Needs Help: TMI Lie

This was launched prematurely, as the YKTTW archive shows that there was disagreement over the name and the concept. The discussion page notes that it might be a duplicate of Embarrassing Cover Up.

Opinions?

edited 16th Aug '12 4:37:34 PM by lu127

1. What does TMI stand for? No answer anywhere 2. Might edit the description; sounds too much Always Female.

TMI is a common abbreviation for Too Much Information.

One difference I see between TMI Lie and Embarrassing Cover Up is that, at least according to the definitions as written, TMI Lie is when a character uses an embarrassing lie about themselves to stop further inquiries into their own situation, whereas Embarrassing Cover Up is when someone else makes up embarrassing stories about the character to cover up a situation the character is involved in.

That said, I'm not really sure that's a big enough distinction to warrant a separate trope—a simple description tweak would merge them.

That's definitely not a big enough distinction, as it gives no fundamental difference in storytelling.

Oh wow, yet another YKTTW beta launch?

I think the difference is that in TMI Lie you make the embarassing story yourself (which would be unexpected, as people don't usually release embarassing info about themselves), while in Embarassing Cover Up the teller isn't directly damaged.

The embarrassing part of TMI Lie isn't on the teller's part, though, but rather that the questioner is too embarrassed about the information he was given to continue questioning (on that line). Whether the teller is embarrassed has nothing to do with it.

Embarrassing Cover Up is embarrassing for the one it's defending, whether it's the teller or someone the teller is defending, if I go by the examples.

edited 17th Aug '12 4:47:45 AM by AnotherDuck

Wow, totally dropped the ball on this one. The TKTTW discussion had sat there so long with no one pointing out that it's a duplicate that I was sure we didn't have it already.

Embarassing Cover Up is the exact same idea, I would suggest adding some of the details from TMI Lie to that page though (like the possibility that the embarrassing cover up is so gross the character may feel it was something You Do Not Want To Know.

It's not worth having two tropes just for when someone else comes up with the embarrassing story.

edited 18th Aug '12 1:17:35 AM by pcw2727

I'm not seeing enough of a distinction between this and Embarassing Coverup.

I should also point out that TMI has several other meanings, such as the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. It's an ambiguous term, and our guidelines suggest to avoid abbreviations in trope names anyway.

So merge and redefine it as any sort of cover up that's embarrassing, whether it's by design to make the questioning stop because of it, or just incidental, and no matter who gets embarrassed?

I agree; the distinction here is not enough to justify calling these separate tropes. It's the same thing from a different angle. Even the creator of the new trope agrees.

I'm all for closing the page and just revamping embarrassing cover up a little bit. How does one close a page? I've never done it before.

You replace its text with "[[redirect:otherpage]]" (no quotes, and for otherpage type the name of, well, the other page).

Make sure to copy over any valid, non-duplicate examples before turning the page into a redirect.

We're done here.