Needs Help: Unfortunate Implications

Unfortunate Implications are a real thing, very often visible in fiction.

Unfortunately, that's not what these pages are.

This has turned into "twist every little thing that someone might find offensive and blow it out of proportion, nitpicking about it". The way it's become, you'd think it's an Omnipresent Trope. A few months ago, I had to axe some examples about how "three women fuse together to create a demon is sexist" and "a woman fighting (and winning!) a man with the power to age things is misogynistic".

It is a prime natter magnet and for justifying edits.

Propose an Example Sectionectomy.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

Previous Threads:[1][2]

Seems that they are a magnet of sinkholery too.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I took a brief look at the "film" and "video games" sections. They were a total mess, and I don't think they are fixable.

Unfortunate Implications was never even meant to be a trope, right? It got re-purposed to that a few years ago or something, from having been an index over tropes that authors should be careful with how they use them.

The old system was a good idea, but maybe it attracted too much complaining to be viable? The current system isn't even a good idea, it's just one big Wild Mass Guessing on finding everything that "someone, somewhere" might possibly take the wrong way.

I'd say yes to sectionary.

I generally read this trope as: A character of a minority or distinct culture may not have any negative traits, unless there's at least one other character of the same culture with a positive trait to weigh it out. Also, no character may ever display stereotypical traits (of any culture). This includes their actual culture or using an accent they do have normally. In other words, I take this about as seriously as Ruined FOREVER.

I would be fine with keeping examples that have actually caused controversy. Examples where one person things it may offend people who're easily offended once they analyse it don't really belong.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

Basically, a Citation Needed standard? I can support that.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

It could go the way of Did Not Do The Research and just become an index of tropes that often have Unfortunate Implications when using them. Making it no longer a trope in any form.

I have no objection to that. In fact I don't want to get rid of it. Just no more of those awful, awful examples.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

What do we do with the wicks, though?

And we really need a "Indexes must have Index in their name" policy.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Unfortunate Implications did have a trope list, but after a lengthy thread, that list was cut, reborn as Handle This Index With Care, then cut again. I do like the idea of citations, I think Unfortunate Implications is worthy of a mention in an article if it did garner a lot of controversy/criticism (see Resident Evil 5 with documented media observations.)

That still means we need to cut 95% of the examples for being utter nonsense.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

I have no problem with that.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

I won't miss them. Not really keen on "offensive" or similar arguments.

Anyway, do we need a crowner here?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Either way there's a gray area, sure, but a list of tropes that frequently have unfortunate implications seems much easier to be objective about, than a list of works containing unfortunate implications.

Well, there are three options the way I understand the arguments, plus nothing.

• Example Sectionectomy. No examples or tropes at all.
• Allow only examples that have stirred up controversy in media, more than just singular opinions.
• Remake into an index for tropes that are likely or often connected to Unfortunate Implications.
• Do nothing.

edited 22nd Jun '12 4:31:03 PM by Feather7603

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

Unfortunately, as someone involved in the death of Handle This Index With Care, I can say that's not really the case. People might get a little less worked up about Trope X being listed under Unfortunate Implications then they would about Work Y, but it's still not terribly objective.

I favor keeping it as a trope, and using Feather 7603's proposal to require citation of actual controversy.

How is this citation supposed to work? Do books count? Scholarly research? Jstor links accepted?

I would accept anything that's not written by a single person. Well, technically everything is, but magazines and stuff have editors and are collective efforts to represent something more than just a single person's opinion. Thus, I wouldn't say a column would be enough, as those are generally specifically written as the opinions of a single person, but articles are supposed to be more objective and reflect the world better.

The other direction is when it seems very obvious, but if it's a deliberate stereotype, it's not exactly unfortunate*

, is it? It may be supposed to be offensive, parodic, funny, or just Values Dissonance.

But really, the main point is that is shouldn't be enough that a troper found something he thought was an Unfortunate Implication.

Of course, lampshades or other in-work mentions would be acceptable as well, as those aren't ambiguous at all.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

I'm okay with the idea of citation if that's the way we are agreeing but it might be a little against the TV Tropes mantra, requiring documentation for just one trope will not stop people from vague generalizations.

If we do demand documentation, really just about anything bigger than a blog should be fine. Such as "Here is an article from AV Club" or "This caused quite a controversy at Television Without Pity." The reason I say "more than a blog" is because anyone on the internet can have a blog (including anyone editing on this site), but to be a writer for a distinct website requires at least a little degree of research.

I think any vetted site would be fine, as there is No Such Thing As Notability. I think the core is that the article shoudl not be about someone feeling offended by something, but by something that clearly happened in the work, and a negative response from some of the audience being clearly grounded in a reaction to the context. I think the bad examples are following a similar devoluation as has been noted for Moral Event Horizon... it's really not supposed to be subjective. Unfortunate Implications, imo, is supposed to be about a trope in the work that, when evaluated fairly, is a reasonable cause for social alarm by a segment of the audience. Whether the problematic trope use is intended or unintended, or obvious or inabvious to the audience, the analysis should be pretty straightforward.

Ah, but what constitutes reasonable? Just because there are obvious examples doesn't mean that every example is unambiguous or undebatable.

This seems like the best option.

There Is No Such Thing As Notability is about works. Don't misuse it for anything else. And citations are about verifiability not notability - common misconception about Wikipedia

Otherwise:

The other page on TV Tropes with citations that I know is DanBrowned.Dan Brown. Just so you know.

And I suggested citations mostly to keep out Troper Tales-like stuff, since most subjective items tend to be in a grey zone about these. On the subject of "notability", I'd say to ask for more than one citation if sources might be just one person's opinion.

Subjective indexes are indeed a bad idea. It would just turn Unfortunate Implications into a copy of Handle This Index With Care.

On another note: Can we make this page (citations or no) Flame Bait? It really seems to be this at times and it would save us the trouble of wicks.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I agree about making the artcile have a Flame Bait banner.

Actually, one point of the citations was to avoid the Flame Bait. I don't think there's a problem to list them elsewhere, with the same restrictions as on the trope page, naturally, but potholes should be avoided

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

I don't want troper talers, but I do think analysis by sites like racialicous or sociological images should be allowed

Those are meant to be seen as objective, not singular opinions, though. They also go into quite a lot more depth than troper examples, and they show evidence of further research.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.