Okay. The description (the beginning at least) is saying "these lyrics make no sense". The quote refers to scatting. The laconic version is about weird grammar. The title suggests stuffing extra syllables in a verse or maybe a painful rhyme. The examples are a hot mess of stuff; most are from tropes that already exist or they don't even apply.*

Seriously, who the heck called Dr. Horrible's Slipping lyrics wacky and shoehorned? That's what caught my attention whilst I was casually reading through. Enjambement, random person! It's glorious!

What the hell is this trope about?

Its middle paragraph is pretty nice. That has place as a trope, I think, maybe as a supertrope of all these lyric issues; not really sure. The other trope seems to be the weird grammar thingy. So those need to be split. That's all I got...

(Edit: Nuts there's something wrong with the title that I don't know how to fix. Did I spell it wrong? I'm such a noob. Edit Edit: Thanks for fixing it...)

edited 16th Jun '12 4:15:01 PM by piearty

The link is broken. Someone please fix. The trope seems to either be about lyrics that end up awkwardly phrased to fit a meter or rhyme scheme or about lyrics that were made up for musical impact rather than making sense as part of a whole. The latter seems to overlap heavily with the music section of True Art Is Incomprehensible. The former makes sense as a trope, but could be described a lot more clearly.

Anyone can change the link by clicking the light blue paper icon with a green plus-circle on it in the upper left corner of the page, just above the first post.

edited 16th Jun '12 12:15:40 AM by Feather7603

The lyrics to "Slipping" are shoehorned ("You line up like lemmings you lead to the water"?) but I'm pretty sure it's intentional.

My question is what is shoehorned? The grammar thing? And that lyric is "No one condemning you, lined up like lemmings you led to the water", which I don't see a huge problem with. Actually, I suppose it could be "they're lined...", but the rest of the Dr. Horrible example is perfectly fine; it just doesn't use end-stopped rhymes. Which proves my point: no one is clear about what this trope is about. You and the submitter thought the example counted for different reasons.

I still don't think lined up like lemmings you led to the water makes sense. Who is "you"?

But the rest of the song is good. It seems like some people are put off by complicated lyrics.

Isn't that "you" the singer? Like, a hypothetical person who might be condemned. Could be replaced by "no one condemning me, lined up like lemmings I led to the water".

You is Captain Hammer this should not be the focus of the discussion.

Oh, so he's saying "No one condemning you (Hammer), (these people are) lined up lemmings you (Hammer) led to the water"? I guess that works.

I don't want to derail this thread though. I agree that a lot of the examples are just slightly complex lyrics instead of what the page is describing (lyrics that are more focused on fitting into the song than making sense)

edited 17th Jun '12 10:21:53 AM by abk0100

Bump. Anything to actually do here?

Well, do we know what the trope actually is, and how could we describe it better?

Yes. We should pin this down more specifically. Weird line breaks might already have a trope.

Clocking due to lack of activity.

Locking.