Unintentional Period Piece needs a threshold.

1. Can you clarify what you mean by factual?

2. Agreed.

Out of curiosity, what were these good examples that got deleted?

RustBeard is asking the right question here. So far I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that we've got some years-long queue of perfectly valid examples that could be added right now if only the 10-year rule were relaxed.

Edited by HighCrate on Sep 17th 2020 at 3:46:50 AM

A factual reason would mean it literally could not have happened as presented outside of a particular timeframe (for example, the Twin Towers could not be a part of the Manhattan skyline post 9-11); as contrasted with a subjective reason, such as values dissonance.

Edited by PointMaid on Sep 17th 2020 at 6:54:48 AM

The idea behind "predicting" is not necessarily a literal guess at the future but advertising something that dates it to a specific time period, like a hypothetical use of a Zune as though it was the big new thing. We are suddenly very aware of a narrow window when it was released.

As for examples, we are largely talking about theoretical examples that might turn up rather than randomly tracking down 10 real examples we are specifically trying to push.

That gets us right back into the sort of subjective territory that PointMaid would rather avoid with their two-part test, though. It's not impossible for someone to be excited about using a Zune in 2020, just very unlikely.

My guidelines are slightly different, but they still achieve about the same.

Edit: To be clear, this is intended to cover all UPP examples, not just examples within the ten year limit.

1. To fit the "unintentional" part of the title, the creators of the work must not have intended the work to look like a time capsule of then-current culture in the near future. This means that works that are specifically made to capitalize on current trends (e.g. most Seltzer and Friedberg movies) or works that make deliberate use of Ripped from the Headlines for satire purposes (e.g. South Park) don't count.

2. The part of the work that makes it an Unintentional Period Piece must be integral to the work. The dividing line is "would the work be substantially different if it were to have been made ten years later?" Something like the brand or model of cell phone a character uses wouldn't count, but the suspicious lack of cell phones in a situation where they would be useful might. Similarly, a scene merely happening to take place at the Twin Towers is not an example if it could have been substituted with another building without anything major changing.

3. The part of the work that makes it a UPP must not be something common across media of the time, such as the work having what looks to us like a Decade-Themed Filter despite being set in the then-present.

4. To qualify for the "special circumstances" NREP exception, the premise of the work must be significantly impacted by the time of, or shortly after, its release.

Edited by RallyBot2 on Sep 17th 2020 at 10:37:58 AM

^^ The Unintentional part indicates that it can't be done ironically or satirically, which would be the whole point of a 2020 Zune afficianado. Anything making such a big deal out of a flash-in-the-pan moment emphasizes the trope regardless of how long it's been, as time is constantly moving in one direction.

Somewhat of a moderator question, but why is this discussion here in Trope Talk rather than Trope Repair Shop which is the actual venue for proposing trope changes?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I do like those, RallyBot. I'd certainly say they're better than the ones I proposed, which were only meant for the 'special circumstances' exceptions we were discussing.

Because it was originally created in 2015 and no moderator has bothered to move it in the five years since then.

Trope Talk often turns into a TRS-lite, often spitballing ideas and issues before deciding the entire trope needs to be reworked in TRS. Despite all the conversation here, nothing significant has really been done with the trope.

I assumed you need to start a Trope Talk thread before starting a TRS. I think at this point the issue has been discussed enough to move the conversation to the TRS. Something I just thought of, what if we made a sandbox for examples that aren't ten years old yet. A group of tropers can then review the examples and determine if they're worthy enough to make an exception.

Edit: @ Rally Bot 2 Those are all good parameters.

Edited by RustBeard on Sep 18th 2020 at 1:22:07 AM

You don't need to make a Trope Talk thread before going to TRS. It's just that a fairly common outcome of people making a Trope Talk thread because they're confused or whatever about a trope is realizing the trope actually needs reworking, which requires TRS.

Which I would say is the case here, FWIW.

Edited by nrjxll on Sep 18th 2020 at 6:01:12 AM

Another result is going to TLP, which I've been thinking about with the Nebulous Now concept since I first redlinked it.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Have we started a cleanup thread for this trope yet? On the No Real Life Examples, Please! page is mentions the ten year rule, but on the UPP page it still allows examples after 2010. I have my doubts that all of these examples qualify for exceptional circumstances.

It doesn't appear that a cleanup thread exists. Someone should make one, but it ain't gonna be me.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

I'm also on board for Rally Bot's criteria.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

I'm on-board with 1-3, and I think #4 is the best proposal for narrowing down what is "exceptional", but I think that #4 and #2 share the problem of people not agreeing on what composes a premise. My best suggestion for modification is "the same premise could not be told ten years earlier or later". I want the "earlier" in as well because works set "during the Cold War" are not UPP when you've had 40+ years of Cold War.

---

That said, if we were doing any sort of crowner right now, I'd upvote your proposal just so that we had guidelines to clean by.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Actually implementing restrictions would be a matter for the "No Recent Examples Please" cleanup thread.

I'm back!

Glad to see that this thread somewhat came back alive in the past month, adressing and actually trying to properly limit the trope so we don't get nonsense like the South Park examples from littering the page.

Then again, I stand by my past-year suggestion. Ditch the entire thing in the hole. One of the last straws for me was checking on the trivia page for multiple works and finding obvious misuses of this trope - a particularly glaring one was on The Social Network, where the troper complains about how inane the movie plot about screwing up business partners seems compared to the the election talk and the Myanmar commentary that would later involve Zuckerberg... when the dang movie uses time stamps to indicate the plot starts in Fall 2003 and then develops through the rest of the decade. I don't know how more "intentional" something can get, and yet have tropers missing the point. The fact that this trope is so widely misused just annoys me to no end, though admiteddly it's probably just a pet peeve of mine.

Edited by Edgar81539 on Oct 16th 2020 at 1:00:09 PM

It's not just you, trust me.

This Is Us

• Unintentional Period Piece: Has a very strong potential to become one in the future. Fitbits, iPhones, and Macbooks are omnipresent in the show, and there are plenty of pop culture references sprinkled into the dialogue.
  • After saying that he planned to integrate the COVID-19 pandemic into the present-day 2020 plot for Season 5, viewers were indeed treated to a shot of Kevin wearing a face mask in the trailer for the season, rooting it firmly in 2020. Though this also made things a bit awkward for the previous season's flash-forward story to the triplets' 40th birthday, which is of course completely maskless. The episode portrays all the family members as having done a 20 day quarantine to be able to get together without masks, though it doesn't even try to explain Rebecca's journey around town.

The first one is speculative but I'm not sure about the second. It might fall under "special circonstances" thought I think wearing mask isn't going to be outfashioned anytime soon...

Intentionally set in the Present Day does not count.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I have added the waterbed example to the bottom of the Other folder in UnintentionalPeriodPiece.Special Cases.

Let me know if it needs touching up.

By the way, UnintentionalPeriodPiece.Special Cases is getting long.

I recommend having Family Guy, Simpsons, and South Park have their own Unintentional Period Piece pages to keep the Western Animation folder manageable as those three are textbook examples of contemporary long-running American adult animated sitcoms that heavily reference contemporary (primarily American) politics and contemporary (primarily American) pop culture.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 5th 2020 at 12:31:38 PM

Kirby is awesome.

Trivia.Animaniacs 2020

• Unintentional Period Piece: The first episode openly acknowledges that the show is being written two years before its release, preventing any truly current cultural references. In particular they point out that Donald Trump might not be President of the United States anymore, which indeed is going to happen come January 2021.^note He was still President at the time of the first season's release, but was not re-elected, although he has been doing his damnest to dispute the results and that's all we'll be saying there.

Edited by Silverblade2 on Nov 20th 2020 at 12:24:06 PM