Ambiguous Name: Dead Herring

Not so much "ambiguous name" as "completely wrong name". The author demonstrates absolutely zero understanding of what a Red Herring is.

edited 21st Apr '13 10:29:13 AM by Pig_catapult

...what...

Uh, is that a "what" at me, or a "what" at the page?

At the page. I completely fail to see what purpose it has. It's clearly not a trope, and purports to be an index for six different kinds of things that are already indexed elsewhere. And, as you say, that's not what Red Herring means.

So...type labels...misuse of terminology...unclear purpose...anything else?

This is Red Herring Character, right?

No, it's not Red Herring Character. It's Character That Dies On The Show Except When He Doesn't. The first three "types" are a reiteration of the Death Tropes index, whereas the latter two are "chracter that suffers but does not die". The header suggests that this is about minor characters only, but most of the listed tropes don't actually have that restriction (nor should they). It's a big mess.

"Character that only exists to die/suffer" - akin to Red Shirt. Somehow, I feel like cutting or redirecting it.

This is not a trope. It is a poorly thought out index. I support cutting as well.

Cut cut chop chop slice.

I also support cutting this. Despite having gone through YKTTW, it's very poorly thought out.

Another black mark: I checked to see if it went through YKTTW (edit: ninja'd), and it turns out that it was launched with only a single hat.

It seems to me this is supposed to be a sorting algorithm or some such of how likely a character is to die. It may be keepable, but I'm leaning towards cut.

edited 21st Apr '13 11:24:20 AM by StarSword

One thing: It has 81 inbounds. Where can we redirect it if the cut gets declined.

We could turn it into a Useful Notes. Just for Fun.

edited 21st Apr '13 11:49:11 AM by m8e

It's not even a Useful Notes page. That's for Real Life things that underlie or are directly related to tropes. This is just a badly made index someone thought would be a good idea.

My vote is cut it and redirect the name to Death Tropes.

I agree.

That would be 8 cut votes, unless I miscounted something

<Goes back at staring at incredibly hilarious political cartoons>

Looks like a Super-Trope defined as Characters as Device + Death Tropes. It doesn't really work as a trope, as the purpose of having a character die varies widely, and "character who dies" is chairsy.

On the other hand, it sort of works as an index for character-deaths-as-devices-except-when-they-just-suffer. I could see it repurposed as a subindex with a better name like Character Death Tropes or something, cutting the non-deaths. But, eh.

edited 21st Apr '13 12:17:02 PM by AnotherDuck

The TRS thread for Killed Off for Real built an exampleless supertrope, Character Death, to catch misuse of KOFR. Think we might combine them?

Character Death strikes me as redundant to Death Tropes.

Already discussed; no, because Death Tropes aren't all CD. Also DT is an index.

Anyhow, further opinions on DH.

Sounds like an improvement over the current situation.

Well, when I first saw the name, I assumed it was a character who dies, but their death is a Red Herring and doesn't actually have to do with whatever other larger mystery is afoot. Like, maybe they were involved in something to do with the main mystery and so their death is suspicious, but then it turns out they got killed by someone else for reasons completely unrelated to the main mystery. I'm just not sure how often that actually happens in fiction.

edited 21st Apr '13 3:23:51 PM by Pig_catapult

That seems a bit too much like the same but more specific. On the other hand, this name might work for a trope about failed attempts to create a red herring. A more metaphorical type of death—like dead horse.

But that's all YKTTW work. For now, I support making this a redirect without prejudice against any future trope that might actually fit the name.

I took the name to mean a character in a mystery who appears to be the villain until they suddenly die.

Also, I think types IV and V are redundant to This Index Has Had a Hard Life, for what it's worth. I say we just redirect it to Red Herring.

Why redirect it to Red Herring? They aren't related at all; doing that will send people to a page that has little to nothing to do with what they might be looking for.