Merge? Edit?: Not So Fast Bucko

Some slightly confusing stuff here. To me, this seems like a very close subtrope to Spoiled by the Format. At least, there is a lot of overlap. At one point in the not so fast article, there is a link to the spoiled by article that makes the latter seem like a specific version of the former. At the end of the spoiled by article, it says "contrast Not so Fast, Bucko!". To me, it seems like cleanup is needed. What do you think?

Your Princess Is in Another Castle! has a lot of overlap too. IIRC.

Seems so, since YPIIAC has a trope repair shop suggesting a merge with NSFB. Hm, 'Not so fast..' sounds like it means 'Not Safe For Bucko' when abbreviated.

edited 5th Mar '11 6:39:51 AM by ArtisticPlatypus

I think I wrote the "contrast" line. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking, but I'm pretty sure it was something along the lines of "Not so Fast, Bucko! is what happens when you aren't Spoiled by the Format." That is, SBTF is "This can't possibly be the end, because there are 300 pages left in the book," while NSFB is "Wait, this is still going on? That really felt like an ending!"

Of course, this is subjective as all hell, which is why Spoiled by the Format asks for only lampshaded examples. It hasn't really succeeded in staying that way, though, so some kind of change is probably warranted.

Indeed. Merge all three, and make it really clear in the description that this trope is about fake endings or prematurely resolved situations that are obviously - because of the amount of pages/time left - about to be unsolved again? Of the three titles, I'd say Spoiled by the Format is the best one.

Bump?

I'm in favour of merging all three, though I suppose there's an argument for keeping Your Princess Is in Another Castle! as a videogame-specific variant, since the trope is motivated more by gameplay longevity than by trying to fill out a timeslot.

edited 29th Mar '11 9:15:20 AM by johnnye

I agree that Not so Fast, Bucko! only applies when you're pretty sure that you were at the very end, but then the twist was thrown in. Tropes like Disc-One Final Dungeon are indeed Spoiled by the Format, which are what make them different from Not so Fast, Bucko!. I can't speak on YPIIAC, though.

The oldest definition of Not so Fast, Bucko! in the Internet Archive:

The first descriptive paragraph, and page quote, seem pretty clear: this is when they wrap up the plot, as another former page quote from The Simpsons put it, "much quicker than usual", tipping off a Genre Savvy viewer that there's still more to come. In other words, Spoiled by the Format as it presently exists.

Sometime in 2007, this paragraph was added:

This amounts to the fundamentals of the trope in every incarnation the Archive has, as well as the present page. Oddly, there is only one reference to Not so Fast, Bucko! in Spoiled by the Format's YKTTW, and that reference thinks it's the inversion. For the record, here is the newer trope's YKTTW description, first paragraph:

I'd say the description was medium-specific (the originally proposed title certainly was) if the next paragraph didn't talk about TV. The second clause is pretty much exactly the core of Not so Fast, Bucko!. The first clause differs from the second descriptive paragraph of Not so Fast, Bucko! in that the latter is the subversion of the former.

I think the real problem is that Not so Fast, Bucko! has always described several different, and surprisingly opposed, phenomena. There's knowing the Red Herring ending is one because there's too much time left on the show, and there's when the end of the show is approaching with all the plot threads wrapping up when they pull a surprise twist ending on you. And then that lengthy video-game-centric paragraph only further obscures the original core of the trope.

As Not so Fast, Bucko! is one of the oldest pages on the wiki, and Spoiled by the Format is only a little over a year old (and both categories of inbound links amount to triple digits for Not so Fast, Bucko! and double digits for Spoiled by the Format), my inclination is to cut Spoiled by the Format, merge its applicable examples into Not so Fast, Bucko!, clarify the description, and decide a) whether we want to split Not so Fast, Bucko! into subtropes (one of which might be Spoiled by the Format, as people seem to be suggesting) or keep it a more general phenomenon, or at least relatively close to its original intention, and b) whether we want to rename what's left of Not so Fast, Bucko!.

I will give this: Spoiled by the Format is a lot more SPOON for what it describes, and Not so Fast, Bucko! would have been very heavily edited and clarified had any of its versions had to go through YKTTW.

Now that I think about this more, I'm pretty sure there are two concepts here: a narrative trope about fake endings, and an audience reaction about deducing plot points from paratextual clues. The overlap comes because a very common plot point to be deduced is "the narrative trope is occurring", but there are other possibilities. The Bored Of The Rings example on Spoiled by the Format, where the characters figure out that they have a bunch more quest to get through via Medium Awareness, seems to have nothing to do with the trope but is a solid example of the audience reaction; I've also seen the observation that the killer in Bones is almost always introduced at the fifteen-minute mark, which falls into the same category.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle! is clearly the trope, Spoiled by the Format is clearly the audience reaction, and Not so Fast, Bucko! has elements of both (which makes sense, as it predates the other two pages). So the right thing to do is almost certainly to merge Not so Fast, Bucko! with exactly one of the other two pages.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle! and Not so Fast, Bucko! have good enough inbounds that they need to be kept in some form, while Spoiled by the Format is pretty expendable, which argues in favor of merging Spoiled by the Format into Not so Fast, Bucko! and making that the audience reaction.

On the other hand, Not so Fast, Bucko! reads to me like it wants to be about the trope more than it wants to be about the audience reaction. Note that the first two paragraphs — the ones which haven't changed for as long as the Wayback Machine has known about the trope — describe one situation where the audience reaction likely happens, and another situation where it likely doesn't, but the underlying plot structure is the same in both cases. Also, the name fits the trope better than the audience reaction. All this seems to argue in favor of merging Not so Fast, Bucko! with Your Princess Is in Another Castle!, or possibly finding some good distinguishing line between them that I'm not seeing at the moment.

edited 12th Apr '11 7:43:38 AM by Micah

Hmm. Your Princess Is in Another Castle! sounds to me like it should be about something else. At least in the original Mario games, as far as I know, no one would seriously think the end of each world was the end of the game; at most, they'd just be hopeful this would be the one where they'd find Peach.

It has a gazillion outside inbound links, but considering it's rather new (Wayback Machine has nothing older than 2009) and has only 70-something intrawiki inbound links (and Wayback has only three archives total, suggesting it's not very popular), I think most of them are just references to the line from Mario Bros, and are neutral to the trope's actual meaning.

But if you found Peach, the game would be over. Assume you've never played the game before, and have no idea how long it is. Would you assume there are 32 levels?

If there's a trope in The Princess Is In Another Castle, I think it would be a message that tells you you are not at the end of the work, or that a character has not achieved an objective. It would obviously be more popular in video games, and maybe stuff like DV Ds: "Don't go away, there's more stuff after the credits."

It would differ from all the other similar tropes by being about the message, not the false ending itself.

That sounds like an argument for cut-and-YKTTW; so far as I can tell, the only currently-listed examples of it are Mario and shout-outs thereto (though I'm not a gamer so I might have missed some).

Are we at the point of putting up a page action crowner? The options I can see are:

• Merge Not so Fast, Bucko! and Your Princess Is in Another Castle! as a trope about fake endings. Clarify Spoiled by the Format as an audience reaction about plot details deducible from medium format.
• Merge Spoiled by the Format and Not so Fast, Bucko! as a trope about endings deducible from medium format. Keep Your Princess Is in Another Castle! as a trope about unexpected non-endings.
• Clarify Not so Fast, Bucko! as a trope about fake endings. Clarify Spoiled by the Format as an audience reaction about plot details, etc. Cut Your Princess Is in Another Castle! and re-YKTTW it as a trope about fourth-wall breaking "there's more stuff than you might have thought" messages.
• Clarify Not so Fast, Bucko! as a trope about fake endings where there's a Shocking Swerve. Clarify Your Princess Is in Another Castle! as a trope about fake endings that serve as Filler. Clarify Spoiled by the Format as an audience reaction, etc.

Does that sound about right?

edited 16th Apr '11 1:14:06 PM by Micah

That sounds like a good set of options to me.

Okay, crowner is created.

So, the crowner shows a pretty clear consensus of the people who are voting. Unfortunately there are only four of those.

Anyone else want to weigh in? Taking action based on the opinions of just four people seems ill-advised.

Well, now there are... six?

That's better... I think?

The title's catchy enough.

I voted first option, but I would like the Princess trope to house Bucko within. It's more clear and direct that way.

Necro-bump. Apparently this crowner actually got a decent number of votes sometime while I wasn't looking, so this looks like a good opportunity to close a couple threads.

Unless people have come up with a new set of objections over the past few months, the only remaining question seems to be what name the Not so Fast, Bucko! / Your Princess Is in Another Castle! merge should go under. Should there be a new crowner, or do people want to discuss that more first?

I think it is alright to make a new crowner, so I made one here for choosing the name of the merged trope.

I propose a merge under the title of Our Princess Is In Another Castle (yes, "Our", not "Your".) I have edited the crowner to state that "Our" is a possible title as well.

The current name ("Your") is an example of Beam Me Up, Scotty!, in that the original quote from Super Mario Bros had "Our". Are you still confused?

Um, no. This a "name", you get to have one name.

I'm editing the crowner to make those separate options.

Calling the crowner