Hi
Calling crowner in favor of the motion to rename.
Hi
Blank crowner for new titles is attached.
edited 13th Jul '12 3:42:37 AM by Willbyr
It's not a strawman - it's hyperbole. No one really means thinks that people are trying to go for bland names on purpose. It's just that "you value clear-ness over good-sounding names to the point that it's detrimental to the site" doesn't pack as much of a punch as "you all worship the goddess of bland-ness and need to honor her weekly with a sacrifice of a slightly-less-than clear trope name."
Yeah, forgive me if my slight exasperation put anyone out. I've just noticed that it seems like the site is moving toward "respectability" at the cost of the cleverness that drew me to it originally. A lot of the changes to trope names strike me as people just not personally liking the name and deciding not to leave well enough alone.
To make up for my faux pas, I have proposed Mortuus Ex Machina, which retains the Latin theme of the Ex Machina series and means exactly what I intended it to mean in the first place. "Spiritus Ex Machina" and "Rescued By Ghosts" don't work because it's not always ghosts that do the rescuing. The savior could be a ghost, a zombie, a hallucination of a dead person, or just someone that everyone thought was dead. Mortuus means "death" or "the dead", so it retains the trope's scope.
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - E. Gary Gygax
Ghostly Rescue may or may not be an appropriate name here, since I am not clear if the Deus ex Machina aspect is important.
Post Mortem Rescue can mean either the same or "resurrection"
Mortuus Ex Machina is simply a translation of Dead ex Machina. Not better, that is.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
As mentioned, the trope is about a Deus Ex Machina performed by someone thought to be dead (by the audience).
I thought one of your problems was that there was a cross-language issue with the english and latin... so how is Mortuus Ex Machina not better?
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - E. Gary Gygax
Having a name entirely in Latin is hardly better than a mish-mash, even though I can read it fine.
The other issue is that the "Deus" bit refers to the solution, while the "Machina" bit is about the source - so I'd think of Deus Ex Mortuo (not sure on the grammar) there.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I don't know Latin, but I know what a Deus Ex Machina is. Anyone with an inkling of trope knowledge knows what it is. Lots of words we English speakers use for death-related things use the prefix "mort" (including "Mortem"), so I don't see how that's misleading or a problem or even a mish-mash.
"Post Mortem" has its own severe problems, insofar as you could be implying that the rescue is after an autopsy, or after the debriefing of an event. I would argue that this is more misleading than we already have.
Regarding the "Ex Machina" part: of course it's important. In the Deus Ex Machina, the actor playing the god (the "deus") shows up at the last minute on the rising or lowering platform (the "machina") to save the day. In this, it's a (presumably) dead person ("mortuus" or "corpus") on the "machina."
So yeah, it works.
edited 13th Jul '12 8:16:45 AM by Dracomicron
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - E. Gary Gygax
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That might work as well.
abk 0100: That's better than any of the other proposed changes.
"The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." - E. Gary Gygax
It's added
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Gentleman Troper!
Even if some of us tropers can read Latin, we should not assume that the average reader does. Deus Ex Machina is an established term in English; snowclones of it are not, no matter how gramatically correct they are.
Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!
edited 17th Jul '12 12:03:10 AM by abk0100
Anything lately?
Okay, I really like Not Too Dead to Save the Day. I immediately know what it means, and it gives me a little chuckle.
Calling the crowner in favour of Not Too Dead to Save the Day.
"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer
Done
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Dragon Writer
Definitely on the long side, but it does have a certain charm to it....
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.
Looks like we're totally done.
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Crown Description:
Vote up for yes, down for no.
It is a strawman, when used in the way Dracomicron is using it - as an insinuation that people who want to rename tropes are deliberately trying to make things "bland" or "boring".
This name annoys me personally, but I've seen no reason to believe that it's actually hurting anything, and I don't really care what happens to it one way or another. But I'm really tired of this hostile attitude/allegations of being "Stop Having Fun" Guys that people who propose renames keep being hit with.
edited 12th Jul '12 3:33:41 PM by nrjxll