Laconic Description Improvement

Also the laconic for Salt and Sanctuary is an X Meets Y entry that describes nothing about the game.

Edited by Adept on Aug 8th 2020 at 12:21:09 AM

The fairly-new Laconic.Four Twenty Blaze It is misleading.

"420 as an inherently funny number for similar reasons to 69."

All it does is compare 420 to 69, which not only relies entirely on another trope to contextualize this one, but implies 420 is a sexual number rather than a reference to marijuana. (Though the unabridged link at least makes a drug connection.)

Maybe this would be a more accurate Laconic?

"420 as an inherently funny number because of its relation to marijuana use."

& Oh, I . . . already changed it before I read the above post. Sorry about that.

Edited by PurpleEyedGuma on Jul 4th 2020 at 10:31:06 AM

Honestly, it’d be easier to get rid of Laconic entirely than repair every single one there is that’s someday gonna get changed back to something bad.

Just imagine how much misuse would go down if we got rid of it.

Laconic is pretty crucial for the TLP, and also extremely helpful to get the basic gist of a trope that has a very long description.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 5th 2020 at 5:05:15 AM

If your worry is that good laconics are going to be changed into bad ones, we could always start doing the comment-tagging thing we do for images.

Laconics are not, in general, making the wiki worse.

...yeah, no, we're not going to burn down an entire namespace just because some things go wrong.

Yeah, they're actually a fun feature of the wiki; it is prone to misuse sometimes, but that's true for all other facets of the wiki. We'd have to get rid of "worse" things (all RL sections, at least 70% of the Audience Reactions, Darth Wiki, maybe even Sugar Wiki, etc.) before even considering Laconics to be a problem.

Laconic.La Tale is just a sarcastic joke about players’ actions.

Edited by jandn2014 on Jul 21st 2020 at 5:41:17 AM

To top it off, it doesn't have a link to the unabridged version.

Also, I'm just reporting that I changed the description on Laconic.CN Real from this:

Cartoon Network without cartoons.

...to this:

A live-action programming block on Cartoon Network that lasted from 2009 to 2010.

The previous one was just an "X, but Y" description, which is discouraged.

Edited by FridgeGuy2016 on Jul 21st 2020 at 4:19:54 AM

That’s good.

Laconic.Live Forever As You Are Now With Alan Resnick is currently

"Learn to live forever, with Alan Resnick!"

which is pretty terrible. It's not even an Exactly What It Says on the Tin short. Maybe we can replace it with something like this:

"Learn how you can upload your brain into a computer! Even if the technology isn't quite there, and the host isn't quite there either."

Speaking as the person who made the laconic for Live Forever, yours is a million times better.

I...was uncreative that day.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 22nd 2020 at 1:32:03 AM

to that replacement.

I swapped them and added a link to the main page.

Laconic.And Your Reward Is Clothes:

How about something like this, but a bit less bland:

Not sure if it counts if it's a weapon... Nor if there's no way for the player to actually see the equipment...

Laconic.Really Seventeen Years Old specifically is about "minors pretending to be adults", while the main page description has always about any lying about ages to bypass an age restriction (I checked the Wayback Machine for proof). Should the laconic be replaced?

Edited by Albert3105 on Jul 31st 2020 at 3:13:53 PM

Laconic.Not So Small Role boils the trope down to a big-name actor playing a minor character, even when the description emphasizes in bold text that the trope isn't that narrow.

Laconic.Classically Trained Extra seems to be talking about instead. The trope is about an actor who feels the role they have is "demeaning", or somehow "beneath their caliber". Basically, it's about the actor's stated perception towards their role, and not the audience's. "Talented actor is wasted" is probably too YMMV to be a trope anyway.

That trope is for in-universe examples of great actors being put in small roles, it's not trivia or YMMV. There is a Real Life section, but that seems to be more based on the actors feeling the part was beneath them rather than the audience feeling it.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 7th 2020 at 11:48:53 AM

I'm having some difficulty coming up with a satisfactory laconic for Cannot Talk to Women (which currently has none). Like, I want to acknowledge that despite the name the trope isn't Always Male or even Always Hetero (though queer examples are pretty rare), but like, without phrasing it in a way that falsely implies there are exactly two genders and they are opposites. Which is kinda hard cause this is still a pretty cishet trope.

And all this without getting unlaconicishly wordy.

Anyway, what I've got so far is "Character who gets tongue-tied around [the gender they're attracted to, but phrased better]".

That's probably even more confusion, IMO, because the character may be attracted towards more than one gender.

Try something like: "Character lacks the courage to talk to people from one or more genders".

I do think the trope's title is annoyingly specific. If I had what it'd take, I would take it to TRS for a broader rename.

Proposed laconic guidelines:

However, since the purpose of laconic is to provide a short "TL;DR" overview for the reader to get the idea of the trope/work easily, here are guidelines to enforce that:

1. Like said, keep laconics short and simple. A single one-line sentence is recommended. Two lines is at maximum before the laconic is too long. Also two versions of laconics at maximum.
2. Please refrain from X Meets Y/Recycled In Space laconics. They are overdone to the point of not being funny, and are not helpful, requiring the reader to gain knowledge of other works to understand. Instead, summarize the trope/work and leave X Meets Y/Recycled in Space descriptions on those pages.
3. Feel free to make jokes but get the meaning of the trope/work clear and across. "(gimmick) The Movie" is quite vague and lacks context compared to "Alice and Bob go on an adventure". In other words, take the premise and sum it up in a short, easy, and witty words, while including the core points the reader needs to know about the trope/work.
4. Be neutral. No Gushing About Shows You Like nor Complaining About Shows You Dont Like.

Edited by PrincessPandaTrope on Aug 12th 2020 at 3:36:48 AM