Seems like a good enough case, so opening.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Just like Parvum Opus was basically a license to complain, I feel this is just a license to gush. I'm not sure the fix you mentioned(basically going the same route for Complete Monster) is worth the time and effort just to clean this up properly. My vote is leaning cut.
Well, that's what the concept
means, so a non-gushy page is hard to come by. I am not sure if we should cut it at all.
There are a few In-Universe examples on Google Site Search, maybe we can obtain something from them? Like, make this trope In-Universe Examples Only?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Unknown
In-Universe examples crop up often enough to justify that move, plus it would make this infinitely easier to keep clean. ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
for In Universe Examples Only.
edited 16th Jan '16 1:07:27 AM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
I am going to say keep based on two factors
- it's the artist's biggest, best, most successful, and widely known work.
- the creator has stopped creating content.
edited 16th Jan '16 5:30:50 AM by Memers
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
That's not what the term means.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
From the other wiki
As for option two, it really can't be their greatest till they are done. Or else people will constantly be adding another and another on to the post which is already a problem.
Everyone thought Titanic would be James Cameron's but then he made Avatar.
edited 16th Jan '16 5:37:29 AM by Memers
Someone in a previous thread pointed out that the academic debates about which work should be regarded as an author's Magnum Opus have never really been settled. I think that the proper thing to do would be to make it an exampleless stub, as was done to Cult Classic.
edited 16th Jan '16 7:02:32 AM by Prfnoff
Is Cult Classic meant to be fully example-less? Because right now it has the "examples can go on a work's YMMV tab" banner and a cursory wick check reveals that many examples are indeed listed there. (And most of those seems to be ZCEs, so that could probably use its own cleanup effort.)
Edit: After a little more research, it seems that Cult Classic is meant to be fully example-less (i.e. no examples anywhere) per this TRS thread. The fact that it's still in example lists all over the place (and those examples often seem to be Zero-Context and/or misuse) says to me that doing the same to Magnum Opus isn't a good solution.
edited 16th Jan '16 7:22:38 AM by HighCrate
I do think this has a lot of potential as In Universe Only. Characters declaring a work their magnum opus is a lot easier to regulate than trying to judge objective real world standards.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
I don't see real potential for in-universe examples of Magnum Opus; a cursory scan of the page reveals none. Then again, I didn't see it for Guilty Pleasure, and I ultimately contributed one to that trope myself.
I didn't give a close read through all nine example pages, but a CTRL+F of "universe" through all of them turns up only one in-universe example: MagnumOpus.Video Games states that the robot Mega Man is roboticist Dr. Light's Magnum Opus in-universe.
I know there are more in-universe examples than that out there, so if we decide to go the In-Universe Examples Only route, we should probably put some effort into finding more.
edited 16th Jan '16 7:42:51 AM by HighCrate
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
As that seems to be talking about the robot and not any of the video games he stars in, that isn't really the same thing as what most of the examples are using it for. And unlike Small Name, Big Ego (which once was mostly opinions on creators), Magnum Opus is a very commonly used term, so a drastic redefinition is out of the question.
Regarding in-universe examples of Magnum Opus, there's always the Blackadder the Third episode "Ink and Incapability" in which Blackadder declares the novel Edmund: A Butler's Tale which he has spent seven years writing to be his magnum opus. Followed by Baldrick declaring his two-sentence story about "a lovely little sausage named Baldrick" to be his "magnificent octopus". (Which has been responsible for me using the term "magnificent octopus" in place of "magnum opus" in conversation ever since.) How extensive in-universe magna opera are I can't be entirely sure, but given the volume of books, films, and so forth about creators and the creative process, there may be more than we realise.
At the very least, I agree that, since it's a widely used and understood term (in contrast to the more obscure "parvum opus", the definition of which is nothing like the definition used on the now cut page), cutting it is perhaps a bit extreme, while a re-definition is probably out of the question - although I get the impression that even in the wider world, "magnum opus" is sometimes used to mean "most acclaimed work" rather than "grandest and most ambitious work". Still, if the page is policed with those definitions in mind, and new entries have to be approved based on a clearly laid out definition of "magnum opus" and the requirement that the creator in question has stopped creating (either through death or permanent retirement) and so his/her/their entire body of work can be assessed, it has potential for critical reaction examples as well.
Short version: my own inclination would be either to go the IUEO route or to clean up misuse and ZCEs to bring it into line with its widely accepted definition.
edited 16th Jan '16 8:31:52 AM by mlsmithca
^ I think that it's most often used to mean both: a grand and ambitious work that is seen as the artist's most crowning achievement. If we keep the page, I think that both of those things should be used as necessary criteria.
I don't see what the problem is with the trope. It's for a creator's best work. That can either apply to their greatest creation before departing their occupation or if their work declines after making it. If a creator manages to make something that's even greater, then the trope can just be updated.
A man who admires many forms of fiction.
The Unknown
There is an issue, as the OP has shown with its rampantly high misuse.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
^Well then, instead of cutlisting the trope, let's remove all the natter.
A man who admires many forms of fiction.
The Unknown
The OP mentioned almost nothing about Natter, and a quick glance at the main page shows very little of it.
I don't think this trope is salvageable in its current state. Enforcing In Universe Examples Only is much easier and something that's actually worth our time.
edited 16th Jan '16 11:22:11 AM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Opus, in this context, means the same as how we use the term "work". Lord of the Rings is part of the work/Opus Tolkien's Legendarium. In this case, the Legendarium is the Magnum Opus, while the trilogy is the masterpiece.
It is not arguable that the Magnum Opus of the Disney Animated Canon is Fantasia because of a 125 minute running time. It is the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
The problem is that many examples don't adhere to the stated definition and worse, are often used as Zero Content Examples. A definition of a trope is only as helpful as examples adhering to it.
I think Magnum Opus is in the same boat as Jumping the Shark and Mary Sue, too widely recognized a trope to simply cut, but too debatable and subjective in what qualifies to have good , uncontroversial examples (or in this case, enough to warrant holding on to in in light of all the ZCE and misuse). Making it an In In Universe Examples Only trope (if we find enough In-Universe examples to warrant it) or axing examples and merely defining the term seems like the easiest fix.
^^ I feel like I'm not understanding you correctly, because if you're saying that simple length is enough to qualify a work as the artist's "largest" work, then we'd have a page full of film runtimes and novel page counts, and that strikes me as extraordinarily boring, overly literal, and contrary to the spirit of the term.
Many if not most magnum opuses tend to run long, but only because length tends to be necessary to accommodate ambition, grandiosity, and largeness of scope. A film that's three hours of mundane Slice of Life with only a handful of characters and mostly dialogue would be a worse candidate for Magnum Opus than a film that's a two and a half hour epic chronicling the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
^ To be clear, when we talk about making it an example-less page, we're talking about disallowing all examples, both on the page and on works' YMMV pages, right? Because I don't think that removing examples from the page but allowing them on works' YMMV pages (a la Cult Classic) solves the problem at all.
edited 16th Jan '16 1:06:41 PM by HighCrate
As far as in-universe examples go, I thought of another one:
Film
- In Walk Hard, Dewey Cox spends much of his musical career and, indeed, much of his life working on his magnum opus "Beautiful Ride," a song that encompasses an entire lifetime of ups and downs and which is so grand in scope that at various points in its creation it requires a veritable army of singers, musicians, and barnyard animals to perform it. Indeed, it is such a crowning achievement in Cox's life that, after its first and only live performance, he drops dead, his life's work complete.
edited 16th Jan '16 1:18:29 PM by HighCrate
Crown Description:
What would be the best way to fix the page?
The Problem:
In the recent TRS in which the decision was made to cut Parvum Opus, a few people expressed concerns about the state of Magnum Opus as well. Looking over the trope description and example list, I'm noticing a few problems right away:
- The description is vague and rambly. It spends an inordinate amount of time talking about how difficult it is to agree on an artist's Magnum Opus, tacitly inviting tropers to list multiple candidates despite the fact that there is ostensibly supposed to be only one per artist. It also spends a lot of time talking about tropes and Audience Reactions that Magnum Opus can, but does not necessarily, overlap with. It spends comparatively less time actually defining Magnum Opus.
- The description does not fit the common definition of the term "magnum opus" as used outside this wiki. According to The Other Wiki, a Magnum Opus is first and foremost an artist's LARGEST work
, and that a large scale is a requirement for a work to be considered a Magnum Opus, with it being the artist's "best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement" being common but not strictly necessary. Our page has it reversed, stating that "some of the works considered a Magnum Opus are often epic and ambitious in scale, length, stature or in content. Though this isn't always the case." (Emphasis mine.)
- The example list is almost entirely made up of Zero Context Examples. For example, in the "Artists" folder, this example:
—>The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada FamiliaWick Check:
To confirm the above, I did a Wick Check and categorized the wicks by the problems they demonstrate. Unless otherwise noted, "misuse" refers to listing more than one example, which was the most common form of misuse I noted; the second-most-common was listing a Magnum Opus for a series, franchise, company, or something other than an individual artist.
Findings:
Analysis: The wicks are a mess. Fully 75% of the bullet-pointed examples have zero context, over half have some form of misuse, and most of the potholes, above-the-line mentions, and other non-example wicks have similar problems. Only 5% (two) of the bullet-pointed examples both use the trope correctly and have full context, and both of those are potentially problematic in other ways.
Recommendations:
As I see it, our choices are to cut Magnum Opus altogether the way we did with Parvum Opus, to make it an example-less definition page, or to rehabilitate it. I believe this would require:
edited 15th Jan '16 8:26:51 PM by HighCrate