MagBas
I am nominating Sympathetic P.O.V.. The trope is used in any series where the Hero Protagonist is the Point of View character.
Opinions?
Edited by MagBas Hide / Show Replies
Makes sense.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
MagBas
Reading the discussion page to The Law of Conservation of Detail, i found this: "The list should really be purged of all the "subverted/averted" entries which comprise some 90% of all and are non-examples, listing all of the countless franchises that simply do not subscribe to this trope. It really makes no sense to list every single video game where generic details are just that, generic details without deeper meaning."
Any opinions about this?
Edited by MagBas
Character Death: in more mature works. So a work isn't mature unless people die? That's not really accurate.
I made this Idolized Julius Kingsley icon back when Akito first came out, and now that the crossover is actually happening, I don't care.
"Video Games" is listed as an Omnipresent Trope due to how the page is formatted/indexed. Shouldn't something be done about that ?
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Tried a fix. Removing the subbulleting may also work.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Took out MacGuffin, replaced it with Plot Device. It seemed odd to me that MacGuffin was on their when it is something whose appearance is often remarked upon and which had quite a specific characteristic. When you go onto the page you see the warning to not confuse MacGuffin with Plot Device and...yeah, it seems that happened. On the one had you have a device that helps to drive the plot while not actually having an impact on it and on the other hand, anything that advances a plot, anything.
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[message deleted, hit "reply" instead of "new topic"]
Edited by Yugnat
Honestly, is "women are delicate" -really- a necessary trope, or even omnipresent? There are plenty of things that do NOT include this trope at all! Similarly, all the video game tropes. "Men are tough", also.
Edited by zer0n
Do these entries qualify for Omnipresent Trope or not?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman Hide / Show Replies
MagBas
Is Like Reality, Unless Noted really omnipresent? Reading the description of the trope, this is about things "outside" the plot being equal to real life- something that, by obvious reasons, is impossible to verify. And in more works, in no moment the fact that the things outside the plot are equal to real life is mentioned.
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I'd say yes. The trope is essentially "base assumptions are that the conditions of the story are like Real Life unless the plot specifically says otherwise". It can be "verified" by basic audience expectations of Consistency. Even in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, where the law of reality are far more fluid than most fiction, we assume that turning on a light switch turns on a light bulb.
Seems like this to me as well.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The first line of the description uses the word "unstated". And if this is an assumption of the audience, this not means that this is actually closer to an Audience Reaction or YMMV?
Edited by MagBas
No. Virtually every trope, save for some, are all tied to audience assumptions. Being tied to audience assumptions, however, doesn't mean they are created from audience assumptions like Audience Reaction or YMMV. As I said before, if we see a character reach for a light switch in a dark room, it is understood that they are trying to turn on a light, because that's how the real world operates. We understand that (1) switches do something and (2) in a dark room, that's usually lights. If the switch gets hit and it does nothing, the audience will be confused as to why it was hit in the first place. Likewise, if the switch does something like make the character explode after it's flipped, that's a subversion of our expectations.
No story (except extreme surrealism) can work without the audience taking for granted some basic assumptions.
But if the light switch is hit and this turns on the light, the fact that the light switch in question turns on the light is actually stated. And if the switch is hit and make the character explode, the fact that hit this light switch causes the character in question to explode is not unstated- this was "noted".
MagBas
Question: Foreshadowing is omnipresent? Lack of Foreshadowing, at least, is sufficiently uncommon to be listed(as Ass Pull).
Edited by 200.187.118.2
Right now the page is not about omnipresent tropes. It is Seen It A Million Times taken Up To Eleven. Omnipresent means "all present", or being everywhere simultaneously. Which is why the entry didn't always have the words "Some are" in front of "intrinsically vital to storytelling itself."
If there is even a single exception then the trope is, by definition, NOT omnipresent. If this page is not about omnipresent tropes, then what is it about?
There are three ways to fix this problem. 1) Strict maintenance and a MUCH shorter list of tropes. 2) Deletion of the page. 3) Renaming the page to reflect what it's really about (and possibly keeping an omnipresent trope page under therules set by the first option)
Edited by TDS Hide / Show Replies
A Law of Fiction that is never, ever broken is omnipresent as well. For example, Three-Month-Old Newborn is absolutely an Omnipresent Trope even though not every work has babies, because using real newborns is prohibited by infant safety laws or whatever, so it's impossible to have a work with a newborn baby in it that doesn't use the trope. The Good Guys Always Win is another one—you can avert it by not having Black-and-White Morality, but if you do have Black-and-White Morality, it's impossible to get away from because it's so tightly ingrained in the audience's minds.
Also bear in mind that people are creative, and if you say that a certain trope can never, ever be averted under any circumstances, it will be taken as a challenge. There are always exceptions.
Edited by troacctid Rhymes with "Protracted."
The page used to say that the tropes listed were "intrinsically vital to story-telling itself." My position is that the words "Some are" should not have been added, that making that change was the equivalent of making a round hole into a square one because it must've been the hole's fault that the square peg didn't fit. Nothing you said convinced me that those tropes fit the original definition, nor did it convince me that the original definition was flawed.
If the page is not about tropes that are "intrinsically vital to storytelling itself" than tell me what it IS about, and how it differs from Universal Tropes because I can't see it.
Universal Tropes are tropes that can exist in any form of media—television, comics, radio, live theatre, etc.—rather than being restricted to one medium. So for example, Bitter Almonds is Universal; Point-and-Click Map is not; and neither is Omnipresent. This distinction is (hopefully) not disputed by anybody (AFAIK).
The guidelines for tropes that appear on this index are fuzzy. There have been disagreements before and there will be disagreements again. That's okay. *shrug*
Edited by troacctid Rhymes with "Protracted."
My problem wasn't with fuzzy guidelines. My problem was that there were guidelines and someone decided to change them in order to fit the trope list instead of changing the trope list to fit the guidelines. That shit ruins pages, it needs to fixed.
[[VisualPun "µ."]]
I'm putting The Good Guys Always Win onto this index mainly on the basis that:
- It's at least as omnipresent as several of the other tropes currently in the index, probably more so;
- The aversion is rare and notable enough to be a trope on its own;
- You don't even think of it as a trope until it's pointed out (based on multiple people in the YKTTW who called it People Sitting On Chairs);
- And how big a deal it is if it doesn't happen.
Consider that The Bad Guy Wins is a major ending spoiler, whereas The Good Guy Wins is never a spoiler at all. It's what we expect by default. That's how ubiquitous it is.
Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement, I'll wait to put it back on, but I think I'm going to stick to this one.
Edited by troacctid Rhymes with "Protracted." Hide / Show Replies
I honestly think this page has suffered a bit of decay, so I'm not surprised to hear that there are some tropes on here that are not actually omnipresent.
The page itself defines omnipresent tropes as tropes that are "intrinsically vital to storytelling itself", a test which I think The Good Guys Always Win fails.
That said, I probably will not take it out if you add it back in again after now. But I do want my specific objection to be known, if nothing else.
Maybe "intrinsically vital to storytelling itself" is pushing it too far. This basically limits us to tropes which are impossible to avert, or aversions of which bork the work beyond all repair. Which leaves us with:
- Anthropic Principle
- Celebrity Paradox
- Consistency
- The End
- Fourth Wall
- Like Reality, Unless Noted (powered by audience expectation- maybe you could avert it with constant "Bazinga! Not like reality at all" events?)
- Most Writers Are Adults
- Most Writers Are Human
- Point of View
I think a better criterion is "Given a random work, chances are excellent it's going to have this trope". The pothole to Seen It A Million Times is a nudge in that direction (after all, there's it and then there's "seen it every single time").
This is how stuff like One-Steve Limit, Back Story and Romance Arc qualify.
Notably, Black-and-White Morality is very borderline in these modern, cynical times.
Edited by TripleElation Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
I'd definitely contest Black-and-White Morality, cynical times or no. Look at the Seven Basic Conflicts. Man vs. Nature? Man vs. Self? These are whole genres that don't require any sort of morality to be involved at all. On that grounds, I'll take it off the list.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
If this is "Given a random work, chances are excellent it's going to have this trope" then it becomes Seen It A Million Times taken Up To Eleven, and that doesn't need its own page.
Omnipresent means All-present so if something is omnipresent then it has to be there 100% of the time BY DEFINITION. The fact that this makes it a short list isn't a problem.
Edited by TDS
Does An Aesop really belong here? It's certainly common, but there's no shortage of works that are made primarily to entertain and not to teach any kind of moral lesson.
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My inclination is that no, it doesn't. An Aesop has suffered a bit of Trope Decay—it's only supposed to be for instances when the moral is explicitly stated within the story.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
Is Speech Bubbles an omnipresent trope in comic books or is it just not common enough to pass as omnipresent in that medium?