Needs a second look: Freak Out

I believe this has come up before ... the problem with this trope name is that it attracts Trope Decay. Image Pickin' suggests that the image contributes to it, because it shows a literal "freak out" instead of a permanent change in personality which is the core of the trope.

Actual misuse check pending, because we've got about 800 in both intrawiki links and external inbounds each.

Around October 2010 I examined all links within the classic ptitle range (finding 8 of 21 questionable). Currently there are 26 links from ptitle range (+6), let me check those:

High probability of misuse

• Preacher's Kid: "increasingly frequent Freak Outs" (wait, what?)
• Sunn O: Literal frek-out by a claustrophobic character locked in a coffin

Not fixed since October 2010

• Spongebob Squarepants: "Everyone" has "at least" one?
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: literal temper tantrums
• Yosh: "momentary"?

Ambiguous cases

• Apollo Justice Ace Attorney
• Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!
• Spartacus Blood And Sand
• Spoonys Campaign
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl

Not fixed since October 2010

• Dhuxs Scar
• He's Back!
• Hulk's Cooldown Hug Corollary

Seems correct, might benefit from better context anyway

• Ju-on
• Wolfs Rain

Across classical ptitles this is approximately 5 of 26 confirmed to be misuse, but could range up to 50% depending on how the ambiguous cases pan out.

edited 7th Jun '11 12:51:45 PM by Stratadrake

Do we have a trope for temporary changes (which is what this is getting misused as)? The actual definition sounds similar to Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, but there's distinction.

Heroic BSoD is mentioned on Freak Out as being a milder and temporary version. Villainous Breakdown is the evil version. Moving misused Freak Outs onto the appropriate page wouldn't be too hard. It does have quite a few uses though:

Freak Out found in: 789 articles, excluding discussions.

That's a lot.. Could do with some looking at.

Edited OP with my wikilinks check across the classical ptitles range. Not all are absolutely misuse (some just need clarifying), but some of them are also still lingering since the last time this topic came up and need to be addressed.

I think Trope Transplant is the way to go.

Character Changing Meltdown?

All It Takes Is One Bad Day and Mental Scars Are Forever were the top two choices in the last thread.

edited 7th Jun '11 12:58:06 PM by chihuahua0

I think that "the character goes through something traumatic enough to change their personality forever" part of the trope is really not reflected in the title that well at all. I feel like the phrase "freak out" generally has a broader meaning (at least when I have heard it used in real life, it seems to usually be close to Heroic Blue Screen of Death).

I think using Freak Out to mean something specific may invite misuse, but I am not totally sure about that.

Freak Out sounds like it should be the supertrope to Heroic BSoD and Villainous Breakdown, but it's not. I support a rename and a repurposing of this name to the supertrope.

I think that Freak Out should be the actual act of loosing it, while Heroic Blue Screen of Death are the after-effects.

Well, that and not all freak outs are heroic or villainous. If a teenage girl has a freakout because she's got a huge zit on her nose, where would you stick that?

Repurposing Freak Out to a supertrope of characters losing it for whatever reason and changing the name of the current trope to Character Changing Meltdown or something similar sounds like the best route to go.

Agree with Willbyr.

Yikes, another one of the old land mines. For those who don't know, there are a lot of tropes on this wiki that pre-date YKTTW, or a lot of our current classification and lumper/splitter rules. These tropes were fine then, but their titles (or sometimes, the entire articles) have clearly aged poorly because of overlapping newer tropes. This is one of them, and happens to be one I made. (Another example — one that I didn't make — is Guilty Pleasures — which was originally called Bad Yet Popular and lasted quite a while under that name before the bitching became too much.)

I support changing the name, but I'm not sure about reusing the old name to mean "character has a bad day and loses temper" — isn't that close to People Sit On Chairs?

No. It is not People Sit On Chairs. The fact that people do it in real life, does not make it chairs.

Another vote for the transplant-and-repurpose. Not sure if I would call the Heroic BSOD a "Freak Out", but that's mainly because I picture a BSOD as being just sitting there in shock (you'll note that a computer with a BSOD tends not to be doing much at all, as opposed to a computer flashing alert messages and bursting into flames.)

I've got a YKTWW that I am currently calling "Going Hudson", mainly because that was the best name for, well, a Freak Out that I could think of without actually calling it Freak Out. I think that transplanting Freak Out as it was originally envisioned and then repurposing the name for when someone has a "Manic, crazed" reaction to the situation.

Don't name it that. Please. We get enough rename threads as is.

Yeah, I imagine a BSOD more like a character just going into shock, instead of freaking out a first.

Yes, a BSOD is a system crash. Freaking out (in the literal sense) isn't an option.

Well, I only called it "Going Hudson" because I couldn't think of another way to describe freaking out. Well, I guess you could call it Manic Mood, but that doesn't sound like a very good title. When I saw Freak Out was in the repair shop, I pretty much decided to let the YTTW coast until I saw how this developed.

Hmm. I don't know about BSO Ds just being temporary; just because you're quiet about it doesn't mean you're any less broken inside. If we were to just stick to keeping BSOD and Freak Out about the acts of mentally shutting down and mentally... well, going mental, then perhaps we could relegate the question of the permanent effects elsewhere. Or just ignore them.

I'm a little skeptical that we even need a dividing line between "freak out that changes the core personality forever" and "temporary freak out."

Permanent character changes effect the story in far different ways than temporary ones. Thus they are different tropes.

Unlocking per request.

End of year stats:

• 889 wikilinks at the end of this year, 227 inbounds (since Jan 2011).

Spot example of a very recent*

• Prep And Landing: Naughty vs Nice: "When Wayne learns that Noel could become Elf of the Year instead of him, he completely snaps."

Yet it is resolved within five minutes so the two of them can go about Saving Christmas and there are no lingering after-effects. It's not a Freak Out as defined by the article. Nor is it a heroic BSOD because that's about "going catatonic", not "going nuclear".

We also have a few bad in-page examples (e.g. "Ren of The Ren And Stimpy Show is prone to these" — what?)

edited 24th Dec '11 12:21:05 PM by Stratadrake

Personally, Freak Out should be rework to something like "character has major emotional reaction by breaking down".

Makes perfect sense to me.