How are we supposed to do this?: Where The Hell Is Springfield

It came up in the Natter Alert thread, and I'm curious what the trope is specifically about. It seems to be "the location of the work is not identified" but that doesn't really seem like much to me. The Simpsons do a running gag where they make weird shit up like it being a midwestern town but with an ocean dock and "west Springfield" being three times the size of Texas, but what are the rest of the examples about?

Fight smart, not fair.

A show's setting is never pinned down, and may change as the plot sees fit.

Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

I've been going through and deleting any thing where it was either A)named or B)a bunch of information was listed in an argument style.

Fight smart, not fair.

Personally I think the trope should be that there are signs that the location could be in different locations in the country like springfield or Raccoon City which is said to be in the midwest but has hills and a 212 area code (Manhattan, NYC) and have a different trope for "fictional location not exactly stated" probably named Nowheresville (which is 3/4ths the current trope).

This was a Co MF though since the entire point of the plot is "Where The Hell Is (Nagi) Springfield".

edited 21st Mar '11 3:01:50 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Yeah, that got cut in my big purge. I'll have to go back in for another round or two.

Fight smart, not fair.

How are the Archie and DC examples not this trope? They both rather explicitly seem to fit.

Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

Whoa, I kinda strongly object to your chainsaw editing approach here. I put a hell of a lot of time into cleaning up and reconciling the DC Universe examples, and now all that's deleted for no good reason that I can see.

As I see it, the trope is about ambiguous or contradictory locations, and (I guess?) Deboss is applying a standard where if the setting is ever identified non-ambiguously, it must be deleted.

These mass deletions seem pretty arbitrary to me.

edited 21st Mar '11 5:21:04 AM by suedenim

Jet-a-Reeno!

Sorry about that. I did a bunch of editing off screen, there were more than a dozen subbullets to the DC section, after the first one or two, I just deleted the whole thing.

I was indeed applying "if it's identified, it gets cut" standard. If you think it makes sense another way, have at it. I'm not particularly attached to the cuts I made.

It occurs that we may want to split the page. It seems to be at least two tropes. "City/State/Country is never identified explicitly" and "City is next to things that are geographically impossible" are radically different to me.

edited 21st Mar '11 6:08:42 AM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

What makes entities like The DCU complicated is that you have thousands of stories told by hundreds of people over a period of many decades — and that's before you even consider other-media adaptations!

So there's bound to be a bunch of contradictions - sometimes ambiguous, sometimes explicit, and like as not, the "explicit" identifications won't agree with each other.

"City/State/Country is never identified explicitly" and "City is next to things that are geographically impossible" are radically different to me.

Trouble is, there are varying degrees of "explicit." For instance, the precise location of a city (e.g., Tuba City, Iowa) might not be identified, but a general location might be - e.g., someone refers to the city as "The Tuba Capital of the Midwest." If a later story shows a seaport or large mountain range, I think it would fit the trope.

Or to put it another way, it might be a The Mountains of Illinois scenario, where the writer of the later story screwed up, or it might be a sign of a stealth retcon - e.g., the Tuba City Seaport becomes a frequently recurring location where one of the characters owns a yacht and regularly goes on overseas adventures. That would call the original description into question.

edited 21st Mar '11 6:54:55 AM by suedenim

Jet-a-Reeno!

I always read it as "the bits of information given about the town's location are irreconcilable with each other". The Simpson's Springfield is probably the best example, but soap operas were given to this as well.

And I think that that reading is supported by the final comment on the archived discussion page: "This trope's about locations that remain stubbornly impossible to pin down;" and the same editor's comment on the Discussion page: "Short of giving latitude and longitude coordinates, or naming the exact interstate exit, how much more detailed can the setting get? This trope is about deliberately vague and contradictory locations, not just fictional cities. ... It has to be deliberately vague, like Angel Grove having every climate imaginable as the plot demands, or Springfield and all its geographical anomalies." emphasis added

edited 21st Mar '11 7:06:18 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

My bad. It popped up in Natter Alert and I took my best shot at applying something about it. We can go back and revert the page. And I honestly thought it was a subtrope of Conservation of Detail.

Fight smart, not fair.

No, you were right. Mea culpa. I've been using it wrong myself.

Where the Hell Is Springfield? has been "The town is never identified" since at least December 26th of 2007. (That's the earliest version the Wayback Machine has)

We have a different trope for that, but it's woefully underperforming. Geographic Flexibility ("The geography of a fictional location becomes extremely flexible as more and more is added to it. ... may gain or lose major geographic features like mountains, or may move to a different climate zone when no one's looking.") has been around since at least October 11th of 2007 and it has only 63 wicks and 151 inbounds since February of 2009. That's just sad.

edited 21st Mar '11 7:20:08 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Okay, given all of my deletions were properly reverted, I'm going to step back as I'm apparently missing something important to the trope.

Fight smart, not fair.

Ok, since my attention is on this, I'm going to work on it a little, with an emphasis on merging points and tweaking where possible. I'll definitely try to retain all information currently on the page.

Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

Why are there two copies of the page on there?

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Did I accidentally hit ctrl+v twice?

Fight smart, not fair.

Crap, wish I had come back here earlier.

Ok, that should do it, though now I have to re-do the edits I just made... Tomorrow.

edited 21st Mar '11 10:40:14 PM by Daremo

Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

It's June, is there anything left do do here?

Hell, it's September and there's still a TRS banner up on top.

How do we feel about the laconic: "A show's setting is never pinned down, and may change as the plot sees fit."

That doesn't seem to quite gel with the above discussion — the changing bit seems off the mark. From what I'm reading "The city, state or country the work is set in is not revealed." would be closer, right?

Yes, the changing bit seems closer to Geographic Flexibility.

edited 1st Sep '11 10:20:28 AM by MetaFour

I didn't write any of that.