If not rename, at LEAST redirect farm...: Offscreen Inertia

Ooo, my very first Guess That Trope! Go ahead, try!

Given the usage numbers (which I personally think come from fans of the Trope Namer), I assume that my preferred course of action (rename) has slim chance of surviving. However, I think it's vastly uncontroversial that at the very least this needs some sort of redirects, so we aren't depending so heavily on foreknowledge to even find this trope.

Seriously, though, did anyone guess that this trope meant "Other things being equal, any given character is probably doing what he was last seen doing. Especially if you hope he isn't."? How the heck can this name possibly work, especially without redirects?

How about Character Inertia?

Offscreen Inertia?

Only has 68 wicks, which is quite doable in terms of changing them if there's a rename.

I can't guess the trope on account of being pre-existingly familiar with its Trope Namer.

However, I don't have any love for it being a member of the X Syndrome trope family.

Shouldn't this be marked as an Audience Reaction?

Why shouldn't it be marked as an Audience Reaction? It should be, because its far from trope standards.

Yes. What Happened to the Mouse? is an audience reaction, this one is not so different.

Narrative Momentum maybe? Anyway, the big paragraph needs to be moved down.

This is an audience reaction, regardless of whether it gets renamed.

I have to say after reading the description, I'm for keeping this one due to Rule of Funny. But Offscreen Inertia should definitely at least be a redirect.

I'm confused by the meaning of this trope. About half the examples are characters being forced to do something, and we know that they'll do it forever. The other half are where the camera cuts away from the character, so we assume they kept doing what they were doing. What is it?

There is no "forced" to it.

I guess you could call it the Theory Of Narrative Inertia, where characters are assumed to be performing the last action they were seen doing, unless we are informed otherwise.

This is only a real issue if the last thing we see them doing is something we're really interested in, or something horrible is happening to them. Thats what bothers people about the Teathecat comic.

From reading through the examples, there appear to be both a trope and an audience reaction. The trope is that when the story comes back to a character after a long time has passed, they're still doing the same thing they were doing when we left them.

The Audience Reaction is when the audience assumes that trope happened.

So a split is in order?

I don't really think they are that different though.

And strictly speaking, its not a trope, its an integral part of telling a multi-line story.

The Audience Reaction is the actually interesting part, at least, thats how I see it.

Well, the examples of the trope are things like someone sitting in the same place and not moving for years. There's an element of absurdity to it.

Bumping old threads of mine in an attempt to clear out TRS.

Let's start with this one! Now that we have redirects, are we done with this? Or did we want to do something else?

edited 8th Oct '11 2:57:41 PM by Leaper

Tethercat Principle found in: 86 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 1,892 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

I...don't know what to say to that.

"Tethercat Principle" -tropes gets 161 google hits.

I always find it odd when a term gets significantly less google hits than it has inbounds here. Nevertheless, it is pretty obviously not an established term on the 'net at large.

Things to clear up:

1. Is a rename necessary? (I don't think so; it has decent redirects and nobody's shown any misuse.)
2. Should it be objective?
   • Some of the examples are Fridge Logic-style where we assume this is happening because it isn't contradicted.
   • Some of the examples come back Brick Joke-style and show that it actually is happening.
   • Are both of these correct? Should just one of them be correct? Do we need to split?
     • I would be in favor of soft-splitting the examples page, formally classifying examples of the latter category as In-Universe (so it can go on the main page for works where it appears), and leaving the former category in the Audience Reaction bin along with its Fridge Logic roots.

edited 8th Oct '11 3:08:49 PM by troacctid

(1) it doesn't seem healthy judged by its wicks; on the other hand it does seem healthy judged by its inbounds. Confusing, no?

(2) by the definition in its first lines, this is about the Fridge Logic where you don't see a character doing something else, and so assume he is still doing whatever you last saw. I don't see how this is anything other than objective.

That also means the Brick Joke examples don't belong here - they belong on Brick Joke.

It has roughly 140 examples, but only 80-and-change wicks. This means that it needs crosswicking.

And has anyone done this? I assume not.

(I also assume that the current name isn't a preexisting phrase, that it's something someone here made up. I don't like it, but I doubt I'll get enough others to see it my way, so I'm probably not even gonna try.)

I think some cross wicking and redirects are in order, but based on the inbounds I get the impression that this is one of the tropes where people run across it and say "That's a cool name and concept, I think I'll share it with all my friends".