Do Not Taunt Cthulhu vs. Bullying a Dragon

I'm just getting here, but to me it looks like this whole thread has done nothing after a very long time. There are still three pages, Do Not Taunt Cthulhu, Bullying a Dragon, and Mugging the Monster, that are all examples of Tempting Fate via character interaction. They are effectively identical.

I say "effectively" because efforts to distinguish them have been inconclusive. Although tropers have cited things like ignorance, reaction, and Arbitrary Power Levels as distinguishing these tropes, everyone is saying something slightly different. That means there is no distinction obvious enough that everyone will understand it. A user seeing one of them will think of all of them, the general Tempting Fate-via-character-interaction concept, defeating the point of keeping them separate. Something making sense when an argument is presented to you isn't the same as something that makes sense when you see its name.

One exception I see is Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?. I see how this could be used as a case where any powerful character is embarassed to devalue their image. For example, the Big Bad is making a dramatic speech when the hero appears and injects a rude joke. The audience will not see him as quite the same impressive force anymore. The difference here is that the villian might not have the means to effectively punish the hero for this, and he might not mind the devaluation of his image either. Thus it isn't nessecarily Tempting Fate and serves a different story-telling function. The problem with that is that the title wouldn't make much sense anymore because using the name Cthulu implies Tempting Fate. The current title also precludes the author from doing it. I'm in favor of removing a snowclone though.

I don't use the functional side of Ttvtropes much, so I don't know what the procedure for making any of this happen is. Oviously we need to agree on something first, but when that happens I'll be happy to help if I'm still browsing the site at that time.

Please read the thread more carefully. This post and the two after it summarize everything quite neatly.

And no-one has done a wick check to verify the distinction.

Checking the examples is more productive for our purposes, I think. I'll give them a skim.

*skim skim*

Mugging the Monster gets a clean bill of health. I don't see misuse in its examples, and I don't see misplaced examples of it on the other pages. So no problems for the "unaware of the danger" cases.

The common thread in Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu? is defiance. It has a lot of overlap with I Shall Taunt You (when it's done as a distraction or stalling tactic or whatever), Do Not Taunt Cthulhu (when they get smushed for it), and Defiant to the End (when they know they're about to die anyway), but those examples tend to be cases where both tropes do legitimately apply, so they're not incorrect.

Do Not Taunt Cthulhu and Bullying a Dragon have the most overlap between examples.

The description and page image for Do Not Taunt Cthulhu make it clear that it's supposed to be for examples where the taunter gets punished for it, which is something the other trope doesn't require. Most of the examples comply. There are some with no retaliation—those fit better on Bullying a Dragon, but if we didn't have the other trope, I'd just drop them in the Tropes Are Flexible box as Defied or Subverted examples (which they basically are).

Bullying a Dragon's examples tend to fall under the dictionary definition of "bullying." The "kids on the playground" examples, for instance, show up here. (Which is good.) Retaliatory and non-retaliatory examples show up; the examples don't distinguish between the two. (Which is fine.)

The overlap definition-wise is in the spots where the Dragon getting Bullied decides to punish the offender. Which side of the line these examples fall in basically comes down to those dictionary definitions. Taunting ends up in Do Not Taunt Cthulhu, bullying ends up in Bullying a Dragon.

Honestly, I'm not too hung up about it. Bullying a Dragon and Do Not Taunt Cthulhu would benefit from routine curation and cleanup. So would twenty thousand other tropes. There's a bit of misuse, but the misplaced examples are easily outnumbered by the nattery or incorrectly indented ones. If you're looking for something to fix, that's where I'd start.

If a larger problem came to light, we could talk. But barring further evidence, I am confident that no TRS action is necessary here.

edited 2nd Jan '14 8:43:01 PM by troacctid

I guess that adding an entry to the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions about these tropes and to make sure all the "Related to..." paragraphs match is the only thing that is needed.

edited 3rd Jan '14 7:00:15 AM by SeptimusHeap

Good ideas.

Clock is set.

Septimus, did you take the actions you mentioned in 55? Because if so, I think we're done.

Nada. Was too occupied with exams for the last month to do much TRS scutwork.

So I guess all the "Related to..." sections should look like this (with minor edits depending on what page it's on, of course):

Alternate formatting:

Definitions good?

Looks good to me, and either format works, (although I really prefer bullet points when there are more than two; it's easier to see how many there are.)

"About to kill you" isn't required for Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?. That would be Defiant to the End.

For Do Not Taunt Cthulhu, I'd go with something more like "If they immediately stomp you into a pancake, that's Do Not Taunt Cthulhu." Remember that each of these tropes is already dealing with a more powerful entity, so re-explaining that part is redundant. Similarly, for Mugging the Monster, maybe something like "If you thought you were the badass and they were an easy victim, that's Mugging the Monster," or "If you don't know how powerful they are and you mistake them for an easy victim, you're Mugging the Monster."

For Bullying a Dragon, I'm not sure "messing with" is the best choice of words...my inclination is to eschew the mini-definition and stick to "Sometimes overlaps with..." or "Sister Trope to..." or whatever. The key word is "bullying," and that's in the title already. I think readers will get a better sense of the trope if we leave it to their imagination; shoehorning in a laconic runs the risk of making it seem narrower than it is.

Clock is set.

Bump. Troacctid, you're the one who objected to my phrasing. Do you have a better way of putting it?

...Yes.

edited 9th Mar '14 12:26:20 AM by troacctid

Ahem. Yes. I knew that. I was...testing you. Yes, that's it.

Anyway, so it would look like this:

Right?

Those defs work, but I'd like to lose the Cthulhu snowclones since the definitions aren't restricted to deity-level enemies.

EDIT: Also, that def for Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu? makes me think more of Defiant to the End.

edited 9th Mar '14 1:12:50 PM by StarSword

Okay, I'm not sure why this was saying it hadn't been opened yet, but since it's been dead for a month, I've re-clocked it...again. Let's get this done this time.

All we need to do is make sure Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu? is not going to be confused with Defiant to the End, and paste the comparison into each trope. And general cleanup, but that's not really a TRS issue.

StarSword, do you have any suggestions for fixing that line? If not, I'm going to paste it in as-is and holler for a lock.

Well, swapped them in on Bullying a Dragon, Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?, Do Not Taunt Cthulhu, and Mugging the Monster. Any problems?

Looks good to me.

All right then, hollering for a lock.