Misused Crowner added 01/13/13: Only Sane Man

Well, that may be slightly too complicated.

Anyway, can we have a vote on this or something? I don't know what you do to get that going, but the change would need to be implemented. Unless someone has some new arguments, of course.

I think you could suggest @18

Alright. Uhh. . . if I condensed it. . .

Alice is a Psycho for Hire, Bob is a Cloud Cuckoolander, Charlie is Properly Paranoid, Doug is an Empty Shell, Emily is a Mad Scientist, and Fred has some serious Schrödinger's Butterfly issues. Looks like your standard Dysfunction Junction.

But then you have Gardenia. Gardenia is actually a very well-adjusted individual. She reacts with appropriate horror to things like Alice's finger collection and the crimes against nature that Emily calls pets. Gardenia is the Only Sane Woman.

(something like that?)

edited 1st Feb '13 3:15:05 PM by Pig_catapult

OK, I replaced the "Uh, do that?" crowner option with the text the "Uh, do that" was referring to. I'll leave the text in the crowner header for now so that nobody thinks I altered the crowner options.

I suggest leaving out the Properly Paranoid (too sane) and the Schrödinger's Butterfly (too weird in the wrong way). I'm not quite sure what the ideal length for the example list is.

Has the crowner been up long enough now?

edited 12th Feb '13 10:21:43 AM by VVK

Upvoted. I've only ever seen it used for definition #2 on wicks, and I tend to prefer more literal trope names anyway.

edited 13th Feb '13 4:03:38 AM by StarSword

This is probably enough votes?

edited 3rd Mar '13 3:06:46 AM by VVK

Use the little triangular yellow holler button above your post to holler for a mod.

(Next time, I mean. I'm doing it now. :P )

Calling in favor of making "the only normal one in a group of weirdos" the definition for this page with "the only one who reacts to the crazy thing that's happening" as a subset.

The to-do list

• Write up a new description for the trope (mainly make changes to the current one, I think)
• Check all wicks to make sure they use the right definition.
  • If you come across a Zero Context Example, feel free to delete it instead of commenting it out, as it is contributing to Trope Decay.

edited 5th Mar '13 3:22:15 AM by Ironeye

It says "subset", not "subtrope". I'm not sure that making an actual second trope was something that was really intended here.

Ah, yes, sorry, I misread that. So used to splits and soft-splits that "internal subtropes", to coin a phrase, manage to throw me. Post corrected.

Alrighty, then. I'm in the middle of something else, but if nobody else has stepped forward to take a whack at the description in the next couple of days, I can probably be persuaded. Feel free to nag me if no progress has been made by, say, Friday the 8th. (I'm hoping it won't come to that, but very willing if needs must.)

Here's what I came up with:

When there is a group of characters who are all just totally weird, either in general or in a particular scenario, the Only Sane Man is the only one who, well, isn't.

Picture this: Alice is a Psycho for Hire, Bob is a Cloud Cuckoolander, Doug is an Empty Shell, and Emily is a Mad Scientist. Looks like your standard Dysfunction Junction. But then you have Gardenia. Gardenia is actually a very well-adjusted individual. She reacts with appropriate horror to things like Alice's finger collection and the crimes against nature that Emily calls pets. Gardenia is the Only Sane Woman.

The other variant is where the other characters aren't always that weird, but everyone save one character is acting weird in a particular situation. For example, they might regard something absurd as Serious Business, with the Only Sane Man the only one who notices how crazy that is.

This latter also includes a standard comedy piece: something absolutely insane is going on, but only one person notices (or cares). There are usually three stages, with a rough correspondence to the Five Stages of Grief: Bewilderment (Shock and Anger), trying to get others to see or admit the weirdness (Bargaining and Denial), and bitter sarcasm (Acceptance).

In the more extreme cases, the poor soul may be trapped in a World Gone Mad and/or wind up Giving Up on Logic in frustration. Sometimes, though, they are Not So Above It All.

A Too Dumb to Fool character may be the Only Sane Man, although he is likely to be less worked up about the failures of others to see than in most cases.

A character may also think of themselves at the Only Sane Man without proper justification.

The Only Sane Man is often relied upon as the Only Sane Employee. This character often ends up a Knight in Sour Armor. For a more horrific version, see Through the Eyes of Madness. For the sci-fi version, The Ignored Expert is your go-to guy. If all the other characters are otherwise sane, and really should see something, but only one guy does, he's an Einstein Sue. The Nietzsche Wannabe is a villain who views himself this way. Occasionally, when the Only Sane Man expresses his creator's opinions, he serves as an Author Avatar. See also Cassandra Truth, Surrounded by Idiots, and Surrounded by Smart People; contrast with the Unfazed Everyman. May temporarily overlap with What the Hell, Hero?.

If several characters take turns being the Only Sane Man, they're playing with a Sanity Ball. If it's a two-person show, with one person playing the Only Sane Man to the other's wackiness, it's a Straight Man and Wise Guy scenario. This trope is one third of a Comic Trio and part of the Four-Man Band.

The Wonka may well feel like this (or be this!) in a world that doesn't follow his thinking. Insanity is, after all, in the eye of the beholder, and The Wonka often has quite valid points.

No Real Life Examples Please You are not the only one that doesn't belong in an asylum, contrary to what you might think.

The end is mostly unchanged. The previous version, for reference, since I already made the edit:

A standard comedy piece: something absolutely insane is going on, but only one person notices (or cares).

There are usually three stages:

1. Bewilderment (Shock and Anger). The OSM looks around, realizes that something is wrong, and immediately has to face the maddening fact that apparently no one else sees what they see, or if they do, then they see nothing wrong with it. (This is not the same as Glamour Failure, though it may contribute to the fact. The character's anguish comes from the fact that others have access to the same information, yet he is the only one to come to the seemingly inevitable conclusion.)
2. Trying to Explain (Bargaining and Denial). The character tries to explain why it is wrong to those who are accepting it as normal - and at the same time confirm for himself that he is not crazy. He may go to great lengths to be able to get proof, or yell, groan, cry, howl and berate, in the hope that someone will notice. Sadly, nobody does, and he may just make a fool of himself.
3. Bitter Sarcasm (Acceptance). He gives up and just goes with the flow, finding refuge in a heartfelt loathing towards the stupidity of the world in general.

In the more extreme cases, the poor soul may be trapped in a World Gone Mad and/or wind up Giving Up on Logic in frustration. Sometimes, though, they are Not So Above It All.

A Too Dumb to Fool character may be the Only Sane Man, although he is likely to be less worked up about the failures of others to see than in most cases.

The Only Sane Man is often relied upon as the Only Sane Employee. This character often ends up a Knight in Sour Armor. For a more horrific version, see Through the Eyes of Madness. For the sci-fi version, The Ignored Expert is your go-to guy. If all the other characters are otherwise sane, and really should see something, but only one guy does, he's an Einstein Sue. The Nietzsche Wannabe is a villain who views himself this way. Occasionally, when the Only Sane Man expresses his creator's opinions, he serves as an Author Avatar. See also Cassandra Truth, Surrounded by Idiots, and Surrounded by Smart People; contrast with the Unfazed Everyman. May temporarily overlap with What the Hell, Hero?.

If several characters take turns being the Only Sane Man, they're playing with a Sanity Ball. If it's a two-person show, with one person playing the Only Sane Man to the other's wackiness, it's a Straight Man and Wise Guy scenario. This trope is one third of a Comic Trio and part of the Four-Man Band.

The Wonka may well feel like this (or be this!) in a world that doesn't follow his thinking. Insanity is, after all, in the eye of the beholder, and The Wonka often has quite valid points.

No Real Life Examples Please You are not the only one that doesn't belong in an asylum, contrary to what you might think.

edited 9th Mar '13 3:24:10 AM by VVK

So basically, I put the core definition first; used the example suggested above, but made shorter; followed with a shortened description of the old definition as a subset; and left the rest as it was, with one addition.

There isn't a real distinction. The Only Sane Man is the only one who notices weird stuff going on, specifically because the others are too out-to-lunch to be aware of any departure from reality. (Example: Bob just sees Alice fly. He blinks and decides this can't be real, it must be a magic trick. Carol the Cloud Cuckoolander sees nothing wrong with anyone flying, because birds fly so obviously she knows something we don't. Emily the Emotionless Girl sees it, and absolutely doesn't care. Bob is the Only Sane Man because he reacts normally to an abnormal situation, in addition to being the only one in a group of weirdoes)

Also, I think The Same But Different is the plague of TV Tropes. If there's a valid difference (ice beams versus fire beams), this is not a snowclone. If you arbitrarily split tropes just for the heck of it, well, that's just stupid.

edited 18th Mar '13 6:51:55 PM by bulmabriefs144

We're not talking about splitting it but expanding it so that it does cover both meanings.

It didn't, previously. There is a distinction. If you say "A standard comedy piece where something crazy is going on but only one person notices," that's not the same thing as "everyone else is generally crazy." They only overlap when everyone is generally crazy and there's a particular scenario in which they're not noticing something going on, which is what you were talking about. There are also cases when everyone acts crazy in general but they're not in a particular scene where they're ignoring something crazy going on, and cases where everyone is usually normal but in a particular scene they're acting crazy like that.

"The only one acting rationally, either in a particular situation or in general" is the new proposed and approved meaning and that covers both (and a bit more), but previously that meaning was not actually given on the trope page. But this isn't really relevant at this point because your argument was that the trope shouldn't be split for the reasons you said and we're not doing that.

While I'm here, I could also say, in response to one of the earlier comments by Ironeye, that I don't think we need to worry about the wicks after this change has been made since the new definition accommodates all the then incorrect usage that had been identified as the problem.

edited 24th Mar '13 1:06:54 AM by VVK

The "original definition" as the only one who notices all the weirdness, is clearly related to the Weirdness Censor which the rest of the wolrd seems to have set to maximum while the Only Sane Man has their's set to a much lower and more rational setting.

Can we be sure to emphasize the only one? And that other people actually have to be weird? I can see this being misused very easily by people taking a small group of weirdos and normal people mixed in together and applying it broadly. And how weird is weird? Most fictional characters have some kind of issue to make them interesting, but I don't think that's enough, unless we specifically mean "only one with no kind of issues; totally normal".

I think weird enough to be called out on it.

Yeah, but that can mean a lot of things. As I said, by regular, everyday standards, most of everyone in fiction is weird. Take Mass Effect. Basically every major character has massive issues and a really colorful history. What counts for adjusted amongst them doesn't count for adjusted amongst us. They're most adjusted member was abandoned by his father, works for a terrorist organization, and said father was later discovered to keeping women in captivity as drugged sex slaves. In-universe, he's said to be very stable. Out-of-universe, this is ridiculous and we'd at least suggest a therapist.

Looking into the misuse that had actually occurred, I didn't see those things causing a problem. It may be better to tolerate vagueness that doesn't cause problems in practice than to try to get rid of all of it.

So, are we done here? If not, what still needs doing?

So, are we done here? If not, what still needs doing?

(Repeating for effect)

Description rewrite. As in, the 38 one.

Clock is set. What still needs to be done here?

edited 29th Jul '13 5:54:08 AM by Willbyr