Real Life section maintenance (New Crowner 19 Feb 2024)

How can Real Life have an ending?

An event in Real Life can have an ending.

Right. Events, lives, days... endings occur all the time, along with beginnings. There are scads of koans, song lyrics, and such about it. The problem with Downer Ending is that it can easily be open to interpretation depending on your perspective. I wouldn't say that RL examples should be banned, but they should definitely be approached cautiously.

Events, lives, days... endings occur all the time, along with beginnings.

Those aren't the ending of any narrative. Real Life still exists after all of those have ended.

Real Life is not one narrative. There is no reason to treat it as one.

Downer Ending isn't just the absolute end of a narrative either. It can be the end of an episode in a series.

I was wondering... does the news subpage of Narm count as a real life section?

Would Wouldn't Hurt a Child count as talking shit about real people? The trope generally requires that the person would commit other evil actions.

The narm for news is about the news shows, which while based on real stuff, is still a type of narrative. You have news stories that are slanted one way or the other depending on what the journalists want. Could probably still use some scrubbing, though.

The Real Life examples of Wouldn't Hurt a Child seem to be more about crimes than villains, with the contrast being between who's a permitted target, and to what extent. I don't think it's harmful as it is.

edited 20th Sep '13 8:50:45 PM by AnotherDuck

Common Knowledge has a huge Real Life section. The trope description seems somewhat uneven, as if several editors have tinkered with it, and the name certainly could be less ambiguous, but I take it that the intended definition is "people widely believe something about the content of a work which is not actually true". Or as the laconic says,

The real life section is a collection of "popular misconceptions" and urban legends, with little or no demonstration of or regard to the relevance to fiction or storytelling, and filled, as to be expected, with ample amounts of Natter and know-it-all lectures. We don't need that; Snopes is much better at it than we are.

While one should be careful of accepting Laconics as accurate renditions of the full trope, in this case that is correct.

However, should that really be NRLEP, instead of just cutting the non-examples? (At a glance, the end result would be the same thing, really, just not quite as permanent a removal. )

edited 21st Sep '13 4:33:05 PM by Nohbody

I suppose one question would be, is it possible to have a RL example for something people believe about stories expressed through media?

I think the closest it could get is certain stereotypes, which either have pages or are not allowed. (If I understand correctly.)

All examples on Common Knowledge are "real life", because they are about real life people believing something incorrect about a work (Popcultural Osmosis gone wrong, so to speak). It's actually a Trivia item, not a trope. I guess technically there could be "in-story" examples too, but I doubt that comes up in fiction frequently enough to constitute a trope.

The "Real Life" folder does away with all connection to works and is just a general list of "common misconceptions". While some of these may come up in fiction, the examples do not point out works where the misconception is presented as fact. I think it's pretty useless, seeing as 1) such things should be covered by Artistic License and Science Marches On, and 2) "general common misconceptions" are something entirely different from the actual page definition, which is "misconceptions about works".

Just 'cleaning' the RL section won't help, because as long as RL examples are allowed, the examples are valid (not judging the quality of the actual entries now). It's a clear NRLEP case to me.

edited 22nd Sep '13 1:32:45 AM by LordGro

So if it isn't directly related to misconception of media, genre, and such, it should be booted?

Yes. Which applies to all examples in the Real Life folder.

This is not trivia, this is a really blatant Audience Reaction. "Audience Reactions are opinions, not tropes. Some of them may be very prevalent opinions, or may have inspired an author to play or avert a trope or may even be what a work is most known for, or be on the contrary completely unknown or privy to a selected few."

edited 22nd Sep '13 4:24:10 AM by MagBas

While the knowledge or belief somebody has about a work is subjective, the fact that a significant number of people have an erroneous belief about a work is technically something that can be objectively verified (or falsified). Therefore I think Common Knowledge is Trivia rather than an Audience Reaction.

"Some of them may be very prevalent opinions"

Karmic Death is specifically about villains who die in a way that is completely their fault, but has a Real Life section.

Would those fit better on Death by Irony?

The Real Life Section of Karmic Death has a commented out note:

"Please restrict Real Life examples to cases where it's been invoked."

(The page needed a lot of namespacing.)

edited 23rd Sep '13 10:56:27 PM by Candi

Added Karmic Death.

I'm really more concerned about the villain part of the trope. Is it appropriate to rethink it as referring to criminals? But then, there are those who protested against protection laws, then died because of that specific lack of protection. I don't think anyone would say they deserved to die, which is a large part of the trope.

There are also a few that just don't fit, like a few of the WWII ones. For instance, Hitler's suicide was a suicide, so it's not really karmic. At most it indicates he thought it was an effective way of killing someone.

I suggest moving the valid examples to Death by Irony, a supertrope, which doesn't have that problem. Or possibly Hoist by His Own Petard, which is a sister trope.

edited 23rd Sep '13 11:42:21 PM by AnotherDuck

That 'call people villain' thing is bad.

As for RL examples:

Jivaro -that's a keeper. Karmic, possible ironic.

WWII: Dirlewanger -that's more a revenge thing, I think.
Freisler -either Karmic or a Darwin.
The cyanide thing -it was effective. Deliberately using the same poison doesn't count as karmic in my opinion.
Mussolini -that's a ticked-off populace, not karmic.

"A man tried to turn his pet goat Snowball into an attack dog" etc. That guy won a Darwin Award nomination and made it into one of the books, if I remember right. Probably Death by Irony at least, and very karmic in my opinion.

Louis the 16th -Ironic, but not karmic. France was still suffering from a lot of the crap it went through under the Sun King. (Read up on his reign sometime; it's very interesting. Golden, but behind the scenes...) Louis the 15th and 16th weren't the kind of leaders that could deal with the mess while maintaining France's strength, especially after the French people saw them aiding another country to gain what they were denied.

L'Olonnais -karmic and ironic

Stalin -I don't see it as karmic. Just deserts, maybe. Reap what you sow and all that.

"A biker takes part in a protest against a law that makes the wearing of helmets mandatory, and dies from a head injury in a minor accident." Irony, but he wasn't exactly a villain, so where's the karma?

"Similarly, an advocate against seatbelt laws died because he wasn't wearing his seat belt." Same as the biker. Irony, no karma.

Swedish Witch Trials -karmic and hoist by their own petard.

edited 24th Sep '13 12:20:59 AM by Candi

Actually most of the ones you flagged "karmic" are still misuse. Note that the trope isn't just "completely justified and ironic death" (that's Death by Irony); it's "completely justified and ironic death that is entirely their own fault"—that is, if they were deliberately killed (by anyone), it's not a Karmic Death.

EDIT: Granted, there's a lot of misuse along those lines in the other example sections as well. The page could probably use a thorough clean with most of the misuse shifted to Death by Irony, where they belong.

EDITEDIT: A very quick wick check (~10) revealed one correct use, 3 or 4 places that should have been Death by Irony, and a slew of Zero Context Examples. I think TRS might be needed, as I suspect it's the title causing the problem, given that we're not using "karmic" according to its most common definition. -groans-

edited 24th Sep '13 2:45:26 PM by Nocturna

You're right. Teach me to try to analyze two hours before bedtime.

So it's more Karmic Boomerang Death?