WTF: Continuity Snarl

I don't get the image AT ALL. Explain?

So the last thread for this didn't get a replacement. Anyway...

Motion to pull

If I understand correctly, that is an artist's rendition of a continuity snarl. I say Keep Until Better Image Suggested and change the caption to expand on the Hawk-Snarl a bit.

I'd definitely want a new image, if only because that's not what I think of when representing a continuity snarl. (The image, not the character. Hawkman fits that trope down to a tee.)

The Laconic, which is not very laconic, says Continuity Snarl is: "When not even the fans who write Wikipedia articles understand what is and isn't in canon."

The image doesn't say that at all.

Also, that could be rewritten with half as many words and no capitalized nouns.

This might be best represented by a graph, showing events in boxes, and lines between those events going all over the place.

I'd be fine with pulling the pic.

Pull

Pull. I'm sure it makes sense to people who follow Hawkman or whatever, but to me, it looks more like Body Horror or something.

edited 2nd Jan '12 10:39:17 AM by INUH

It makes perfect sense. You have mishmash of various versions of the character.

That's if you know those are what his various incarnations look like. And even then, it says to me some kind of horrid experiment melding his various dimensional counterparts.

You don't need to know a thing about the show. I never heard of it before but I was able to use common sense and context to figure it out.

All you need to do is improve the caption.

What about a small version of one of the continuity charts for Transformers? Pictures are on here: [1] (Western continuity at the top, and scroll down a bit for the Japanese continuity chart). Permissions would be needed, though.

edited 2nd Jan '12 11:12:27 AM by ArcadesSabboth

"You don't need to know a thing about the show. I never heard of it before but I was able to use common sense and context to figure it out."

What context? For all we know, what is actually happening in that issue has nothing to do with the trope (as in that issue would have to be about confusion over his past to be about the trope).

And it just looks arrogant to imply those that don't get this aren't using common sense.

Contextual reading is a few easy step:

1. Read name of trope.
2. Read first few lines and last few lines of the Wall of Text description (that probably needs to be shortened, BTW, but I guess this is the wrong board to address that)
3. Look at picture: See several versions of a character mashed together.
4. Think "Oh, this is about complex, confusing continuities so this is being used as a visual metaphor for that."

And, for a bonus, it is explained in the Comic Books folder.

I don't get how anyone would think, say, Body Horror, given the title.

That might work. Of the two, I would say go with the Japanese one because that is more compact.

edited 2nd Jan '12 11:35:01 AM by Auxdarastrix

The trope title cannot make up for shortcomings in an image, especially if the image is an abstract of the trope.

"And, for a bonus, it is explained in the Comic Books folder."

How? And I mean how does it describe how that cover shows the trope? This is the line actually about the cover.

"The cover to Hawkman (Vol. 3) #27, published in December 1995, shown above, pretty much describes Hawkman's continuity at the time."

The problem there is that it doesn't say the issue itself is about this trope. It just seems to assume it's about it. So for all we know, the actual event depicted is Body Horror, not this trope.

edited 2nd Jan '12 11:52:03 AM by DragonQuestZ

The whole point of the image is to display the trope visually in as concise a manner as possible. It should be able to illustrate the trope independently of the article itself.

Nothing should be independent of anything. That approach is entirely wrong. Anyone that looks at just the picture to understand the trope is going to make all sorts of misguided assumptions, no matter how good the picture is. Same with the Laconic, or the Playing With, the Anaylsis or whatever else you are looking at.

Every part of a trope page should complement and enhance the entire page, and be understood and used as part of a greater whole. People looking at just one part and not the whole thing are a big part of why we get rampant trope misuse to begin with.

I agree that page elements do not stand alone; it's important to consider things from a holistic point of view. Regardless, that image is kind of weak, though.

Part of the reason for why we push for images that stand on their own is because, for the longest time, we've had problems with Fan Myopia and Just A Face And A Caption. People would just put up pictures of whatever their favorite character was, regardless of whether or not it displayed the trope or if it was even an example. We're trying to get away from that and provide things that make sense to everyone, not just the few people within the fandom from where the image originates.

To me, as someone who doesn't read Hawkman, this image is completely nonsensical and I support a pull.

edited 2nd Jan '12 3:23:19 PM by KaiserMazoku

Okay, maybe saying that the image needs to be independent of the article entirely is an overstatement, but having an image that's completely unintelligible unless you're already familiar with the trope is also a bad thing. The point of the image is still to demonstrate the entire trope as much as possible. It probably won't illustrate the trope in it's entirety, but it should give the reader at least some sense of what the trope is about.

edited 2nd Jan '12 6:27:06 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Supporting pull.

I think a chart might work best for this.

X 5

You really need to go read How To Pick A Good Image and the Image Pickin' Etiquette and Image Pickin' thread criteria threads in the FAQ forum, because you're way off base with how we work in here.

edited 2nd Jan '12 6:39:21 PM by Willbyr

I read How To Pick A Good Image. I don't see a contradiction with anything I said.

I read the first post of the thread in the FAQ. I don't see a contradiction there either. I'm not going to read all 183 posts, just to find some sort of evidence that people are incapable of reading brief captions and trope descriptions. That would be rather... ironic.

Anyway, I see that I accidently posted my support for this picture◊ in the wrong Continuity thread, so I'm posting it here now.

Hmmm.. I tend to agree with Aux here that with the context it's not too hard to figure out those are multiple variants of one character that are in conflict with each other.

I didn't even know "Hawkman" was a thing until this thread. Yet I open the page, look at the picture, and without even reading the trope (or caption) I get the point: One character with multiple versions that are not reconcilable.

Still, while I don't think it's an auto-pull, I would prefer something different.

Does anyone have replacement suggestions?

edited 6th Jan '12 6:42:14 PM by Sackett