Ambiguous Name (titles crowner 3/8/14): Forgotten Birthday

I think the title should be changed to "Not-Forgotten Birthday".

I'm not LGBT. I just think Rain's really cool. Apologies if my humor gets too painful.

The title sounds okay to me, though it would be a little ambiguous on who's forgetting the birthday. Though if this trope were to be renamed, I would choose Forgotten Birthday Suspicion. The title suggested by the OP sounds like it could be ambiguous on who didn't forget the birthday.

Or that.

I'm not LGBT. I just think Rain's really cool. Apologies if my humor gets too painful.

I do not know why we would want to rename a trope with 243 inbounds.

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

I have a different suggestion.

According to the header, this trope is "people pretend to forget a birthday to secretly plan a surprise party". However, many of the examples simply are "somebody's birthday is forgotten".

That's clearly two different tropes. So I suggest that we restrict this trope to "a birthday is really forgotten" (which many examples already match) and YKTTW a new trope for "not really forgotten, here's the surprise party".

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

If I remember correctly, you must prove that the name's causing trouble by listing the examples that either does the correct meaning or gets something else because they thought the trope meant something different due to the ambiguous name.

I doubt you can just suggest a name change like what you did.

For example, Springtime for Hitler ALSO has an ambiguous name, but the times it had been on the Trope Repair shop, the others consider it to NOT have misuse beyond what the trope meant, so the name stayed (and if I remember correctly, this is one of the oldest tropes listed on this site)

And I was ninja'd by two people.

Make that three in total.

edited 12th Jul '13 12:12:55 PM by KarjamP

I guess you can guess what my stance on a split is.

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

Just to mention that the "really forgotten" Trope is referenced in the last line of the description:

So we already have the destination Trope for the split; I'd say let's move the "really forgotten" examples there and rename both Tropes.

• This Trope: People pretend to forget about a birthday/anniversary to hide the Surprise Party celebrating said event.
• The other Trope: People actually did forget about a birthday/anniversary leaving a character to feel miserable. Or angry.

edited 22nd Jun '13 8:22:01 AM by DonaldthePotholer

Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.

The other name is okay with me. I don't think it needs a rename.

Ah, unsurprisingly we already have that one. It strikes me from the examples on this page that it is often misused for One-Person Birthday Party. That's not good.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Example move is good. No rename, though.

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

I approve of the example move, but I'm probably alone in that I still want the rename.

I'm not LGBT. I just think Rain's really cool. Apologies if my humor gets too painful.

Running a Wick check now (with only 105 pages, 20 should be good).

And, in case you didn't notice, I don't think that there is significant distinction between a Birthday and an Anniversary for the above Tropes. (EDIT: The "Surprise Anniversay Party" scenario is listed as one of five scenarios on that page. So merge One-Person Birthday Party into Forgotten Anniversary and then rename?)

edited 22nd Jun '13 8:23:53 AM by DonaldthePotholer

Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.

The last sentence on the description for Forgotten Anniversary references Forgotten Birthday as the birthday equivalent of the trope, which it isn't.

Random Wick Check Complete.

Methodology: A Survey of 20 Wicks by taking every fourth Work (not including Darth Wiki). Trope pages were not included in this analysis.

• Archer: Unclear; claims it's a Deconstruction but offers no details.
• Community: Downplays the "forgotten" Trope for one character (21 instead of 20), Implies it for another.
• Drama Drama Duck: Under Break the Cutie; this is definitely a Subversion as well as a partial Deconstruction.

—>having Forgotten Birthday subverted when the surprise party is postponed and never actually ends up happening so you really do think everyone forgot you (because the host was too busy turning evil because of a virus and blackmailing and verbally tearing apart everyone he cares about),

• God, the Devil and Bob: "Purposefully forgotten with no party intended" based on the description.
• I Love Lucy: Inversion of the actual Trope:

—>Lucy asks Ricky not to recognize her birthday. When he follows through with it, she becomes sad...

• Johnny Test: Description mentions the Setup common to both Tropes, so technically Unclear.^note If Johnny didn't forget at all, then it's correct usage, party or no party.
• Lalaloopsy: Unclear, description text falls more under One-Person Birthday Party.
• Mr Sunshine: Both Tropes:

—> Averted in the pilot, Heather puts "Happy Birthday BEN" on the big screen, but in the next episode absolutely no one realizes that its the 10th anniversary of Ben working at the arena.

• Para Pencari Tuhan: Unclear
• Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth: Honestly forgotten, but made up for later. (Kind of inbetween)
• Sgt. Frog: Plays with the correct Trope.
• Strawberry Shortcake: Correct Trope
• The Backyardigans: Unclear. Another example citing the setup, but not the resolution.
• The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh: Another example that doesn't mention it, though IIRC, it falls under "Honestly Forgotten". The fact that it's The Eeyore makes a planned "Surprise Party" less likely.
  And, as it's a Spin-Off:
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: Runs the whole gammit in one episode: Rabbit thinks that the correct Trope is in play. He then gets depressed when he finds out it's not, leading to him thinking it's the other Trope, when in reality, Pooh just messed up the calendar, i.e. it wasn't Rabbit's Birthday at all!
• The Steve Harvey Show: Neither Trope; it's more like Upstaged Birthday. (In this case, one of his hosts was pregnant and another was proposed to. So they honestly remembered, and it's not a surprise, but the other things they were celebrating were, at least to the Birthday Boy.)
• Tower of Terror: Correct, with the delay Up To Eleven.
• Wings: The Correct Trope is Invoked with Hilarious Results.

That's 17 thus far, 18 counting the Spinoff. So Two More. Rolling Random Dice:

• Game Grumps: Neither Trope. Not even close.
• The Amazing Spider-Man: "Honestly Forgotten". With disasterous results.

EDIT: And one more non-random wick (due to it being referenced on so many namespaces within the work):

• Echo Chamber: BOTH Tropes under discussion are Referenced as "Forgotten Birthday". (Specific Episode is Season 2, Episode 6; time mark of the reference is at 1:39.) Also, the Episode itself plays out like "Honestly Forgot", but I, for one, am unsure whether Tom (In Character) was planning something or not. Plus, the Laconic for that episode heavily implies the "merely Forgot" one.

The Echo Chamber example alone indicates significant potential for misuse because it's an internal production to TV Tropes, thereby reflecting the opinion of a significant Vocal Minority of the site!

As for the other 20:

• Correct: 6 (30%)
  • Seeming Inversion: 1 (5%)
  • Combined with "Just Plain Forgot": 1 (5%) (Not Counting EC)
• Just Plain Forgot by itself: 5 (25%)
• Just Plain Unclear: 3 (15%)
  • Setup but Unclear Resolution: 2 (10%)
• Neither Trope: 2 (10%)

• Total Correct Usage: 40%
• Total Incorrect Usage: 40%
  • Overlapping: 5%.
• Unclear: 25%

Your Honor, I would like the Wick Review entered as Petitioner's Exhibit A and the Echo Chamber episode (2-6) entered as Petitioner's Exhibit B.

edited 22nd Jun '13 10:18:40 AM by DonaldthePotholer

Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.

Wow, that's worse misuse than Magic Missile had.

Agree with Panctice's proposal to rename to something less ambiguous.

I didn't even realise there was that much misuse.

I'm not LGBT. I just think Rain's really cool. Apologies if my humor gets too painful.

I would just move the correct use off somewhere else.

Or perhaps move One-Person Birthday Party to Forgotten Birthday and move Forgotten Birthday off somewhere else.

edited 23rd Jun '13 4:33:17 AM by SeptimusHeap

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

This needs more attention.

I would leave OPBP alone and make the page at issue a disambiguation.

What are usage stats for One-Person Birthday Party?

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

22 wicks, no inbounds.

That settles it for me. I agree with Sept's proposal.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Me Too!.

Seeing the usage stats for OPBP, I support that proposal.

Page Action crowner's hooked.