Does Not Illustrate (runoff crowner 8/20/13): Genre Savvy

I still think 32 is the best.

I must be cruel, but to be kind That bad may begin, and worse be left behind

^

edited 6th Jul '13 6:56:34 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

I don't like it. It's all text.

I am really starting to hate that phrase. No it's not. The art shows it's adventurers talking, and that the one being berated just stabbed something, both of which are important details.

It relies heavily on text? Okay. Too heavily? That is kind of subjective; I don't think so, especially given the lack of better suggestions. It's all text? That is objectively false.

edited 6th Jul '13 7:17:09 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

I think my point is still valid. There's a trend in IP lately to rely heavily on text-based images like comics to get the point across, which detracts from the very reason we have images: visualization. Good images should show, not tell, and this one is all tell. Frankly, it takes a bit to realize that the halfling killed somebody, its just off in one little corner. The rest is just talking heads.

Example? There is no such trend. The trend I have observed is to shoot down any suggestion with text in it. That suggestion is mostly tell, a little show... better than the current image, which is all tell and no show.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Frankly, I don't see how this can be depicted in a way that doesn't have a fairly text-heavy image.

And I'm starting to detect a general trend in IP to ignore principles out of desperation when we can't find a good image. "Well, it isn't really text-heavy." "Well, you can kinda sorta tell it looks like an example of the trope if you really squint." "Well, maybe you can interpret the image in a completely opposite way to what the trope intends, but we can't appeal to every single person who might come up with some far-fetched alternate interpretation."

The OOTS image is all text, plain and simple. No amount of rationalizing is going to change that. Knowing that they're adventurers tells you absolutely nothing about the trope that isn't in the text (and I'm not exactly sure it tells you that); knowing that Belkar just killed something might tell you a teensy bit, but it's pretty easy to infer from the text. I'll admit it wouldn't work very well as a quote, but that doesn't make it work any better as an image. I'll also admit that some people may be too quick to shoot down suggestions with text, maybe including me, but this goes nowhere near shooting down "any suggestion with text in it", and in any case this certainly isn't the image to take a stand on it with.

For the reason laid out , and my own formulation of it earlier, I'm honestly leaning heavily towards no image. No trope has an inherent inalienable right to an image. I know Fast Eddie once complained about IP being too quick to pull images, but I really think it's gone too far in the opposite direction, where we've become desperate to attach any image to a trope that might conceivably have one (or even, as might be the case here, that might not).

edited 6th Jul '13 9:20:28 PM by MorganWick

"No image" is fine with me, note that's the suggestion I made in the OP, but it's still not true that the OotS image is "all text", and I didn't say any of those things (or anything like them), e.g. "it isn't really text-heavy". It is. But "all" is an exaggeration... the current image is close enough to that being literally true, but applied to the OotS suggestion it is stretched too far, the phrase is rendered meaningless. Too much rule-adherence, not enough critical thinking. Some ideas are too complex to communicate without a lot of words, and that's not a lame excuse for considering a text-heavy image. The principle is to avoid images that are more tell (as opposed to show) than necessary, not some arbitrary objective line of text-heaviness that applies to all cases... not lowering standards, but adjusting them, because every case is different, there is no universal standard.

edited 6th Jul '13 9:32:44 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

You know, after all the exaggerations about the OOTS pic being all text, the strawmen in , and all appealing to/against trends no one can seem to agree on actually exist, I'm leaning to accept the OOTS image.

I still prefer the gun, though.

Crowner?

Check out my fanfiction!

I'd like to add the further objection that the Oo TS image is just not that visually interesting. It's two simply drawn people standing around with large speech bubbles. That's boring. I hate reading images. There's plenty of text on the rest of the page to explain the trope.

It looks like the choices are No Image, 6 (gun picked up using a pencil), 32 (2-panel OOTS) or 35 (montage of "no capes"). Perhaps it's time for a crowner to find out which (if any) is preferred.

My favorites are 6 and my suggestion, 32. The only thing I have against 6 is that without text, it's not clear which genre he's being savvy about, but it could work.

In case anyone is interested, I added the Sam Starfall pic I suggested in 17 to the What Could Possibly Go Wrong? page since it didn't already have any image. Feel free to make an Image Pickin' discussion if you think it should be changed.

Absent-minded professor and Neverwinter Nights DM

^^ Ok.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

6 would be showing a crime drama, but it doesn't show being savvy about genre conventions, just a person being good at his job. I agree 32 is just two simply drawn people standing around with large speech bubbles which makes for boring visualization.

A good caption might make #6 great. Any suggestions?

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

That post has a caption suggestion.

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

A suggestion that addresses the criticisms: it also communicates that he's not a police detective, or why he's holding up a gun with a pencil, or something.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

I said it was a general trend I was seeing, and the lines I mentioned are pastiches of general positions I have seen in various IP threads including but not limited to rodneyAnonymous in this one. I think I've actually seen Willbyr take similar positions. Maybe I'm the only one who notices this trend because I'm the only one who actually cares about finding a good image.

You have all gone insane if you think the OOTS pic being all text is "all exaggeration". I'll admit that post 61 may better explain my problem with the OOTS pic (the tiny bit of blood in the first panel is literally the only element of visual interest), but even to the extent the visuals do add anything, they don't explain the trope any better. Even rodney has to grasp at straws to find things in the image that are tangentially related to the trope at best, and neither he nor Another Duck have actually addressed the points I raised in my earlier rant. Again, it doesn't work very well as a quote, but only because it's a garden-variety example; that's excused more for images, but that just means not being a good quote is no excuse for being a bad image.

Here's what I see without the visuals: Haley scolds Belkar by saying that someone was "supposed to get away" because he had a name and was threatening revenge. From that we can infer that this someone, presumably an antagonist to Haley and Belkar, was not allowed to get away somehow, presumably solely because of Belkar's actions. Admittedly Belkar could have, say, tracked it down and brought it back alive, but that just shows how poorly the image or quote illustrates the trope either way. To the extent it does illustrate the trope, that's pretty much everything right there; I dare you to explain to me how the visuals add anything that explains the trope any better.

Seriously, this might be worse than the early-OOTS image on Overused Copycat Character, and that one would work just as well as a quote, but at least it has an actual drow there to do some illustration that someone could use to argue in favor of it. (And lest you think I'm one of the people who "shoot down any image with text in it", let the record show that I think the OOTS images in the Celestial Bureaucracy thread are among the better ones suggested, and they're as text-heavy as it gets.)

edited 7th Jul '13 1:38:42 AM by MorganWick

I stopped reading about there.

edited 7th Jul '13 1:37:54 AM by AnotherDuck

Check out my fanfiction!

Everyone wants to find the best image. Disagreement is about what that means.

edited 7th Jul '13 1:59:32 AM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Yes. I bothered to read it all just out of respect. I see a lot of saying what's wrong, but I don't see much saying what would be right. I too would like a better picture (one which clearly illustrates the trope without using a lot of text and ideally using no text) but I haven't seen such a picture suggested yet.

Or more simply, stop cursing the darkness and help look for a candle!

Absent-minded professor and Neverwinter Nights DM

It was clearly exaggeration for effect; notice I preceded the sentence with "maybe" (though in any case I will admit that post has a pretty good chance of getting me thumped). Regardless, it sure seems like most people here don't want to find a good image bad enough to avoid the trap of rationalizing decidedly sub-par images disturbingly often. Here are just a few examples where I felt like the Only Sane Man:

• Rip Van Winkle: A sleeping chick with cobwebs all around the bed. Nothing about waking up decades after you went to sleep. Honestly seems like it would be better for a slightly different trope.
• Network Decay: A cluttered, memey image that juxtaposes a boxed set of a documentary with Honey Boo Boo, and as if that wasn't enough, hammers it home even more with the old Learning Channel logo. Admittedly doesn't fall into any of the categories I listed, but surely there could have been a better image than this.
• Made of Good: Image: Combining three good things gets you the Powerpuff Girls. Trope: Things literally made out of good itself, or related abstract concepts.

And these are just the ones where the bad image made it onto the page; there are many others where the thread was headed towards accepting a bad image when it was saved somehow, as I did with Useless Boyfriend. My experiences with that thread and Cursed with Awesome actually made me a lot less willing to bring images to IP lest I be shot down as way off the mark; had I not suggested improving the caption the Useless Boyfriend thread might have been locked in less than 24 hours the way CWA was.

What would be a good image? Well, as I said before I'm not convinced this is pictureable, but if it is the Incredibles and gun/pencil images point to ways in which it might be, even if they're not good images themselves.

edited 7th Jul '13 2:19:48 AM by MorganWick

I feel like 6 is the best image. A caption can carry some of the weight, just not all. A caption that clarifies that he's not a detective or something and that he's just being Genre Savvy could work perfectly well as a page image.

Honestly, my biggest problem with 6 was that I was looking at it on an iPhone and shrunk down so small, it didn't look like anything. Seeing it at full wiki size makes me more of a fan of it, though not an enthusiastic one.

6 is alright, but just alright...I do prefer it to the OOTS pic. Since we have a subpaged trope here, I would be fine using 6 on the TV page. For the webcomics page, I've got a couple more suggestions:

- This, panels 2 and 4 (and possibly 4 by itself)
- This, panels 1 and 4 (maybe 4 by itself)

edited 7th Jul '13 8:32:50 PM by Willbyr