Never Live It Down: a YMMV trope with heavy in-universe use

Never Live It Down describes a behavior which is used by characters in universe as well as fans out-of-universe. Almost 2/3 of the wicks comes from non YMMV-pages. I was wondering if we should try to find a solution for the in-universe "demand", other than forcing users to type "in-universe" in order to avoid the flagging on work pages. Have we had other tropes with similar issues in the past and how did we handle those?

Well, But You Screw One Goat got renamed and made a disambig.

And the article page says Flanderization is when this concept happens to a character in the work itself, in the vein of "this is what [the audience / the creator] thinks the character is and so this is what they force the character into in [fanfic or their expectations / the work itself]." I'm not sure if that's quite right, but it's at least a starting place for the discussion...

I noticed this myself recently. The trope description is about a situation in which a small thing undergoes Memetic Mutation and comes to define a character in a fandom, despite not actually being canon. That's also how I've used it myself.

Every time I've stumbled on it on a page, however, it's referring to something a character did that keeps getting brought up.

I understand the misuse, since that's a direct use of the name, but it's not what the trope is describing at all.

Yeah I could see splitting this between ymmv and in universe.

I see now that there is actually a difference in meaning between the in-universe Running Gag of being reminded of one's failure and the out-of-universe narrowing down of a character to his most memorable scene. Worth a shot at TRS?

Edit: Or would it suffice to silently collect in-universe examples in a TLP draft since it's misuse for Never Live It Down anyway?

edited 2nd Feb '18 5:34:21 PM by eroock

Very much so. And for the In-Universe one I do like But You Screw One Goat for it.

edited 2nd Feb '18 10:21:23 PM by Memers

Collecting the examples might be better. When I tried to get TRS to split Dye Hard between in universe examples of people who dyed their hair, for various reasons such as people being racist vs certain hair colors and some do it for disguises, the thread was shoved into the graveyard without even a response.

I still want to get that thread going someday....

edited 3rd Feb '18 9:30:11 AM by Memers

Do a wick check when you try again.

Frankly, I'd just as soon make Never Live It Down an In-Universe objective trope: that's the only way I've ever seen it used out on the wiki.

I think only the "Real Life" subpage (out-of-universe) should be YMMV, with the in-universe examples separated from the Audience Reactions. The main page (which is in-universe examples) would lose the YMMV banner, while the Real Life subpage has it. Subpages to specific works would be exempt.

edited 30th Mar '18 11:34:10 PM by AppleGates

Grigorll has started a draft currently titled One Mistake, Endless Mockery as an attempt to gather the in-universe examples of Never Live It Down. Now, I'm curious, what is the ratio of in-universe examples to out-of-universe examples for Never Live It Down?

edited 14th Apr '18 3:17:00 PM by Miss_Desperado

I'm over half a year late to the discussion but, if the thread's still open, I agree with StarSword. I feel Never Live It Down should be for in-universe examples. It's how I've always seen it used and most instances are canonical.

^ As mentioned in OP, this being a YMMV trope, you would expect it to show up predominantly on YMMV pages. Two thirds of the time it shows up in other name spaces. So I reckon the misuse is in range of 25-50%. Feel free to do a wick check if you want to make a case for a different course of action.

Not sure what you mean by examples being canonical.

The easiest solution is that the in-universe trope should become Never Live It Down (since that's what it's already being used as) and the out-of-universe one gets Trope Transplanted to something else. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.

I don't know how to do a wick check. How does one do a wick check? I inquired about the ratio of in-universe to out-of-universe examples in Never Live It Down, and I have yet to see an answer that's not a guess.

Edited by Miss_Desperado on Dec 29th 2018 at 8:48:40 AM

If the misuse is considerably higher than 50%, your suggested transplant makes more sense indeed. But until we have proof of it, it's only an assumption on your part. Anyway, we should probably go through TRS regardless of what a wick check may find.

How to Do a Wick Check

Okay, so the page checking the wicks for Never Live It Down is here. I'm gonna go cross-eyed if I try to look through sixty-nine random entries in one sitting.

The 1,792 YMMV pages can probably be ignored as correct use (out-of-universe). That leaves 54 pages from the rest to be checked.

Someone is proposing a trope for in-universe instances of this. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=owjcc72qo5c69kceqh95qkn3

^ See comment 11 above.

The proposed in-universe version got launched.

TRS is too busy for it at the moment, but frankly I still think Never Live It Down is a better name for the in-universe version. It might be a lot of work to change it (although I don't know, if 2/3 of the examples are already in-universe), but the name is definitely the reason the misuse is so widespread to begin with.

I guess we can afford to wait for now though.

Edited by Jokubas on Mar 21st 2020 at 7:40:52 AM

It's a rogue launch

And I thought NLID has a Grandfather Clause?

Doesn't matter if it does; if it's causing notable misuse, it should change.

It was rogue launched earlier, but I relaunched it legitimately last night.

As far as the name goes, I went with what I thought was the most workable solution under the circumstances. I’m not married to the name I came up with, so if it really is the case that NLID is the better name, okay then.

But as I said in the discussion, There seems to be an assumption that NLID’s in-universe misuse is unquestionably because of the name, when there’s also the (bigger, IMO) issue that there is no existing trope for in-story examples. That, and I wasn’t sure that this case clears the bar on reasons to rename a trope per the rules —with no empirical evidence, it’s just arguing over assumptions and preferences. And I wasn’t particularly interested in doing the wick check myself — the burden of proof falls on the accuser.

Out of all the suggestions I’ve seen, I think the best one is probably renaming NLID to The Fandom Never Forgets or similar, and either changing the new one to NLID or leaving as-is. In a perfect world where logistics aren’t a concern, that’s what I would have done. But that’s more than I can do alone.