Not Tropeworthy: Dying Like Animals

Those should be cleaned up if we do decide to remove the type labels.

Good lord, you're right. The examples are infested with impossible-to-understand type labels. Bah! Burn them!

They're also spread throughout the site, too. Usually they're the fairly obvious ones that are self-explanitory (Chickens, Lemmings, the occasional Ostrich) but it should be noted. Fighting For Survival actually has it worse since almost all of the animals for that one make no sense.

I just really, really wish whoever did this in the first place didn't bother.

Sorry for the late reply.

- I don't see why everyone's thinking I want these pages merged with Animal Motifs. Other than the vague "dying like animals" phrase, it has nothing to do with animals.

- Again, it's not a coherent motiff. When, say, a character has a motiff, it reminds you of that thing the motiff is supposed to be about (i.e. rose motiffs incorporate tons of rose symbolism, for example). To the best of my knowledge, very, very few works go out of their way to associate a character's bottomless stupidity with bats, ostriches, et cetera. This is particularly bad about the Fighting For Survival trope, as it goes very damn near the omnipresent tropes

I suppose my main issue has to be with the nonsensical definitions of the character types. On other words, it's the whole "we define these characters as lions or porcupines or whatever" thing.

edited 5th Jul '13 4:57:27 PM by peryton

The whole Animal Motifs issue was caused by my own confusion over these two tropes. On the surface, these pages didn't have to do with animals. This kind of confusion indicates that there's a problem with the page.

You missed the drama, for a while the topic was tagged as Animal Motifs or something. It was weird. You can ignore that drama that went on for the first 15 or so posts.

It turns out I had a to-do note for this from a long time ago.

So here's a link to the old thread, which got locked prematurely and left all the crap of unsorted animal examples in. Hence, it's how it is. On the bright side, the discussion and analysis still have the animal stuff; it could be worse if we were stuck figuring out what each one meant.

So yeah. As a whole, Dying Like Animals is worthless, and many of the specific animal types are really unintuitive and reaching to fit the theme. The analysis page links each one to a trope, but some of those comparisons aren't too good. And very few of those associated tropes have tkey element that goes with Dying Like Animals, that these behaviors are working against their interests of survival. For example, Ostrich links to Hidden Elf Village and Vulture links to Disaster Scavengers, but Hidden Elf Village and Disaster Scavengers don't necessarily carry the idea that this group is dooming themselves by their response or lack thereof, so it's not as simple as putting examples on those tropes.

I think it might be worthwhile to have a trope or tropes that go in line with that moral fable/karma element of Dying Like Animals; that's more important than the animal comparisons. It's fine if an example somewhere on the site casually refers to "dying like ostriches with their heads in the sand" but the animal theme is not as memorable as it purports to be and is too opaque to work sitewide.

Honestly I think it'd be easier to nuke the trope and start over from scratch. Probably not an option though.

Seems like we have two main opinions here.

• Remove the type labels
• Create replacement tropes/Cut the pages and start over

edited 11th Jul '13 5:46:39 PM by MikuruFan

So, is it time for a crowner?

I thought that there should be more opinions. Arguments for or against the options, along with new ones, before making the crowner.

This trope (particularly all the named sub-types) has alwasy bugged me.

"Dying like animals", and some varients/named examples ("dying like flies"/"lambs to the slaughter") are pre-existing phrases. (Although not necessarily used exactly as TV Tropes uses them - "Dying like animals" has alwasy meant to me "dying en-mass and without accomplishing anything", not "actively working against their own best interest during a crisis situation").

Most of the other types seem to be made-up terms only used by TV Tropes, and more importantly, with unituitive names and little or no connection to established animal motifs. (And having just looked over them again, a lot of them don't even have anything to do with dying).

My vote: Nuke the trope. "Dying like animals" and commonly-used varients should be moved to Stock Phrases. Specific types can be reconstituted as tropes, if they are distinct and trope-worthy, and given meaningful names.

There's an opinion that the pages are too small for a split.

You know, these pages are lists of tropes about good/bad behaviour of bystanders in bad situations, unified with animal metaphors.

My vote: Move all examples to the existing tropes. Make new tropes if any variant doesn't have its own trope. Delete examples that don't have tropeworthiness. Move the remaining pages to Just for Fun.

That may be a better idea. Some of the type labels have a linked trope already, although some cases are questionable.

Sandbox.Dying Like Animals is the old description, by the way.

What Wardog said is pretty much exactly how I feel. I've been offended by and opposed to the misuse of the phrase "dying like animals" ever since this page was first proposed.

By the way, welcome to TRS, Wardog

edited 28th Jul '13 12:10:42 PM by Madrugada

I guess we could redirect this page to the one Absurdly High Bodycount, when that ever launches from YKTTW.

Redirecting to another trope brings up other issues like inbounds leading to the new trope and not the intended trope.

My 2 bits? Nuke the entire analysis page(it's not helping), rename this, and done. As it is, it's a trope, just needs a better name and no animal subtexts

If we crowner this, the issue of renaming would be complicated. Last time I suggested dealing with the more technical details after the crowner while working on Too Good to Last, the page was immediately restored after a while without warning, the crowner closed, and the thread locked. No discussion on what should be done to the page as it was restored took place at all. I don't want that to happen again.

Too Good to Last's crowner had a clear consensus for restoring when I requested the crowner call. It needs some work done, but that doesn't need TRS.

My opinion? Leave this trope the way it is. Dividing this trope page's examples up or removing the Animal Motifs is unnecessary and this wiki would only be worse for it.

Please explain why removing forced type labels in a trope too small to have them would hurt the wiki in any way.

Went over this topic again.

Even more in favor of just completely axing them altogether. These aren't tropes, they're not storytelling devices. As they are now, seeing Dying Like Animals on a work's example list means nothing, especially if they're referencing an obtuse "animal" that isn't even linked on the page itself.

I'm for just axing this, possibly making a few useful ones into tropes of themselves if anyone finds any that we don't have and think are salvageable and distinct. Without the (tortured and obtuse) animal metaphor, there's not much point in the page itself.