Not Tropeworthy: Mondegreen

Thanks for explaining. Provides some more context to this situation. It's amazing how this site's culture 180'd in 10 years.

Anyway Mondegreen Gag is a good name I think. It would help indicate that this trope is In-Universe only. to a description rewrite as well as proposed by Water Blap.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I mean, seeing that old thread is actually making me reconsider if this should be IUEO. I defended it and did cleanup for it because... that's what the trope was. But seeing it decided so arbitrarily like that, and seeing how people misused it and continue to misuse it even after cleanup...

Don't get me wrong. Mondegreen Gag is a good trope. But I'm now starting to sway to the side of "why not both?". I still think my I Read That As-esque game idea is probably the best way to go since it would lack any of that "what's notable" issue present in the 2011 thread.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 1st 2022 at 2:17:01 PM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Here is a quick-'n'-dirty rewrite for the description:

I figure that, since I suggested a rewrite, I should at least provide a first draft.

---

EDIT:

I get where you're coming from. I did a lot of work with Acceptable Targets and (tried to) with Artistic License. But it's important that we move forward, not backward. You don't want someone undoing all of your hard work ten years from now, and neither would I for mine. Honestly, I've seen my work evaporate after half a year before, it sucks.

The prolonged misuse does suggest that tropers want a trope for that particular usage. There may be strong YMMV potential, but there's also strong IUEO potential that we shouldn't ignore. The old TRS thread probably should have split the trope into IUEO and YMMV but they were too hurried to fix the problem.

Keep in mind that, especially in the early days, the mod team was trying to steer away from non-tropes, and since YMMV is not a trope, the older TRS likely focused more on IUEO because the people leading that may have thought it would just double their problems down the line. Had that TRS effort been spearheaded by tropers like TRS is nowadays they likely would have split it into YMMV and IUEO. (I'm not saying that TRS never did this back in the day, but it's the easiest explanation I can think of for this case.) It's possible they were hoping the YMMV examples would (eventually) be purged along with the Troper Tales stuff, idk.

Edited by WaterBlap on Jan 1st 2022 at 1:27:52 PM

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

First draft looks good so far, but I think we need some more opinions so it's not just me sharing opinions about the description.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

The rewrite looks fine, but I'm a little uncertain about it since we do need to decide what we're actually doing first. If this was the Trope Description Improvement Drive I'd give you a hearty , though.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Looks good to me.

Edited by AmourLeFou on Jan 1st 2022 at 12:45:00 PM

Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.

Yeah, when I was cleaning the wicks for this however long ago, I think the final tally of semi-valid uses was somewhere in the 800s, so anywhere from 200 to 400 or so new instances have either been created or edit-warred back in since cleanup finished.

And the misuse was everywhere, not just on YMMV pages.

Would out-of-universe mondegreens that are somehow relevant to the story still be kept on the page if there's a reliable source for it? (Say, a real person mishears a phrase, and the mondegreened version becomes the title of one of their subsequent stories?)

Until next time...

Anon e Mouse Jr.

EDIT: Misunderstood the post.

That's less a trope than just a weird bit of trivia, and I don't know that it would be common enough to justify having an Trivia trope dedicated to it.

Edited by Graveheart on Jan 1st 2022 at 5:12:55 AM

For clarification, the relevant entry, for the Literature.Travis Mc Gee page:

• A real-life example. According to Stephen King's nonfiction work Danse Macabre, series author MacDonald named the eighteenth book in the series after one.
  John D. MacDonald tells the story of how for weeks his son was terrified of something he called "the green ripper." MacDonald and his wife finally figured it out — at a dinner party, a friend had mentioned the Grim Reaper. What their son had heard was green ripper, and later it became the title of one of MacDonald's Travis McGee stories.

Until next time...

Anon e Mouse Jr.

I mostly like Water Blap's rewrite, except for the opening sentence:

This statement is incorrect. A mondegreen is "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung". That's what it means. This is a real word that the proposed rewrite misdefines. That's why I think the in-universe examples should be moved to Mondegreen Gag; the title also makes it clear that the trope is about in-universe mondegreens, and not mondegreens in general.

Water also points out mondegreens that are acknowledged by the singer, which is probably worth making a Trivia page for.

So I propose turning Mondegreen into a disambig page, with Lady Mondegreen as a redirect. Mondegreen would briefly describe a word or phrase that results from a mishearing, then say that on this wiki, it may refer to:

• Mondegreen Gag: When characters in a story coin a mondegreen
• Mondegreen Acknowledgement: When the singer publicly acknowledges a mondegreen. Subtrope of Ascended Meme.
• I Heard That As: JFF page for audio versions of I Read That As.

Ukrainian Red Cross

I think the rewrite would be fine if we apply VampireBuddha's definition correction to it.

Currently undecided on the split and disambiguation; I'll need more time to think about it.

Edit: All right, I think I'm fine with splitting and disambiguating, with the exception that I think Lady Mondegreen is fine as-is, and it should go on the disambiguation page along with Mondegreen Gag, Mondegreen Acknowledgement, and I Heard That As instead of being turned into a redirect to it.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 2nd 2022 at 10:06:22 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

The quick-'n'-dirty is for the trope, not for the definition of a mondegreen. So we can just change "A mondegreen" to "A Mondegreen Gag" or whatever the title is.

I agree full-heartedly with "mondegreen acknowledged by the singer," but for the name I think it depends on the type of examples there are. If it's an example of "fans hear X and the lyrics are later changed to that" then that fits nicely with our Ascended X snowclone (and a subtrope of Ascended Meme). But if it's "fans hear X and the singer alludes to it outside the work" then that fits better as a subtrope of Meme Acknowledgement. In the wick check, which I did not peruse carefully, I saw examples where the lyrics were actually changed, so it may be worth it to make Ascended Mondegreen.

---

I can get behind a disambig. Pre-existing terms are usually a hassle.

So the following would get their own entries?

• Lady Mondegreen (YMMV)
• Mondegreen Gag (a trope)
• Ascended Mondegreen (a trope, if there are enough examples to support creating this page)
• Mondegreen Acknowledgement (a trivia item, if there are enough examples to support creating this page)
• JFF.I Heard That As (a just for fun)

The JFF page would probably give future tropers an outlet for documenting their personal mondegreens.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

Adding Ascended Mondegreen alongside Mondegreen Acknowledgement sounds fine.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Can you make a crowner?

Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.

Yeah, a disambig sounds fine to me but we really do need a vote.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Lady Mondegreen's current examples include a lot of in-universe ones that are not YMMV. If we launch Mondegreen Gag, they should be moved there.

Not yet. It's too soon, per the Three-Day Rule.

Edit: As for examples of Ascended Mondegreens, live performances of "Don't Bring Me Down" by Electric Light Orchestra have had the line "Don't bring me down, grooss"^note "grooss" being a nonsense word Jeff Lynne came up with for the song replaced with "Don't bring me down, Bruce", and live performances of "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix have had "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" replaced with "Excuse me while I kiss this guy".

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 2nd 2022 at 1:14:59 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I feel like "character nickname originating from a mondegreen" is not the same as Mondegreen Gag and could just be listed with Lady Mondegreen on main work pages with the "in-universe" loophole. Unless there are a lot of examples of it in-universe, but in that case it would make more sense to have a Literal Lady Mondegreen trope that's IUEO rather than lumping it with the Mondegreen Gag idea.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

I'm seconding Water Blap's suggestion, though will we have an issue with it like we did Ear Worm?

I was previously asked to make a crowner. Since it's been more than three days, are we ready for one, or do we need more time?

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I know we have some ideas, I don't know if they were compiled yet.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'll wait for someone to compile them, then.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

• Turn Mondegreen into a disambig
• Launch Mondegreen Gag (a trope)
• Launch Ascended Mondegreen (a trope)
• Launch Mondegreen Acknowledgement (a trivia item)
• Create JFF.I Heard That As (a just for fun)

That's all of them, right?

Edited by AmourLeFou on Jan 9th 2022 at 11:44:18 AM

Check out my forum game: Rate the above YMMV.