Misused: Peoples Republic Of Tyranny

And we already have tropes for government types, like The Republic, The Federation and The Theocracy.

Maybe there should be an option for making it No Real Life Examples, Please! in addition to making it In-Universe Examples Only.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 4th 2021 at 11:37:03 AM

Where is the idea of making this trope No Real Life Examples, Please! coming from, the Real Life section hasn't been causing significant problems and is heavily tied to this trope even existing?

Agreed. Making this NRLEP when there's no evidence of any problem is, to put it bluntly, jumping the gun.

Well, it depends on what this trope is. It might be to ROCEJ-y to call real-life places "dictatorships", but then again, well...what else would you call some places?

Instead of a hard ban, maybe a better approach would be that we can't use the term to describe governments that still exist. Historical examples are one thing, but places that exist in the modern day can be too flame-baity.

That applies especially if we do convert this into a new trope, since the current is about the naming trend.

I'm not sure that is a good idea either this trope is a bigger modern phenomenon than a historical one. Including that rule would also mean banning North Korea which is one of the most famous examples of these kinds of namings.

Well, I mean, North Korea still exists and I don't know what else you'd call it except a psychotic dictatorship. The ROCEJ issue stems from the potential of myopic morons potholing to or adding examples to the trope about whatever country they don't like. Though I don't believe it's too widespread an issue.

I don't think calling North Korea a dictatorship is going to cause any issues I mean people in North Korea can't even access the site.

Fair enough on the NRLEP thing — maybe it wouldn't be necessary.

Idk. It still feels sticky to me but maybe only me.

It feels a lil sticky to me too, which was why I suggested IUEO. Calling a country a dictatorship is more or less objective, calling them tyrannical (implicitly done by the trope name) less so.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 4th 2021 at 2:45:47 PM

Tyranny and dictatorship are basically synonymous, though.

There definitely seems to be a Missing Supertrope problem here. At the very least I don't want a name change. We sometimes get too generic with our tropes names and this one is still fairly clear while being clever.

Edited by Karxrida on Jun 4th 2021 at 1:56:11 AM

Not really. You can be a tyrannical monarch.

I don't think most people would make distinction between absolute monarchy and dictatorship.

Democracy is (badly) known as "tyranny by the majority". The meaning boils down to "I don't like how they run things", with a moral argument built into it saying "and you shouldn't either".

Edited by crazysamaritan on Jun 4th 2021 at 6:09:12 AM

Interestingly, the word "Dictator" wasn't always a negative word.

Neither was tyrant.

That's the argument for making it NRLEP: it's a morality trope.

&That's Have a Gay Old Time in a nutshell.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 4th 2021 at 10:03:28 AM

Well, it is a morality trope. But I don't think anyone that comes onto TVT with the idea of shilling for North Korea will last very long.

Right, which is why I'm uncomfortable labeling any real-life government a dictatorship, no matter how easily we can get away with it, but like I said, if it comes down to it, I'd prefer if we at least kept it to historical examples. Not many people will defend, say, Mussolini or Pol Pot as not being dictators.

You give the Internet too much credit.

...True.

I can understand why people don't like the idea of the Real Life examples but the thing is this trope is so heavily tied to Real Life that getting rid of them would pretty much defeat the purpose of this existing and limiting it to historical cases wouldn't work either because of North Korea.

Why would it defeat the purpose? We can say "it's Truth in Television" without needing to go into specifics. The trope isn't "real life dictatorships exist".