What An Idiot cleanup

I've mentioned this a few times before, but have never acted upon due to lack of support. I think that we need to cleanup our What an Idiot! pages.

The problem is how people here are defining idiocy. We have a few tropers here who are defining idiocy as a mistake in general. The problem is that everyone makes mistakes. Smart people make mistakes. Mistakes are not idiocy. For it to be idiotic, there needs to be a very clear and obvious choice. There isn't always a clear an obvious choice though,

I'm not putting this in the repair shop because I don't think that the trope itself needs fixing, but rather examples need to be removed. Remember that mistakes do not count as idiocy.

Note: Per TRS, What an Idiot! was moved to Darth Wiki and made Flame Bait, so the following needs to be done:

• Examples must follow the "You'd expect"/"Instead" format.
• Examples on non-Flame Bait pages (mainly YMMV subpages) should be moved to a What an Idiot! subpage if they follow the proper format, otherwise they should be deleted.
• Inline wicks (such as potholes in examples for things other than What an Idiot!) should probably be deleted.

Here are the wicks for Main.What An Idiot, which was turned into a redirect until all remaining wicks use the DarthWiki/ namespace, after which the Main/ redirect is to be cut.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 29th 2022 at 3:03:49 AM

And how do you draw a line between "mistakes" and "idiocy"?

Well, it is pretty hard to define what that line is. What I can best say is that the difference between what is idiocy and what is not relies on three factors: how in character is it, how obvious is the alternate solution, and does it really affect anything at all. Unfortunately, the answer is not all that clear to me either. It's just that I get this feeling that when I read some of entries, and I get a feeling that it's not merely someone making a stupid decision.

Something else to keep in mind is the context of the situation. If a character is in a crunch and doesn't have time to think things through, their decision can look idiotic to an observer (or in hindsight) when it makes sense at that point of time. Or they were just pressured into it without being able to think about the consequences.

In-Universe knowledge about the consequences of a character's actions is also important. Some entires have audience bias where a character could not possibly foresee what's dumb about something but the viewer can.

edited 26th Dec '16 1:18:34 AM by Karxrida

The problem is that this trope is extremely subjective, even for a YYMV trope.

When a character in a TV show makes a bad decision, one viewer may be in a forgiving mood and think it's a mistake anybody could make — there's nothing idiotic about it. Another viewer may facepalm and cry out "What an idiot" at the very same action.

There's a spectrum from "easy mistake to make" to "totally idiotic mistake". At the ends of the spectrum, we can be justified in saying that the forgiving viewer is too forgiving or that the unforgiving viewer is unreasonable. But there's a very large grey zone here.

edited 11th Jan '17 2:09:43 AM by GnomeTitan

I would also like to point out that the laconic says "A character does something so idiotic that the audience (and sometimes other characters) won't be sympathetic.". It's a big reason why I want to purge examples.

I'm planning on purging WhatAnIdiot.Star Vs The Forces Of Evil soon. If anyone has any specific examples that they would like to have removed, please let me know.

From the Bad Writing Index:

• What An Idiot: Characters should not make unrealistically bad decisions to drive the plot.

What is "unrealistic" in fiction?

What humans don't do? Changes in the mental faculties of humans to the point where the parameters change are fairly uncommon in fiction.

Reality Is Unrealistic.

Soo... Can this thread be brought back?

I noticed that sometimes people use the trope to describe stupid actions by characters who are meant to be idiots.

I agree with ~Karxrida. I've found several entries on WhatAnIdiot.Steven Universe alone where the character's emotions, personality, and the current situation explain why they did what they did.

And this might just be me, but considering the rampant misuse of the trope, it might just be best to give it the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard treatment and have all examples go through a thread before being added.

edited 25th Jun '18 11:13:04 PM by Crossover-Enthusiast

From WhatAnIdiot.Steven Universe:

• Keystone Motel:
  • Greg takes Steven and Garnet on a "business" vacation to a motel so he can sell some equipment and earn income. Ruby and Sapphire have split up because they both disagree on whether or not to forgive Pearl for tricking him into becoming Sardonyx. Ruby is furious and ranting, while Sapphire is repressing her anger. Their emotions are causing their powers — heat and ice respectively — to lash out in any vicinity they occupy.
    You'd Expect: They'd make sure that while their powers are out of control that they would warn Steven, or try to rein it in for his sake.
    Instead: Each gem is so wrapped up in their anger and drama that they don't realize they're physically hurting Steven with their powers. Garnet mentioned earlier, mind, that she gets dozens of visions where she sees Steven hurt or killed, but apart the Gems can't seem to comprehend that.
    The Result: Ruby nearly boils Steven alive in the motel pool when he happily invites her for a swim, but she doesn't notice due to walking around in circles and ranting. Sapphire reacts stoically when Steven tells her that she made their room icy cold and froze over the toilet, so that he has to pee outside. Greg stays out of the feuding but tries to calm everyone down over breakfast the next day.
  • Then there is breakfast. Ruby is still sulking. Sapphire is still acting holier-than-thou.
    You'd Expect: If Ruby's not feeling up to breakfast, then she would sit it out. She doesn't have to spend all the vacation time if she needs some space.
    Instead: Ruby comes along, and pouts in the booth. When Greg and Steven offer her food, that plus her resentment set her off and she breaks their table and breakfast plates in rage.
    The Result: Steven hits his Rage Breaking Point, lets his breakfast fall to the floor and walks out in tears. Sapphire and Ruby immediately stop their fighting to go comfort him, and they admit they have been ignoring his pain in favor of theirs. Any money Greg made from selling the equipment goes into paying for the damage to the restaurant. As Steven puts it, Garnet brought the home awfulness with her, and is it his fault?

Notes:

• Greg isn't going to Keystone to sell equipment, he's going to buy it - specifically, some new brushes for the car wash.
• The water wasn't molten. It was boiling, sure, but it wasn't molten.
• The last "The Result" sounds a bit complainy and misleads Steven's remark; he asks if he brought the awful with them, not Ruby and Sapphire. The way the example phrases it makes it seem like one of them blamed him and he retorted back.

The whole thing is misuse. The whole point of the episode is that Ruby and Sapphire's strong emotions resulted in them not being rational. Letting your emotions cloud your judgment doesn't make you an idiot.

Other bad examples from that page:

• Onion Trade just sounds like "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot, since the obvious solution is mentioned at the end.
• The first example from Island Adventure is about a character whose judgment was being clouded by emotions.
• Love Letters is about two kids trying to solve a romance issue. It's pretty easy to understand why they'd be lacking in experience in this area and mess up.
• Joy Ride is about Steven succumbing to peer pressure.
• We Need To Talk is once again about a character being emotional.
• In Catch and Release and other episodes, Peridot is presented as being out-of-touch with Earth's culture. She's just behaving in the way she was taught to on Homeworld.
• The first example on Message Received is just a case of Poor Communication Kills. The second is about Yellow Diamond choosing to destroy the Earth instead of harvesting it for resources, which considering how it houses the rebellion might not be the worst idea if they're not starved for resources.
• Gemcation is yet another case of a character's judgment being clouded by emotions.

Thank you. Though I always thought the "Onion Trade" example was correct, just with a lampshade thrown on. And Homeworld is in a resource crisis, though Yellow would still fall into the clouded by emotions category considering what happened to Pink.

I also feel it's important to mention that most of the examples on the page are from either Wayward Totodile or Jayalaw. I've brought several of their entries to the Is this an example? thread, and out of all of them, one got rewritten (Gemcation) while the rest got cut.

What An Idiot is an Audience Reaction, which means it can't be Played With. Therefore, if it's Lampshaded, it's not an example.

Oh, okay. Didn't know that.

Here's something that's bugged me. since this trope is never applied to characters who are established idiots, how is this any different than Idiot Ball?

I don't see how this trope can exist as anything but a vessel for complaining.

Bringing up this example from Nine Lives (2016):

• What An Idiot: Tom's family, when they get him as a cat, decide to put his litter box right next to his food.

That needs to be formatted correctly. And even if it was, I'm sure even a regular cat could tell the difference between their food and their bathroom.

Well, it is a pretty classic cat raising mistake. Cats get very stressed about that because they instinctively want to eat in a different place than where they eliminate. I don't know that it would rise to the level of What An Idiot, though. Heck, real life is replete with examples of people who do that sort of thing because they don't know better.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 1st 2018 at 2:24:16 PM

I got namedropped so I suppose I'll throw my two cents into the ring.

Yes, I made a lot of examples on that page. I mainly reworded previous examples that had been cut for reasons of "not worded correctly", so I attempted to reword them so that the issue wasn't the wording. I had also been the main person to combine the What An Idiot sections of both the YMMV and the main What An Idiot section together, so some of those examples (such as the Joy Ride one, sans the Garnet example) were from the original namespace.

Regarding that one, since Garnet has a subset of future vision and therefore could theoretically have some sense of foresight, I'd say that it might count.

I'd love to know more specifics of what does and doesn't count as "too emotional" for a What an Idiot example so I can contribute to some cleanup. The two seem to be closely related and I wasn't sure of a "standard" so to speak, as long as it seemed reasonable that there was a mistake.

Here's a bump and the stuff from WhatAnIdiot.Steven Universe's General folder.

• Gems are Nigh-Invulnerable humanoid rock creatures from outer space. Rose Quartz led a rebellion to protect humans and all organic life on Earth from being wiped out, since a Gem colony destroys planets from the inside out.
  You'd Expect: Given Rose's love for humans that she and the surviving Crystal Gems would learn all about them, namely that humans believe in autonomy if they aren't captured and conditioned over five thousand years to live in a zoo, and that they are relatively fragile compared to Gems.
  Instead: The Gems isolate themselves from humanity after the war and don't bother to learn more than cursory facts about them. Despite the fact that Rose is protecting humans and the Earth, she knows little to nothing about them. Pearl mentions that Rose has had human lovers, but Rose didn't know that humans grew from babies for a while, for example, or that tiny humans are "fragile and soft".
  As A Result: Rose accidentally endangers baby Sour Cream's life by leaving him unoccupied on a Ferris wheel, and later on when Rose "dies" to have Steven, a Gem-human hybrid, the Gems have to work with her lover Greg to figure out how to rear a baby and help him grow.
• After Steven is born, the Gems and Greg alternate in caring for him. He lives with his dad at the van and It's A Wash until the Gems and Greg build a house extension of the temple suited for raising a child. Greg makes sure Steven is well cared for, and has educated him a fair amount about the Earth.
  You'd Expect: The Gems to educate Steven about their culture to the fullest extent of their ability, despite their guilt, as he gets older. There is a whole planet fathoms away with different music, language, writing, and history. There's also the fact that Steven doesn't go to regular school, so he should at least get more of an education.
  Instead: More often than not, Steven is Locked Out of the Loop. The Gems operate on a need-to-know basis, especially since Steven is a goodhearted Friend to All Living Things. In Season One, much of what he learns comes from missions where his guardians dismantle dangerous technology or Corrupted Gems, and it gets to the point where he nearly has an anxiety attack on learning what his mother did to Pink Diamond. Even after this, it takes great effort for the Gems to communicate with Steven.
  As a Result: Steven kicks off multiple arcs due to his ignorance (such as freeing Lapis from the mirror, alerting enemy Homeworld Gems to the Crystal Gems' location) and his mounting annoyance on not being told anything (and subsequently trying to find the answers himself) is the prime cause of the Zoo arc.
• Garnet has Future Vision. This allows her to see multiple futures at the same time, often at a dizzying rate.
  You'd Expect: She would use this more often than she does, especially in dangerous situations. For example, when Peridot is coming to Earth with an unknown ally and upgraded technology.
  Instead: She doesn't, especially to see things that could threaten the Gems' lives. Granted, Steven has tried her powers and knows that sometimes there is no happy outcome, and there are some things her Future Vision cannot predict, but still.
• Meanwhile, the Diamond Authority has conquered countless planets. In fact, Earth is the only colony we see that was an utter failure thanks to Rose Quartz. Yellow Diamond reveals she has no regard for organic life, the way Rose does.
  You'd Expect: They would keep tabs on sentient life forms, organic or otherwise, especially since humans are chaotic beings. A Peridot who is trained to keep reports would be good at the job, for example. With the humans, it's revealed that Pink Diamond kept a human zoo which reveals a relatively small sample size, for example.
  Instead: Diamonds and Gems in general treat humans and other organic as pets at best and nuisances at most. In addition, they don't bother learning more than cursory facts they observe; Peridot makes her first report on humans based on Steven telling her the names of his friends, and she assumes they are different types of humans, the way there are different types of Gems. Blue Diamond in season four, after she talks to Greg, decides to take him without his consent to the people zoo to "save" him from the Cluster. Yellow Diamond then tries to cheer up Blue Diamond by having an Aquamarine and Topaz kidnap Steven's friends, to bring them to the zoo. If not for the duo being a Knight of Cerebus pair, they would have been found and busted immediately by the townsfolk and the Crystal Gems.
  The Result: Homeworld is completely unequipped to deal with a rebellious human like Lars, who comes back from the dead and can No-Sell most of the detectors because he lacks a Gem. He ends up busting out with refugee Off-Color Gems, stealing the fastest Gem ship in Homeworld, and making their soldiers look ridiculous. It also means they have less effective means of dealing with Steven, a Gem-human hybrid, who flees a courtroom on realizing that the Diamonds won't spare Lars, who was captured for the zoo and is used as evidence of Rose Quartz's guilt.

I had an Idea, make What An Idiot a Just for Fun or Darth Wiki page. As a trope, it's redundant with all the other stupidity tropes and only exits for extra complaining.

Moving it would let us keep examples by those who enjoy such.

In-universe examples should be put under more specific tropes.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jul 29th 2019 at 12:08:00 PM

Would you consider adding Idiot Plot to your suggestion? It attracts just as much negativity and inane comments, if not more.

Edited by RoundRobin on Jul 29th 2019 at 9:57:46 PM