Duplicate tropes discussion thread

What exactly separates Acceptable Breaks from Reality and Willing Suspension of Disbelief?

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Unrealistic tropes are beneficial to the writing, as otherwise some points would be impossible to show. A stronger version of Artistic License.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: Lack of details up to Show, Don't Tell regarding events or concepts doesn't create an Ass Pull, as audience can inution something happened offscreen or a ridiculous technology is plausible In-Universe.

^ That's a quite limited take on Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Beyond lack of detail, it also deals with unrealistic, explained aspects of the story.

The fourth paragraph on Willing Suspension of Disbelief is the most helpful for me to establish a difference:

• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: The audience is willing to accept unrealistic things as long they feel justified in-universe.
  • An example would be Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The story wants you to buy into the idea that "belief can move mountains".
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Unjustified unrealistic things are still accepted because it makes the work better. I assume this gives rise to the Rule of X tropes.
  • An example would be Translation Convention. Characters in/from a different country speaking English is rarely addressed but we accept it nonetheless because it makes for a more immersive experience than using subtitles.

Edited by eroock on Mar 2nd 2024 at 5:19:17 PM

The description makes me think that Acceptable Breaks from Reality was originally a video game trope and about vastly oversimplifying things to make the game playable (the principle applies to tabletop games as well). If it's not used this way, it's probably an afterthought. Willing Suspension of Disbelief is a term that's also used outside of this site and is rather general on the audience accepting unrealistic things because it makes the story better.

Here's an old TRS thread that gets into some of the history involved.

Edited by MorganWick on Mar 3rd 2024 at 4:33:02 AM

Phlebotinum du Jour is when sci-fi is no longer intriguing due to Science Marches On and has a chronological list of common plots.

Feels like it belongs to Analysis.Science Marches On then.

Science Marches On is more generic. Phlebotinum du Jour is specifically a piece of Applied Phlebotinum not working for newer audiences because the technology that was cutting edge when the work was created became mainstream and the piece of science used in the work is no longer magic, while Science Maches On can apply to any case when the science of the work is outdated. It looks to me more like a subtrope-supertrope relationship.

Is Scully Syndrome a case of multiple Agent Scully?

^ No, it covers the aspect of some Scully characters to offer irrational explanations while they are supposed to be rational.

What's the difference between Beware of Vicious Dog and Angry Guard Dog?

To my reading, the former is about a particularly dangerous dog that is a threat to anyone around it, while the latter is specifically about dogs that ferociously protect what/where they're guarding and woe to anyone that challenges them.

nm

Edited by eroock on Mar 9th 2024 at 2:36:38 PM

e: nvm

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 9th 2024 at 3:37:39 PM

How is One-Hour Work Week distinct from The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything?

This is sort of a guess, but I assumed The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything is for when the character's job is deemed as a major part of their character or the show's premise but they don't actually do the realistic responsibilities that job entails, while One-Hour Work Week is for when their job is minor enough to be negligible / largely offscreen.

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 9th 2024 at 2:10:40 PM

That's how I understand it.

The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: character is seen at work but doesn't actually do his job
One-Hour Work Week: character does his job but has a seemingly endless amount of free time

This could/should probably be made clearer in the trope descriptions.

Edited by rasterax on Mar 11th 2024 at 11:39:17 AM

I kind of assumed that The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything was about characters who are called pirates, but don't loot and plunder, because that might not be appropriate for a family audience.

That's covered by Badbutt, I think.

Could someone please explain to me what the difference between the tropes Kindhearted Simpleton and Dumb Is Good is?

Possible differences have been discussed before, but people seem to agree that the difference is at best pretty nebulous.

The Un Twist is Captain Obvious Reveal mistaken for Red Herring. I doubt it's a meaningful distinction, by the nature of Captain Obvious Reveal being Obvious, there will always be people who've suspected that there's something more, while The Un Twist is hard to fact-check.

The page itself even says in bold: "Any plot development can become The Un-Twist to a sufficiently paranoid reader."

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 14th 2024 at 11:37:10 AM

I don't see the difference between A Threesome Is Hot and Three-Way Sex. What is it supposed to be?

Both trope descriptions are quite similar, with the former getting in a tangent about the bisexuality of the two girls in a MFF or the guys in a MMF variant. And Laconic.A Threesome Is Hot seems to imply that examples of A Threesome Is Hot must be noted as awesome, but on page examples often are just "a threesome happened".

I will do a Wick Check for A Threesome Is Hot and add it to the TRS Queue if you also think these threesome tropes are not distinguishable enough.

Bumping to tell that I've gone through adding to the TRS Queue. The wick check is at A Threesome Is Wicked.

Any improvements I could make?

I would look at the TRS thread that merged it with its former sister (brother?) trope A Threesome is Manly (which was tagged only for the latter trope, so it's not directly linked on Hot's discussion page), where one person argued for Three-Way Sex being chairs and others arguing against that, which seemed to point towards an understanding that 3WS was for any threesomes while Hot was specifically for threesomes for Rule of Sexy or otherwise because a character considered them hot.

The problem with that is twofold: a) as the person arguing for 3WS being chairs noted, even at the time 3WS' description talked about it as a vehicle for fanservice, suggesting the perceived distinction between the tropes didn't exist, though the direction they approached it from and their being on an island with regards to their main argument meant it didn't have much of an impact at the time; and b) I suspect their approach towards chairsiness, that the reasons something is noteworthy are tropeworthy but not necessarily the thing itself, has become more mainstream on the forums since then, as evidenced by the fate of the appearance and weapons tropes.

Personally I think threesomes are rare enough that "threesomes exist" isn't automatically chairs, and there may be a good conceptual distinction between "fantasies, wishes, proposals" and actual threesomes like you propose, but it's probably worth doing a usage check for Three-Way Sex on top of A Threesome Is Hot, because to me this history suggests we may end up doing more with and to the former trope than the latter.

If Three-Way Sex and threesomes were to be considered chairs and cut, it would affect some sex tropes of the likes of Shower of Love, Two-Person Pool Party, Wall Bang Her... These are mostly "having sex in a unusual way" and I think they imply that the characters doing that stuff have higher libido or open-mindness, so they aren't 100% chairs.

Besides that, I see a great difficulty in considering a threesome "hot". In many non-pornographic examples it happens without the characters commenting on it unless it was disappointing or awkward. And a guy reacting to other three making out is Too Rare to Trope, so A Threesome Is Hot can't be put in the same frame as Girl on Girl Is Hot. On the other hand, if a troper describes the threesome as hot, they would break the rules on No Lewdness, No Prudishness.

Let's see in the future when Hot and 3WS get their thread. In the coming days I will wick check 3WS and add it to my OP.