Complaining: Audience Alienating Premise

I'm thinking we may need to institute some sort of guidelines for adding examples in Audience-Alienating Premise (ala what we have now for Unfortunate Implications), because a number of the examples seem to be successful or well received (at least commercially) entries that the tropers adding them don't personally care for.

The thing that got me to notice this was the entry regarding "Time Runs Out", which was listed despite actually being a pretty strong seller, and Ms. Marvel (2014), another strong seller (which is critically acclaimed to boot) that seems like it was just added because someone wanted to complain.

Isn't the whole point of the trope that it covers works that failed or were met with backlash because the premise turned people off? It shouldn't just be "This doesn't appeal to me personally so I'm gonna say nobody likes it or could ever possibly like it." That sounds like Opinion Myopia.

edited 25th Feb '15 11:02:28 PM by comicwriter

The way it's currently used, or at least appears to, is that people add examples of ideas that sound completely disagreeable, without regard if the work in question was actually well-received or not. For example Neon Genesis Evangelion, a Humongous Mecha show that is anything but actual mecha and more relying on Gainax' trademark Mind Screw and Faux Symbolism, gore and exploitation of the Child Soldier trope. Despite that it continues to sell with remakes, merchandise and all that stuff.

So the suggestions I would have are: a) pruning examples that don't fit the direct description (i.e. the aforementioned Eva) and making it clear that subversions are not wanted (because it might cause example overflow) or b) change trope description for the new use (would require the edit of merely the very first two paragraphs).

Personally I'd go with the latter since this is an Audience Reaction trope rather than an objective thing but again, this may or may not eventually cause example overflow.

Honestly, a lot of it sounds like Better Than It Sounds.

What isn't that (and still not the trope) sounds like "there are some parts of this work that some people may find objectionable," which isn't much of a trope. Details of a work aren't the same as the premise of it, or the concept of the work. Along that line, handling a premise badly is also different from the premise itself being the problem, such as Lone Star, which even lists shows with the same or similar premise that worked well.

Yes. I agree. This one person posted an example and said something along the lines of "I can't believe this show was successful, because I hate this idea".

Most of the examples do seem to focus more on details than the premise.

Yeah clean up the examples discussing the details and not the premise of the work.

This trope is about works that run off the fact that the premise is appalling to the viewers like say a stage play about Hitler and the Nazis. I would say 'if the single sentence description without any verbs about the work, aka a Laconic, isn't appalling/alienating to its target audience then it is just not the trope.'

edited 2nd Mar '15 6:40:00 AM by Memers

I think the criterion for inclusion should be that the work actually did alienate its audience, to the point that the work wasn't a success because of that. Some of the examples are like that.

I agree that there's a lot of misuse on the lines of a) the premise could, or should, have alienated the audience, but for some reason it didn't (in-universe example: The Producers) b) the premise alienated the troper adding the example, but not the audience in general.

The thing is, if the premise doesn't actually alienate the audience, it's not really an Audience-Alienating Premise, is it? "Could potentially be alienating, but wasn't actually," is just a speculation soup of could've-beans.

The Producers is actually a perfect example of an Audience-Alienating Premise. They were looking for something that the audience would find abhorrent. They say so in so many words. The plan failed when they took the execution to far and the audience decided it must be a satire/parody comedy, but that doesn't make it less of an example.

edited 2nd Mar '15 12:55:29 PM by Madrugada

So basically they tried to invoke it, but failed?

edited 2nd Mar '15 1:27:20 PM by AnotherDuck

A premise that looks like it will alienate the audience but doesn't is a subversion.

A proper Audience-Alienating Premise is when the premise is cited to be the reason why people don't want to watch something, whether it's good or not.

Audience Reactions are not subversions. Subversions are deliberate plays on people's expectations, and as much as you can try, you can't actually control a reaction from real people. It could be an aversion, but I'm always leery about listing aversions in examples relating to real people and their reactions. In-Universe, you can naturally control reactions, of course.

edited 2nd Mar '15 1:35:33 PM by AnotherDuck

So Audience-Alienating Premise is about premises of the work that is alienating to the audience, right? Does it say anything about the work/story itself? (I get the feeling that it doesn't)

No, it's not a failed invocation or a subversion: The plan (to produce a play so bad it closed on opening night) failed, but the play itself, "Springtime For Hitler", had an Audience-Alienating Premise. Recall, it was not a musical when they found the script. It was only the execution that made it palatable to the audience — they were already walking out when someone exclaimed "Hey, it's a joke!"

Well, Eva (the TV series proper) is now still somewhat of an alienating premise-most probably because Seinfeld Is Unfunny (the Rebuild went in an entirely different direction because of this, and also because of Trolling Creator).

Sells a lot, sure, but we are talking a hard-core bunch of fans, and a lot of people who don't like the show (because of the premise, the execution, whatever). So we have that.

No, Eva was not this at all. It was Creator Meltdown and Budget Meltdown. The series premise was rather standard, but the premise had nothing to do with the conclusion where the Love It or Hate It issue with the series lies.

Digital Devil Saga would be this, It is an RPG 'where you must kill and eat your rivals to gain access to Nirvana'. That is what I mean by if the series laconic is alienating then it would be this

edited 18th Mar '15 4:49:53 PM by Memers

I agree there is a lot of misuse, but I don't think "it failed" will work as the criterion. It's hard to define for anything without a single release, there may be different markets, and you can never be entirely sure why it did.

Instead we should focus on the premise; too many examples are about the direction of the story or bad gameplay design. This is about viewers not wanting to get into it, not trying it and giving up.

I suggest we state clearly that it only applies if any single sentence that sums up the work sounds wrong to the average would-be viewer. (Or if the title alone does that.)

This would exclude many entries that are more "it failed to please either of its potential markets" (like Mitsudomoe). That might merit its own article, something like Demographic Misfire.

I agree with the concept of this, but not the way you've phrased it; that sounds like an invitation for people to start playing "Describe this work in a way that makes it sound completely different (eg: A young girl kills a complete stranger, then takes a contact to kill another one" for Wizard of Oz) on the page. That's a fun game, but not what we want here.

I agree that this page should only list examples that did alienate readers because of its premise. Otherwise, it'll be what Madrugada said: complaining about works one hates by wording their premise in an unappealing way.

Also I'd like to suggest that it should only be about works that:

• 1. Do actually alienate the audience - as explained above.
• 2. Alienate their audience - and not e.g. critics, Moral Guardians, different audiences, you, your friends etc.
• 3. Alienate the audience because of their premise - and not e.g. diehard fans being annoyed by They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.

edited 7th Apr '15 9:32:58 AM by Rjinswand

After sleeping on it, I think that the key to this one may be something like "Did the intended audience walk away from this work scratching its collective head and asking "What made <creator> think anyone would want to see (read/play/listen to) That? What were they thinking/drinking/smoking?"

That doesn't work really as many of these are 'once they have seen it now they get it.' I again refer to The Producers as a reference A Springtime For Hitler was this in the nutshell, alienating premise is an understatement for that one, but once the show came out people loved it.

I think one more point to think about is, how exactly do we define "alienating"? "Something that can be expected to alienate the audience even before they'd see the work" (like the Hitler musical)? Or "Something that happened to alienate the audience even before they saw the work"?

Taking a cue from the page image, we should probably think about marketing. Even if it's not commercial, is the premise an obstacle if you're recommending it? So the Rapelay example doesn't fit, because it was aimed at those who play such games; it may have failed there too but that's a separate matter.

Rather than failure of the work itself, we should look at the promotion of it. If it had no publicity and only gathered an obscure fandom, or if the advertising tried to hide the nature of it, then it qualifies.

Agreed.

That's kind of what I meant when I said that the work should alienate its intended audience to qualify.

My question: what about examples like:

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a terrific movie that turns classic villain and hero tropes on their ear. It won a lot of awards, and it would have won one more if there was an award for Worst Name For A Movie Ever. Many potential fans refused to see the film purely because of the title; it's not exactly unreasonable to expect something called a "Sing Along Blog" to be awful.

The example is "this initially turned a lot of people off, but they got over it and it was a big hit."

It's not really speculation, I can personally attest to knowing a number of people who outright refused to see it based solely on the name until a lot of needling by me and other friends led them to watch it in spite of the name.

But it also didn't exactly result in the movie being a "failure" of any sort.

Similarly, I added an example on YMMV.Etrian Odyssey about the audience-alienating nature of Etrian Odyssey Untold. Again, it's not speculation - Untold got a LOT of backlash because of Story Mode, but it ended up more as a Base Breaker at worst, hardly any sort of failure.

What would be the rules regarding examples like that?

edited 16th Aug '15 6:29:04 PM by wrm5