Needs Help: The Simple Life Is Simple

About half the examples on the page are played straight. The fact that half aren't is why we're proposing to split the page into "farming is portrayed as being simple" and "characters think that farming is simple, but are proven wrong".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I'm counting five straight examples of the trope (not counting the video game examples, since everything is easier in a video game than in Real Life). Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three cases where carpentry is portrayed the same way, and a bunch of examples of assorted other professions.

Look, how 'bout this: we split the trope as originally proposed, with one trope being The Not So Simple Life, and the other trope keeping the current definition; if the latter trope fails to prosper, we can have a seperate conversation about expanding its definition. That sound good?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I count 12 straight examples: the unnamed "early sci-fi story", Mrs Piggle Wiggle, Atlas Shrugged, discussed in The Ascent of Man, Star Trek Insurrection, The Simple Life, The Fugitive, played for laughs in That Mitchell And Webb Look, Let's Face It, Harvest Moon, Minecraft and World Of Warcraft (I don't see how being video games disqualifies them — they could easily require certain skills or levels or something).

For comparison, I count 12 examples that would fall under the proposed "farming is harder than people think" trope: Silver Spoon, two Discworld examples (Wintersmith and Feet of Clay), Gone With The Wind, Jean De Florette, Holiday Inn, Tess Of The Durbervilles, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Johnny Bago, Green Acres, Dick Tracy, and The Archers.

The rest (the Mark Twain example, where it's just "this one guy doesn't know anything about farming", the Horse Sense example, where it's "farmers are dicks to a city boy by not giving him the proper tools for the job", and four Real Life examples) I wouldn't call examples of either trope.

edited 28th Jun '13 11:09:23 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

World Of Warcraft is actually a pretty good example since other "professions" like blacksmithing and tailoring take a huge amount of effort to train in before you can do anything worthwhile, while farming is a mini-game offered to everyone that offers pretty much maximum rewards instantly (subject to other limitations like questing to get rarer seeds.).

The "early sci-fi story", Atlas Shrugged, The Fugitive, Star Trek, Let's Face It *

, and one of the Real Life examples (ironically enough, the one marked as "subverted") are straight examples.

The Ascent of Man is a denouncement of the trope, That Mitchell and Webb Look is a parody, and The Simple Life and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm have insufficient context.

As for the video game examples, if, as Clarste says, farming is far simpler than other professions in World of Warcraft, then that does count as an example. However, just having farming be simpler in a video game than in real life doesn't count, because video games tend to simplify everything. Minecraft is listed as an example, and that game has people punching down trees with their bare hands and remaking the landscape to suit their needs; farming being simple in that game isn't really noteworthy.

edited 28th Jun '13 9:29:19 PM by RavenWilder

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

That's why I listed The Ascent of Man as "discussed" and Mitchell and Webb as "Played for Laughs". Both of those would be listed on the played-straight trope, not the subverted version of the trope, should the split happen.

In any case, even using your interpretation, there are still eight examples (the six you list, plus World Of Warcraft and Harvest Moon — which is consistently about a city boy moving to the country and starting his own farm from scratch — but not Minecraft as I've never played so couldn't comment) plus two zero content examples. That's 8-10 straight vs 12 subversions, which takes us from "exactly half and half" to "a little bit less than half and a little bit more than half". Certainly I don't think that your original complaint, which was that it had "so few straight examples", is valid.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Not really sure Minecraft would count. Discounting all fabulous construction projects you can do, everything is very simple there, and farming is not at the bottom. But it depends on whether the trope is about farming being simple at all, or simple relative to other things you can do. Farming is far more complicated than mining. Mining is: Step one: get pick. Step two: hack wall. Step three: profit.

Redstone engineering wizardry is firmly filed under "fabulous construction projects". But yes, it's among the most "complicated". Alchemy might be up there as well, but that's mainly just formulas.

edited 29th Jun '13 2:13:08 PM by AnotherDuck

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I'm not denying the discussed and played for laughs examples would be on the trope page. However, since they're not straight examples, they don't indicate that "farming is simple" is particularly more prominent than "[Insert Occupation Here] is simple". But, again, I'm thinking maybe we should table that conversation for another day, and for now focus on getting these two tropes split.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I'd say that farming is possibly the most complex "intended" activity in vanilla Minecraft that doesn't necessarily involve advanced redstone engineering wizardry.

edited 29th Jun '13 1:21:30 PM by Pig_catapult

Bumping.

So there's a pretty good consensus to split this into two tropes, one "farming is portrayed as simple" and the other "character thinks farming is simple, but is proven wrong", right?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Seems that way, yeah

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

So how do we do this? Do we just start a YKTTW for "character thinks farm life is simple and is proven wrong", then move the appropriate examples over to that trope once it launches? Or is there some special procedure for when you're splitting a trope?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I think an alternative names crowner is set up to decide on the new trope's name while the draft is put on YKKTW.

YKTTW or sometimes (if there are enough examples and good descriptions already) sandboxing.

Crowners are optional in the YKTTW process; even with sandboxing, thread discussion can do.

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

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