Misused: World Of Cardboard Speech

This trope seems to be filled with non-examples. Many of the supposed "examples" belong in other tropes, mostly Crowning Moment Of Awesome but also others. (My inexperience is showing - could someone fix the title please?)

edited 4th Sep '14 9:53:07 AM by Melkior

Absent-minded professor and Neverwinter Nights DM

Looking through a handful of examples, I agree, this could definitely use some cleanup.

The major disconnect seems to be between the trope namer and the actual description.

The trope namer is about an incredibly powerful person — someone who has to restrain their strength constantly just to function in society — facing an enemy of equal power, allowing them to "cut loose" and actually apply their full strength for once.

The actual trope description is much, much broader — a character has an epiphany that gives them a power boost. They realize something — about themselves, about their enemy, about the situation, whatever — that allows them to fight at a higher level than they were before.

Most of the examples I saw while skimming the article fit the latter but not the former. There's some ambiguity sometimes over whether the character making the speech is just now having the revelation and that's what causes the power boost, or if they've always thought that way and they're just explaining to their opponent (and the audience) why they're taking the gloves off, but the effect is the same either way: character is struggling, character gives speech about their thoughts, character is now much more powerful.

There is some misuse for "character gives an awesome speech about their motivations", but I don't think that's the primary issue. I'd suggest splitting the trope — keep "World of Cardboard" Speech as "I don't have to hold back for this fight" and make a new Epiphany Power Boost page for "I just realized something, so now I'm going to kick your ass".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I agree. Ever since I came across this page, I've felt like there's been a disconnect between the intent of Superman's speech and the trope definition and that's as good a summation as I've seen.

Let's not jump ahead. The OP is claiming there is misuse in that there are a lot of "non-examples," which either means there is a lot of "character does this in story Y" and no elaboration (which isn't the case, a lot of examples start off that way and then elaborate) or examples aren't following the pattern of [mental conflict, personal revelation, emotional empowerment]. Many examples I'm not familiar with but they all seem to be along the same lines.

And the trope namer is one possible example of how the trope plays out, it's meant to be a contextually dependent concept. The idea of "I know how to kick your ass now" is more along the lines of Does Not Know His Own Strength meets removing the Power Limiter.

edited 6th Sep '14 11:41:49 AM by KJMackley

The problem with that suggestion is that there's no indication that we actually need the former trope, and the speech itself is as good a trope namer as any other. Every speech is going to be different based on the context. "World of cardboard" just happened to be the one that the trope creator liked the best, and there's no reason to change it now.

Here's the Laconic for it:

• The hero makes a speech about the problems they've experienced and how they overcame them.

The fact that there's confusion about what the trope definition is, seemingly caused by the title being far more specific than the description, appears to contradict that.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

What confusion over the trope definition? Where are the bad examples, the rampant misuse? I can see maybe a handful that stretch the boundaries of the trope, but nothing that warrants a massive rename and rewrite.

Melkior is apparently under the impression that most of the examples on the page are bad examples. He's wrong, but only because the actual definition is much wider than the title implies. When I went to check this, I was confused as well — I had to reread the description a couple times to realize where the disconnect was. Willbyr has also said that he agrees this is a problem.

The fact is, the definition is unclear. Is it about a character who normally has to hold back being able to cut loose for one, similar to I Am Not Left-Handed? Is it about a character who realizes something, and that realization lets them win the fight, like Epiphany Therapy for kicking ass? Is it a self-administered Pre Ass Kicking Rousing Speech?

Those are all different things. The only similarity is "hero gives speech then kicks ass", which may make it a good supertrope, but the individual variations certainly deserve their own subtropes. And there are examples of all of those on the page itself, because the actual trope definition is vague enough to allow them all (the fact that the description has a half-dozen bulleted "variations" doesn't help).

I'd say it needs to be split into its component tropes. At the very least there's "character who is Afraid Of His Own Strength stops holding back", "character has a sudden realization that resolves a lingering issue that was keeping them from fighting at full strength, then proceeds to kick ass". It also needs to be made clear whether this has to happen during a fight (and allows a character to win) or whether it gives the character the strength to fight in the first place — the description seems to imply the former, but there are plenty of examples of the latter on the page.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I don't see the problem.

The connection is "Hero realizes self-limitation and breaks said limitation after speech".

Except that in the first case, the hero is already aware of his limitation, he/she just has an opportunity to ignore it.

That's splitting hairs. The trope is specifically:

• Mental Conflict
• Personal Revelation
• Emotional Empowerment

That's directly from the description. It simply manifests under a variety of circumstances because the conflict, revelation, empowerment changes depending on the story and the character. That's where you are getting confused, mistaking the results of the trope with the trope itself.

The trope namer follows that pattern just fine, and the revelation isn't "I just now realized I'm really strong" but "Against you I can give it everything I've got." The examples also follow that just fine.

edited 7th Sep '14 8:16:05 PM by KJMackley

I've always found this to be a badly named trope. No matter how you slice it, most of the examples don't match up with the trope namer. I mean, comic fans know hero isn't holding back anymore is at least as old as 1960s Spider-man, which actually didn't involve a "speech" at all. There was no "world of cardboard" just "I usually hold back but don't have to with you!" and yet it is much closer to the trope namer than Hercules admitting every bad thing Ares has to say about him is true and then kicking his ass anyway. Yeah, there was actually a speech in the latter comic but it doesn't resemble the trope namer at all.

Not even sure say something before "ah started kicking ass" is even worth a trope page. That seems more like Heroic Resolve. Dont Have To Hold Back might be too close to I Am Not Left-Handed too but it would be more in line to what the trope namer really was talking about.

A quick search for the word "epiphany" yielded the page Epiphany Comeback, which is just a bit more specific than "Epiphany Power Boost," but hasn't exactly been thriving. It looks to me like a fair number of the examples on "World of Cardboard" Speech would fit better there.

Which is fine for a supertrope, but there are plenty of more specific variations that I think deserve spinning off — including the trope namer, which is causing confusion by being more limiting than the actual trope as currently defined.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

This trope isn't a subtrope or supertrope to really anything. Yes, the trope definition is broad, but it's not multiple tropes in one but just broadly defined. It's one trope that can manifest itself using other tropes. So saying "Example X also fits as Trope Y" doesn't mean it doesn't also fit as this trope.

I'll be upfront, I am actually the one who made the trope, so I am going to be a little partial and defensive towards it. At one point I might have supported a rename, but at the moment I'm going to quote the "related to" page: "World of Cardboard" Speech found in: 808 articles, excluding discussions. Since January 1, 2012 this article has brought 8,077 people to the wiki from non-search engine links.

That's some pretty impressive stats. If you're just looking for a flaw in the trope, you can find it but currently there is no evidence given of misuse as suggested in the OP.

Sorry, but I'm inexperienced with this. I obviously didn't provide enough information.

To me, the trope is all about "I'm so powerful I have to continually hold back, but I just realised I don't need to hold back with you." That's the clear context of the trope namer regardless of the description.

Perhaps "I just realised I'm more powerful than you" could be a sub-trope but I'm sure that "I just realised I can overcome whatever was holding me back" should be a different trope.

The main point is that the trope, in its current form, is attracting examples which don't fit the trope namer and, at least in my opinion, are borderline in fitting the description.

I'm guessing that the trope description was very narrow in the beginning then someone thought it should be broader, leading to the current mess.

Absent-minded professor and Neverwinter Nights DM

Yeah, that's where the misuse is. Again, I still think Epiphany Powerup is a trope, I just think it's a supertrope that stuff like "World of Cardboard" Speech etc should be spun off from.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

You do realize that the person who originally conceived the trope is directly above your post telling you that what you think about the trope's history is wrong, don't you? The trope has always been interpreted broadly, and while the trope namer is very specific any other possible trope namer would be equally specific because every such speech is individually crafted to suit the speaker's circumstances.

Now, what your post is telling me is that some people (ie: you) are confused by the trope name and think it's much more specific than it actually is, because they don't want to read the description (or read it and decide to ignore it for some reason). Now, this doesn't actually create any misuse, because any such narrow example is also a broader example. But perhaps it means the trope is wicked slightly less than it should be. This is incredibly hard to prove though, and at best means we should rename it something more generic, without splitting off anything. However, the argument against that is that it seems to have a healthy amount of links, so the name appears to be working.

So... what argument do you have other than "I'm confused"?

edited 14th Sep '14 3:48:37 PM by Clarste

There are two separate arguments here. One, the name is much narrower than the trope, so the name should be changed to be more indicative of the broad nature of the trope. Two, the trope is so broad that numerous subtropes exist, so those subtropes should be identified and spun off into separate articles. (At least one of those subtropes is the trope namer, where the realization the protagonist has is that they don't have to hold back like they usually do; if the thread agrees to both change the trope name and spin off subtropes, then I'd say we should use the "world of cardboard" name for that specific subtrope.)

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The thing is that I've been saying the actual trope is complete, it uses other tropes because the circumstances of the individual characters are different. The list we currently have of possible circumstances is just touching upon the different tropes you can use in correlation with a "World of Cardboard" Speech as currently defined.

And THAT, therein, is the problem with any sort of split. We are not talking about two or three different ideas rolled up into one, but something akin to an index like Chekhov's Gun with the supertrope being something like "Empowering Epiphanic Speech." BUT, we already have tropes associated with a lot of these individual circumstances so all these subtropes are basically going to look like:

• EES with Patrick Stewart Speech
• EES with Because You Can Cope
• EES with Heroic Second Wind
• EES with Afraid of Their Own Strength (the context of the actual "World of Cardboard" Speech)
• And more

The trope is popular, but not that widespread and there is not enough misuse where such an action is necessary or would be helpful, because we might get a couple dozen examples of a few of those "sub"tropes, but a lot of examples are just floating around by themselves.

And like I already said, I wouldn't have been opposed to a rename some time ago but the current name has caught on.

edited 15th Sep '14 9:37:18 PM by KJMackley

So if they're not tropeworthy in and of themselves, then they get lumped into the supertrope. That's the point of having supertropes and subtropes. "It would have a lot of subtropes" is not an argument against a split — if the supertrope is broad enough to need a lot of subtropes, then there's nothing wrong with having a lot of subtropes. "It would end up being an index instead of a supertrope" is also not an argument against splitting it — if it has a large number of mutually exclusive, non-overlapping subtropes, then it should be an index instead of a supertrope. (I don't think that that's true in this particular example, but still.)

You're claiming that there's no misuse so no action is needed — but the problem is that the name leads to the trope being underused (because the name is more specific than the trope is), meaning that it's impossible to point to examples. You can't point to a specific instance of something not happening.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I sincerely doubt the trope would be nearly as popular if it didn't have its current name. It's the fact it has such a memorable example as the trope namer that let it catch on and spread. We can't always guarantee these things happening, which is why we now err on more "boring" names, but when it does happen we can credit TV Tropes for helping codify a new term.

And my primary argument is not "subtropes are bad" but that the trope does not have subtropes. See, the trope "World of Cardboard" Speech is a trope, and so is all the other tropes that are manifested in the use of the trope. But the manifested trope meeting the "World of Cardboard" Speech trope is not a unique trope unto itself. It's just using the manifested trope with a "World of Cardboard" Speech. It would be like trying to create subtropes of Magnetic Plot Device in it manifesting as a Hell Gate or a City of Adventure, you aren't creating anything new from either trope.

Beyond that I don't understand your argument. If there is no misuse then what is the problem with the trope in one simple phrase? And is it something that "breaks" the trope that actually requires repair?

edited 16th Sep '14 11:19:17 PM by KJMackley

I would say that 8000 inbounds is a sign that the trope name isn't that unclear.

Now you could argue that unclear trope names get more inbounds because people have to link the trope page everytime they use it (and this trope has only 800 wicks) but that's not very plausible.

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