Specific concept, or misworded description?: Drop What You Are Doing

I recently proposed this in YKTTW, and some users (whose comments don't seem to be there right now, but they were there before, and I do not recall deleting them) were saying said YKTTW was already covered by Drop What You Are Doing... but that trope, from the description, seems to be just for when a shocking thing is announced, not for when it is simply noticed like it is in my example from The Shawshank Redemption.

So yeah, is the concept really supposed to be that specific, or is the description just misworded?

Drop What You Are Doing is for anything that causes you to do what the trope title says.

If you're shocked, or attacked, or surprised, or otherwise caused to let go of whatever you were holding, and unable to retrieve it before it falls.

What if someone makes no attempt to retrieve it? Would my example from The Shawshank Redemption count then?

Also, if that is the case, I think the trope could use a better title. And a reworded description. o.o

In what way would you say the description is misworded? Your YKKTW seems to cover "shocking", and so does Drop What You Are Doing, which also covers several other reasons a person might drop something in a dramatic situation.

What sort of alt-title or renaming would you suggest? Drop What You Are Doing (aside from perhaps benefitting from ptitle) pretty much describes the trope and what happens when it is applied.

The original YKKTW that ended up Drop What You Are Doing is here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=n26d2npb&trope=DropWhatYouAreDoing

edited 7th May '11 4:36:15 PM by ParadiscaCorbasi

Drop What You Are Doing, if taken literally, implies that someone is being TOLD to drop it, rather than dropping it out of shock without being told to. The figurative meaning of the phrase, of course, is to tell others to put aside what they are doing at a moment, because something else is supposedly more important. Either way, it could use a better title.

Shock Till You Drop was one proposed in my YKTTW.

I suppose I see what you're getting at but the trope title also is just a simple declarative. That when something happens and your hands are full, you drop what you're doing. It isn't phrased as a command intentionally.

Shock Till You Drop is mostly a pun on Shop Til You Drop which doesn't cover all the examples listed in the trope itself.

edited 8th May '11 5:57:15 PM by ParadiscaCorbasi

"Shock Till You Drop is mostly a pun on Shop Til You Drop which doesn't cover all the examples listed in the trope itself." - Paradisca

Why not?

EDIT: And to be clear, that was just one suggestion.

edited 8th May '11 7:59:20 PM by neoYTPism

Why not?

It has already been pointed out in this thread that this trope covers situations besides just shock. Just look at the list of examples, the very first example listed it is a stroke victim dropping a coffee mug. No shock involved. Yes shocking news is the dominant cause of this trope but is not the only one. You are proposing a The Same But More Specific. And so far I haven't seen a persuasive argument what this contribution would add.

Are we trying to get too clever at the expense of clarity? I agree that this trope is poorly named for the precise concept it represents, but that's partly because the concept is so universal that a witty name simply distracts from the premise.

I also find that there's a lot of overlap between this and Slow-Motion Drop; in fact the only difference that I can see is the "Slow motion" part, making Slow-Motion Drop either a Sub-Trope or a case of The Same But More Specific.

Dramatic Drop might be the only name I can see working for this, but we'd have to really push the difference between it and Slow-Motion Drop, maybe by making it a Super-Trope.

edited 9th May '11 12:38:43 PM by Fighteer

Dramatic Drop seems fine by me.

edited 10th May '11 8:59:12 AM by neoYTPism

I can live with with Dramatic Drop.

edited 15th May '11 5:30:14 PM by ParadiscaCorbasi

Does this really need a rename?

Is there misuse?

Not that I know of. It just seemed some tropers were unhappy with the title which I thought was pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

I thought "Shock Til You Drop" made very little sense in comparison.

Just disliking a name isn't reason enough to rename, though. Normally, a trope name has to be either misused, underused, named for a character who fails the One Mario Limit, or simply wrong (as in a technical term used seriously but incorrectly) for a name change to go through. With 99 wicks, this one is healthy, so none of the latter three apply. So unless anyone can show misuse, I'm against renaming this.

We do, in fact, rename fresh tropes that have a name that looks like it will lead to misuse.

I thought Drop What You Are Doing was a dialogue-named trope for "character X makes character Y abandon whatever they're doing and rush out with them on some urgent (or possibly not that urgent) business."

The actual trope is more like "Drop What You Are Holding". If we're renaming, I like Dramatic Drop.

I also agree with "Dramatic Drop" since it's self-explanatory, but still catchy.

Some renames are losing a lot of snappy creativity, which I don't like, but this is one I can dig.

I feel like the bulleted list in the description is unnecessary, and possibly detracts from the trope. The first paragraph explains the trope very well and quite succinctly. The list just goes on to muddle things.

Apparently, Dramatic Drop is now a redirect. Are there still problems?

It doesn't look like there are any problems with this trope that need to be dealt with here.

There's a case for tweaking the description but that's not an issue for TRS unless we're redefining it, which we aren't.

Definition tweaking and rewriting for clarity is a TRS issue and one that the TRS does frequently.

In any case, this trope is named for a stock phrase and we really do frown on that.

edited 14th Jan '12 7:19:43 AM by shimaspawn

And a phrase that doesn't even mean the trope.

But "Dramatic Drop" is too broad for the trope.

"Something very startling or utterly shocking is announced or discovered - and the person encountering the shock literally drops what they're holding in astonishment. It most often falls ...and falls... and shatters at their feet - an aural punctuation mark to the bewildering announcement."

So we need a specific name.

It is a very distinct trope. Drop Objects In Surprise is bland and dull, but a bit more of a clue to the trope.

Shocking News Means Dropped Objects?