulled the last couple of lines of the quote back out; it's funnier in isolation this way. (one hour later) Vader: And oh yeah, the Force, that's actually microscopic bacteria found in your bloodstrem called midecloreans. Luke: Look if you're not gonna take this seriously, I really don't see the need to be here. —- Also, Locke's father is Sawyer (not the Sawyer on the island, but the Sawyer who "inspired" him to become a con man by conning his parents out of everything).
Tabby: Not to be as snarky as I undoubtedly sound, but...seriously? I called that one back in the second season (and did an annoying little "Called it!" dance upon the reveal).
Heart Burn Kid: Yup, seriously. Got revealed towards the end of Season 3.
Tabby: What I meant was, "Seriously? People were surprised by that?" Hence the apology for snark. —- Calling shenanigans on some of these Rah Xephon spoilers. "Quon Kisaragi is Ayato's real mother": I thought that he and Itsuki were cloned from her, or something like that? And "Ayato's biological mother is reborn as his daughter after he "retunes" the world.": I thought the daughter was just named after her? —Document N —- Ununnilium: The Okami one seems only mildly unlikely, to me. Dragon Quest too.
Later: Thus, taking out:
- Okami: You'd think the Big Bad would be Orochi, the 8-headed-snake-bell-hill-thing, but he's beaten as one of the first few boss fights, and again on the last continent, and again in a Boss Rush, as standard to Capcom games.. He's actually The Dragon to a giant sphere controlled by what seems to be a black-and-blue baby seal. Makes you wonder why they didn't give you a club in this game...
...because it seems just like Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, and taking out:
- In Dragon Quest VIII, the hero's pet mouse is his grandfather. Oh, and he — that is, the hero — is really a prince. Oh, and btw, he's not human, he's really at least part dragon.
- None of this is mentioned in the game, until you get to the Bonus Dungeon. An interesting aside — seeing this changes the ending, as the hero, now being royalty, can marry the girl that got away after all.
...because it seems like a standard Changeling Fantasy. Lale: Maybe it's just me, but the wording makes this look like the trope definition to me: "This is a phenomenon when a viewer accidentally receives spoilers but doesn't believe that they could possibly be real because it seems too crazy to be true." If that is only one of the ways this trope applies, I think it should be changed. Is it? —- Sci Vo: The actual trope is (or should be), "When what actually happens would sound like Epileptic Trees if you simply stated it." I'm too busy/lazy right now to invest concentration in figuring out where to insert that, and then what else would have to be changed to make it all flow/hang together with the insertion.
Servbot: Moved the Metal Gear Solid, Xenosaga, and Star Ocean examples from anime to video games
Ununnilium: Pulling out:
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash reads like a compendium of Cyber Punk Epileptic Trees theories about corporate statism, the Internet, the beginnings of human language, Mafia-owned pizza franchises, Fed Ex, and neurology.
...because this is about things that are wildly unexpected in the book, rather than books about things that count as wild theories in Real Life. —- Sole Sakuma: About the Naruto examples... I called the first one after watching the first episode. I haven't seen another one after that. I mean, in any case, it was so obvious that it's unbelievable. —- Lord Seth: Can someone adjust the Sluggy Frelance example? It's fairly badly written and I don't know enough about the comic to fix it without possibly messing it up.
Ununnilium: I'm just gonna pull it out; I could tell there was going to be another Bun-Bun, from the present, from the moment they mentioned "twin-fits". ...okay, Eric Burns could, and I read his article on it. Shut up.
- in sluggy freelance blacksoul is bunbun in the obsidian teknokon. and the one in the teknokon is the one from the rest of the comic's present. and he can fly.
—- Ronfar: Been fixing this page, a little... still needs work, but I'm bored. —- Citizen: Bluenose Bowdlerizer, leave the ZP quote alone. And the first quote is long enough for this entry, so moved this one back to Video Game Examples. —-
- Ki TA: So, what happened here?
- Yeah, and why the name change? I didn't see anything like that being talked about at I Am Not Making This Up Discussion.
- Namta: I am not on board with the name change. Really am not.
Charred Knight: Apparently It was on YKTTW, I didn't know until I brought it up on the forums and made an ass of myself, but apparently they fixed the problem with having to type Main in everytime so they split the different multi part tropes into their own section. I am also on board as HATING the name change since it doesn't tell you what the trope is about, and I Am Not Making This Up just sounded better.
Fast Eddie: I Am Not Making This Up has a problem in that it has that first-person thing going on. You can't use it without either opening up the whole "Who is 'I', in this case?" question or inviting natter. No body is married to No Really. It would be easy to change it something else. Suggestions?
Citizen: I was not aware that "that first-person thing" was such a serious problem. >_>
Fast Eddie: It may not be. My sense, though, is most places where I Am Not Making This Up is used, it will be either in a "this troper" paragraph, or immediately above one. It sets a tone for natter. I'm interested in making it clear, especially for folks new to the wiki, that discussion is welcome on the discussion page, but we'd like to keep the articles clear of it. When they see "I" in an article, it seems like an invitation to project themselves into the article.
Sarge: The first person thing didn't seem like a problem to me. Seems like a bad reason to change a funny, interesting name to something so...dry. Just clean up natter if it happens, it's not like you can't remove it, seriously. >_>
Ninjacrat: I strongly suspect the wiki is divided into two non-overlapping groups: those who remove natter and those who say 'natter isn't a problem, just remove it.'
Dr Dedman: The opriginal was pithy, to the point and related to a pretty well-known bit of pop culture. This isn't some dictionary, it's supposed to be fun. No Really just substitutes a more boring quote to do the same job. Kill this, thing.
Rogue 7: Another vote for the original. Most of the uses of I Am Not Making This Up were generally potholed, from what I've seen.
Charred Knight: natter shows up primarly due to complaining. You give a person a chance to complain, and you will get paragraphs of natter. The worst case of natter was They Changed It Now It Sucks until 3/4th of the page was deleted. The second type of thing I associate with natter is where something is added that should have just been added to the example itself.
Fast Eddie: Here is a body text search for I Am Not Making This Up (search results). That's 4 uses in 16,000 pages, and yes, they are mostly potholed. One is a self-reference. The phrase is not useful as a reference to the article. Would someone like to suggest something that is both pithy and usable?
Freezair For A Limited Time: That's probably because you searched the wrong phrase: That was a body search for I'm Not Making This Up. Searching I Am Not Making This Up proper nets this:That's 1.7 kilowicks.
Fast Eddie: Huh. Well, that's depressing. 1700+ instances of self-injection into articles. Fine. I can change the name article back. //later: That's done. It took about 15 seconds. Can I interest anyone in Not Making This Up as an alternative?
Redkun: What's so wrong with a little bit of self-injection? It certainly makes things more tasteful than the dry monotone of an encyclopedia and it doesn't always lead to natter. Is TV Tropes actually becoming Serious Business?
Ninjacrat: Speaking as the guy who is personally responsible for removing (at a rough estimate) 50% of the natter on the wiki, self-injection is the number one cause of waffling and bullshit. And anything that reduces it would be a god-damned blessing.
As a side note, 'do you hate fun?' really is becoming the wiki's 'do you hate freedom?', isn't it?
Fast Eddie: An article can be fun without the writer hopping up and down and going "Me! This is ME writing." In fact, it is easier to write a fun article if you don't do that.
Tanto: Fast Eddie and Ninjacrat are being too nice.
TV Tropes Wiki isn't about you. ("You", in this context, meaning "The Contributors".) Anything that might possibly give anyone that impression needs to be annihilated with extreme prejudice. There are forums — millions of 'em — where you can talk about yourself. (Hell, we've got one.) You can start a blog and talk about yourself. You can talk about yourself all the live-long day.
But not here. We have a mission statement here, and nowhere in that mission statement does it say "catalog the opinions of anyone and everyone with enough brain cells to form a coherent thought". "Casual" does not mean "talk about anything you like". "Fun" does not mean "talk about ourselves". (I for one loathe reading "examples" that are "thing that happened to one person once".)
The wiki is more entertaining when it's not serving as peoples' diaries and autobiographies.
Master Hand}: Grandfather Clause, guys. Grandfather Clause.
Inkblot: Ok, maybe this shouldn't be cut, but this trope has been so watered down due to pothole abuse that something needs to be done. And may I suggest a name change to the original YNTTW title, "But The Trees WERE Epileptic"?
Emily: If we're concerned about these pages becoming a dumping ground for all kinds of random weirdness which may not even be that unbelievable, how about placing a note on the main I Am Not Making This Up Page encouraging people to think about which actual tropes their example of weirdness would fit into, and placing it there(or linking to that trope) instead?
Morgan Wick: Here's the problem... "unbelievable-ness" is subjective. What one person finds completely unbelievable, another may find purely par for the course.
Ki TA: Is there enough content for a "Web Original" IANMTU?
