Needs Help: Who Would Want To Watch Us

The description said that it's when the characters are associated with a movie or TV production of their own adventures.

Yet, the title implies that said characters are actually meant to be saying "Who would want to watch us?" (or something similar) to count as an example.

The quote on top of the page, as well as some of the examples, matches more to the title's name than the description.

So there's misuse? How much?

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I didn't know the definition of Ambiguous, so I didn't know it means "More than one meaning".

Can a mod please change this to "needs help" if I can't change it myself?

If you want a mod you can click the triangular warning sign and holler for a mod, with a description of what you want them to do that you can't.

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Okay. Done "hollering".

Thanks!

edited 15th Sep '12 10:28:53 AM by KarjamP

Thanks to whomever changed the reason for me!

Now, let's discuss the problem properly.

So what is the problem? In more detail, I mean.

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The trope's title doesn't match the description.

The description states that it's a gag about when the characters are associated with a movie of TV production of the work.

However, the title of the trope implies that the characters need to dismiss the idea, stating "Who would want to watch us?" or something similar.

The description itself never said it's required!

The Quote on the top of the page (the one about Professor Utonium stating that that a Powerpuff movie is a bad idea), as well as several of the examples (like Sailer Moon, Asterix, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, etc.) follows the title's implication more than the trope's description.

(Edited because of an revelation on what the description said).

edited 16th Sep '12 9:59:18 AM by KarjamP

The title doesn't need to explain the full trope. It shouldn't be changed unless it's cause for misuse, underuse, or if there's some other significant problem with it. If it works, it works.

The definition could perhaps use some clarification.

Anyway, are you saying there are two tropes here? One with some kind of in-universe show about the characters themselves, and one which is just a joke about something like that would never work, like a variant or possible subtrope of to It Will Never Catch On?

edited 16th Sep '12 8:52:10 AM by AnotherDuck

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You first. Cite some pages where it's getting used wrong.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

The problem with that is that the description doesn't say that it can overlap with It Will Never Catch On. It only implies that in the title, other than saying that it can be laughed off.

But even them, the title implies that the examples are meant to be laughed off.

Now I suggest a rename after the revelation on what the description means by "being laughed off".

Examples don't show that it's not laughed off include (using only the first example of a single work instead of all of them):

• Dragon Ball Z
  • A Filler bit of the anime has Gohan, to his surprise, run across a movie being made about his superhero alter-ego, the Great Saiyaman. The director mistakes him for Saiyaman's stunt double, and Gohan, being Gohan, decides to go along with it. Until he realizes it's getting late and he still has to visit Krillin, so he flies off.
• Spider Riders: The episode "Hero Act" has the main characters viewing a play detailing the exploits of a legendary Spider Rider, only the real actors deciede to quite before the next showing. So Hunter (naturally) volunteers himself and Shadow as replacements. And as one would expect Character Exaggeration and bad acting ensues.
• Parodied in an episode of Keroro Gunsou where they try to make an anime as part of one of Keroro's plans to invade the Earth.
• Mojo used films of the X-Men as TV shows on his world. This became a problem when Onslaught had seemingly destroyed them all.
• Happens in the Angel sequel comics. After Los Angeles gets dragged to Hell and back, some bright spark gets the idea to do a movie based on Angel's adventures there — which Angel and Spike go and see in the course of an adventure, and which has a Comic-Book Adaptation in our world as an Angel annual.
• In the third issue of Nodwick, Piffany asks Artax if he remembers the evil adventurers they defeated "about two months ago" (ie in #2):

—>Artax: Why yes, I often mull over that tale! In fact, I wish I had it in a printed form, about 32 pages long, with pictures, clever drawings, and even a letters page. I'd buy as many copies as I could for about three silvers each*

About $2.95

. They'd be a great gift for people of all ages!

• In the final issues of Milligan's Shade The Changing Man after DC had decided to cancel, Lenny is describing Shade to her father.

—>Lenny's father: What is he, Superman?
Lenny: If he were, his comic would probably be canceled.
(both look out of panel)

• Y The Last Man
  • A theatre company stages a play called "The Last Man" that resembles the plot. When Yorick hears the ending, in which the last man commits suicide, he comments that it's a terrible ending.
• About the time Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy movie came out, there was a storyline in the comic strip about Tracy getting involved with a movie being made about his life, which somebody is trying to sabotage. The saboteur turns out to be The Blank, who is mad about being left out of the film — very likely a comment on the fact that the villain of Beatty's film is The Blank In Name Only.
• Dream On has a couple-episode plot of a movie being made of the protagonist's ex-wife's perfect husband's life. Protagonist falls in love with the woman playing his ex-wife.
• Parodied in the Super Mario Bros Movie. Anyone who stuck around after the ending credits was treated to a clip of two Japanese businessmen talking to the two "heroes" offscreen, proposing to make a video game based on their adventure. The "heroes" are then revealed to be Iggy and Spike (King Koopa's nephews), whose suggested title for the game is "The Super Koopa Cousins".
• In one of the books about The Littles, Lucy Little wrote to an author of books about giants suggesting she write a book about little people with tails. The writer likes the idea of little people, but finds the idea of them having tails silly.
• In one episode of Farscape a producer of virtual reality "game blobs" uses the memories of Crichton to produce a game based upon the adventures of him and Moya's crew... leading to a rather bizzare episode that begins with Crichton being rescued from Scorpius by a minigun-toting Stark and only gets stranger from there.
• The X-Files episode "Hollywood A.D." has "The Lazarus Bowl", an episode where a movie is being made about Mulder and Scully (and getting them very wrong). The real Tea Leoni, David Duchovny's wife, was cast as Scully. When Scully observes that Leoni seems to have a crush on Mulder, he scoffs: "Like Tea Leoni would ever be attracted to me." When discussing about who to cast as Mulder, he suggests Richard Gere. Garry Shandling was cast instead.
• The OC has a long-running in-world version of their show, The Valley. They go out of their way to create similarities between the shows: The Summer character is named April, the Seth character ad-libs his lines, the Seth and Summer actors dated in "real life," until they broke up, a reality show about "The Real Valley" was created after Laguna Beach happened. Was lampshaded in the series finale, when Summer states that The Valley had been picked up for seven more seasons.
• Boy Meets World has an episode where Eric becomes an actor on a Boy Meets Word-style sitcom. The sets from Boy Meets World are shown as actual sets, and it is explained that the classroom is made to look bigger through camera angles.
• Both Married With Children and Sanford And Son had plots in which unscrupulous TV executives stole their lives and made a sitcom out of it.
• In Sanford And Son's case, a cousin of Rollo's creates a show about a Jewish version of Fred's life. When asked why he didn't just make it a black version, the cousin replied this trope's title as Fred turns to the camera in disbelief. Of course the Sanfords already are the "black version", of the English Steptoe And Son.
• Supernatural
  • It turns out that a prophet has been writing a book series about Sam and Dean (with titles the same as those of the respective episodes). It was only popular with a cult following, and got cancelled after "No Rest for the Wicked" (the book). In "The Real Ghostbusters", Chuck says the book series is going to be revived. That's about a third of the way through Season 5.
• In Flight of the Conchords, the last episode has the protagonists appearing in a musical as themselves. The real Bret and Jemaine play themselves in the show, so it's two guys playing themselves playing themselves.
• A long-running plot in The L Word concerns Jenny's writing of a novel which is a thinly-disguised autobiography with very unflattering (though fairly accurate) depictions of all the other characters. It's a huge success, and gets picked up to be made into a film, which leads to a very confusing fifth season in which we see the original characters hanging out with the actresses playing the fictional versions of the characters, and also some reconstructions of the events of the first season played out with different actresses and slightly different dialogue... designed to make Jenny look good, of course.
• One episode of One Foot In The Grave has the Meldrews' cleaner writing a play about their life, which is then acted out on stage by actors suspiciously similar to the real Meldrews. Everything that happens in the play actually happened to the "real" Meldrews, including the utterly unexplained appearance of a giant, lifelike housefly, but a producer who has come to watch the show claims it's utterly unrealistic and silly, and refuses to endorse it for a "proper" theatre.
• The Power Rangers Dino Thunder episode "Lost and Found in Translation" plays with this, turning an episode of Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger into a Japanese TV series based off of the Dino Thunder Rangers. Conner initially dislikes it because he thinks they're making fun of the Rangers, but eventually he recognizes it as different, but not bad. This was intended as a poke at the "Sentai purists" who despise Power Rangers as an embarassment to Super Sentai; ironically, their attitude towards this episode was nearly identical to Conner's In-Universe reaction.

Ambiguous Examples:

• Spider-Man
  • Spider-Man was once asked to star in a movie about himself — the offer turned out to be a trap set (somewhat ironically) by the Green Goblin, who made his debut in that issue.
• The Fantastic Four have also had this pulled on them; the villain behind it was the Sub-Mariner.
• She Hulk also had this pulled on her; the villain behind it was Warlord Krang. Waitaminute...
• MAD has engaged in a lot of this over the years. Often coupled with quite blatant Self-Deprecation.
• During the first series of Big Brother Australia, the contestants had to write a song about their time in the house. The song ended up revolving around this trope.

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys has two episodes that used this premise as a plot: "Yes Viriginia, There is a Hercules" from season 4 and "For Those Of You Just Joining Us" from season 5.

• Early Edition Chuck tries pitching a series about a guy who gets tomorrow's newspaper with no success.

(I think I should stop listing early, as there's a lot.)

See? In those examples, they didn't say "Who Would Watch Us."

edited 16th Sep '12 10:01:18 AM by KarjamP

"It doesn't say that it can overlap" doesn't mean it can't. You can just as well say "it doesn't say it cannot overlap". Especially as that's pretty much what laughing it off implies.

All tropes can overlap, unless the description implies or explicitly says they cannot.

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If you'd seen my edit to the post detailing the description of the problem better, then you'd noticed that I'd changed my reasonning.

I'm saying that the current title implies that it's required to laugh off the work saying "Who would want to watch us?" or similar.

The truth is that, according to the description, it states that it's not required.

I'd suggest a rename for better accuracy with the trope's description.

That the trope name doesn't describe the full trope and nothing but the trope is not cause for rename. If the examples are still allowed by the definition, then there's nothing wrong with the page, unless you can provide evidence of misuse, and not just examples that don't match the title perfectly.

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If your reasoning is considered correct by the mods, then they may close this discussion.

Clocking.

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Locking.

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