Acceptable Targets Discussion Thread

Since Dude, Not Funny! isn't YMMV anymore, I don't see Unacceptable Targets as being redundant. Or are you saying that the concept itself will attract complaining?

Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'm not calling it redundant necessarily, but I'm saying that it covers the YMMV Dude, Not Funny! use that got Dude, Not Funny! IUEO'd in the first place.

Okay, that's a fair point.

Once Acceptable Targets seems to be redundant with Values Dissonance, at least that's how I read it.

I've started the Acceptable Targets Wick Check and have a full list of 52 wicks to check. Help would be appreciated.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Nov 19th 2022 at 6:10:02 AM

~themayorofsimpleton

Didn't get the ping but I'm busy now and can't do much. I apologize. When I get a chance I'll see what I can do.

(Good thing I kept this thread in my Followed Threads or I wouldn't have seen this).

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 19th 2022 at 7:20:06 AM

I finished checking the rest of the wicks. This thing is a ZCE magnet and a pothole magnet. Those two alone made up over half the wicks, and that's only counting the entries that had no examples with context at all. There are several other entries with ZCEs but have at least one example with context, which I put the example with context fits. Lord knows I probably misplaced a few things.

To summarize:

• Something is explicitly okay to make fun of - 6/52
• Something is made fun of - 15/52
• Something is repeatedly made fun of - 3/52
• ZCE/Pothole/Related Trope/Misc. - 28/52

Edited by badtothebaritone on Nov 19th 2022 at 7:57:42 AM

Thanks for doing all the work! I was busy dewicking They Fight Crime!/baking brownies so I couldn't get to it—I apologize.

Anyway I could see a TRS case anyway since no one knows what the definition even is.

IIRC, we had two main ideas for how to deal with this:

• Disambiguate between Take That!, Author Tract, and some other tropes I'm probably forgetting
• Retool the trope into something along the lines of "A work repeatedly and consistently makes fun of a specific thing throughout," preferably with a new name.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Nov 19th 2022 at 8:51:46 AM

That sounds good. I think you can add this to the TRS Queue.

Now that Acceptable Targets and its ilk are being actioned, I've been taking a crack at Unacceptable Targets specifically, which was excluded from the TRS thread. Here's my wick check so far. If things keep going the way they are, then I think this one might be redundant with things like Sacred Cow and Dude, Not Funny!. Thoughts?

Edit: Nixed Dude, Not Funny! from the general case. There is a bit of In-Universe usage, which would fall under Dude, Not Funny!.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Feb 3rd 2023 at 3:55:27 AM

Like I said earlier, I don't think Unacceptable Targets is redundant with Dude, Not Funny! because the latter is now In-Universe only. However, I understand that this could become a huge complaint magnet.

Wick check done. Of the 50 I checked:

• 16 involved someone making fun of something and getting major backlash for it, of which almost half are in-universe.
• 14 don't mention anything about significant backlash.
• 7 are about creators deliberately avoiding the backlash by refusing to make fun of certain people.
• The rest is a mixture of complaining, ZCEs, a couple of trope relationships, and some other misuse.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Feb 3rd 2023 at 5:25:40 AM

In-universe stuff can probably go under Dude, Not Funny!, and stuff that's about making fun of unacceptable works sounds redundant with Sacred Cow or He Panned It Now He Sucks depending on the circumstances. A few related tropes mention that making fun of Unacceptable Targets can lead to things like suffering a Role-Ending Misdemeanor (like with the Sonic ad guy) or getting Overshadowed by Controversy (like with Clone High), so those can probably be slotted in for a least a few examples. I guess that leaves the question of if mocking unacceptable individual folks like Ataturk and Gandhi would fit under anything else.