Markup View

Author: Lenoxus

Nov 18th 2011 at 10:57:10 AM

So a couple days ago I had a longish reply that my browser gobbled up, and that was discouraging enough that I decided not to get back to this for a while. Anyway, I can definitely see why this particular title is problematic -- it could hypothetically apply to other things as well, in particular an ''actual'' joke/prank.

What I liked about the stock phrase format is that it helped capture the "feel" of this trope succinctly, or so I believed; it's so particular and common that setting it up and having it turn out to ''actually'' be a prank would almost certainly be a deliberate subversion and not a meaning-free decision of the author, like the subversion of NoOneCouldSurviveThat. Plus, 90% of the time this happens, we can't help but agree with the character that ''if'' it were a prank, it wouldn't be particularly funny, just pointlessly scary. However, like I just said a paragraph ago, a phrase-based title isn't exactly free of ambiguity.

Anyway, I like DangerMistakenForPrank. It's only flaw is that it ''may'' be too broad -- I feel like this trope should specifically apply to the character, alone, deciding/hoping that the scary stuff around him/her must be a sick joke, and not when various outsiders in broad daylight make that same mistake, and the quote captures this better than something like DangerMistakenForPrank. But since we're just building this trope now, it may as well be as broad or specific as it likes to be. Either way, there's a degree of overlap with NotAMask -- in fact, perhaps this is the supertrope to that? Nah, just a sister.