Unclear Description: For Want Of A Nail

That sounds good, except there should be no hard rules. Obvious examples (and playing with) can break the rules and others can be a 4 out of 5 or something. Each step can(and maybe should) be logical, but only knowing step 1 and the last you couldn't know/guess the steps in between. Kind of like a Missing Steps Plan. (Knowing the steps they are logical, only knowing the first and last you couldn't reasonably estimate the steps inbetween.)

I think there should be some logic to it. A butterfly flapping its wings, moving some air and causes a hurricane on the other side of the world isn't this trope. A butterfly distracting a king at a critical moment, causing his death and the fall/end of that bloodline is.

edited 31st Aug '13 3:44:54 PM by m8e

So what we're seeing here is

• logical v. unrealistic
• time travel v. normal progression
• sequential v. immediate

edited 31st Aug '13 3:18:16 PM by MikuruFan

Well, it wasn't intended as a set of hard rules for the examples to be checked against. Rather a summary of the points I think are relevant to the trope. For instance, a longer chain would be more implausible just by being longer, so even if each step could be reasonably expected, you wouldn't expect everything to happen at once.

I'm not sure about completely random events, like the butterfly example. It's sort of not even provable that that was even related to it, whether or not they claim that's the cause or not. I haven't really thought about whether or not that would make it an example or not. I kind of think the progression for how that initial event caused everything is relevant to the trope, though.

Not sure I follow what you mean.

People disagreeing over what distinctions the trope has.

I'd say all of the above.

I feel that that's too broad.

Definitely agree that if the consequence is reasonably obvious from the cause then it shouldn't be considered an example. E.g. "for want of a nail, a man made an extra trip to the hardware store" isn't an example. I think Duck's points in #73 do a good job of summarizing what makes an example.

edited 31st Aug '13 5:13:01 PM by Stratadrake

I agree.

So it's not too reasonable, but not unreasonable?

This is going to confusion.

By itself, yes. But Duck gave a good list of 4-5 key distinctions that most FWOAN's already satisfy pretty much all of:

• Small event with huge ramifications ("for want of a nail...")
• Consequence is out of scale with the event ("...a kingdom was lost")
• Chain of three or more consequences (nail, shoe, horse, rider, battle, war, kingdom)
• No apparent connection between the extremes (nail -> kingdom wut?)
• Mentioned in-story (the poem as a whole)

edited 1st Sep '13 12:27:57 PM by Stratadrake

It looks like this whole thing is being structured on a poem.

I think the real issue I could come up with is the fact that there must be at least a chain of three or more events, as I don't know if we really need that requirement for this trope.

I DO agree there must be at least a step or two in between the nail and the consequence in order to count, though

edited 1st Sep '13 12:42:43 PM by KarjamP

That is a requirement that I also found weird.

Wow, you guys really over-thought this. I removed the few words that made it about a specific kind of time travel/alt history plot. This page defines the parent trope of a lot of other tropes, as is already dealt with in the "see also" and "compare" paragraph. That was really all that was needed.