KnowWhenToFoldEm vs RageQuit

Is there any real difference between them? I looked on the Know When to Fold 'Em page and a few examples sound more along the lines of rage quitting than anything else? Is the latter another variation of the former?

From what I gather, Know When to Fold 'Em is when a person realizes he is outmanuvered or outgunned and makes a break for it, so it's a display of wisdom, that the person is wise enough to realize the situation is not in his favor. Rage Quit is a person just looking at the odds and saying "fuck it I'm done". It's not a display of wisdom in realizing the odds are against you but rather a display of frustration.

There is misuse on the two pages, you are correct.

Know When to Fold 'Em is a calculated withdrawal or strategic retreat. The decision to quit is driven by reason or logic (usually related to self-preservation). Rage Quit is emotionally-driven, usually by anger or frustration, and is neither calculated nor strategic. The two are the opposite of each other in how and why the quitting happens.

edited 24th Jan '15 11:51:09 AM by Madrugada

Also as a result the timing tends to be different, meaning you can often tell which it is in narrative by the placement, even if the emotional cues may be misleading such as a villain who quits because it is logical, but rants about the indignity of being forced to quit.

Know When to Fold 'Em tends to be as soon as you know that the risks outweigh the likely reward. Rage Quit tends to be either when the first signs of trouble start (if they were expecting an easy ride) or when they have already lost and it is just a matter of playing out the final moves.

From what Gaon said about the Rage Quit:

Wouldn't a person looking at the odds and saying "fuck it, I'm done" also be realizing that he's outmatched? That to me makes it hard to distinguish the two sometimes.

edited 24th Jan '15 9:35:18 PM by Generations91

It might be possible for the two to overlap, but only if the decision to cut your losses and get out is accompanied by Flipping the Table or some similar expression of anger. Rage Quit is impulsive; Know When to Fold 'Em is exactly the opposite.

One might say it's about how one expresses their energy. Rage Quit uses a lot of energy when they've lost. Know When to Fold 'Em conserves their energy for the next battle.

Overlap is possible, but rare.

^More or less what I was gong to say.

Know When to Fold 'Em is knocking over your king. Rage Quit is knocking over the table.

Let's try this again: It's not the cosmetics — how the character quits. It's not in whether they're angry about quitting. It's WHY they quit.

A Rage Quit has it right there in the name: They are quitting because they are in a rage; angry about what's happening. It could be that they're angry because it wasn't as easy as they thought it was going to be. It could be that they're angry that they're losing. It could be that they're embarrassed about not winning. It could be that they're angry about realizing that they're overmatched. It could be a lot of things, but it's always because they're angry about the way the situation is playing out.

A character may be angry in a Know When to Fold 'Em situation, but he's not quitting because he's angry, he's angry because he needs to quit or is being made to quit for logical, rational reasons.

edited 25th Jan '15 8:40:05 AM by Madrugada

Okay, Maddie, now post the scenario without having Limited Omniscience, and knowing the character's internal motivations. Reading the motivations relies on interpreting the character's surface behaviour and statements.

There is one thing these two tropes have in common: rather than taking the loss like a man, the tropes imply backing out at the last minute.

That's.... not at all accurate, ~Generations 91. While usually true for Rage Quit, it is almost never true for Know When to Fold 'Em. Folding is about showing that you know you have lost, and accept the consequences of losing. Neither trope uses "last minute" anything. Raging doesn't even require losing to be relevant.

So... No, you misunderstood both tropes.

Generations91, that's wrong. Unless you consider getting needlessly beaten to a pulp to be taking your losses like a man. Know When to Fold 'Em is, in fact, taking your loss like a man. You realize you are going to loose and accept it and move on. Also, both Rage Quit and Know When to Fold 'Em can happen quite early on, either because it isn't going to be the easy walkover you thought it would or because you don't like the rules for Rage Quit or because you can see that you don't even have a chance for Know When to Fold 'Em.

Edit: We don't have a trope called Know When To Hold Em, silly man.

edited 25th Jan '15 9:27:58 AM by grrr

Ok, thank you for pointing that out. I just think we need a slight clean up for both pages because of how the two can be mixed up (to me at least).

Samaritan, if the characters motivations are completely unknown or unknowable to the audience, that's simply bad writing, unless the opacity is a deliberate choice on the part of the writer, necessary to enhance or conceal something else in the story.

I've never heard Show, Don't Tell called Bad Writing before. To show a character is frustrated instead of telling the audience, there is some opacity. It is more common to interpret a character's motivations based on their actions than it is to read the motivations on the page.

Bad writers make it hard to gauge the emotions/motivations accurately, good writers make it easy to gauge the emotions/motivations accurately. That's why I asked you to post without the Omniscience, to view the scene from a Point of View without access to the quitting character's mind.

Without being inside their head, the audience has to make reasonable assumptions about why they quit from how they quit. Which is why the cosmetic differences are so distinct. Rage Quit always has the character throwing a fit, and K Now When To Fold Em always has the character thinking it through. Combine the latter with Sore Loser, and you can get the former as well.

There is no "always" in there. The difference is still in the reasoning why the character quits. The way it's presented is merely what we have to judge it by.

It's entirely possible that a character fakes Rage Quitting to make people believe she's not got anything planned by it, and we only much later find out the truth. In that case both tropes would be in play, in different ways, even if all appearances at the time say there's only Rage Quit.

Heh, basically the same thing I said, just a different example of how they can (rarely) overlap.

Where did I say it had to be told, not shown? I said they had to be accessible to the audience. told, shown, semaphored, tattooed on their foreheads, whatever. If the audience has no idea why a character quit, whether for a rational or logical reason or out of sheer anger or frustration; and no clues that they can make an informed guess from, that's bad writing.

I don't know about rarely overlapping.

Know When to Fold 'Em is realizing you are going to lose and giving up. No emotional status attached to it. It is a logical decision but it doesn't have to be unemotional. You might be calm, you might be angry, you might be sad.

Rage Quit is when you quit with a massive emotional outburst. You technically don't even have to be losing at the time. (although I can't think of any examples where that happened)

So, the way I see it you can do either or both. The overlap is where a character has realized that they are in an unwinnable situation, gives up, and blows up.

You said It's not the cosmetics — how the character quits. It's not in whether they're angry about quitting. It's WHY they quit. If we don't know the character's motivations, because we don't see inside their heads, then we have to deduce their motivations based on HOW they quit. We get the why by the cosmetics, unless the author is telling the audience instead of showing. So I asked you to rephrase it without the Omniscience, because how the character quits is important for the audience to determine the character's motivations if those are merely shown or semaphored. If the audience is told, like by tattooing it on their forehead, then obviously the cosmetics aren't needed.

You can also have someone leaving because they're a Punch-Clock Villain / Hero and the clock just ran out. I just say the overlap is rare because you can look at the pages and see that only a few examples can be mistaken for one another.

Oh.

The trope is not determined by the cosmetics. Which trope is being used is determined by the character's motivation for quitting. A character who quits for logical, rational, considered reasons (or reasons that seem logical and rational to them) is Know When to Fold 'Em, even if they fuss and rage about having to quit. A character that quits out of frustration or anger at the way things are going has Rage Quit, even if they don't do anything more than stomp away from the table and slam the door as they leave.

edited 25th Jan '15 3:57:11 PM by Madrugada

Right, but stop using the "inside view", and examine if a character is rage quitting or reasoning using the "outside view". If a writer uses Show, Don't Tell, you won't hear their motivations. How do you, as the audience, determine their feelings?

The cosmetics are there to inference the meaning, even though they don't determine the trope.

edited 25th Jan '15 5:42:03 PM by crazysamaritan

Through the rest of their characterization. Through what other character do in reaction. through the background information the audience has.

What's your point? Mine is that simply looking at the cosmetic aspects can be misleading, and may be part of where the OP's confusion (and a few of the bad examples) comes from.