Example Drift: Uncanny Valley

By act, most definitions mean physical movement. Not emotional depth.

There are real people who are cold and clinical. Most people being lumped into Uncanny Valley Girl are fully encapsulated by standard human behaviour. They're just kind of emotionless, a little creepy (because humans can be creepy all on their own), or cold and clinical. People throw these under inhuman because it sounds cool, but they're acting like a lot of people I know in RL.

edited 20th Dec '11 5:22:55 AM by shimaspawn

Heyo, get a look at that crowner. I think that qualifies as consensus, yeah? Doesn't look like any work has been done on it, though. Should we try to get some sandbox pages going? Or make some YKTT Ws?

edited 20th Dec '11 6:08:19 AM by NativeJovian

How did you pull emotional depth from what I previously posted? Behavior(how one acts IE. behaves) as defined by my previous post has nothing to do with one's emotional depth but whether one can interpret stimuli and react to it properly. Furthermore, you realize inhuman entities means just that, beings that are not humans. Had I meant humans acting inhuman I would have just put something along the lines of humans acting inhumane. For example,an android is an inhuman entity that almost always fits within the uncanny valley even if they look completely human because under the right conditions they won't behave as humans would if placed in those same conditions. Obviously for this discussion both zombies and the immobile dead are considered inhuman entities by virtue of prior examples given by the uncanny valley graph itself on the Uncanny Valley main page.

World English Dictionary

behave — vb

1. to act or function in a specified or usual way

2.to conduct (oneself) in a specified way: he behaved badly towards her

3.to conduct (oneself) properly or as desired: the child behaved himself all day

thesaurus

behave   Part of Speech: verb Definition:function Synonyms act, operate, perform, react, run, take, work

Sidenote,I only posted the last time as it seemed as if people were confused by whether the uncanny valley included actions an entity performs or simply how it appears.

edited 21st Dec '11 11:26:54 AM by xanatoshatesyou

I realise what you're saying. The characters that people want to lump into this have nothing to do with that definition you're using. I can't think of any characters that fall under that definition in media that don't fit the other definition of Uncanny Valley as well.

People just want to lump Emotionless Girl characters and serial killers into this trope for reasons I don't understand.

edited 21st Dec '11 11:57:07 AM by shimaspawn

Those would require a separate trope, about characters that are human, but there is some aspect that seems inhuman.

Or just characters that are within human variation but are just creepy for some other reason. That seems to be the biggest misuse of it. Characters that aren't human but are creepy, but are creepy in the same ways real humans are creepy.

The winning vote in the crowner is clear:

Keep Uncanny Valley as a disambiguation page, describing the original robotics study, and split the current examples into two new pages:

• Uncanny Valley Graphics: A subjective Audience Reaction about graphics or animatronics attempting to produce photorealism, accidentally ending up causing discomfort.
• Uncanny Valley Character: The in-universe trope describing a portrayal, where an abnormal character intended to be scary, is slightly less realistic than its context.

Lets just do what the crowner says.

edited 22nd Dec '11 4:33:52 AM by Sackett

Yeah, may as well go for it...

Bump...

...and rebump.

I can start writing one of those in YKTTW (Preferably the in-universe version, so we can get that out of the way.). I'd prefer a different name for the in-universe version, since "Uncanny Valley Character" doesn't get across that the character is uncanny valley in-universe to other people, and doesn't actually have to be uncanny valley to us.

edited 17th Jan '12 2:49:58 PM by Scardoll

It's not the clearest name. Thanks for taking over the YKTTW.

Sorry for the delay; I at first started writing a completely different trope, but then I realized my mistake. I think there's actually three tropes here.

Uncanny Valley Graphics: Failed attempts at photorealism that are creepy. YMMV

Uncanny Valley Character: A character that looks less realistic than its context as a tipoff that he's not human. Not YMMV.

Uncanny To Others: The trope I was thinking of at first, where characters can see something physically wrong with this character as a hint that he's not human. Not YMMV.

I just launched Uncanny Valley Character on YKKT. Examples and suggestions are appreciated.

I don't think your third is at all a part of an Uncanny Valley trope. It's a different trope entirely that invokes this trope, but they're used quite differently. Suspiciously Unhuman, perhaps?

I've just read through the entire twelve pages of this thread and I am so very, very confused now. (I arrived here from the YKTTW, FWIW.)

To begin with, the proposed split seems to be between when the trope happens accidentally in due course of attempting to make robots and characters look realistically human and when the trope is deliberately invoked as part of a work.

I can think of one very good reason this will not turn out well.

But the argument over the last twelve pages seems to imply that the split is between 'subtle deviations from natural realism' and 'subtle deviations from the artistic style of the rest of the work'. This seems to work well to me except that's not an option that was placed in the crowner.

There also seems to be a debate over whether humans can fall into the uncanny valley, which I should think would be obvious because the uncanny valley has two slopes to it. If you can push something inhuman into it from the left side, you can just as well push something human into it from the right, and I can think of two examples from live-action in which this was done (painting Arnold Schwarzenegger's skin with vaseline to make the Terminator's skin look like not-flesh, and shaving Brad Dourif's eyebrows for the role of Grima Wormtongue).

...err. Did I kill it? :/

MURDERER!

D:>

...in all seriousness, though, I don't want to be the one who stopped this from being fixed. I'm just very confused and have some major issues with where this thread seems to be going so far.

I'm doing a shameless Thread Hop here, but the winning option of the crowner is the first thing I thought of after reading Noaqiyeum's initial post (before I even looked at the crowner, actually). If it's supposed to look normal but it comes off as Uncanny Valley, then that's Uncanny Valley Graphics (eg, some people had that complaint about Final Fantasy The Spirits Within). If it's intentionally messed up and creepy looking (especially compared to others in the same work), then that's Uncanny Valley Character. The former is YMMV, while the latter is not.

But that's exactly the split that was made between Accidental and High Octane Nightmare Fuel, which keeps coming back to be fixed because most cases aren't clearly accidental or intentional, and the current plan is to just give up and merge them together again. That's not a precedent I think we want to follow.

That's more due to the names they used than it is a problem with the distinction itself. High Octane Nightmare Fuel sounds like Nightmare Fuel but moreso. That's not an issue with Uncanny Valley Graphics versus Uncanny Valley Character.

edited 25th Jan '12 10:11:21 AM by NativeJovian

Uncanny Valley Character as the way I think it should be is there is something off with they way they look as opposed to other characters in the work kinda like Gonk but more subtle and creepy.

It usually means something or even as symbolism. Un Blinking Eyes, twitchy movements, Unusual Eyes, (Some works use a Dull Eyes of Unhappiness type effect for this.) Skin Tone that is a little off etc to show they are themselves off.

edited 25th Jan '12 10:42:48 AM by Raso

Re-opening on request, but clocking. Let's enact the repair, please.

So, what will we do here? Make the two new pages and the disambig?

How is the progress coming on those new trope pages?