Misused: All Myths Are True

There is no clear-cut distinction between "happening in the real world" and "happening in a fantasy world". See Urban Fantasy and Magical Realism for just the most obvious midpoints. With the exception of post-modernism, all fictional works are assumed to be "real worlds" within their own reality, with their own internal consistency.

Trying to artificially split every work of fiction into one of those two categories is enormously subjective, for no practical benefit that I can see except for keeping two tropes we happen to have at the moment, even if you have to radically redefine them to do so.

Well, it was just an idea. Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

I really meant that AMAT can be set in a world based on our own (where fantasy conventions actually are myths), while FKS is genre-dependant. Yes, Urban Fantasy and Magical Realism are where they overlap, but AMAT and FKS also occur in other subgenres and settings where they don't overlap.

edited 8th Dec '12 8:52:56 AM by DouglasFir

You're talking about Constructed World?

Yeah, that's the idea.

edited 8th Dec '12 7:26:14 PM by DouglasFir

OK, so FKS would be AMAT but happening in a Constructed World. Does that make a meaningful difference to the way the trope is used? If not, they shouldn't be separate tropes.

Also, we still seem to be just trying to think up ways the two tropes could potentially be split, rather than honestly determining if they're different as they are now. If the current description and examples don't illustrate the distinction you're making, then they'll all have to be scrapped anyway, so you may as well be proposing a new trope. And if the current name is associated with a different definition, it would add to the confusion to keep using that for the new one, so you really would be proposing a new trope.

I mean they're certainly attracting different kinds of examples. If you look at Fantasy Kitchen Sink, most of the examples do this thing where they list off as many fantasy elements from the work as the troper could think of ("This work has werewolves, fairies, aliens, dragons, vampires, wizards, zombies, elves, talking dogs, robots, Cthulhu..."), which isn't something that's happening with All Myths Are True.

That is not necessarily a sign that they are the same trope.

From earlier in the thread:

The way AMAT is being used (and I can't argue with this usage), it seems that it refers to any time many or all of the audience's real world myths are shown to be literally true (or at least based on truth) in the story's universe.

This might be a vast fantasy world that's behind The Masquerade, like in Harry Potter or Dresden Files.

It could be an openly fantastic world, like D&D, where Zeus, Thor, and Ma'at have to share space in the afterlife when they aren't busy battling demons or faeries.

It could be a universe where Sufficiently Advanced Aliens visited in the distant past and inspired all the stories, like in Stargate.

They're still the same trope; from the audience's perspective, all the audience's myths are true in the story's universe.

Now is that sufficiently identical to Fantasy Kitchen Sink to merge them? We may have to cut some examples — like Stargate — as being not FKS. Personally I'm okay with that; since "all your gods are references to one alien or another" is one of the most common versions of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, I don't see much need to have a second trope for that version.

edited 9th Dec '12 7:55:49 AM by Escher

I just thought that AMAT could be world-dependant (no Constructed Worlds) and FKS could be genre-dependant (no non-Fantasy). But I said that it was just an idea.

You're right. They are attracting different examples. And that's got me thinking: If we're careful enough, we could still use the current distinction.

I think I said in a past post that fantasy and mythology are two distinctly different things.

But they aren't. Fantasy is a literary genre deeply rooted in myths and legends from real-world cultures. Vampires are from Slavic mythology, elves are from Celtic mythology, dwarves are from Norse mythology, dragons are from medieval Christian mythology... yes, there are modern codifications of such myths associated with fantasy (largely thanks to Tolkein) but there simply isn't a clear division between the two things.

Point taken.

Well, if we have to do a merge, then how about making Fantasy Kitchen Sink redirect to All Myths Are True? To me, it makes more sense than the other way around.

Here's why:

• Since fantasy is derived from mythology, any FKS could arguably qualify as AMAT. But I don't think the reverse would work quite as well.
• FKS was originally supposed to be AMAT Up To Eleven. That makes FKS kind of like a subtrope of AMAT.
• The Up To Eleven part has allowed people to go crazy with FKS to the point where it looks downright silly to me, while AMAT seems better organized.

"Merge Fantasy Kitchen Sink and All Myths Are True, keeping the other name as a redirect."

None of that specifies which name we keep and which we lose. We can discuss that once the crowner's decided.

I don't really care at this point, I just want this to be over with...

The way the crowner option is written, if we voted to merge, I think we'd need an additional crowner to figure out what name to merge under.

BTW regarding the "Clean up" option, it's pretty pointless to have it there at all because "cleaning up" a page is always free and doesn't need a consensus. I'm going to add an option to remove the Chekhovs Myth part of the definition since that already exists as a separate trope with a better name for it.

edited 9th Dec '12 5:32:20 PM by troacctid

Bumping for more votes.

Also, please mind that not all options aren't mutually exclusive, lest of all cleanup.

It's looking like changing the description to keep it away from The Legend of Chekhov is the option with the most support.

Just to clarify — the common misuse of "all real-world myths are true or based closely on a true story" is already Crossover Cosmology?

Mmmm... not exactly. It's kind of a weird distinction to draw, but not all myths are cosmological.

OK, so we have:

• Crossover Cosmology: For settings with blended cosmologies, sometimes incompatible.
• The Legend of Chekhov: For myths that become true/relevant later.

I am currently a bit unclear on what All Myths Are True is here.

In that case I think a trope is missing. I wonder how much All Myths Are True and Crossover Cosmology examples may be misuse for the missing (super?) trope.

For which All Myths Are True would be a decent name...

edited 25th Feb '13 9:20:38 AM by ArcadesSabboth

Crossover Cosmology is specifically for cosmological and theological cases. It doesn't include vampires or leprechauns, for example. It's for religions.

Seems like a weird distinction, maybe, but you've got to admit that there are a lot of examples of crossover pantheons where Thor and Odin hang out with Zeus and Poseidon and complain about that upstart Jesus kid. I think it's worthy of its own trope.

edited 25th Feb '13 2:12:00 PM by troacctid

Not just pantheons, either. Zeus and Thor and Huitzilopochtli and Jesus hang out at the heavenly God Tavern discussing the latest antics of Coyote (putting a severed unicorn head on the desk of the leader of Werewolves Anonymous) and bet on how long it'll be before the next Horus vs. Set fight, while The Fair Folk are abducting European politicians...

There doesn't even need to be a Crossover Cosmology, the cosmology could be something original that allows the various mythologies to exist together in some way (look at In Nomine or Gargoyles).

edited 25th Feb '13 2:24:49 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Right... and then All Myths Are True would be a supertrope that encompasses cases that are not pan-cosmological/theological?

Hmm, offhand, I can't think of how you'd have Crossover Cosmology without also having some level of All Myths Are True, so...I guess so.

That sounds... not ideal, but good enough.