Needs broadening: Out Of Character Alert

... exactly how do we distinguish Something They Would Never Say from Something Only They Would Say?

What? The current definitions are not comparable at all.

• Something They Would Never Say: Bob is taken hostage and needs to communicate he's in trouble; the bad guys allow him to call his friends but explicitly forbid him from revealing the situation. So he inserts a subtle OOC remark into his message that one of his friends will pick up on and realize "Something's wrong; Bob would never say that" without his captors picking up on it as well.

• Something Only They Would Say: Bob's in disguise but blows his cover by letting slip a personal Catchphrase.

We distinguish them by the meaning of the words "only" and "never".

^ Eh, something like that.

This topic could use a better tag, though. Like "...or the Trope Decay wins:"

edited 29th Dec '11 8:58:03 PM by Stratadrake

Changing the title seems to be the only way to redemption for this one... Out-of-Character Alert or something in those lines... must include the idea of a call of help in any case.

Yeah, that might help reduce confusion.

I like the sound of that.

12-to-0 over three months looks pretty consensual. However, there's obviously a demand for a trope like Omega Kross' original post:

edited 10th Feb '12 1:02:13 PM by Myra

Calling the crowner in favor of the top two options:

• Rename and Transplant
• Redefine trope

I was skimming through the YKTTW backlog yesterday when I spotted this. Awesome — codifying the 'covert distress call' trope is one step in the right direction for fixing this one.

Have I understood correctly that we'll have two tropes: Covert Distress Code (currently in YKTTW) for predefined emergency messages and The Trope Formerly Known As Something They Would Never Say for improvised ones?

Basically, yes.

OK, then. I liked Lyendith's suggestion Out-of-Character Alert for the spontaneous version, anyone else?

Clocking as requested.

Oh, geez, so we got less than two days to rename this trope before it's stuck with the current name?

I guess we need a crowner, pronto!

One of the issues is we gotta finish up the YKTTW for the coded distress signal.

Can that happen before the clock runs out?

Whew. Accidentally hollered this one. Disregard it, please.

I hollered for a removal of the clock. There's just too much to do before the deadline. No response as of yet, tho'.

Last I heard there was no declock button, it can only be extended, not removed.

Apparently so; the clock has indeed been extended.

So what exactly remains to be done, so we can get an idea of what kind of time is required?

Well, let's see:

1. Finish up the YKTTW and get it launched.
2. Excise bad examples from STWNS to the new trope.
3. Tighten up STWNS's definition to improvised distress signals only.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!

(I might be missing a step or two.)

edited 8th Apr '12 10:02:21 AM by Stratadrake

Is there gonna be a rename of STWNS or not?

I'd say so, because we got an unanimity for Rename-and-transplant. I've made a new names crowner: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/AlternativeTitles/SomethingTheyWouldNeverSay