Complaining: Ass Pull

First , the name and the description sound as complaining about aversions to Foreshadowing and Chekhov's Gun. Second- if aversions to a trope are sufficiently uncommon to be listed, it is possible list them as aversions to this trope.(And if it is not sufficiently uncommon...well, are not worthy listing.) I guess an Example Sectionectomy is a good idea.

edited 13th May '12 11:40:20 AM by MagBas

It's a Continuity Trope about poor continuity. And yes, there is such a thing as poor continuity, and when it's the aim of this wiki is to identify and document narrative language, poor language, like Plot Holes and Ass Pulls, is very much as worthy of documentation here as anything else.

On the whole though, I do believe it would be better if Continuity Tropes (especially ones about BAD continuity) belonged on their own subpage (something akin to "goofs" pages on IMDB, perhaps, since much of this kind of stuff could just be summarized as narrative goofs and flaws). Stuff like this isn't necessarily a convention, as typical tropes are, but occurrences that objectively violate an established narrative and continuity aren't exactly subjective and YMMV, either. To that end, this issue probably touches upon a topic that should affect how we handle all Continuity Tropes (or, at least, those that are also in the Bad Writing Index) as a whole, rather than any single page about continuity not being correctly handled.

edited 13th May '12 12:40:16 PM by SeanMurrayI

...as you noted, it is not a convention, but a goof. Beyond it, as i said, Ass Pull has an other trait- it is an aversion to some tropes.

About the ymmv thing... read the discussion page to YMMV. It makes the explaining better than I.

Bump.

And that's irrelevant. An Ass Pull is purely an element that advances or resolves a narrative/plot thread without it being established or hinted at beforehand (for instance, having The Hero survive a Bolivian Army Cliffhanger by revealing that he could fly away from the danger like Superman, without having previously established that the hero ever had such an ability). The actual lack of specific narrative tropes that otherwise wouldn't have meant there is an Ass Pull in a story is irrelevant to actually identifying an Ass Pull.

And I'm not going to read the YMMV discussion page without direction to what exactly you expect me to read there. There's been a lot of discussion on that very page, and it's impossible for me to judge which part(s) you find to be relevant or where they are on the page. Not that it should matter, I don't think. An Ass Pull doesn't seem to be any less objective than a Plot Hole.

edited 3rd Jun '12 10:10:49 AM by SeanMurrayI

"A clue or allusion embedded in the narrative that predicts some later event or revelation. It could be something a character says or does, an event that doesn't make sense until much later, a Meaningful Name, or really anything at all. The foreshadowing may be ominous, or seem perfectly innocent at the time." This is the first paragraph to Foreshadowing. About the discussion thing... i am speaking about the November 30 2010 discussion.

What are we talking about Foreshadowing's description for? We're talking about plot points and events that have no correlation to a built up narrative and may as well have just fallen straight out of the sky or been spontaneously pulled out of someone's ass; it's a completely different type of occurrence.

And, at best, the YMMV discussion from November 30, 2010 only supposes that maybe people mistook Ass Pull for "plot point conveyed badly", rather than "plot point delivered without any correlation to established events in a narrative". That much would only conclude definition drift and misuse (assuming there is even evidence to support that; no evidence is given) and doesn't seem to justify why an objective concept like "plot point delivered without any correlation to established events in a narrative" (which is still supposed to be the intended definition here) is being labeled as subjective, whereas related concepts like Plot Hole don't get similar treatment.

edited 3rd Jun '12 2:50:17 PM by SeanMurrayI

"An Ass Pull is a moment when the writers pull something out of thin air in a less-than-graceful narrative development, violating the Law of Conservation of Detail by dropping a plot-critical detail in the middle, or near the end of their narrative without Foreshadowing or dropping a Chekhov's Gun earlier on." This is the first paragraph to Ass Pull. It is pull a plot point without hint it first- at least, this was my understanding.

This is indeed a trope. While its nature makes it very easy to abuse so someone can Complain About Shows They Don't Like, it still is a trope regardless. Conventions of bad writing are still conventions, and therefore worthy of being documented here, and sometimes "bad writing" is recognizable.

This is the Super Trope to Deus ex Machina, Deus Angst Machina, and Diabolus ex Machina. Very simply, it's a moment in which a narrative development occurs without any actual, well, development.

Here's a short lecture on the subject from the creators of South Park: http://lockerz.com/d/9405573

In case that is made unwatchable: "We've found out this really simple rule that maybe you guys have all heard before, but, it took us a long time to learn it, but… we can take these beats, which are basically the beats of your outline, and if the words 'and then' belong between those beats, you're ****ed, basically. … What should happen between every beat that you've written down is either the word 'therefore' or 'but'."

There's more, but that's the most important part.

Clocking due to lack of activity.

Locking up.