Take a guess: Hold Your Horses

For this trope, we can just use the classic litmus test. Knowing only the name of this trope, how many of you can guess what phenomenon it's supposed to be referring to? Give it five guesses, just to be on the safe side.

So, anyone guess correctly? If you did, I applaud you, because I can't for the life of me figure out what relation the metaphor has to the text of this trope at all.

Crowner for renaming.

What?

...

WHAT?!?

Besides the wretched name, I'm a little skeptical on whether this is tropeable or not...

Yeah, I expected this to be either a stock phrase or a trope about cautioning characters from jumping into things. I didn't expect it to be No Exposition.

"Hold Your Horses" is the contrasting sister trope to It Gets Better (which was "Get On With It Already" before it got renamed). The two were launched at the same time. It gets its name from the most basic definition of the phrase - "slow down, you're going too fast and I can't keep up with you!" The trope applies to stories with confusing, chaotic beginnings that tend to leave their readers scratching their heads in bewilderment as they try to figure out what the heck is going on. Its one of the lesser known, but still irritating, Pacing Problems.

I'm guessing the problem is that there are so many punny names on TV Tropes that people expect...well, horses. I think it's one of the few tropes that use an idiom as anything other than a pun. It's not got so many wicks that it would be troublesome to rename, though.

The name also has the problem of being far broader than the trope.

Some Guy, I think the trope should be renamed for reasons that have already been mentioned. I am concerned that this trope might lead toward having a good number of subjective examples though. Your Mileage May Vary on whether that is a serious problem with the trope. I probably am being a bit paranoid about that.

I do not really know of a good rename. No Exposition sounds okay to me, but I would prefer a name that implied that not only is there no exposition, an exposition seemed necessary, but was not there. Perhaps, something like Forgot To Explain, or Forgotten Exposition would work. I do not really think those are very good renames either though.

edited 3rd Jan '11 9:24:38 AM by LouieW

Reaction against the name appears to be swift and decisive- an alt-title crowner may be technically premature, but we could always just hook it later. I like Forgotten Exposition the best, since of the three proposed it implies the least malice.

It's a legitimate concern as to whether this is a tropable concept, but I can try to manage the subjectivity in the the trope by redoing the description to be a bit more standardized and neutral. As far as Hold Your Horses go, that would be a good title for a trope that actually has something to do with holding or horses, if anyone's willing to share your I Thought It Meant guesses.

I'd been under impression that Hold Your Horses was about when a plot was going too quickly and seems like it's going to be resolved way too early, then something inevitably happens that causes it to take much longer. I think we do have that trope somewhere, but clearly I was mistaken about the name.

It's a common enough phrase that I don't think anyone's necessarily confusing this for being something about horses. I think it's more that the connection to the title is tenuous at best. For that matter, I'm not particuarly fond of the name for the other extreme, It Gets Better, for similar reasons. But that's a separate issue.

It also reads more like a complaint than a trope description.

I'd been under impression that Hold Your Horses was about when a plot was going too quickly and seems like it's going to be resolved way too early, then something inevitably happens that causes it to take much longer. I think we do have that trope somewhere, but clearly I was mistaken about the name.

edited 3rd Jan '11 1:11:51 PM by Ghilz

Yeah, that's it. I figured it was probably something with a similar name.

Since there seems to be overwhelming support for a rename by the crowner, does anyone have any suggestions for a new name?

I don't think much of this as a objective trope. It seems like an extreme of In Medias Res, but with a subjective negative response. Two different people can read one work and one reader will feel it badly needed some exposition, the other enjoyed the detective work required to make sense of it. One reader will think there were enough hints, another will not.

Names like Forgotten Exposition as proposed in the alt names crowner don't seem so great to me: sometimes the exposition wasn't forgotten at all, it was purposefully omitted as a stylistic choice.

If I had to suggest anything I'd half-seriously say: Knee Deep In Medias Res.

edited 7th Apr '11 11:16:22 PM by Camacan

Lost in Medias Res?

That's pretty good.

Over two months old? +27?

I think we can call this and try to figure out a new name...?

Not Enough Exposition?

Bump

Just requested that the single prop be switched with the one in post 12 so it can be added to and voted on.

I don't care for No Exposition — that gives the strong impression we never get it, which is usually not the case. The trope is more that the story outpaces the exposition.

Agree with "The Trope at present is just In Medias Res, but with a negative attitude."

However, I think that Forgotten Exposition could still be a good title... for a Trope that "One We Prepared Earlier" used to be: Namely, a Trope for works that don't have an Origin Story (Formation of the Team, How we got to this world, etc.

The leading option is at 10+ with no votes against. It looks like it's time to call this.

Alright, I moved Lost in Medias Res to the indexes that Hold Your Horses was apart of, redid the wicks (though I could not find a use of Hold Your Horses in Get On With It Already), moved the laconic page, and pasted the description of Hold Your Horses to Lost in Medias Res.

I would appreciate if a moderator would move the discussion found here to Lost in Medias Res before the name change can be finalized. I sent a report on the wiki too just to be doubly sure someone who can move the discussion knows about this.

Please feel free to point out errors to me that I may have made during this process.

I am not sure if I should put Hold Your Horses on the cutlist because it might confuse people, but I am making it be a redirect for the time being.

edited 5th May '11 8:19:45 PM by LouieW

It's always safe to keep the old title as a redirect, for historical interest if nothing else.