AXTE INCAL AXTUCE MUN
This trope has nothing to do with the Fourth Wall at all. Snowclone suckage at its finest.
Dragon Writer
Oh, oops. Hmm ... almost two months ago? Forever in Web time. And nobody took time for a misuse check back then. The initial argument was:
Looking at the Painting the Fourth Wall Western Animation section, actual examples seem to the be the exception, rather than the rule. Most of what is listed is Breaking the Fourth Wall, Fourth Wall Psych, or just gags that involve the fourth wall in some way. (e.g. Fake advertisements.) The trope itself means that some aspect of the medium itself is being used to communicate some concept or story element to the viewer, but the common usage seems to use it to mean "weird fourth wall-y stuff".
Some of the problem seems to stem from the title. I've seen a pretty substantial number of examples of characters "literally" Painting the Fourth Wall, which almost inevitably ends up actually being an example of Breaking the Fourth Wall, since it generally means that the character starts to interact with the screen in some way.
edited 16th Oct '11 12:23:38 PM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
The Warriors Way example is about the music playing in the background being the sound of High-Pressure Blood coming out from your throat when one of the Sad Flute ninjas cuts you, hence the name "Sad Flute".
I can't argue with the misuse, but I have never had a problem with connecting the title to the definition. The Order Of The Stick page image previously there helped a lot...now ugh, I have no idea what the current picture is supposed to show.
I would say that the description could also use some clean up. I would prefer that plus an example cleanup to happen before attempting to rename - it is a Fourth Wall trope and it is kinda like writing on said fourth wall, or at least hanging decorations on it.
edited 16th Nov '11 11:24:31 PM by Elle
Dragon Writer
I disagree about it being strictly related to the Fourth Wall — Breaking the Fourth Wall in particular. The misuse claim is about people treating it like "Playing With The Fourth Wall", which is missing the point entirely, and the article has had at least two occasions of page images describing the wrong trope.
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
I went through the article with an axe, cutting away a great many inappropriate examples and no doubt some of the appropriate ones, and rewrote the description to a simplified but clearer form.
^You didn't axe enough. I'm still seeing plenty of examples that don't belong anywhere near the page.
Also, can we get a change to the thread title? This trope's name isn't a snowclone. At all.
Belief or disbelief rests with you.
Plus EP x 3 for thread title.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Disasturbator
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Dragon Writer
@Petrie: The trope title is derived from Breaking the Fourth Wall (compare: Tapping On The Fourth Wall, Leaning on the Fourth Wall), so it is in fact a snowclone by our usage of the term.
edited 18th Nov '11 8:10:21 AM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Dragon Writer
Bumpity. I recently noticed the F Zero page is misusing it when one character's ending describes them smashing the screen out of frustration. That aside, nobody's posted any new, proper checks. Can I?
For starters, this is the complete 'A' range.
Misuse more easily fixed than said
In other words, I fixed them already. Still counts as misuse though.- Characters.Ace Attorney Witnesses And Other Characters (Medium Awareness)
- Ace Combat Zero The Belkan War (Leaning on the Fourth Wall)
- Adventure Time (Aside Glance)
- Alice Comedies (Medium Awareness)
- Ambiguously Human (Medium Awareness)
- A Moment Of Peace (Not An Example)
- CloudCuckoolander.Anime (Leaning on the Fourth Wall)
- Apollo Thirteen (Camera Abuse)
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (Medium Awareness)
- Art Initiates Life (1st of 3; not related)
- Aside Glance (was Justified Trope)
- Assassins Creed (was Flash of Pain)
- Axis Powers Hetalia (Medium Awareness)
- Austin Powers (Medium Awareness, Played for Laughs)
Literal Misuse
- Animal Man: "At one point, a panel in the comic is literally painted in. Buddy also uses his ability to step outside the fourth wall to help him beat Overman, literally pulling him out of continuity."
- Art Initiates Life (2nd of 3)
Misuse not so easily fixed
- Alexander Pushkin: "The half of the poem The Little House at Kolomna is about the verse metre used by Pushkin in the very same poem."
- (Alexander Pushkin, same example)
- Art Initiates Life (3rd of 3): "Brendan in The Secret Of Kells defeats Crom Cruach with a
purple crayonpiece of chalk with which to redraw the animation."
Can't tell what's going on here
- Roleplay.Active Duty: "Makoto replied to an action that had accidentally been put into quotes by Johnson's player."
- Ah My Goddess: "Done by Chihiro when Keiichi expresses surprise at her intention to use a 156 horsepower engine in her dream bike."
- All Over The House: "When Emily let colour into the comic for the first time, Tesrin complained that it burned her but Emily thought it "much nicer" Done again when hits on the site skyrocketed because of people searching for a pornographic music video called All Over The House."
- Animated Actors: "In the Gunnerkrigg Court interlude City Face, the commentary below each page speaks of the characters like actors playing roles. And the Shout Box below these pages featured commentary from these in-universe actors rather than from Real Life readers."
- Another Gaming Comic: "With the beginning of the Second Evil Campaign, roleplaying-game-traditional secret notes passed between players and the DM are represented by little notepad-objects, which display the note on mouse hover. A similar system is also used for the players' thought balloons."
- Answer Cut: "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again couples this with Painting the Fourth Wall. 'We have just heard that David Hatch has left Radio Prune to create his own radio station, and it falls upon me to say...three years later. (gentle piano music in background)'
- Art Shift (2 citations)
- Assassins Creed Revelations: "The console versions of this game miss out on this, but with the PC version, when you start the 'Desmond's Journey' sequences, the main game closes, and soon after, the sequence opens up in a new program. It seems like an odd bug, but it's not - the Journey sequences are is an entirely different program from the main game's. It also feels perfectly in line with the entire 'corrupted dataflow' style the Animus of this game has adopted. This also occurs on the Xbox360 if you install the game to the harddrive. When you start or complete the Desmond sequences the system begins to read from the disk as if the game were not installed."
- Augmented Reality: "Some helicopters in Fringe's alternate universe have an information service that works in this manner. Presumably it includes an overlay of massive three-dimensional block letters identifying your current location."
- Awesome McCoolname: "Two of his minions also have names that beautifully paint the fourth wall: [[color:#2ED73A:D]][[color:white:o]][[color:#2ED73A:c Scratch]] and [[color:#2ED73A:Sn]]o[[color:#2ED73A:wman]]. All the other members of [[color:#2ED73A: The Felt]], and the gang itself, have names that are written in green."
(not part of the formal range, but spotted in transit)
Zero Context Example
- Alcatraz Series
- A Legend Of Rain
- Amelia Rules!
- Painting the Fourth Wall: "Why the tilde?"
Nonstandard medium conventions that convey metatext
- Achewood
- Aeon Natum Engel
- Characters.A Game Of Gods Nomads
- A Growing Affection
- Alfred Bester
- all lowercase letters
- Ancient Domains Of Mystery
- A New Ninja Challenger
- Antihero For Hire
- A Prayer For Owen Meany
- Archipelago
- Archy And Mehitabel
- Arkham Asylum A Serious House On Serious Earth
- A Sangheilis War Is Never Over
- A Series Of Unfortunate Events
- Ashes And Dust (cited Medium Awareness and Lampshade Hanging for context)
- Ash's Return
- Asterix
- A World Without Rainbows
Our totals across this range are:
- Total misuse: 17*
- Easily fixed: 14
- "Literal": 2
- Other: 3
- Total ambiguous: 13 (not including +1 from the 'C' range)
- Zero Context Example: 4
- Ambiguous context: 9
- Correct: 19
This is approximately a 30 percent misuse across the A range, with an additional 20 percent ambiguous cases.
edited 8th Jan '12 12:05:08 PM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
I would support a rename.
Dragon Writer
Let's try the 'E' range, same category, Alex.
First, the misuse:
Cited as misuse and easily corrected
- Earn Your Happy Ending (Not An Example)
- Quotes.Ear Worm (Punny Name)
- Echo Chamber (In-Universe Camera)
- Endless Ocean (In-Universe Camera)
- Epic Battle Fantasy (Breaking the Fourth Wall)
- Epic Mickey (Examples Are Not Arguable; moved to Notice This)
- Eternal Darkness (covered by Interface Screw)
- Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory (Screen Tap)
- Examples Searching for a Trope (Born in the Theatre)
Literal Misuse
- Eight Bit Theater: "When BM solves problems through stabbity means, all we see is blood splattered on the fourth wall."
Other suspected misuse
- Ear Trumpet: "Hagar The Horrible once was trying to communicate with an old Viking. The problem: The Ear Trumpet was full of letters."
- Eat Lead The Return Of Matt Hazard: "The stereotypical RPG prettyboy boss speaks in text boxes and is turn based, and the player can disrupt his Cure animation by shooting the health out of the air."
- WMG.Echo Chamber: "According to the You Tube channel (Word of God?), his name is Dave and he is the Visible Boom Mic operator. And you were supposed to see him."
- El Shaddai Ascension Of The Metatron: "Part of Armaros' dance routine is to feel up the screen."
- Evil Zone: "Get 100% Completion, and you get an audio drama where all the characters fight over who's the real main character.
The ambiguities:
Ambiguous context
- Easter Egg: "The Dresden Files RPG has PDF versions of the sourcebooks available if you buy them online. In several places where Harry has scratched out part of the text with Sharpie, you can copy the text into another program and read what was underneath. It's usually something like "By the way, if you're reading this, we sure bet you feel clever!"
- Everybody Hates Chris: "Frequently, especially in "Everybody Hates Mother's Day" when Chris Rock and adult Tonya have an argument in the voiceover booth, while the camera pans between young Chris and Tonya respectively."
- Sluggy Freelance: "[Chaz's] name, activation method and voice all indicate evil, but Chaz neither requires nor encourages evil acts...]"
- Eyeshield 21: "His thought bubbles are arrows containing short phrases pointing towards his opponent du jour."
Zero Context Example
- (none found in this range. Yay!)
Creative use of metatext:
Indexes, Other
Now for the totals.
- Total misuse: 15
- Quick fix: 9
- Literal Misuse: 1
- Other 5
- Total ambiguities: 4
- Correct, Exempt, Other: 5
Hmm, I think I liked the A range better. The E range shows 60 percent misuse, but it's only a third the size. So, combined, the A and E letter ranges constitute 40 percent misuse.
edited 8th Jan '12 1:31:04 PM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Oh hey. I'm the guy who YKTTW'd this trope. That went smoothly, with (I recall) everone agreeing that it was a thing, but by the time it was due to be launched, I had been left incapacitated by an extraordinarily stupid turn of events. The trope page was built by committee, and left with a half-baked description that among other problems lacked a "see also"/"compare & contrast" section that would've pointed casual tropers in the right directions.
By the time I'd recovered, a backlock of other issues and lingering stupidity kept me from writing a new description. I guess I didn't really think much of it until this thread was started, when I panicked and put in a bare-bones but much clearer and functional description.
I think that swapping a defective description for a good or even working one should cause much of the problem to subside, and that this makes such a difference that we can't fairly judge the trope's performance on past grounds. However, I also acknowledge that the mis-use that's already happened is a large part of the problem and won't go that easily, which is why I'm ready to review every last related page, and fix them when necessary.
I also object to the claim that the title of this trope runs afoul of the things listed on the Everythings Worse With Snowclones page. Unfortunately I desperately need to go to bed, too, so please don't do anything major for a day or so while I get my rest and my thoughts in order and see if I can't work on things further.
We needs a new name for this. Any ideas?
The Final ECW Champion
I think the name is fine. Visual cues about the story the characters themselves aren't aware of. Death speaking in all caps in Disc world right? The unsound affect off mouser's bombs. Psychic characters having color or italics in Marvel comics right?
I don't think the name is wrong, I think tropers are just misusing it. Seems more like a special efforts case than a repair shop one. The fourth wall generally is something not known to the guys in story so it makes sense to be in the title.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
It's not a "gag" thing.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
This is in desperate need of a rename and a cleanup.
Crowner here
edited 18th Feb '12 2:27:14 PM by Catbert
The problem I've always had with the name is that it sounds just like a lesser version of Breaking the Fourth Wall to me, just like Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
Based on that wick check, I'd say that I'm not alone.
From my point of view "conveying things about the story through elements that aren't actually in the story" doesn't have much to do with the fourth wall. You may as well call subtitles and speech bubbles "writing on the forth wall."
I can't think of a name right now, but there's got to be a better one that what it has now.
I think we need to add in the description that this is NOT something that happens TO the 4th wall. I think the bad examples are stemming from the fact that the current title is "VERB-ing the 4th wall", and so people automatically associate it with something that happens to the 4th wall.
Dunno about what to rename it, if anything, though when i think about it, "Painting the 4th wall" does conjure up images of someone doing exactly that, and nothing as subtle as a character making a throw-away reference to the way text is formatted.
..."The Writing on the 4th Wall", perhaps? The "THE" would be important, as to disassociate the trope with the act of something happening TO the wall. Otherwise we have the same problem, and people go looking for instances where someone literally writes on the screen. Or maybe "Noticing the Paint on the 4th Wall"? Long names, I know, but the more simple a title, the more broad it becomes in the minds of those who see it, and the more ripe it is for misuse.
We need a name that has nothing at all to do with wall, fourth or otherwise, because this is not about Fourth Wall.
edited 18th Feb '12 4:32:26 PM by Catbert
Crown Description:
The page has nothing to do with the Fourth Wall, and has been subjected to massive misuse.
... because Everythings Worse With Snowclones, that's why!
I'm currently analyzing this for confusion with Fourth Wall and its other snowclones....
The following is the canonical ptitle range.
Looks correct
Ambiguous cases
Suspicious cases
Looks like...
Little or no context
Okay, so out of the classic ptitle range I can draw three conclusions:
So, can I get some help here?
edited 16th Oct '11 11:21:10 AM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.