Mohs Scale of Hardness Cleanup

As per suggestion from PrincessPandaTrope and WarJay77, this thread would cover all Mohs Scale of Hardness tropes such as Mohs Scale Of Violence Hardness, Mohs Scale Of Rock And Metal Hardness, Mohs Scale Of Lyrical Hardness, and Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness.

I have taken a look at many of the pages within them and I have found some issues.

First and foremost, some of the pages contain ZCEs.

Second, some of the examples in the pages are inconsistent and even arbitrarily placed.

It would be good to record the more problematic examples.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Oct 15th 2020 at 11:26:40 AM

You could mention Mohs Scale Of Lyrical Hardness, but that one doesn't have many problems.

Lastly, Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness. Any opinions here?

The examples should be in a list with proper context.

Right now, it's a Tribble's breakfast at best.

I'm going to point out that the 2D Metroid games are listed at Level 3 for violence hardness. This seems somewhat understandable, but the explanation fails to point out that Super Metroid had some gruesome imagery with Crocomire, a boss who dies by having his skin melted off as he screams in agony. That feels like too much for a level 3, though I'm not saying it should be super high either as Crocomire is a non-human and there's no blood, the melting just goes straight to the skeleton. However, it is still quite gruesome. I'm not sure where it should really rank to be honest

On the Western Animation subpage for Violence Hardness, Watership Down is at level 8, with no note explaining why. I haven't actually seen the whole movie myself, but I've seen plenty of videos all about the violence. And with all that in mind, the worst I saw was a bloody neck biting leaving the victim's body in a pool of blood. The thing is, I've seen entries give bloody neck harm level 7 and bodies lying in pools of blood isn't inherently a level 8 thing. I think it should get a level 7 instead of 8, but I guess this is only the start of what the original poster was going on about when it came to works being arbitrarily placed

A large part of the problem with these "Mohs" scales in general is baked into the design, so there's no real long-term solution to cleaning them up without working them over.

You'd have to do at least some of the following:

• You'd need fewer, more broadly defined, and better defined categories — 5 would probably be a more workable number. The 1-10 scale may be a cheeky reference to the actual Mohs Scale, but 10 categories is too many for a project like this. The differences from one category to another tend to be subtle enough that they blur into each other, especially when these scales tend to emphasize certain traits over others — e.g. the Violence Hardness scale emphasizes the amount and presentation of blood above all else, and it takes a hell of a lot more than gory imagery to make fictional violence effective.

• You'd also need to figure out an at least somewhat objective criteria for the categories, because as is, they're all contingent on viewer perception.

• There's also the question of, do you rate a work holistically, or do you rate it by its most extreme example? One of the most affecting scenes of violence I've ever seen came from a work that would otherwise register as a 1 or a 2 on that scale. It would be lunacy to rate that work a 6 or 7 based on ONE three-minute scene out of a 13-episode TV series, but that's exactly how many of these are being rated. It's the same phenomenon that will forever haunt Nightmare Fuel: people tend to exaggerate or mischaracterize events in order to make their favorite works sound more "extreme" or "mature" than they actually are.

I have a hard time deciding if Ghosts of the Future is level 6 or 7 with the issue 17 incident of Silver the Hedgehog getting his hands stabbed and spilling blood over the floor, himself, and eventually Blaze, as well as this◊.

Edited by PrincessPandaTrope on Dec 17th 2020 at 10:41:12 AM

Bump

Regarding what HeavyMetalHermitCrab said about the emphasis on blood, I found some ultimate proof that blood isn't what should be emphasized. Watch this PIF which has a lot of blood, and after that, watch this German PSA which isn't bloody. Which one packs a bigger violence punch?

The answer: The bloodless one. It's way harder to watch than the bloody one. And yet since blood is emphasized, the bloody one would have a higher rating of violence hardness. That's just wrong

The Live-Action TV Violence Hardness page contradicts itself by saying at the top that it's basing it on the average scale of violence per episode, and then goes on to list shows based on specific moments that they'd be on lower levels without.

Same with the Western Animation page for Mohs Scale Of Violence Hardness

However, there's no statement at the top.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Feb 19th 2021 at 9:08:30 AM

It feels like I'm the only person who follows this thread.....

That aside, I noticed inconsistencies. On the Film subpage of Violence Hardness, bloodless fatal shootings are as early as level 2, while on the Video Games subpage, this begins at level 4. Also, the film subpage considers nosebleeds as a level 1 thing, while on the Western Animation subpage, The Loud House says it's at level 4 for it...

Both of us might be the only ones interested in the cleanup.

No wonder why the Mohs Scale pages are so arbitary at best.

Let me summon a few tropers to see if they can have a look as well.

~The Mayor of Simpleton ~mightymewtron ~Berrenta ~RallyBot2 ~bwburke94 ~PlasmaPower ~VampireBuddha

Edited by Nen_desharu on Mar 25th 2021 at 12:03:05 PM

Why did you bring me here? I've never expressed interest in any of these tropes. Most of them deal with genres with which I'm not familiar, so I can't really review them.

You could take a look at MohsScaleOfViolenceHardness.Western Animation for starters.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Mar 25th 2021 at 12:04:53 PM

If I have time, maybe, but I spend a lot more time overlooking works and tropes that I've been following for years, so I can't always spend time cleaning up a trope I've only learned has problems today. I can try but I'm going back and forth between TV Tropes and homework right now, so.

The fact so few of them have context is annoying, I can say that much. Do we comment them out?

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 25th 2021 at 12:10:07 PM

If we comment those without context out, we could very well nuke many of these pages.

Before we do anything drastic, it would be best to form a consensus.

Same question: why was I brought here?

General question: Are these even really tropes?

Yeah this feels like Just For Fun.

What the hell is Mohs anyway? I googled it and just found a bunch of stuff about facial surgery.

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 25th 2021 at 12:34:43 PM

Mineral hardness. Runs from 1 for talc —Which you can crush with a fingernail— to 10 for diamond, which scratches/cuts every other known substance.

These feel very similar to sliding scales, and are about as well defined.

I have no experience with these tropes, so I cannot help.

I agree with mightymewtron that the Mohs Scale pages should be Just for Fun.