But it's still a long name, right?: Half Truth

Eddie isn't a mod, he's the site owner. That means he can rewrite or ignore the guidelines at will.

I mispoke. But regardless, this is a wiki, which means no one should have unilateral control. Yes, he owns the site so its his do with what he wants and so on, but if he just changes things on a whim it creates an unstable site that people don't want to visit.

<Mod Hat ON>

Don't derail this. The topic is what, if anything, to do with this trope

<Mod Hat OFF>

Fine. We should change this back. Now, am I going to get banned for doing so?

Honestly, I'm not sure this trope is really about half-truths. Going back the Trope Namer, in what sense is "Darth Vader killed your father" even half true? It's certainly true From a Certain Point of View, that point of view being a metaphorical one, but it's not using elements of the truth in combination with certain assumptions the listeners naturally make to present a lie. I don't think Half-Truth is accurate.

edited 28th May '11 8:38:00 AM by Clarste

A half-truth is a mixture of truth with lies. Kenobi was truthful in saying that Vader used to be a promising student of his, and that he was seduced by the Dark Side. The part about him betraying and murdering Anakin (when in fact they were the same person) was a definite lie — though he did postmortem defend it from a metaphorical point of view — in order for Luke (and the audience) to keep a positive regard of his Disappeared Dad.

So old Ben's statement was anywhere from half-true to completely false depending on how you split the details. And yes, there's a noticeable difference between "what I told you was true, except for this one vital detail" and "I fed you baloney, but for a very important reason".

edited 28th May '11 8:57:16 AM by Stratadrake

Perhaps we could split this. Keep Half-Truth for what the trope definition is, and make From a Certain Point of View into perspectives that make a different reality (which I felt Revenge Of The Sith dropped in that it should have shown that Obi Wan felt Anakin was consumed by Vader instead of just turning to the dark side).

I don't know, that seems unnecessarily specific.

No, because it wouldn't require a lie for the other trope.

Metaphorical Truth vs Saying something that was only Half True is very different.

You cant accuse the first one of flat out lying to someone (which is where "Its true From a Certain Point of View" comes from.) and having to find the truth mixed in with the lies.

edited 28th May '11 12:55:54 PM by Raso

Okay, I guess I can see that. Obi Wan's lie was From a Certain Point of View because while biologically Anakin and Vader were the same, as far as Obi Wan is concerned Anakin died when he attacked the Temple. If he had said "I watched him die," that would have been a Half-Truth because he watched him burn alive in the lava, but he didn't actually see him die (unless we're stepping back into metaphor).

I still think its an unnecessary split, but I'll admit it makes sense.

It would include Anakin's line from "Sith", which isn't a half truth, just another perspective (as weak as I feel the execution was).

I think Truth From A Certain Point Of View might further improve it.

Or True From A Certain Point Of View. But personally, I prefer From a Certain Point of View; some cases of this are invocations of shaky logic to support an opinion.

I guess we should make a single-prop crowner on whether to split this into Half-Truth and From a Certain Point of View, followed by figuring out the names. EDIT: And here it is.

edited 29th May '11 2:10:12 PM by Discar

Bump for more votes, but I think the winner is clear.

True From A Certain Point Of View sounds decent. Needs a solid writeup to properly distinguish it from a Half-Truth though.

Why change the name? From a Certain Point of View was doing fine. I understand the split, but adding an extra word seems unnecessary.

I don't understand the difference between "metaphorical lies" and "a mix of truth and lies". If something is metaphorically true but literally false, that makes it a mix of truth and lies.

Half-Truth includes other forms of lying, like lying by omission (i.e. no false details were given, but vital truths were deliberately omitted). There's a reason legal courts mandate "the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" instead of just "the truth".

edited 5th Jun '11 12:30:40 PM by Stratadrake

And are we planning to split off those other ones too? Cuz it seems finicky to me. They're all variations of "You sort of told the truth but not really" and they're mostly treated all the same way.

edited 5th Jun '11 12:35:42 PM by troacctid

Isn't From a Certain Point of View supposed to be "you lied, but later gave a flimsy justification for how what you said was TOTES TRUE YOU GUYS"?

Which is to say, half a truth less than a half-truth?

As I see it, there are three different tropes here:

• Metaphorical Truth: A "lie" that is only true in metaphor.

• Liar: "I can't leave him because he got me pregnant."
• Other Guy: "Whatever happened to that baby you were supposed to have?"
• Liar: "Oh, when I said that, I meant pregnant with happiness!"

• Half-Truth: A statement that is a mixture of the truth and a lie.

• Liar: "You were born of a man and a she-horse."
• Other Guy: "I suspect half of that statement is true . . ."

• Backtracking Lie: An attempt to weasel out of or justify a lie after the character has been proven to be lying.
  • Liar: "Your mother is dead."
  • Other Guy: "No, she isn't."
  • Liar: "Er, I meant dead tired or dead to me or dead gorgeous. I would never lie to you!"

Obi Wan employs all three in the conversation with Luke, hence the confusion.

You know, the concept of "I lied, but I did it for a good reason" reminds me of Jake and Elwood from The Blues Brothers:

Which is yet another Motivation Trope: The Kindly Lie or Well Meant Lie.