How are these implications unfortunate? : Unfortunate Implications

It's something I've come upon a few times, most recently here, where people claim cases where a villain behaves in a way eerily similar to a child predator, counts. I'm sorry, but what's so unfortunate about this? This is the bad guy we're talking about. It's like complaining about the Joker blowing up a hospital because that's what a terrorist would do. I mean, if the character in question is also a gay stereotype, I could see the problem. But it boggles my mind to label a villain acting villainous as a case of Unfortunate Implications.

Unfortunate Implications is just a cancerous page in general. A lot of the subpages themselves contain Unfortunate Implications.

edited 3rd Feb '11 6:50:12 PM by Scardoll

Related?

I hadn't looked at the examples for the page itself, but yeah examples like the one in the OP need to go. As I understand it UI is for racism, sexism, etc. not "this is actually very creepy"

Yeah, a lot of people misuse the trope as "any implication that is in any way unfortunate", not the rather narrower thing it actually is.

Just fix such examples if you see them.

Another thing I'm noticing: There's a lot of examples where it's hard to tell if they're legitimately unfortunate implications, or whoever left the entry is really reaching for it. I'd say at least a third of the examples I've seen had subpoints disputing them.

Laconic: Potentially offensive Accidental Aesops.

In practice this set of articles gravitates towards personal reactions where someone took offence at something.

Example:

• The Pirates Of The Caribbean films. Jack Sparrow is a rebellious Jerkass who laughs authority in the face and, oh, he's a pirate. And in spite because of all this, the guys want to be him and the girls want to marry him, and the kids look up to him too!...

So we now know someone had a negative reaction to a positive audience reaction to a character. Not even close to a trope.

(When we have articles that invite personal reactions we get a lot of this less site-relevant material — material takes up time just shuffling it about and trying to keep it formatted: it goes threadmode at the drop of a hat.)

edited 4th Feb '11 12:02:00 AM by Camacan

I feel like there might be something useful here though, which is why I haven't suggested axing all the examples. It's only the thread mode that bothers me. Although even that doesn't bother me as much as it should, I like reading people's different interpretations.

Blegh. Maybe it would be better just to put a couple notable examples and then lock the page. If anybody wants to debate about a work they can go to the forum.

edited 3rd Feb '11 11:37:35 PM by melloncollie

To answer OP's question, yes those are examples of Unfortunate Implications being used wrong. See an example that doesn't fit, delete it.

Maybe we should rename it to sound less vague?

As far as I have always understood the trope, Unfortunate Implications is either:

• when a character that does something notable negative also is the only character who belongs to a certain group.
• Only characters who belong to a certain group are capable of doing something negative while there are enough characters of another group available.

So examples of Unfortunate Implications would be:

• A series with a rogue's gallery and one of the more noticeable villains is the only black character in the series. (So Lando Calrissian being the only black human seen so far and a double-crossing cheat who betrayed his friends was Unfortunate Implications in The Empire Strikes Back)
• A teen movie where we find out that the only kids who have ever caused an accident were all girls.
• A book where the only confirmed atheist is suicidal.
  etc.

Are not examples of Unfortunate Implications:

• A buddy cop movie with a multi-ethnic police corps going after a black/Asian/Hispanic criminal.
• A movie set in a all-girl boarding school where we find out several of the girls have caused car accidents.
• An SF series where most of the chracters have Outgrown Such Silly Notions, and one of them contemplates suicide.

So as long as the distinction between both groups of examples is upheld, we have a valid trope with (IMO) a clear name.

edited 4th Feb '11 6:16:14 AM by AlexThePrettyGood

The description could definitely use a cleanup. The laconic version is fairly straightforward (once you check what an Accidental Aesop is, anyway), but the main page is confusing as hell.

I'm going to counterargue that Lando's half-hearted betrayal and his race had absolutely nothing to do with each other, and he turned out to be operating under duress and switched sides anyway. So what, exactly, is the Accidental Aesop that creates Unfortunate Implications? As far as I can see, there's only a straight Aesop: be wary of making deals with badguys who keep Moving the Goalposts.

This is the sort of thing that makes me believe that Unfortunate Implications is largely written by hypersensitive individuals with way too much time on their hands.

edited 4th Feb '11 9:30:52 AM by Fighteer

An Accidental Aesop is when the viewer sees a different message than the one intended. As a YMMV trope, it's important to stress that sometimes the creators aren't putting this stuff in on purpose (well, mostly).

I'm putting the subjective tag on Accidental Aesop, because it's pretty much that by definition.