Should be a disambiguation page : Creating Life

Update: Shimaspawn convinced me that we should go the supertrope/subtrope route instead of a disambiguation page. So. One neutral supertrope for creating life no matter how it was portrayed. Followed by subtropes for various ways of portraying it. On tropes and YKTTW threads, we now have:

• Supertrope: Creating Life
• Subtropes:
  • Creating Life Is Bad (or Playing God).
  • Creating Life Is Awesome
  • Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!
  • It Came from the Fridge
  • Creating Life Is Unforeseen (Supertrope of those last two tropes)
  • Creation Story (A creator creates a world of some kind)

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The old version of this post follows below

The act of creating life in general and intelligent life in particular is a central part of many works. Then this act is done by humans, it is usually portrayed in at least one of the following four ways, with or without overlap:

1. Creating Life Is Awesome: The act of Creating Life turns out well for the created individual as well as the creator - who doesn't develop any megalomania in the process, instead remaining a normal human being and usually becoming a reasonable father figure for his or her creation.
2. Creating Life Is Bad: Also known as Playing God, the act of Creating Life is highly immoral when done by a human. Such glory belong to God alone, and mortals should beware of hubris! Expect the experiment to have Gone Horribly Wrong, Gone Horribly Right, or whatever. The creator is likely to either abandon the created in one cruel way or another, or love it in spite of it being highly destructive.
3. Deity of Human Origin: Yes, Creating Life is for Gods. So if you Create Life, you are a God. And this is a good thing. Even if your humanity ensures that God Is Flawed.
4. Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: The act of Creating Life is done without even realizing it. The current trope is limited to computers. A supertrope that includes the creation of biological intelligent life is developing at YKTTW, under the working title Creating Life Is Unforeseen.

First issue: Disambiguation page

The name "Creating Life" include all these concepts, and should thus be a disambiguation page. Currently, it's the main title for one of the four (five) tropes listed above.

Having "Creating Life" as title for any one of these tropes is very unclear: The name indicates that the trope is about creating life. In general, regardless of whether it's done by a mortal or a deity, and regardless of in what light it is portrayed. The actual trope, however, is about creation of life being done by a certain type of character (mortal) and being portrayed in a certain way (as a bad thing).

Second issue: What should the new main title be?

We already have the redirects Playing God and Creating Life Is Bad. In my opinion, both titles nail the concept with precision and clarity. Which one should we chose? Or does someone have a third option?

edited 17th Jan '12 6:38:56 AM by Xzenu

Creating Life is the supertrope for all those concepts. As such it should be the supertrope with all of the examples that better fit those subtropes on the proper subtrope page. Any examples that don't fit those tropes can remain on the Supertrope.

What the page needs is a clean up. A clear list of subtropes and insistence that examples be listed there first.

edited 16th Jan '12 7:23:30 AM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

The current Creating Life page is simply Playing God / Creating Life Is Bad. You suggest that we split it into a neutral supertrope about "creating life, regardless of perspective" and a separate subtrope for the frankenstein myth?

I don't think a neutral supertrope is possible. In either case, the current page is not the supertrope.

I think a neutral supertrope is possible. Not all works are a value judgement. The title sounds like it should be a supertrope. I think we could tweak it to be one. Those are certainly all concepts that share a supertrope.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

While I can't think of such a work, I do agree that it is theoretically possible. A work could mention the creation of sentient life in labs, without making it directly or indirectly cool or horrific. With indirectly, I mean for example using it as a narrative tool for portraying society itself as awesome or bad.

Actually! The game Alpha Centauri might be such an example. Your civilization will create intelligent life (unless you actively avoid those tech trees), and this is not part of the characterization of your faction. You may be awesome or horrible, honest or hypocrite, religious or unproblematic ally secular... In either case, you will create sentient life.

(BTW, some works zigzag between Awesome and Bad. I preliminarily think it's best to keep those examples to those two pages, rather than having it on a supertrope page as well.)

Hmm! We don't seem to have a trope for the creation of artificial intelligences!

Instant A.I.: Just Add Water! is only for when it's created by mistake.

While the creation of biological sentient life in my experience is always portrayed as either Awesome or Bad, the creation of technological (or incorporeal/magical) sentient lifeforms is often portrayed more matter-of-factly.

The supertrope should be for sentient life, regardless of type.

See, you just gave an example of it being value neutral. DMFA has one of the characters create biological life and rather than being treated by the narrative as horrible or awesome it's treated as "oops". You might just not be consuming the right media.

Things that don't clearly fit into good or evil belong on a supertrope. Even if the supertrope doesn't end up having many examples on the page at all. Tone Shift has one example on the main page, but it's a supertrope. It counts as having all the examples of it's subtropes too.

edited 16th Jan '12 7:52:33 AM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Yep, you convinced me. :-)

What is DMFA?

Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures. It's a webcomic.

So, what we need is to make a crowner to turn this into a supertrope then.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Yup. But lets wait a few days before we holler, to see if anyone else has input. I have started drafts on YKTTW, updated OP with links.

Edit: Btw, thanks for the DMFA example. Seem to be an example of the new trope I was working on, Creating Life Is Unforseen.

edited 17th Jan '12 6:52:54 AM by Xzenu

I hooked a crowner, like you hollered for, but aside from the one option I could find, I don't know what you want in the crowner...

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

Looks fine to me. Thanks.

Neutral Super trope sounds like a good idea. We have a similar set up for Immortality with the descriptive immortality page and then pages for the pro and con.

Bump. All votes in favor so far. Launching in three days if no objections.

Value neutral supertropes are good things.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Does the neutrality of Creating Life include cases where both sides of creating life are shown?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Calling the crowner.

It includes all examples that don't fit better into a subtrope.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

And works that zigzags back and worth on the issue of whether or not the creation was awesome / bad / unforeseen can go on both pages.

Uh, why? My impression is that Creating Life Is Bad and Creating Life Is Awesome are for cases where the badness/awesomeness is an absolute constant. Zigzagging would be more the purview of the neutral Super-Trope.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Yep, if it zigzags and therefore doesn't really fit in one or the other it can go in the supertrope and not be a nattery mess on both subtropes.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

So, crowner has been called with the result in favor of making Creating Life a neutral supertrope. What's the next step?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Well, it looks like someone seems to have redone the page. I think it looks pretty good. It doesn't have many examples, but with so many subtropes it makes sense.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Yeah, but how come Instant A.I.: Just Add Water! doesn't show up as "Instant A.I., Just Add Water"? It's custom-titled already.

edited 14th Feb '12 1:21:56 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Take it to the broken custom titles thread in wiki talk.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick