Needs Help: Screwed By The Network

x2 It's not subjective, though? Like I said, this is an actual, documented phenomenon. The problem is confirming whether it happened or if people writing entires are making assumptions of the circumstances based on personal investment in the work. That latter aspect might support a move to Darth, but the wick check currently doesn't show this to be the case based on what OP said. We only have general "misuse" as the biggest sticking point without strictly defining how that misuse is occurring.

A breakdown of the misuse should be done before we take "move to Darth" into serious consideration, because otherwise we could be throwing this to the wolves for no good reason.

Edited by Karxrida on May 20th 2022 at 12:49:17 PM

I mean, yeah, the wick check didn't account for subjectivity at all, so it's sort of a judgement call on my end. But I just think that in a majority of cases, the "screwed" part is audience reaction, because audiences are going to jump to conclusions and exaggerate and find someone or something to blame for their show being mishandled even if the actual story was much different. After all, saying a work was "screwed" carries an assumption of intent, doesn't it? Or at the very least applies a negative label to what happened, which brings emotion into it even unintentionally.

Again, my idea has nothing to do with misuse, just the vibe I get from the trope. If you have a different picture of it in your head, fair enough, won't demand you agree with me, I just can't physically get myself to see it as completely objective trivia. Like, at all. And Darth just seems more suited than vanilla YMMV, so I say Darth.

Anywhoodle, I think I've said enough here for now. I'm gonna try and go to bed soon, and will try not to post here as often starting tomorrow, I certainly don't want to dominate the discussion. I'm just awake and bored.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 20th 2022 at 3:54:29 PM

ahhhh, I see where the disconnect (for me at least) is coming from. I was wondering why you kept bringing up intent when to me that's not really relevant to deciding whether or not a work has been screwed by Executive Meddling. I mean, some higher up could fundamentally think moving a show to a different time slot would help the show's ratings and it could backfire spectacularly. To me, that still qualifies as the show being screwed by the network because the decline of the show was caused by something outside of the actual content of the show.

But I see that intent is baked into the definition of SBTN: "This is about intentional sabotage (or at the least making decisions so stupid it looks like it was intentional), not "the mean network executives canceled my favorite show"."

On that note, I'm in favor of slightly redefining it by removing the stuff about intention from the description and cleaning up examples to make sure they fit.

Edited by amathieu13 on May 20th 2022 at 6:19:48 AM

Yeah, I think a through cleanup is needed before we toss this to Darth completely. The best course of action to take care of misuse, I think, is to only allow examples discussed by the creators or others working on the work themselves. That would make it more objective, as it would require a source and be less speculative.

Interesting. This would be the second time a trope has had a cleanup effort installed before it gets a Darth move, the first being They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.

I'd be fine with doing what we did with They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot and starting a cleanup thread without doing any TRS stuff.

Does one already exist? If not, I can close this thread if someone makes one.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 20th 2022 at 8:03:43 AM

I believe there isn't yet. We also need to agree to try said cleanup instead of Darthing.

Edited by Amonimus on May 20th 2022 at 4:07:40 PM

I'm willing to wait for more feedback on whether to move everything to a cleanup thread. I admit that the wording in my previous post may have been a bit too forceful when it comes to freeing up this slot.

If we're going to move this to a cleanup thread and get rid of misuse, what would a correct example of this trope look like? Because I've got a feeling that a show being sabotaged is going to be subjective.

Scattered thoughts:

1. "Network cancels a show that is a bad deal" - the expected result, not noteworthy, remove all examples that don't talk about the business part of show business
2. "Network supports a show that is a bad deal" - subversion of the above, noteworthy in Network to the Rescue
3. "This show was so good and should not have been cancelled" - not even Darth-worthy
4. "Cancelling this show made no sense from a business perspective" — maybe? we don't know Hollywood accounting
5. "Network made a bad business decision regardless of intent that resulted in low returns, thus cancellation" - what this could be.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 20th 2022 at 11:14:58 AM

I'm okay with doing a cleanup.

The only thing I'd like resolved before a cleanup (if that's what we go with) would be the way we handle web video examples.

I added it on as the addendum, but those are a good portion of my Unclears, and the trope never really got updated to consider whether they could be valid uses or not.

For web video examples (barring those that are from an actual "network" such as the many Channel Awesome examples) I'd say we need to, at a minimum, have a source saying that the platform "screwed" the creator/work in some way instead of the creator just canceling it.

I suppose we could handle this the way we handled Berserk Button by using a crowner to hash out the definition/scope followed by sending the grunt work to a cleanup thread.

So, does anyone have any ideas for what to do here?

We could do one of two things:

1. Run a crowner to clarify the definition, then possibly move cleanup to a cleanup thread (which was previously done with Berserk Button). If anyone has ideas for this one, I'd appreciate it if someone could post a list.
2. Close this in favor of a cleanup thread without doing anything else.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 22nd 2022 at 5:41:55 AM

I think we need a small crowner for formality that we've agreed on cleanup.

• Define as "Network made a bad business decision regardless of intent that resulted in low returns, thus cancellation", opposed to "Network intentionally sabotages the work", any form of speculation or audience complaining about Cancellation. (Based on Synchronicity's post)
• Move the discussion to Trope Talk, and clean the description and examples there.

Are those mutually exclusive, or can we do both at the same time?

Can be both, like you've said "clarify the definition, then possibly move to cleanup". Just in case people disagree with it.

Don't feel strongly about the definition option (I think the current title is unsuited for a more neutral version, but other than that I guess it's not the worst idea?), but I downvoted the second one. Why? Because Trope Talk isn't where cleanup threads should go, dang flabbit!

Weirdly, the trope as described already covers bad business decisions, it's just stuck near the very bottom of the article in a single sentence, quoting.

"This is about intentional sabotage (or at the least making decisions so stupid it looks like it was intentional), not "the mean network executives canceled my favorite show"."

The description could definitely use a rewrite (to shift focus away from intentional screwjobs), but bad business decisions are already considered as acceptable examples.

x2 Yeah, moving this to Trope Talk instead of Long-Term Projects is weird.

I fixed that by changing it to say Long-Term Projects instead of Trope Talk. I think I thought of that change when I was asking for feedback, but forgot once I actually made the crowner and ended up blindly copying and pasting that text as-is.

It'll still get moved to a different part of the forums either way.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 22nd 2022 at 3:06:03 AM

Oops.

Examples of "Network intentionally sabotages the work" should go under Torch the Franchise and Run.