Absurdly long real life section: Humans Are Cthulhu

Seriously its like half the page.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I'd say it's closer to a third, but that's a good point.

Fight smart, not fair.

And they're all speculation, since the trope requires an animal's point of view. Most of them are to the tune of "Imagine you're [type of animal]. You must be thinking [Fridge Logic]!" There's a couple that deal with different cultures of humans seeing each other this way, which is also wrong.

Voting to axe.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Just chopped about 80% of it. Natter.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Howdy folks. I just registered after a long lurking, and I am quite sorry my first post has to be a complaint, but since the hatchet was being wielded by a moderator, I don't think undoing the change would be appropriate.

This is a page that I read once, came back to look for, and could not find: it turns out I remembered the page specifically for the section that has been deleted.

I thought tvtropes did not believe in notability?

The cut has nothing to do with notability. If you want to complain, at last do so in a way that make sense.

Sigh... Should I have put a Sarcasm Mode link there? I thought it was obvious enough, but apparently not.

I meant "believe in notability" as a reference to the other wiki's "delete first, ask questions never" attitude. I think there was some good stuff in the deleted section. Unless the server is running out of disk space, I don't see a reason to use a hatchet where a scalpel would be more appropriate.

ETA: Replies made only with the purpose to point out that sarcasm doesn't work that way are kindly to be >/dev/null; non-complying authors will be tied to a chair, and made to listen to Alanis Morrissette's "Ironic" 99 times (100 being the limit set by the Geneva Convention to qualify as "cruel and unusual punishment"). Thank you.

edited 22nd May '11 7:59:18 AM by Asterix

I don't, all the best stuff was saved.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

I honestly beg to differ.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but IMO one of the best sections of the page was the one with the gazelle story, which is now consigned to oblivion. There are a couple of other lines that are probably tropeworthy, too...

Hi and welcome to TV Tropes!

If there's something you want to save to your hard drive, use as basis for a new trope or Useful Notes page, or argue that it should be reinserted, well, here goes.

For future cases, learn to use the "history" button. This time, I'll paste the deleted/edited stuff here for your convenience. Have fun with it.

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• It also suggests that the abducting aliens are bumbling incompetents, as causing more than the absolute minimum of stress in wild animals is always undesirable, from the standpoint of valid field research. (Otherwise, you're just learning about abnormal animal behaviors, not natural ones.) Yet many abductees claim — even boast — that they get snatched over and over again, despite becoming complete basket cases from their alleged experiences.
  • Alternatively, there could be a tiny minority of people who are prone to remembering the abductions and the vast VAST majority of people never know they happen at all.

• Think of how pets like dogs might see us, if they had language and our ability to compare things. We bring foods that they would never see and demand that they perform in unnatural ways, take them to have their hides ruffled and worked over with sharp instruments, bring them to trot in circles and be examined, the vet, the kennel. Some might manage to "dominate" their owners, but they don't know how to be alpha to humans and get stressed out, and if they do a very dog thing and bite, we do not allow them to live.
  • Of course, it's not that we make them act in unnatural ways. All dog behaviors are natural behaviors they already did on their own. However, we generally ask them to either do them at 'inappropriate' times or they are puppy behaviors that we ask them not to unlearn when they mature. It would be more appropriate to say that we ask them to act like Cloud Cuckoo Lander toddlers.
    • Although, given the side-effect of domestication known as neonteny, they essentially are infants (well, juveniles) that never grow up.
  • This is why it's so important for a dog owner to learn to "speak dog". If you can read a dog's body language and use it back at them, things get so much easier!
    • Bear in mind that we took wolves and bred them to create dogs in the first place. Unlike with other tamed animals the behaviours we look for aren't any more unnatural than the dogs themselves, they're the ones we bred for.
  • Then again the reason we keep them around (nowadays at least, when they aren't working dogs) is because of their comforting loyalty and easily met needs, compared to neurotic self-centred humans. Some people keep them because they get a kick out of dominating another being's life, but not most people.
  • They probably respect and are intimidated by us. After all, a good hunting day for a dog is catching a rabbit or bird and chowing down. A human goes out "hunting" (actually going to the grocery store), and in 1/2 an hour returns with generous portions of Pork, Chicken, Beef, Eggs, and enough food to feed a dog for weeks. They probably think we're the greatest hunters in the world!
    • We ''are'' the greatest hunters in the world, duh: I mean, we're not even good swimmers, and we eat sharks. There's a reason our own scientists call us super predators, you know.
  • Cats, on the other hand, seem to see us as rather like elephants. Big, useful, potentially dangerous, but somehow rather goofy.
    • The big cats (including lions) that once lived in Europe and Asia probably thought we are goofy, too, until they were all hunted down with just bows, arrows and spears.
  • And of course, there's the pampering, hugging, playing, giving treats and making a huge fuss over the pet when it does something right aspect of the relationship as well. Godlike-beings we may be, but in healthy human-pet relationships it's certainly not an unloving/unloved one.
    • Best summed up in this joke:

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>Dog: You feed me, you love me, you take care of my every need. YOU MUST BE A GOD!

---

>Cat: You feed me, you love me, you take care of my every need. I MUST BE A GOD!

• 'My name is Dug. I have just met you, and I love you.'

• Though most people in a modern society don't realize (modern Humans Are Cthulhu works tend to portray humans along the lines of Squishy Wizard, with the humans' Eldritch Abomination flavour beng the result of civilization, technology and the alien absurdities they spawned, otherwise they are simply squishy bags of meat that can be easily overthrown with a claw), humans are near the very top in terms of endurance compared to other creatures, particularly in hot climates and especially if said human had undergone Training from Hell courtesy of the wilderness. Combined with our other advantages, humans are the Terminators of the animal kingdom. We can chase prey for hours, and were known to even keep it up for days back when we were hunters/gatherers. Rip out our "claws"? We don't care, we'll pull out new ones and throw them at you. We can warp reality so that everything is trying to kill you. Humanity's utter domination of the hunt eventually lead to a transition from hunter gathering to farming, thus paving a pathway for civilization and our modern Squishy Wizard existence, which was the result of being freed by civilization from the hell of wilderness and undergoing neoteny. We might be extinct by now if it wasn't for our ancestors' endurance and badassery.

—>Gazelle 1: Oh man, I've been running for a whole five minutes and that group of humans are still chasing me!
Gazelle 2: It gets worse. The wolves have started teaming up with them.
Gazelle 1: Oh Nature...

• No doubt that is why so many animals cut a bargain if they can.
  • In the case of cats, it's quite probable that they choose us, rather than the other way around. Wildcats in Africa discovered that mice congregated near human food stores, so there was plenty to go around. Since humans appreciated the pest control, they wouldn't harm the cats and would even give them extra food to keep them coming back. The cats began to realize that humans weren't so bad after all, became friendlier, and thus prospered. Cats became domesticated on their own simply by doing what came naturally to them (which, incidentally, is probably why cats retain so many wild characteristics to this day), so there was no need for a capture-and-tame routine. Some theories on the domestication of the dog state that something similar happened with wolves scavenging near human dwellings, though this is still disputed.
    • Keep in mind Darwinian evolution. Cats didn't "realize" and "became friendlier." Rather, humans rewarded the benevolent cats, and killed or chased off the aggressive ones. Cue a few hundred generations, and you have cats living in human-settled areas.
    • Two interesting things here—first, North African wildcats are a lot less fearful and territorial than others to begin with. Second, while surely not planned, a good deal of said evolution was likely "cultural" rather than genetic—cats raised in isolation act much more like the wild type.
  • Worth noting that wolves were one of the few creatures that could handle our endurance and keep up with us. Which is why started working together.
• Not just animals but plants as well, but with a twist: The Private Life of Plants shows that while humans manipulate plants for food, supplies, and just being pretty, plants use this manipulation to spread to areas where they wouldn't normally grow.
  • Really, most of our domestic animals are arguably symbiotic with us.
• The common perception of humans as sucky hunters comes from the argument that if a human is isolated, stripped of his tools and protections, he then becomes easy prey to Nature. *
  ^{Apart from the inherent endurance, advanced problem-solving capacity and fine dextrous manipulation, anyway.}
  This is true enough, but it overlooks the fact that to act in concert with a society and to build tools to aid us is our nature. It's like arguing that wolves would be terrible hunters if they couldn't work in packs, or that big cats wouldn't be dangerous if you took away their teeth and claws.
  • I read a debate on a message board about a human's "natural" food. A vegetarian was trying to argue that plants must be the most natural human food, because before fire meat was indigestible. This argument doesn't work for two reasons:
    • 1. Fire is older than humanity. Our now-extinct ancestors had fire long before we could be described anything like modern humans
    • 2. The percentage of meat eaten has never been lower in history. Yes, we were hunter/gatherers before, but don't downplay the "hunter" part: depending on the society, 50-100% of calories came in the form of meat, since the earliest days of humans as a species.
      • Wrong. Until recently people rarely ate meat more than once a week, only rich people could afford it. We eat so much meat that our body has to work hard to remove the excess protein. And it's not possible to get 100% calories from lean meat, you need fat or sugars.
    • 3. Steak tartare, carpaccio, raw kibbeh, sushi someone? Raw meat is perfectly digestible.
      • Indeed. However, without modern disease control it can be also easily fatal.
  • Also, there are a fair number of people who, stripped of tools and assistance and dropped into the wilderness have a pretty good chance of re-equipping themselves and surviving to tell the tale. Seriously, nature better come in the form of grizzly bears or great white sharks or The Virus (which is humanity's worst and most potent weakness) cos otherwise the odds are heavily stacked in a knowledgeable human's favour.
    • Hell even if nature does come in the form of a bear or shark if the human possesses common sense and doesn't antagonize the predator it'll probably just leave them alone rather than try to pick a fight. Although without the help of the magic that is medicine, humanity are nothing compared to the wrath of The Virus.
      • So, we're the aliens from The War Of The Worlds, then? All-powerful, but with weak immune systems.
        • The human immune system, just like that of all mammals, is an extraordinarily aggressive protection system. Keep in mind that we kill 95% of our lymphocytes just for not being good enough. It is also extremely redundant, with important outposts in all the entry points to the organism, and diffused, so it is EVERYWHERE in our body. Hence why autoimmune illnesses such as lupus are so devastating. In fact, more efficient inmune systems would be hard to find, but we may count the crocodile's (which has antibiotics to avoid infections due to, well, the animal living in swamps), and the shark's, which has had time and time to perfect a design rather that to reinvent itself.
        • According to the notes in at least one edition of the book, the aliens were meant in part to be allegorical for British soldiers fighting natives.

• To large, dangerous animals, or animals that use venom, humans would be Squishy Wizards. Yes, the humans can warp the environment to their whim, kill from a distance, turn night into day and make fire, but get in close enough to use claws, fangs or poison, and they die like any other prey...
  • Yet they quickly find that in by doing so, they would ruin their reputation to the world forever and have invoked the wrath of these mysterious beings who would have normally left them to their own devices. These beings can hold grudges forever. The predator then becomes the prey as these animals realize with growing horror that thet are being hunted by countless Super Persistent Predators whose single-minded goal is to exterminate them. There will be no negotiation. There will be no quarter. These beings will not stop until they have their revenge.
    • Hell, we'll hunt individual animals for weeks, months, even years to bring them down if necessary. There you have it, humans are an overprotective guild of mages.
    • We're more likely to relocate them now unless they make a habit of it. Something about almost wiping out entire species in a region for revenge of a single death now strikes people as wrong.
    • This is the reason it is a taboo among the animals in Kipling's Jungle Books to eat humans. They will tell their cubs that it is because it is tasteless, or unethical, or unhealthy ("If you eat human meat, your teeth will rot!") but the real reason is a maneater causes human to go berserk at the environment, to the detriment of all. The reason Shere Khan is despised by the other animals is he is actually a cripple, and the only big prey he can catch are humans and their cattle, causing trouble for other big predators everyone else.
• Humans have some of the strongest and most dense musculature on Earth. We are only surpassed in this by chimps (see The Bodily Strength of Chimpanzees Glen Finch Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1943), pp. 224-228 JSTOR) and they are only 9-11% stronger by weight. Humans: made of fresh squeezed 100% betterthanyou. Unfortunately, we can only use all of this musculature when it's a fight or flight situation.
• A little more on adaptability. Eldritch Abomination is, as one of defining traits, unconceivable, not just something unfamiliar, but an insane mockery of natural law altogether. Come down to the animal world, where species use basically the same behavior patterns for ages. A usual predator will have his senses, one, two built-in weapons and some tenth' offensive maneuvers at all in his arsenal, mostly relying on less then that. He, or his prey, will also have about the same limited amount of countermeasures, that again stay the same across generations, while being determined by natural selection if his species is the fittest. Here comes the Unconceivable: it's one giant melee fang (and probably a sturdy carapace) in the morning, no such fang but a tamed fire that kills from afar in the afternoon, warping the world, natural selection and the laws of the universe themselves so that Everything Is Trying to Kill You, and if nothing of that works, expect a full new bag of tricks tomorrow, and another after that, and another. We're talking what, hundreds, thousands weapons and absolute uncountable amount of patterns, all wielded by one squishy species and changed at will? This is madness! (Yes, yes, we know. This is Humanity!)
• Fishing is like a near-death experience for small fish. They get fed, go up into a white light where they can't breathe and see all their dead relatives around them. Then, a great voice says "Nah, too small. Throw 'im back."
  • Jeff Foxworthy joked that catch-and-release must be the fish version of the near death experience. "I was surrounded by my dead relatives. And I saw God. He was wearing a flannel shirt and a Budweiser cap. He told me it was not my time and threw me back."
  • Imagine the thoughts of a pet fish. You're in a relatively small environment, and only invisible walls protect you from the unbreathable air. Strange apes stop just beyond these walls, and do little more than stare at you for no apparent reason. Once or twice a day, food mysteriously rains from the sky. There's also this strange contraption that pulls in a current and spits out bubbles. Then every once in a while, one of the strange monkeys actually sticks their hand in the water, bringing a strange tube that drains the water, making the already small environment even smaller. Just when it seems dangerous, fresh water is put back in. Also, if a friend dies, they are caught by a green net where they ascend beyond the water into the great beyond. No wonder it's so common for them to stress out and die.
• According to HP Lovecraft, some of the defining characteristics of Eldritch Abominations are that they are inherently unnatural and uncaring. Humans not only disrupt ecosystems and destroy habitats with their very presence, but have accidentally exterminated so many species that we've LOST COUNT. We're just like the uncaring Old Ones Lovecraft kept rambling about.
• There are countries where monkey brains are considered a delicacy. For the monkeys, it's like the plot of some stupid old alien movie: creatures from far far away, with powers far beyond the monkeys' comprehension, abduct them to actually eat their brains!

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• Made worse by the fact that the Aztecs were a Stone Age civilization. They knew of no metal sturdy enough to be used for making weapons or armour. Enter the Spanish, wrapped in nigh impenetrable steel, with swords and halberds that could slice a man in two and managed to stay intact and sharp in the process...
  • The Aztecs were so tantalizingly close to metalworking... what could have been if the Europeans arrived even 50 years later. (Of course, even with metalworking, their society was completely broken, being primarily based around killing their best people, and they wouldn't have been able to counter horses or firearms. Cortés had 14 cannon with him.)

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• Actually it is quite common that Humans Are Cthulhu to other people. That is how a Conspiracy Theory comes about, and why this trope fits in our imagination so easily. Also, it is rather creepy the things civilization has built. Cyclopean underground flying spires possessing the power of the Sun, unleashing The End of the World as We Know It as soon as they awake. Wolves that become servants and find Happiness in Slavery, massive artificial metal monsters swimming at the bottom of the sea and searching for each other with mysterious powers. Hand-held thunder that can kill from a distance. Moving islands that aren't islands. Herds of dead metal that move about using absurd appendages that bring them to speeds no leg can achieve, the more absurd fact being that they are powered by explosions from million-year-old corpses of plankton. Plants that grow at our command. Artificial mountains made up of Sinister and/or Alien geometries. Light in darkness. Non-euclidean two-dimensional prisons of entire multidimensional worlds. Herds and populations finding Happiness in Slavery in concentration camps, only to be slaughtered by High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Artificial servile lightning that is the lifeblood of an omnipresent, omniscient, all-powerful Hive Mind of eldritch superintelligence. And so on.

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• Huh, funny. In South Africa a common word for a white person in "mlungu", which refers to sea foam. I suppose this coincidence is natural, since in both cases white people came via the sea and are more or less the same color as sea foam.

• Even today, in the more severe cases of Does Not Like Men and He-Man Woman Hater, it might end up sounding like "Men Are Cthulhu" or "Women Are Cthulhu," especially when they start talking about possibly just becoming gender separatists.

• Most wild land animals that have had prolonged exposure to humans treat them with fear and respect. The exception is zoo or reserve animals that are frequently handled by humans directly.
  • Urban pest species such as rats or pigeons would feel this trope even more strongly, in that our actions are inscrutable as well as miraculous. One minute we're dumping tasty garbage and bread crumbs for them to chow down on, the next we're exterminating them with poisons, traps, and deadly predators (dogs, cats, ferrets) that slavishly do out bidding.
• We shape the development and population of farm animals, so that we can consume them. Just like the Great Old Ones.
• Naturally, we have yet to discover aliens. However there's a lot of research dedicated to learning what kinds of alien life can conceivably exist, so long as the basic laws of molecular biology as we understand it apply throughout the cosmos. This line of thought introduces ideas such as aliens that require ammonia or formaldehyde instead of water and using nitrogen or phosphorus instead of carbon. However the type of environmental conditions for such elements and chemicals to sustain the basic principles of cellular life, as we understand it, are quite bizarre. How does this fit the trope? Well depending on the "alternative combinations" involved, to these theoretical life forms: our homeworld becomes a boiling vat of caustic gasses, the liquids that flow through our veins are flesh melting corrosive acids, the atmospheric pressure we move gracefully through would crush their skeletons (endo or exo) into paste, and the mere sound of our voice could rupture organs (it being a form of kinetic energy).
  • Oxygen is one of the most corrosive elements in the known universe. And we breathe it.
    • Also, our two most common beverages are water and alcohol. They are also our two most used industrial solvents.
• Skunks' major defense is their stink gland. Skunks' most common cause of premature death in developed areas is getting run over by a car. Cars, of course, are exclusively engineered, built, maintained and driven by humans. What human has ever smelled skunk stink while driving and thought "I'd better stop the car"?
  • Generally by the time the driver can smell it, it's already too late for the skunk (and, by the way, the car).
• Talking birds (parrots, for instance): To put it succinctly, what we hear as "Polly want a cracker" is probably "IA IA HUMANS FHTAGN" to themselves and other animals. In other words, parrots and other talking birds are the "dark cultists" of the animal world.
  • Actually, parrots and other similarly intelligent birds (not necessarily talking birds, though) understand human languages and not just memorize sounds. Also, birds of the same species in different parts of the world use different brid-languages and have to learn them to communicate.
• You know those old stories about people taking food from The Fair Folk and being trapped in their realms forever? Well, that happens to animals, too. Animals that take food from humans learn to depend on them, and forget how to find food on their own. Or worse, they are lured to their deaths by humans who take advantage of their complacency.
• You're a bird, flapping along, enjoying your first good thermal of the day, when you hear a rumbling in the distance. Before you can turn to see what it is, the rumbling becomes a roar and a vortex seizes you, tossing you around. The last thing you see are blades. Congratulations, you just became bird strike.
  • Birdstrike can bring down planes and kill people. More like Accidentally Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu.
  • Same for animals that become roadkill, or manatees that get hit by boats.
    • Only most animals killed by land/sea motor-vehicles don't send the passengers hurtling to their deaths... (Note: Dumpsters and landfills should be kept far away from airports. Really far away.)
  • A bird flying against a glass window. Freaky invisible barrier!
• Man also possesses the ability to wear products made from dead animals, making him one of the Face Stealers of the animal kingdom, like the nudibranch and hermit crabs. But instead of the nudibranch's usage of assimilating jellyfish or the hermit crab's obvious naturality, the skins that humans wear are instead transformed into numerous varieties that are totally unrecognisable from where they came.
  • Also, google, "octopus" and "armour". There's video of an octopus doing something with some shells he found. Whether he's building armour, a cave, or just playing with it we don't know.
    • Chewing on it, maybe? To sharpen his/her beak?
• Talking about octopuses, isn't it very uncanny that the Cthulhu of the animal kingdom is eaten by us?
• To animals, the human body itself is probably almost irrelevant, considering how many "bodies" we can just put on, including:
  • Creatures the size of a rhinosceros that can maintain speeds faster than a cheetah for more than five hours.
  • Enormous ducklike creatures which can keep moving for years without ever consuming anything (read: nuclear powered carriers), are completely invincible to almost anything nature can throw at them, and can cleave animals in half or blow them up.
  • Birdlike beings that move at several times the speed of sound that can kill from tens of miles away and can travel thousands of miles in a day.
  • A silvery, faceless abomination.

Oh look, a great deal of it has nothing to do with the trope, and is just nerds spewing facts...interesting facts, being a nerd myself, but if you really want to keep it there are more relevant trope pages.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Yeah, it's out of the question to reinsert the bulk of that stuff into the original place. Like I said, it's there in case he want to save it on his own harddrive or use it as basis for some new project - or, make an argument that some little part of it ought to be reinserted.

OK, first, thanks for the post. I do know about the history button (it's how I found out who deleted the content in the first place), but it is nice to have it in the thread for quick reference.

Now, as for "interesting but not this trope"... Most of the material IS a trope. I am not necessarily arguing that it's THIS trope, although things like the gazelles and the fish example do seem to apply, but I am pretty sure the technology examples apply to a trope for "prehistoric man (or, equivalently, an alien, in works where humanity has achieved interstellar travel) is exposed to modern technology", which means they belong on this site (though not necessarily this page).

The human super-endurance (relative to other animals) may belong to Charles Atlas Superpower, and the animal examples actually tend to link to a trope that may, in fact, be more appropriate. I would need some help finding a home for the other ones, but I am pretty certain some 80% of this 80% does belong somewhere, and may be saved from the scrap heap.

It does concern me a little that a moderator saw fit to expunge it entirely: is the general opinion that the material is not good enough, or simply that it belonged here, it just didn't belong here?

edited 23rd May '11 11:04:26 AM by Asterix

It didn't belong there. It may belong somewhere, but not on that trope page. And "somewhere" might not even be on this site at all. The purpose of the wiki is to catalogue and classify tropes as they are used in fiction, media and entertainment. Not to document anything remotely interesting that can be tangentially related to a trope.

The trope is "In a work that is written from the point of view of a non-human species, humans are presented as eldritch abominations or something close to it."

The first problem is that "In Real Life", doesn't fit the "in a work written.." part.

The second problem is that it was largely "Humans are weird" or "Humans are dangerous" or "Humans are unpredictable". Not "Humans are Eldritch Abominations."

The third problem was that it was nearly a quarter of the total page length. Again, the purpose of the wiki is to catalogue and classify tropes as they are used in fiction, media and entertainment. When 25% of a trope page is about Real Life, that page has gotten off track.

edited 23rd May '11 11:15:44 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

It is not like we abstain ourself from adding Real Life examples when it is applicable, though. But, then again, the vast majority of it has nothing to do with the trope, anyway.

@Asterix. Sarcasm or not, people keep trowing "notability" when it is not apply. This is annoying and contribute to people misunderstand what this wiki is about. Don't misuse a term if you are aware you are misusing.

Furthermore, a sarcasm tone is still uncalled for. Who deleted it posted in this thread warning he did so and he gave a justification for the cleaning. It is not like anyone is obnoxious deleting stuff without giving opening for discussion.

I feel that "humans are presented as eldritch abominations" is too much of an exaggeration of what the trope is generally intended to entail.

In my opinion, the trope involves a non-human species, but specifically one that's clearly a lesser species, including unintelligent and uncivilized beings (like animals) and incredibly tiny, primitive alien races that view humans as "gods" or "giants", and this species view humans as both being incredibly superior and a danger to the "non-humans".

Essentially, I see it as a parallel to Humans Are Bastards, whereas human behavior is being compared with the behavior of established non-human civilizations of greater or equal sentience in that trope, but Humans Are Cthulhu shows human behavior from the perspective of species with lesser size, civility, and sentience.

@Heatth: Actually, I would submit that TV Tropes' own definition of notability fits my meaning more than the actual, wikipedian concept; as stated in the link in Madrugada's own posts (which, of course, is There Is No Such Thing As Notability): "If it fits the trope description, then it can be put in."

In hindsight, I did not realize why I had made that particular choice of word: it was probably a subconscious reference triggered by Madrugada's own signature.

That is neither here not there, however, with respect to Madrugada's post itself, which contains two very interesting points.

1: Some examples simply did not fit the trope, hence the deletion.

2: "Real Life" not being a work of fiction, even if examples do fit the trope the list should be kept short, hence more deletion.

Personally, one of the things I always loved of TV Tropes is its inclusiveness; the Real Life section is, on many occasions, one of the most entertaining parts of a trope page; still, Madrugada's explanation makes a valid point.

At the very least, at the moment I would not be able to finish a sentence starting with "I disagree because".

Well, I could say "I disagree because I like Real Life examples", but that would be somewhat pointless, and possibly more than a little childish.

I shall ponder upon Madrugada's words, and see if I can come up with a reasoned reply. I still like many of the examples that were deleted, but now I have to wonder, is the fact that they are entertaining enough to include them?

The funny part is that, in trying to create good examples from Real Life, some of the tropers actually created tiny self-contained stories that are, in fact, a work of fiction that is made entirely of this trope...

edited 23rd May '11 4:40:19 PM by Asterix

Sean, you can not like it all you want, but that's the definition , according to the page:

If you think it should be redefined, that's a matter for a TRS thread to redefine the trope. Not a reason to ignore the definition in favor of the one you prefer.

Asterix, No Such Thing As Notability has a much narrower meaning and intent that many people try to use it for: It is specifically that no work is too "non-notable" to be a valid source of examples. That's it. It doesn't mean "Anything goes". It means, I can't delete an example from, for example, a webcomic that ran for three weeks and then died, solely on the grounds that it is "not notable enough".

edited 23rd May '11 4:49:38 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

As the Origionator of the YKTTW for this trope, I've been lurking in this conversation for a while, as I have mixed feelings on all this, but I've managed to form an opinion, and it's this:

1. I interpret the phrase "Eldritch Abomination" as metaphorical. For example, if the non - humans see us as something closer to The Greys than an Eldritch Abomination, that still counts.
2. The Real Life section implied we, the contributors, know what animals are thinking, which arguably falls under the Your Mileage May Vary umbrella.
3. The size of the Real Life section arguably suggests that rather than a case of individual examples, it's a case of Truth in Television.

So maybe the Real Life section should read:

"Obviously, it's arguable that this may be Truth in Television, but Your Mileage May Vary. So please, no Real Life examples."

edited 23rd May '11 5:26:12 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

I know what the description says. However, I am not interpreting those words literally.

I see the rambling Eldritch Abomination description as lying in the depths of extreme exaggeration and hyperbole while the base trope itself is much more flexible than what you are making of it. The Eldritch Abomination comparison is intended to draw a distinction between the immense and frightening superiority humans have over a much lesser species—not to describe them as literal cosmic horrors.

edited 23rd May '11 5:41:04 PM by SeanMurrayI