Misused: What Do You Mean Its For Kids

Y'know, while I don't think I've ever seen Madrugada phrase things that strongly, I do agree that the What Do You Mean Its Not A Snowclone? family needs to die.

(...wait, that's actually a bluelink?)

edited 12th Apr '13 7:10:38 PM by Stratadrake

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

It linked to Everythings Worse With Snowclones, it looks like.

...yeah, so I noticed.

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

That's actually pretty clever.

Screw The Title I Have Snowclones

My favorite is Critical Snowclone Failure.

So, what stance are we taking here? Kill the snowclone tree or check for misuse and then probably just kill the single snowclone title?

By my count, there are six of these snowclones. Now our standard for trope naming is "Clear, Concise, Witty". I think we can all agree that snowclones aren't witty; they're just stock phrases that we apply to vaguely-related situations. Then, all of these names are awfully long; "what do you mean it wasn't made on drugs" is not concise in the slightes. Finally, they're not clear either; as this particular set of tropes (for kids / not for kids) illustrates, they are easily mistaken for the exact opposite.

So let's look at the other four pages.

What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls? is a bit confused on what it is. It is either "a show for and about young girls that has a Periphery Demographic of older guys", or "a show about young girls with lots of adult content, aimed at older guys", and some of the examples are "a show aimed at young girls that is more sexualized than people are comfortable with". Now the former is simply Periphery Demographic and Testosterone Brigade; the second is The Same But More of What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?, and I'm pretty sure we also have a page for the third. So I'm not sure this page needs to exist at all.

What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs? seems to have become one of our Verbal Tic pages. It's got over a thousand wicks, and is generally meant as shorthand for "anything some troper considers weird". The examples on the page cover anything from the in-universe stock phrase to Interface Screw, from in-universe characters using drugs to real-life musicians alleged to take drugs, and anything involving Surrealism or a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. It's a big mess overall.

What Do You Mean, It's Not Political? is "fans speculate that a work is a political allegory". It is full of examples where "some people argue that", "it has been claimed that" and other weasel words. This feels more like Wild Mass Guessing than a trope page; and frankly you can imply an allegory everywhere if you look hard enough. Actually come to think of it, this is the political equivalent of Fetish Fuel: given any work whatsoever, there will be some people who find it kinky, and some people who find it political. That's not news.

What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic? is "a work has been analysed by literary analysts", and it has the tone that this is a bad thing. That's Not A Trope; it claims to be a YMMV page but would be more fitting as trivia.

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So in my view, Not For Kids is a trope with an awkward name. For Kids, and Not For Little Girls are multiple tropes thrown together in a confusing name, and need to be split. Made On Drugs should be changed into the in-universe stock phrase only, because right now it's an "everything goes" page. Not Political and Not Didactic are not tropes and can apply to pretty much anything, so they should be cut. $.02

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Re last items:

"Not tropes" is not a reason to cut, and neither is "can be applied to everything".

Do we need a supertopic like it was done for the "Everything's Better With X"

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

I agree with Spark 9 about the Kids tropes, little girls and drugs.

I think political has a lot of good content. We have to change the name obviously, but Misinterpreted Political Allegory or Co Opted Allegory seems an interesting audience reaction.

I have trouble seeing what didactic is supposed to be. Why are we criticizing literary analysis? Aren't we literary analysts? We can have a page for over-analysis that demonstrably excessive I guess - the page currently has a lot of in-universe examples - but we can't seriously mock teachers for analyzing The Old Man And The Sea, can we?

edited 13th Apr '13 4:36:23 AM by AmyGdala

It's generally when people analyze things that don't bear analyzing. AFAIK

edited 13th Apr '13 8:32:52 AM by shoboni

I disagree with Sparky's analysis of What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?. Toss the snowclone, certainly, but it's a trope that means people have critically analyzed it and found some deeper meaning that isn't actually supported by the author (though I think we should probably institute a citation rule). I think an older page image went something like:

-> What the work says: His room was blue.
What the literary critic thinks it says: It's symbolic of his deep depression and Blah, Blah, Blah.
What the author meant: His room was fucking blue.

EDIT: And now I find that the page is effectively a duplicate of Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory, which has a really non-indicative name and is where the image I was thinking of came from.

edited 13th Apr '13 10:04:55 AM by StarSword

I think Everyone is Jesus is a sub-type of it where it's that specific theory of someone representing a Christ figure.

What I'm getting from reading Jesus in Purgatory is that it's the specific subtrope where the analyst is looking for allegory everywhere.

Didactic is simply "deeply analysing something that doesn't stand up to deep analysis"

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

This is getting to be a mess.

Yes, it is.

I think we'd better concentrate on getting a good name and clear description for "...for Kids" rather than wandering into trying to figure out what each one of the others needs.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

The one thing that came in mind was But Its For Adults Too I Swear, but it's dialogue.

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

Kids Show Adults Like? I think we need to ignore "witty" at least at first. "Clear" and "Concise" are going to be tricky enough.

edited 13th Apr '13 12:34:53 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

How about merging into Fandom Berserk Button? Because "how dare you say that this show I like is for kids" is a clear example thereof. It strikes me as The Same But More.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Possibly, and Misaimed Fandom.

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

I think Misaimed Fandom is a whole different beast. AFAIK it's when a satire or similar has people that take it completely straight.

I disagree with merging, since it's a specific kind of Fandom Berserk Button that happens a lot. I'd go with a rename.

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Also, my trope suggestion is still here for the misuse:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=o6e7quti4tvmx6tmz3bgfrpc

edited 13th Apr '13 1:45:45 PM by shoboni

Tagged the YKTTW as "Needs a Better Name", by the way, because dialogue isn't allowed in trope names.

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

I don't think that this trope "happens a lot" compared to other variants of Fandom Berserk Button. Remember that the vast majority (80% - 90%) of the examples on this page are incorrect and belong under a different trope instead.

I think this approach would work,

• Move examples of "show with adult content mistaken for a child show" to What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?
• Move examples of "child show that has adult fans" to Periphery Demographic.
• Move examples of "adult fans of a child show take offense at it being called a child show" to Fandom Berserk Button.
• At this point there should be no examples left, so redirect this page to What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?, because that's what it's mistaken for most often.

edited 13th Apr '13 1:06:22 PM by Spark9

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

This situation calls for a disambig, not a redirect.

Anyhow, are we ready for a roll call?

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

I agree with the first item, and further move that What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids? be renamed to Mistaken For Kid Friendly.

The instances where the work is a kid's show when and where first published would fall under the temporary name of: "You Really Want To Tell Kids About That"(?) EDIT: Apparently, Spark missed this category. EDIT 2: This is what I originally thought this Trope was about.

While the remaining examples would indeed fall under Periphery Demographic, I think there may be three potential SubTropes there:

• The work is a Long Runner, and makes no attempt to present itself as anything but a Kid's Show; it's just that the "elder" Periphery Demographic was once the Target Demographic. Example: Pokémon. EDIT: This could fall under Fandom Berserk Button
• The work is a kid's show, but is so full of Parental Bonus that even adults who are not parents express pride in being part of the fandom.
• Just plain Misaimed Fandom; perhaps the writing is just that good. EDIT: Again, Fandom Berserk Button could apply here.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic seems to be a mix of Sub Categories 2 & 3.

Also, the key merit of the Sub-Trope What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls? is the apparent side-focus (or not even side-focus) on budding female sexuality. We may need to keep that Sub-Trope for now, until we get these mains clear. Once we do that, we can determine where each of those examples go, i.e. whether it's intended for girls after all and/or how much Parental "Bonus" was added on top of the main theme.

EDIT: Co Opted Allegory is perfect for the Political variant. I'm sure that's what JRR Tolkien was thinking that the German Translators wanted to do when they asked to adapt The Hobbit (into a Reich-friendly premise).

edited 13th Apr '13 1:50:33 PM by DonaldthePotholer

2 would pretty fit into the trope I suggested making if it's blatant enough.

I like that name suggestion for Not For Kids.

Also, thanks Heap, I just did that as a place holder to get it going.

edited 13th Apr '13 1:49:51 PM by shoboni