Misused: And I Must Scream

So, quick introduction: I frequent Image Pickin', but it's fairly rare that I show up here, and this is my first actual trope... repairing. Thing. What this all means is that I don't know what an "inbound" is, I'm not sure how to check Wicks, etc. Basically, I just know that And I Must Scream means that the character is trapped, suffering some form of eternal torture, and that many Tropers use it to illustrate something particularly horrifying and/or painful. The question is: How do we change this? It seems that this trope is misused all across the wiki. And now, you get to yell at me for being a n00b. Have fun!

Things of mine keep getting deleted. I curse too much.

And I Must Scream found in: 2164 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 6,622 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

Wow! This is going to need a rock-solid case to rename. Especially since it's not a verbal shorthand, genre, or omnipresent trope, but it's only a hair short of qualifying for the Overdosed Tropes page anyway.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

First what we need to do is check a bunch of those wicks to make sure that they are correct. To do that, you pick 50 of them at random from the list of pages that have wicks (You can get to that by clicking the "related to" button at the right end of the button bar) and seeing how the use on each of those fifty pages compares to the actual definition: "correct", "incorrect", "can't tell, unclear, or not enough information". That's "doing a wick check". (The links between pages on the wiki are called "wicks". "Inbounds" is how many people have entered the wiki through that particular page, by following a link somewhere else on the web (like in a blog post, on anther forum, and so on.)

In this case, the definition you'll compare each wick to is "A character suffers from an extreme Fate Worse than Death. Death never comes to free him from it. He is immobilized or otherwise contained, unable to communicate with anyone, and unlikely to be removed from this situation ... anytime in the foreseeable future."

So all of these factors have to be present for it be a correct use:

1. It's an extreme torment. Mildly uncomfortable or annoying isn't good enough.
2. It's not going to kill him, and he's not going to die from anything else.
3. He's immobilized or closely confined — wandering around alone isn't enough.
4. Unable to communicate with anyone.
5. No foreseeable end to it; no foreseeable rescue or relief.

I think that we're going to find a lot of wicks that don't meet all five of those.

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

I'll do the fifty wicks, just give me a bit.

The description mentions it doesn't have to be forever, just that it "usually" is.

Yeah, unwritten rule number one: follow all the unwritten procedures. - Camacan

I've been wondering (since the subject has come up), is there any kind of automated way to get those 50 random wiks? Or would I have to, say, slowly scroll my screen and occasionally write something down?

No automated way. Just scroll down the list and click on random links to open them in a new tab. In my browser, that's right click.

I usually open a notepad file at the same time, and copy over each entry, pasting it into the correct section (correct, incorrect,can't tell/don't know)

edited 6th Sep '11 7:46:13 PM by Madrugada

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

Speaking of, and done relatively randomly (Main and media namespaces only), here's the wick check.

Misuse:

1. I'm a Humanitarian - In reference to Pseudopod #23. The story does not contain a case of And I Must Scream by any measure.
2. After War Gundam X - contains no elements of And I Must Scream
3. Alter AILA - Nothing resembling And I Must Scream mentioned.
4. Animal Kingdom - See above
5. Claymore - Description sure sounds like it's not this.
6. Cowboy Bebop - Unless being a brain without any way to interact with the outside world is extremely torturous, this is misuse. Awfully close, though.
7. Cute Is Evil - The end is quite forseeable, by way of being eaten as sentient candy.
8. Elianto - Strikes me as inadequately torturous.
9. Dragon Quest - No mention of torturousness, or of consciousness.
10. Fallout 2 - Fails to meet any criteria for And I Must Scream.
11. Faux Death - It's in a Sink Hole (based on the fact that it's followed by a Pot Hole to Cruel and Unusual Death)
12. Half-Life - Headcrab zombies can still communicate, if barely.
13. Heta Oni - Failure to meet most if not all criteria.
14. I Am Not Spock - Referring to Arakune from Blaz B Lue, who seems to be able to move, and as such, does not qualify.
15. Inception - Lack of torture, etc.
16. Joker Immunity - Refers to Warhammer 40000 - not immobile, unsure of other aspects.
17. Kaiba - No implication of living in a machine being a particularly unpleasant experience.
18. Kings - Has literally nothing to do with And I Must Scream
19. Leprechaun - Something to do with Moville Mysteries. Sounds more like... What the hell would we call getting turned to wood in trope terms?
20. Lloyd Alexander - looks like it's being used for some variation on Taken for Granite.
21. Mad Artist - Doesn't seem to meet the cannot communicat aspect.
22. Masquerade - Refers to The Christmas Toy, seems like it might be after Fridge Logic, but doesn't seem to be as such in universe, so it doens't count.
23. Master and Commander - 19th century field medicine might be nightmare fuel, but it is not And I Must Scream.
24. Mercy Kill - Refers to Reaper indoctrination in Mass Effect. Appears not to be an example.
25. Mona Lisa Smile - Refers to The Sarah Jane Adventures - I don't think being trapped in a painting is usually treated as a truly horrible torture. Side note: Do we have a trope for getting trapped in paintings?
26. Only Mostly Dead - Refers to Pikmin - Not specifically torturous. Can burried Pikmin even feel anything?
27. Pandering to the Base - Weird Audience Reaction Sink Hole misuse.
28. Poptropica - More like Banished To Another Dimension.
29. Psychonauts - The situation described does not mention painfulness, and it does mention being unaware of the situation.
30. Ravenor - If you had to start with "mild case", I'm pretty sure it can't be an example of this.
31. Robot Chicken - I don't think the chicken's really treated as being tortured, certainly being experimented upon, but not this trope.
32. Saikano - Walking an empty Earth. Not And I Must Scream.
33. Shifting Worlds - No implication that this trope is actually in effect.
34. Sins of Our Fathers - Sink Hole on the words "and completely alone"
35. Slave World - Used for being able to have your ability to speak turned off.
36. Soul Jar - Refers to The Inheritance Cycle - Incorrect, based on the next bullet point saying something about comminication still being possible.
37. The Art Of Theft - It never happens to the character in question. It's also of questionable relevance to the Chzo Mythos as well.
38. The Noozles - Seems to not have anything to do with this trope actually happening.

Unsure:

1. 3 Inches of Blood - Though, I'm not completely sure. I suppose it depends on how torturous being an animated skeleton is.
2. Your _____ Is Broken - It's referring to the scene in The Matrix where Neo loses his mouth. There is an end to it, but it likely wasn't in sight for Neo at the time. That said, it did end, and was made to seem like it was All Just a Dream.

Correct:

1. A Troll In Central Park - looks correct, by way of Baleful Polymorph.
2. Genius Loci - Referring to John DeChancie's Castle Perilous. The chaso part is what gives me the impression that this is correct.
3. Hypocrite - Referring to Full Metal Alchemist, looks right after reading FMA's page.
4. I Have Your Wife - Refers to a work I am not familiar with, though the write-up checks out. (I think)
5. Karmic Death - something to do with Buffy The Vampire Slayer - looks right
6. Nedroid - Looks right, and oddly self-inflicted.
7. Nier - Looks right, in an odd way.
8. Night Watch - Looks right, since being trapped in a sarcophagus forever with someone you were fighting/opposing sounds like it'd be pretty torturous for both parties.
9. Pre-Mortem One-Liner - Series in question is Bleach, and yes the situation is correct.
10. Strong Ants - Explanation corrected later in thread.

. X Just X (Not counted towards total wicks checked, simply mentioned in the interest of full disclosure):

1. Ambrose Bierce
2. Gyo
3. Myst (Okay, there is elaboration, just none related to whenter or not it is in fact, a case of And I Must Scream)
4. Spells R Us
5. Tales Of The Unrefined

This amounts to 79.17% misuse among examples that aren't uncertain or X Just X.

edited 6th Sep '11 10:45:06 PM by Balmung

Maddy, is the "closely confined" absolutely required? I can think of an example from a David Eddings book. A dude pisses off a god, the god freezes time, sets him on eternal fire so that he will never go out or die, and then leaves him in the frozen moment of time. Is that this or just generic Fate Worse than Death.

Fight smart, not fair.

It says "Immobilized or otherwise contained" which I read as "Not able to move around much". Giving someone an entire dimension to run around in is, to me, somewhat less horrific that giving them a small room or even a house they can move about in but not leave.

And whosis can scream, still. It's just that the only creatures that occupy that no-time are the troll gods. So it's not that he's prevented from communicating. There's just no one there who would be interested in listening to him.

Belgarath shoving Zedar into the rock under the tower is And I Must Scream, though, since it's got all of them: horrific (buried alive); not fatal (Belgarath's reply when Garion (Silk?) asks if he's dead.); Immobilized (underground, in the bedrock); Unable to communicate with anyone (See "buried in the bedrock"); and No foreseeable end (to free him, someone would have to exactly duplicate in reverse what Belgarath did to put him there. Right down to the exact way he thinks.)

edited 6th Sep '11 8:47:01 PM by Madrugada

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

Perhaps the problem that the trope itself is too narrowly defined. What other, similar tropes do we have? How many of the examples meet all but one element? (Tropes Are Flexible.)

Seems like several were called incorrect for not featuring torture, but the trope says that the isolation itself may be the torture.

It's been too many years since I read the trope namer.

edited 6th Sep '11 8:58:57 PM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

I think the trope is too narrow if you're going to insist on every single point. I think there's still a lot of misuse, but not nearly as bad as that wick check shows.

I'm gonna be a bit lazy with my math here and say that about 2/3 of the misuse would probably not count as misuse if they didn't have to hit all of the points.

So which points are optional? All of them? If it has any four, but not the fifth? A particular one? Which one?

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

I think the core of the trope is that you're trapped, isolated, and cut off from the world. Therefore three and four (confinement and no communication) are absolutely mandatory.

I think torture (point one) is implicit — it doesn't have to be stated that if you get turned into a statue (or a painting), but are still conscious, that's torture, so we don't need an explicit claim, but if it's clear that it's not torture — that somehow, it's not a horrible fate — then it wouldn't be this trope. But I think it would have to be clear that it's not torture to be disqualified, so I think a couple of the examples marked as misuse might not be.

Points two (won't kill) and five (no escape) are the ones I see us having the most flex room on.

Even with that, it leaves us with a lot of obvious misuse. Some of the examples weren't even close.

edit: oh, and I think there's a point that's being overlooked. Communication shouldn't just be prevented (a gag wouldn't count, for example). It should be impossible. Being turned into a statue while remaining conscious is a classic example of this trope. Almost the default.

edited 6th Sep '11 11:23:59 PM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

The animorphs one is correct, its just complicated. Long story short, they got trapped by the animal's instincts rather than anything physical. For the rest of the series (note this was in book 3 out of 55), they all have nightmares about it.

Looking at some of the reported misuse, I'd say, A) a lot of it's not misuse (but there's still enough to be concerning), B) we need a Trapped In Your Body trope or something like that, for some of the too-broad use, and C) many people are taking the name literally, as something that makes a character (or the audience) scream.

That last is a serious problem, and, of the 50 cases above, seven are clearly this, and three more might be. That's 14% to 20%, which is bad.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

And That's Terrible. (Terribly sorry. I really couldn't resist that one.)

edited 7th Sep '11 1:32:52 AM by kroozer101

Things of mine keep getting deleted. I curse too much.

Well, remember, I was using the criteria that Madrugada laid out. as it stands, this is a very specific trope.

I'm in favor of tweaking the criteria. I agree that the "torturous" part is inclusive with the rest of it, and need not be specifically painful. The essence is that you have no freedom of movement, communication or the ability to die. You're stuck in a permanent, inescapable prison with no ability to even communicate your pains. It is pure internal suffering and torment (often implied). And by "permanent", I mean "until otherwise negated" or at LEAST very long term.

Tweaked the Laconic to clarify that you need to be unable to communicate.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Well, the Trope Namer was contained inside an enormous computer mainframe, nor was he rendered immobile in the huge space...

I don't believe the size of or available space inside whatever is containing a person or character has to matter in any way nor does movement necessarily have to be restricted; an example quite simply is a very unpleasant situation where not even death could be a release.

edited 7th Sep '11 8:18:15 AM by SeanMurrayI

I think rather than being immobilized the real point is they cannot escape the situation. Like maybe they can move around the whole country, but no matter where they are they are still suffering the same torment, still cannot communicate with others and still cannot expect release.

Hmm. I was using torturous not in the simply "physically painful" meaning, but more to indicate degree of discomfort inflicted, considerably more than "uncomfortable" or "bothersome". I agree the limiting it to "causing excruciating physical pain" is too narrow. Emotional and mental pain should count even if physical pain isn't present or is only mild or moderate.

I do think that the "no foreseeable escape (not even by death)" is very important.

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

If anything, I'd believe emotional and mental anguish are more important to defining this trope than any physical torture, as being trapped, confined, or restricted in some form or another is the most prevalent characteristic of this trope, by far.