Cleanup: Artistic License tropes

@20: My interpretation of artistic license is what it is; I just think we should keep in mind the actual meaning of artistic license when discussing the Artistic License pages. I really didn't do a good job making it obvious that I didn't mean the pages and that I mean the concept itself.

If that's not how it's usually done, I wouldn't know. Sorry.

Also, there are other AL pages with Real Life examples. I doubt just moving them and making note that they go in analysis would stop people from thinking AL can be applicable in Real Life. I can understand referring people to whatever Useful Notes pages we have, but would the analysis tab really remind people AL cannot be applicable in RL? As opposed to just telling people we don't want RL examples on the main page, that is.

Septimus, part of the reason we decided to move all the "You Fail X Forever" and "Somewhere An X is Crying" pages to "Artistic License X" is that they were becoming simply pages with lists of things that some creator got wrong sometime, and some editor decided to show off how much they knew about how wrong it was. There was no trope. There was just bitching and complaining or preening and self-congratulation that the troper knew better.

@26: Part of the issue is that Artistic License and the pages Artistic License - Whatever are two different things. The first refers to deliberate things and acceptable ones, the latter are used as "list of mistakes".

About the RL sections: While the one on Nuclear Physics was so nattery I am glad it's gone, I'd see some more discussion before just saying "they don't need RL sections" on the others.

@27: The issue (from what I read in the threads about the rename anyhow) was more that the old names made the pages sound extremely complainy with "this is wrong, and the creator is bad". I otherwise see conflicting information on whether it was supposed to be limited to deliberate examples, and most of the examples don't.

The YouFailBiologyForever link on Adolf Hitler...change to Artistic License – Biology or cull? I'm good either way.

edited 29th Apr '13 4:52:14 PM by Willbyr

Cut it. It's not an error that they made in the interest of making a story more interesting.

I'll have to support a keep, because of the arguments about the definition I made earlier on and since ^ sounds both too narrow and inaccurate (the item in question sounds like a genuine made-up thing).

I mostly agree with Maddy, and fully agree on the cut part. My only disagreement would be that I don't think the mistakes/deviations from reality have to be deliberate on the part of the creator; I do think they need to serve some sort of narrative purpose, though. The pothole on Hitler's page sounds more like a genuinely held (albeit completely screwy) belief than a decision made to advance his party's/ideology's line, and thus there is no narrative purpose.

That's a much better way of putting it, Nocturna: that the error has to serve some narrative purpose. Because admittedly, we can't know whether the creator knew or didn't know that he was getting something wrong.

If there's no narrative purpose, the pages simply become "Neener neener, he got this wrong!"

I also like how Nocturna worded the definition. It avoids the "list of mistakes," I think. I'm worried that a list of mistakes would become what Did Not Do The Research became.

About RL sections: I'm wondering if we could use the Real Life examples to better explain the misconceptions fiction utilizes. I mean, in a few of them (namely, AL - Gun Safety), there's No Real Life Examples Please; while the reason is pretty obvious (i.e. avoiding making fun of people who killed themselves on accident and gun control politics), I think the Real Life examples that are already listed could be put in the description and taken out (two of them include Geology and Geography). Other pages have an "other" section (Economics, which also has an Aversions section) or no examples at all (Linguistics).

My point being that the Real Life examples don't need to be in Analysis or an "Other" example section; they either can be put in the description or should be taken out. That's just a suggestion, though.

I am neutral on Nocturna's description; while it would make it a bit more pertinent to the site purpose, it sounds like a really big job for a modest payoff (and DNDTR was an index that kept coming up in TRS; not quite the same problem)

Given the discussion, I've cut the YFBF on Adolf Hitler.

So this thread was the very last entry at the very last page. It's basically an Artistic License tropes cleanup thread, from what I'm able to gather from the title. I'm bringing it back because I think it might be useful.

Given this thread's age and the fact the only two posts since 2013 are from me, I've determined this thread isn't useful at this point in time. Therefore, unless there are Artistic License Tropes that are still in desperate need of cleanup, I request this thread is locked, at least for the time being.

Edited by JHD0919 on Jun 2nd 2023 at 11:04:33 AM

All of the You Fail X Forever redirects have long been cut and clean so there's that. I don't see anything wrong with keeping this thread to bring up issues with the Artistic License tropes so I would like some confirmation that there really is nothing to clean up. Your posts were only four days apart and not every clean up thread gets attention.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 3rd 2023 at 7:51:15 AM

Good timing on resurrecting this thread; here's something that caught my eye on Artistic License – Law:

• Zootopia: Judy is excited to begin her first day as a police officer, only to find out she's stuck on parking duty. Most major cities in real life have a whole separate department of parking services whose primary job is issuing citations so that the police are free to handle bigger crimes. While suburbs and smaller towns might still leave this task to the police, a city as huge as Zootopia would not.
  • Also the elephant owner of the ice cream parlor trying to deny Nick service simply because he’s a predator and trying to justify it by pointing to the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone. In reality he’d be breaking the law because he’s violating anti discrimination laws. Right to refuse service only applies if any customer in a business is being disruptive, such as drunk and disturbing the peace or the like.

Since Zootopia is a fictional city in a completely fictional world, I don't think these count as Artistic Licence.

The first example is okay in that the ZPD does seem to be mostly based on US police forces, so I think it's fair to point out that Judy probably wouldn't have parking ticket duty in reality, even though that's can't be judged for certain.

The second example however is pure craziness. The entire film makes it very clear that a deep predator vs prey divide exists in society. How do we even know that Zootopia has anti-discrimination laws? And if it does, that doesn't mean that anyone who breaks it instantly gets punished on the spot. This boils down to 'it's illegal so it doesn't happen', and is an easy cut.

Yeah, the second one should go, it expects this fictional world to have modern American laws.

I've cut the entry; I've noticed that Artistic License – Law Enforcement has an entry very similar to the first that I think is worded better, so I'll leave it at that.

Artistic Licence – Economics has a folder dedicated entirely to Aversions. Is this allowed?

Even if this was allowed, a good chunk of these are just bad. We could probably gather the examples that have to do with a sudden influx of a resource causing inflation, but otherwise, bankrupt this folder.