Misused: Ambiguous Allegiance

Ambiguous Allegiance is a weird trope that has only 56 (non-Sandbox) wicks^note  though if you're wondering, the sandbox wicks are both meta wicks about the wick check itself, including the actual wick-check sandbox and a confusing definition, that relies on audience confusion despite being mainspace. My Ambiguous Allegiance Wick Check shows that most of those 56 wicks are used to describe intentional ambiguity, or are at least written in a way to make it seem wholly objective. There's only 9 wicks that use it to describe audience confusion or are written speculatively, which would make it seem like this trope should just be rewritten and cleaned, but...

I'm not so sure about that anymore. Not only do a few wicks seem to be describing Enigmatic Minion instead, but we already have other "ambiguous allegiance" tropes, like Heel–Face Revolving Door, Wild Card, and the aforementioned Enigmatic Minion. However, the concept of "the audience debates about this character" seems like a valid Audience Reaction concept to me personally, and it's not one I think we have covered aside from the broader Alternative Character Interpretation.

What do I think we should do here? Well, with only 56 wicks and 336 inbounds, I think it'd be easiest to just cut or disambig this concept and maybe split the Audience Reaction concept off in the TLP. The nine wicks we have on the wick check might need to be rewritten, but they'd make a decent start, and with a better title I think this can be salvaged.

Now, this did go through TLP, but to nobody's surprise it had a very rushed process, zero hats, and like five examples, and though I have to say I'm astonished that the trope was almost named after a character from House of Anubis because nobody but me would've understood it a decade later, the current title isn't much more helpful. It's obvious that this one had a sloppy start from the get go and would've seriously benefited from more time in the oven... or just generally being made years later, when standards got raised.

Opening

I think we should disambiguate between the tropes this is being used in place of, and move examples that rely on audience interpretation to Alternative Character Interpretation.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 24th 2022 at 5:53:08 AM

Disambig with Ambiguously Evil, Wild Card, Enigmatic Minion, and Alternative Character Interpretation. Maybe with Conflicting Loyalty, Allegiance Affirmation, and Double Reverse Quadruple Agent as well if any of the examples fit.

Disambig between Enigmatic Minion, Alternative Character Interpretation, Wild Card, Ambiguously Evil.

Honestly, yeah, just moving the "correct" to Alternative Character Interpretation is fine by me.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 24th 2022 at 7:19:53 AM

to a disambig

Good with disambiguating this with the tropes mentioned above

So, there's a crowner at the bottom but no options?

I think we can call it.

Well, tomorrow would be the third day. So, we can call the crowner then.

...Oh, right, I always forget that February ends early.

"Ambiguous Allegiance" may refer to the following:

• Ambiguously Evil: A character is implied to be evil, but the story doesn't give solid confirmation or makes the evil hard to pinpoint
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Viewers debate about where a character's loyalties are
• Conflicting Loyalty: A character being loyal to one thing causes/will cause problems with loyalty to another thing
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Someone with a bunch of allegiances at once to opposing factions
• Enigmatic Minion: A villain whose allegiance and/or motives are not clear
• Wild Card: A character whose allegiance is unpredictable
• Allegiance Affirmation: The opposite: someone explicitly declaring allegiance through words or actions

If an internal link led you here, please correct the link to point to the right page.

...And delete whichever ones did not apply to any wicks during cleanup.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Mar 2nd 2022 at 2:05:25 PM

Done.

Heh heh. A fitting page name for the Ambiguity Index.

Hey, since I checked every example in the wick check, should we keep it around to help with the (already easy) cleanup, or just cut it?

If it's useful, keep it around.

Dewicking done. Sandbox was helpful.

Closing

Edited by Tabs on Mar 2nd 2022 at 1:47:23 AM