Is There Really A Point To This? (New Crowner Jan.18): Ralph Wiggum

First of all, for anyone not familiar with this page, it's NOT a special page for the The Simpsons character.

From what I can gather from the description, this is supposed to be a trope for characters who are The Fool, The Ditz, and/or the Cloudcuckoolander only with an increased potential for making an audience cry, "What An Idiot!"

The page is written in such vague terms that the divide between, say, The Ditz and The Ditz appears to be very much a subjective matter, and having a trope named after a character isn't making the distinction any clearer.

If people see a legitimate, unique trope in this, I'd, at least, suggest a clearer redirect (although I'd much rather try and push for a renaming). If not, I think this page is looking pretty redundant among other already existing pages about characters who do stupid things.

edited 1st Dec '10 9:56:27 AM by SeanMurrayI

If it's just The Ditz but more so, I support cutting it.

Also, it's a terrible name, even among character named tropes. I mean, not even The Ralph Wiggum?

"The Ditz found in: 653 articles, excluding discussions"

"This title has brought 429 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09"

Is there evidence that people are misusing this trope?

^Misuse isn't the issue here; it's the the idea that we may have a trope that's very much redundant and vaguely defined and redundant compared to what else we already have. And, yes, I DO believe that a lot of examples credited to this page could easily be put on The Ditz or The Fool or Cloudcuckoolander, despite the insistence in the description for The Ditz claiming that this is different from those tropes.

Also, given the fact that this is a page named after a well-known character from The Simpsons, I'm taking the high number of outside referrals very lightly.

edited 1st Dec '10 12:26:02 PM by SeanMurrayI

A trope isn't bad just for the fact that it could be worded as The Same But More for another one. It must actually be used with the same intentions to be guilty of The Same But More.

See also World of Ham, World of Snark, Fountain of Expies, or Chekhov's Armoury.

Saying that The Ditz is the same as The Ditz but more stupid, is like saying that an Ax-Crazy Stalker with a Crush is the same as a Dogged Nice Guy, only even more dogged.

Technically it might be true, but it's still a different trope.

But troping Caboose (who finds a dead body in similar armor to his, and thinks that it's himself), or Zoolander, (who is too stupid to turn his head left), as The Ditz would be a ridiculous Understatement.

The Ditz is someone who is relatively dumb, compared to the audience, and to the charcters around himself. He can even appear in a dramatic story, as comic relief. It's the fictional portrayal of stupid people.

The Ralph Wiggum is so moronic, that it would be impossible in real life, because anyone who could learn to talk and walk must be smarter than that. It only happens in comedic shows, where even the "normal" characters are implausibly ditzy, and he is stupid compared to them.

edited 1st Dec '10 1:09:29 PM by EternalSeptember

The Ditz is a likable idiot (Ex: Kelso from That 70' Show). The Fool is an idiot who is Born Lucky (Ex: Forrest Gump). A Cloudcuckoolander isn't necessarily stupid, just "spacey" (Ex: J.D. from Scrubs and Kramer).

The Ralph Wiggum is an absurdly stupid gag character who shouldn't be able to function in day-to-day life (Ex: Peter Griffin and Ralph Wiggum).

Essentially someone who is Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket but as a character in a show instead of advertising technique.

^^ & ^^^ Quoting directly from the description for The Ditz:

The Ditz is a character whose defining characteristic is profound stupidity. Female ditzes tend to be sweet and naive, male ditzes tend to be oafish but lovable. The Ditz is written to appear unintentionally funny. In drama series, he or she provides comic relief.

The person is not a true Ditz unless you are left wondering how someone this stupid could possibly hope to function in modern society.

That's the exact definition we're now trying to pin on The Ditz.

edited 1st Dec '10 1:54:03 PM by SeanMurrayI

I'd say we need to soften the definition of The Ditz.

I'd also point out that The Ditz and The Ditz have a fair share of overlapping examples.

"The Ditz is a likable idiot (Ex: Kelso from That 70' Show). The Fool is an idiot who is Born Lucky (Ex: Forrest Gump). A Cloudcuckoolander isn't necessarily stupid, just "spacey" (Ex: J.D. from Scrubs and Kramer).

The Ralph Wiggum is an absurdly stupid gag character who shouldn't be able to function in day-to-day life (Ex: Peter Griffin and Ralph Wiggum)."

If that is the case, then ALL the name suck, as none of them indicate the necessary qualifiers to differentiate them.

Definitely a distinct trope - this is not just stupid, but a kind of exaggerated stupidity beyond the point of what's humanly possible. If someone doesn't know who George Washington is, they might be The Ditz; if they think George Washington is a kind of toaster, that would be more like a The Ditz. Other typical examples of The Ditz traits are not knowing how to breathe, eat, and/or sleep, etc. I think the description could be made briefer and more clearly distinguish it from related tropes.

It's a very old trope, which is why it's character-named and doesn't have a "The". However Ralph is such an iconic and widely-known example that I think it's okay, although I would add a "The" in front to clarify.

edited 1st Dec '10 2:21:43 PM by Dcoetzee

The Ditz is going to need a much more explicit redirect at the very least, however.

Also, while The Ditz is currently written up to mean exactly what a lot of people are saying The Ditz is supposed to be, The Ditz is also much more widely used, and examples between these two pages alone overlap so much that on some work pages the two tropes are being listed to refer to the same character(s).

I'd be willing to suggest a merge more than anything.

edited 1st Dec '10 2:26:50 PM by SeanMurrayI

There's only a problem with The Ditz being a non-descriptive name if we insist on making it substantially different from the dictionary definition. A ditz forgets how to fill out a multiple-choice test. A The Ditz forgets how to sit in a chair.

Isn't Ralph Wiggum way more stupid than a "ditz"? Like, brain-damaged, functionally retarded...

Some representative quotes:

"Ms. Crabapple, my worm crawled inside my mouth and then I ate it. Can I have a new one?" "No Ralph, just lay your head on your desk and go to sleep." "Oh boy, sleep! That's where I'm a viking."

"My cat's breath smells like cat food."

"I sleep in a drawer."

The Ditz is likable but dumb. The Ralph Wiggum is absurdly stupid.

Cutting the The Ditz page? That's unpossible.

Isn't Ralph Wiggum way more stupid than a "ditz"? Like, brain-damaged, functionally retarded...

As was pointed out in post 8, The Ditz is already defined as "The person is not a true Ditz unless you are left wondering how someone this stupid could possibly hope to function in modern society."

I'm not sure there's much further to go than that.

The Just A Face And A Caption page image (Brittany from Glee) on The Ditz is currently listed as a The Ditz. Just thought I'd point that out.

Page images don't have to be examples of the trope, they have to visually demonstate it. A murderous monster that looks like a bunny could be the page image for one of the cuteness tropes, as long as it appears cute enough.

Her expression looks like a typical airheaded Dumb Blonde, so it's not just JAFAAC.

edited 1st Dec '10 3:57:33 PM by EternalSeptember

So The Ralph Wiggum is a specific kind of ditz? Distinguishing characteristics? Enough good examples to warrant a separate/subtrope article?

I edited the incorrect line out from The Ditz page. Problem solved.

A page image that doesn't illustrate the trope is a bad page image. A page image that actually illustrates a separate-yet-subtly-distinct trope is an even worse page image. (Also, looking like a typical Dumb Blonde doesn't really help all that much with the Just A Face And A Caption aspect when the trope it's supposed to illustrate is not Dumb Blonde, but I digress.)

edited 1st Dec '10 4:04:26 PM by troacctid

The Just A Face And A Caption page image (Brittany from Glee) on The Ditz is currently listed as a Ralph Wiggum. Just thought I'd point that out.

She's also listed under The Ditz. Like I've already pointed out, The Ditz and The Ditz share numerous examples between themselves, and some work pages even list both tropes to refer to the same character(s) for being stupid.

^^Who was saying that it was incorrect? This is still going to leave hundreds of wicks to sort through to figure out what to do with overlapping examples; any problems there may be are far from being solved, anyway.

^And this is something that should be held over for a separate Image discussion.

edited 1st Dec '10 5:48:09 PM by SeanMurrayI

wait.

if The Ditz is "The Same But More But In A Very Specific Way" than The Ditz, and they share examples, doesn't that pretty much spell that there's confusion between the two tropes? you can't have a character be The Ditz in this particular scene and a The Ditz in this other scene, you should be classifying the character's personality as a whole. if the line is well-defined, it's either one or the other. taking out the confusing paragraph in The Ditz is all well and good, but the tropes need a clean-up, too.

i'd say the repeated examples count as misuse. how many are there?

Both pages make clear that The Ralph Wiggum is NOT just a ditz, and The Ditz is not the same as The Ditz, so when two editors both inconstently claim that it is the example of this trope, it's a contradiction, and therefore misuse.

But there are also examples like the one about "Karen Smith of Mean Girls", on The Ditz, that admits that it's a borderline example, but then proceeds to list the specific attributes of both tropes that she shows.

That's not misuse, to continue my previous example, that's just like saying that "This character is a Dogged Nice Guy at best, but sometimes he is so extreme, that in this and that scenes, you could even call him a Stalker with a Crush."