Misused: Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped

The hard part is determining how we could know that the thing needs to be delivered in such a heavy handed manner.

Would it be forced to be context-heavy (with citations and such) like Unfortunate Implications?

It's already a YMMV trope so I don't see the issue with subjectivity here.

edited 15th Mar '17 12:55:59 PM by shoboni

A part of the subjectivity issue here is that it becomes almost a complete duplicate of Anvilicious.

Not really.

That trope is for any time the message is heavy handed, this is an audience reaction for when someone thinks it was heavy handed AND done right.

It's entirely possible for tropes to have an overlap.

But when it becomes 100% overlap....

I highly doubt it's anywhere NEAR 100% overlap.

Being citation-reliant would help.

Maybe not yet, but if this trope is The Same But More Specific (incluing But Done Well as more specific), than whats stopping them from adding the same example to both tropes, to Entry Pimp or complain about the work or its historical context?

Maybe a wickcheck might be useful here for determining the overlap

edited 15th Mar '17 2:11:01 PM by MorningStar1337

You can't make massive changes to wiki pages because of what MIGHT happen, that's not how this works.

I also dislike citation reliant (like we did with Unfortunate Implications) on YMMV tropes because it tries to weight opinions in order to give the illusion of objective fact to subjective tropes.

edited 15th Mar '17 2:55:38 PM by shoboni

@24: So, SANTBD is for heavy-handed morals that are culturally relevant at the time of its release?

I don't have time to do a proper wick check right now, but a quick read of the examples in both pages shows that a lot of entries are simply "this work/episode has An Aesop". Sometimes, there's an additional context to say that the Aesop is not being presented subtly. But while I didn't find many overlap between the two tropes, the way the entries are written don't seem to be distinct from each other.

The purpose of YMMV subpage is to document the general audience reaction regarding a work or character, but is unfortunately often misused for a place for soapboxing individual opinions. Which is why some "tropes" that are inherently critical requires citation, because people tend to use them as a complaining outlet.

edited 15th Mar '17 6:28:31 PM by Adept

I think the requirement would distinguish SANTBD from Anvilicious, and I think that distinction is already present in the descriptions. I haven't done a wick check yet, either

We were discussing what the differences were between the two tropes, and people kept saying that SANTBD was "the same as Anvilicious but done well" or something along those lines. I think making the "historical context" a requirement for SANTBD would saliently distinguish one trope from the other. I'm not saying it'll solve all this article's problems, but I think it's a start.

Edit: But yes, "culturally relevant at the time of its release" was what I was thinking.

edited 15th Mar '17 6:42:44 PM by WaterBlap

That might be a valid way to distinguish the two tropes, but doing so would require a complete revamp for the examples' write-up, since almost none of them mention any historical backdrop that is relevant to the aesop/anvil it delivers.

As I recall—not sure how to check—Don't Shoot the Message used to be part of Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped.

That said, it might be best long-term to have Anvilicious be "An Aesop meets Viewers Are Morons — a moral is used as a blunt instrument on viewers" and make this (with a necessary rename) into basically "An Aesop as an important/not subtle part of the story."

That would make the difference be how you may be left feeling by the delivery of the moral, not how much you might feel the moral needs saying—especially since part of the reason Don't Shoot the Message had been part of Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped is because some people feel no moral benefits from use as an assault weapon.

So...

• Don't Shoot the Message: "Good" Aesop delivered "badly"
• Anvillicious: Heavy handed delivery of a moral
• SANTBD: Heavy handed delivery of a moral is good, and necessary

Right?

SANTBD would/should be "An Aesop delivered in neither subtle nor a heavy-handed manner."

Take the view that 'done well' means "The moral is a key, important part of the story, preventing it from being subtle, but is not delivered like they are trying to bring enlightenment to the poor benighted savages that are the audience."

Nothing says it can't heavy-handed, the point is that the moral is delivered in a heavy-handled manner because it needs to be

But without any additional qualification about how the message is delivered, then the trope becomes simply "this work has morals", and that's already under An Aesop.

These tropes are specifically for when the moral is handled in an extremely unsubtle and heavy handled fashion that smashes the viewer/reader/player/listener over the head with An Aesop. This can end up being hamfisted and impossible to take seriously when done wrong, thus why we have a trope for when it's specifically done to good effect.

Not just when the work has a moral in general

@34, No. There are many YMMV tropes that are purely audience reaction and we can't go around trying to apply objective criteria to EVERYTHING with subjective opinion is a big part of media analysis.

edited 17th Mar '17 1:13:04 AM by shoboni

If it's merely going to be heavy-handed, then this trope needs to go—leaving aside the whole issue of the morality of blugeoning anybody with a moral and the basic fact that some people consider heavy-handed moralizing to be completely incompatible with 'well done,' there is a very basic problem with 'good.'

Namely, remember the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement? Remember the observation that if it ends up here or under Anvilicious seems to really depend on if the moral is something the troper agrees with?

"This work has a moral as a major plot point" at least would allow some version of this to be kept and avoid the problems inherit in judging if a moral is 'deserving' of it.

If we were talking about sermons—this would be the moralistic sermon where even non-believers are pretty okay with staying for, Anvilicious would be when the sermon is offensive enough that everybody but those who agree leave, and DSTM would be when even the choir is too offended to stick around.

No it doesn't.

Both these are really old and heavily wicked tropes that haven't caused problems yet and that you'd need A DAMN good reason to mess with. Especially when ANTBD is already an YMMV trope and audience reaction

One again, tropes that are heavily subjective can overlap.

Now you're just talking wildly speculating on what COULD go wrong when nothing has of this today.

edited 17th Mar '17 1:22:34 PM by shoboni

What are you referring to when you say "Both these are really old and heavily wicked tropes that haven't caused problems yet"?

The Anvil tropes.

Semptmus said in the first page the trope this very thread is about has 12,000 inbounds.

edited 17th Mar '17 2:18:13 PM by shoboni

Ah. My confusion stems from the fact that neither are tropes and they both have caused problems.

That's your opinion, the massive amounts of wicks and inbounds say otherwise.

edited 17th Mar '17 2:30:00 PM by shoboni

Errrrr... high wicks does not mean quality. Remember that Fetish Fuel and Troper Tales were pages with the highest inbounds which was exactly the problem.

ETA: Or do you mean the Not A Trope thing? Because that's not opinion either. I wasn't trying to be snarky, I was straight up explaining why I couldn't tell what two tropes you were referring to.

edited 17th Mar '17 2:44:38 PM by Larkmarn