Always 3:00am in the Filth
I'm not a fan of the idea that TV Tropes is white-washing away creator's mistakes. People make mistakes. Both little ones that aren't really important and the ones where they should have known better. Some creators bend the rules for the story, some don't know any better, and others didn't bother to check.
If people are whining "this guy is an idiot, he said X is Y" then let's rewrite it. I just don't like claiming that every mistake is actually deliberate. It feels dishonest.
edited 6th Oct '13 11:05:46 AM by Rotpar
"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984
Artistic License tropes aren't automatically mistakes so anything that assumes (or are worded like) that should be fixed. But we shouldn't go to far in the other direction and "white-wash".
Some are intentional, some are just ignorance. 90% of it is crud either way.
edited 6th Oct '13 2:18:57 PM by m8e
The thing is, TV Tropes does not exist to catalog creator "mistakes", nor are the Artistic License tropes properly categorized as "mistakes". It exists to classify story telling conventions.
Artistic Licence, as we use it, can be best summed up as "Creators are allowed to be inaccurate if the inaccuracy serves the story better than accuracy would."
It isn't about engaging in a game of mass nitpicking.
This decision was already made when the pages were renamed. We just need to finish the job by fixing descriptions and possibly examples.
The issue is overly-negative descriptions, yes? I would just say "Sometimes, fiction works differently than Real Life".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
Short of Word of God saying either "Yes, I know it doesn't work that way, I did it that way because I thought it makes the story work better." or "Why, no, I wasn't aware that isn't the way it really works, my mistake." we have no way of really knowing which is the case. So we can either be judgmental and snark and snipe about how they "got it wrong" (the attitude displayed on the old "You Fail X Forever and Somewhere An X Is Crying pages) or we can be charitable and call it Artistic License.
The pages don't need to individually go through TRS to make that change to them; the decision to change them was made sometime ago. The problem is that the work hasn't been done. So anyone who wants to desnark the various Artistic License pages, go right ahead.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Gods. I just redid all the Artistic License laconics to actually say something besides all-caps "X DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!"
I'm sorely tempted to say, "Take a look at them, please, and if you think I got them right, I'll lock every single one to keep them from being turned back into a joke".
edited 6th Oct '13 4:37:43 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Aye, that was long overdue. The ALLCAPS !!!!RANTS!!!!! were a fair eyesore.
That said, I have to ask about the "to make the story better". In all examples of these items that I've encountered, any elaboration of that aspect was mostly in form of Justifying Edits. Never mind that we'd probably have to cut lots of examples (as well as remove some subtropes).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
As far as the example writing goes, I think a simple, factual statement about the variance between how things worked in the story and how things work in Real Life is the way to go, without speculation as to the motive (ignorance or deliberate choice) unless Word of God has already stated the reason.
"Creators are allowed to be inaccurate if the inaccuracy serves the story better than accuracy would."
I think if an inaccuracy don't serves the story better than accuracy would it can be assumed to be unintentional. No need for Word of God.
Like this example in Artistic License – Military:
- Many characters in Top Gun are wearing patches from every branch of the military except the Navy.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Well, I put in the bit about "to serve the story better" because that's generally the intent, even if it doesn't work. And whether it works or not can be open to interpretation. Which is what the Main Artistic License page says.
Leaving it off felt incomplete, and adding "with the intent to serve the story" or "in the expectation that it serves the story better" felt like it was inviting Natter and complain-y edits explaining why it doesn't work.
And by the way, FE gave me permission to lock those as I finished them, so they're all locked now. There are still quite a few Artistic License pages that don't have a Laconic. If you add one, let me (or one of the other mods) know, so we can lock it up.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
While I fundamentally agree with the latter (not with the lack of update in Locked Pages, tho'), I do not see how "to serve the story better" is better than the others.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
So moving onto the descriptions: First up is Artistic License – Animal Care
Failures of the kind where someone fails at giving proper care to an animal. Failures include feeding an animal something it should never eat, keeping it in improper conditions, or handling it just wrong.
A subtrope, in which a horse (or alternate steed) is portrayed as needing far less care than it realistically should, is Automaton Horses.
Any suggestions for rewriting this to not be about "failures"?
I think of "When animals in fiction get care that would be improper if applied to real animals. Common versions include feeding an animal something it should never eat, keeping it in improper conditions, or handling it just wrong."
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
Oooops. Added to Locked Pages now.
^^ Septimus's suggestion is good. That's the sort of change I was making as I went through the ones with Laconics. (I didn't get all of them. It got too depressing.)
edited 7th Oct '13 7:08:08 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
All the laconics that I can see got the modification. I'll also have to mention Trivia.Artistic License Nuclear Physics somewhere, although probably not here.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
I got all the existing Laconics. I didn't get all the main pages. A few of them, that I could clean up easily. I also didn't make any new Laconics for pages that didn't have them.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I think we can implement Septimus's version of Artistic Licence Animal Care and also fix the example categories along the same lines. Then move on to the next trope description, which is Artistic License - Astronomy. At first glance I don't see any major problems with that one, but a second or third opinion would be good.
edited 8th Oct '13 5:47:28 AM by Catbert
The starting description is certainly good. Now if the sub-descriptions are good is a different question (or their arrangement, for that matter. I wonder if removing the main folder is better).
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
Ah, that one (Astronomy) is a page where we were trying to figure out how to use the various Artistic License tropes as "catcher's mitts" (if you'll forgive the somewhat strained metaphor) for tropes we don't already have.
The idea behind that arrangement was that the Artistic License - Astronomy page serves as an index of the related tropes we already have, and then the examples folder is a place to put examples that don't already fit one of the subtropes. That's why the examples on the page are sorted by type, rather than medium — so that we could see how many examples of each type there were, and decide whether it was YKTTW-able or not.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I just put in the new description for the Pets one and changed the "Note" about pet food brands to an actual administrative note with the double % in front of it.
edited 8th Oct '13 11:04:20 AM by Catbert
The next item down the list is Artistic License – Awards. I'll go request a custom title, but the 2nd paragraph of the description could use retouching, especially the "Truly painful..." line axed.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Zzzzzzzzzz
Tweaked, and tidied the examples as well. I'm not sure about the organization — the way it is now pretty much forces third-level bullets for some legitimate examples.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Don't know about the organization either, but the page is much more tidy now.
Artistic License – Biology: While the description is OK, the example might need some cleaning-over.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I'm doing some cleanup right now, but there are so many examples I'll probably miss some of the problems.
One of the things I'm doing is attempting to remove references to "failing biology". I'm also cutting out one example of a Fanfic that provides an supposedly inaccurate depiction of Digimon biology, given that those aren't real, along with some religiously motivated stuff that was never intended to conform to mainstream science.
Also, I think we should be removing In-Universe examples of a character getting something wrong when the work clearly depicts the character as being wrong.
I propose that we go through the Artistic License index trope by trope and remove all elements from the descriptions and trope examples that sound as if they are complaining, or that talk about works of fiction as if they are making mistakes or the authors are writing the things they do out of ignorance or stupidity.
I've noticed that some of the Artistic License tropes are still written in a way that reflects their former "You Fail X" forever status.
These articles put an emphasis on how Creators are making "mistakes" and "errors" because they supposedly don't know any better, rather than how they are taking liberties with what might be realistic because they are writing fiction and choose to include certain differences from reality for artistic purposes.
For starters, take a look at Artistic License – Linguistics:
Many language/linguistics tropes are attributable to this, and are split up here into errors in academic linguistics, translation errors, and errors in usage.''
It then goes on to categories examples by the types of "Mistakes"
Artistic License – Martial Arts talks about "as minor a grievance as an inefficient move or as major a martial insult as 80s ninja films."
I would classifying artistic licence as a grievance or insult would be an example of a complaining Tropes Are Bad approach.
Artistic License – Medicine talkings about artistic license as a "failure in media..."
I strongly suspect there are more examples.
edited 6th Oct '13 4:02:43 AM by Catbert