Real trope or stealth Complaining: Cosmic Deadline

Okay, so I saw Cosmic Deadline and I got very excited thinking it was about Exact Time to Failure on a plot level and the ultimate countdown the heroes have to resolve the situation or something suitably dramatic.

Then I realized it's basically Complaining About The Plot Being Resolved Too Quickly. At the very least this is a subjective and should be marked as such. At worst it's yet another form of stealthily bitching about works and needs to be excised. It might even need a new name.

Thoughts?

Seems like this should be Gecko Ending due to being Cancelled.

The description needs a complaint-ectomy, but I'd say "in a story with multiple unrelated plot threads, they all resolve at the same time for no particular reason" is a valid trope.

Definitely not Gecko Ending. That's an adaptation-only trope that simply means the writer(s) created their own ending because the "real" one hadn't been written yet. Nothing about multiple threads, this doesn't require an adaptation...the only thing they have in common is being Ending Tropes.

edited 8th Nov '10 9:03:28 AM by Shale

Ok "rushed ending due to being cancelled".

edited 8th Nov '10 9:09:23 AM by Raso

It's not just "due to being cancelled", although that's one possible reason. It's more, "started running out of screen time/pages/editorial patience and rushed the ending". So, it depends on a number of factors:

• The author runs up against some form of deadline, whether it be within the script or due to external forces.
• There are a bazillion plot threads left unresolved.
• To avoid Leave The Plot Threads Hanging, the author starts wrapping them up at a lightning pace by handing out Epiphany Therapy, Deus Ex Machinas, Idiot Balls, you name it.

It's very closely akin to Xen Syndrome for non-interactive media.

The thing that makes it subjective is that it's a statement about the quality of the work. It also has a fairly poor example count for what seems like an established trope, given the nature of media.

edited 8th Nov '10 9:19:33 AM by Fighteer

Those could be very subjective though unless there is Word of God proof. Take Gundam Seed Destiny for one.

Edit: I got ninja edited

edited 8th Nov '10 9:22:04 AM by Raso

I suggest trimming it to the latter half of Fighteer's third bullet point. For instance:

As the story of Alice and Bob's Quest For the Holy Macguffin begins coming to a close, Alice and Bob find the artifact after months of searching. Within days of their discovery, Carol - unaware of where Alice and Bob are or what they're doing - finishes the death ray that will allow her to bend Tropia to her will. Meanwhile, the Goldfish Poop Gang stumble upon a cache of Powered Armor that allow them to Take a Level in Badass just in time for their last throwdown with the heroes.

Each of these events is the beginning of the final act of a plot thread and happens at the same time despite being unrelated in any kind of causal sense. The only reason for them all to happen at once is the metafictional one - we're coming to the climax of the book, and these are all climax-y plot points. Whether there was deadline pressure, adaptation issues, whether or not it's satisfying for the viewer - none of that matters. Just the objective part. A bunch of plot threads resolve at once, with no other in-universe cause than coincidence.

I'd go with something simple like Rushed The Ending. But it's still a subjective trope and I don't see how we can get away from that.

edited 8th Nov '10 11:05:30 AM by Fighteer

"A bunch of plot threads get resolved in short order" is not a subjective statement. "The events in question had no common cause in the plot" is also not subjective.

That's not what the trope resolves to currently. Those are elements, but what it's about is that those things make the ending unsatisfying. If we want to make it a more objective trope, we have to cut the, "and this makes it bad" part.

edited 8th Nov '10 11:15:22 AM by Fighteer

"A marked increase in pace toward the end of the work, independent of plot-related reasons"?

Note this paragraph:

"A good author carefully plots everything out to come to natural conclusions. In the event of a Cosmic Deadline, a bad author will hammer on resolutions as quickly as possible regardless of the impact on the story's quality. See Deus ex Machina for a common symptom of this."

This trope is defining an element of Bad Writing. (In fact, there are one or two examples I could add based on the current description.)

edited 8th Nov '10 11:17:42 AM by Fighteer

I do think this should get renamed anyway is its going to stay an Ending Trope Cosmic Deadline could also mean something like Star Trek The Motion Picture where the release date was set in stone which the movie ended up being cut badly in every way but the Ending.

(I do think that an Unmovable Release Date causing production troubles is trope worthy though.)

The thing is that Bad Writing objectively happens. The subjective part is how, or even if, people find it bad. But things like Idiot Ball still happen in a show, same as rushing a plot resolution.

"Bad" and "objective" do not go together, though. Bad/good/indifferent entirely depends on the opinion of the viewers.

For a somewhat extreme example of the difference, "guns are a tool" is objective. "Guns are bad" is not.

You missed the point of what I wrote. For one thing, your "counterpoint" is what I wrote in the second sentence of my post.

I really like Shale's explanation and if we don't rework this subjective trope into that objective one, we should YKTTW it.

It's a lot like Xen Syndrome, so it could be called a Xending.

edited 23rd Nov '10 7:18:56 PM by TheInternet

Here may be why the Trope is named the way it is:

The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Cliches, #182: "Compression of Time"

As you approach the final confrontation with the villain, events will become increasingly awkward, contrived and disconnected from one another — almost as if some cosmic Author was running up against a deadline and had to slap together the ending at the last minute.

The reasons for this do vary, but the fact of the rushing to achieve this ending is the core essence of this Trope.

EDIT:

And how about this to replace current paragraphs 2-4 inc.:

As the end of the story nears, antagonists suddenly start dying at an incredible rate, McGuffins that eluded the heroes for the whole story are recovered, and mysteries are quickly wrapped up. Now this can be normal for a story as it reaches its climax; but in this case the rate is so absurdly high compared to before that it's almost as if some cosmic author realized that he has one hundred pages left of a thousand-page book to write and has yet to resolve most of the stray plot threads. Therefore, the resolutions to most of these threads are tacked on in rapid fire, allowing just enough time to give the main plot sufficient closure (or not). A Deus ex Machina is usually present.

In fairness, this may not necessarily be the fault of the author. If something is cancelled prematurely, for example, writers often have no choice but to rush the ending in order to wrap things up in a semi-satisfactory manner; it's either that or No Ending. Things can be even worse if the series gets renewed after the writers did their best to tie everything up in time.

Also, to The Internet: Xen Syndrome itself is a poorly named Trope and is currently under repair.

edited 29th Nov '10 3:24:05 PM by DonaldthePotholer

The problem with this trope is that it's based on tropers (and viewers, readers, players, whatever) inferring something negative about the process by which a work was created, without any real evidence. The name goes out of its way to make what the trope's about (plot threads being resolved quickly near the end) extra-negative by inventing a bad reason for it to be ended that way.

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