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
I'd also support a move to Darth Wiki—the name is vitriolic enough that it feels like it belongs there, and the content even more so.
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Short-Term Projects herald
DarthWiki.What An Idiot. Sounds about right.
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!
Frolaytia X Qwenthur of Heavy Object
I guess it wouldn't bother me.
IPP Wick Check created.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Perhaps you should bring this up in TRS?
Here's the last TRS for this trope. It was about cutting but the votes were too split to go forward with it.
I think a Darth Wiki move would be a valid compromise, keeping it for those inclined but getting the redundancy and complaining out of pages.
Anything else to do?
After coming across a few other complainy What An Idiot posts, I had a thought: could this become a In-Universe only trope? That is, character A does something stupid and then character B exclaims "You're such an idiot!".
It's just a thought; plus, I'm not even sure how it'd be different from You Fool!. Maybe if it'd be less about anger and more about exasperation?
Anyway, I'd support a TRS thread about this one, or moving it to Darth Wiki. Either sounds good. - Fly, robin, fly! - ...I'm trying!
Frolaytia X Qwenthur of Heavy Object
![[tdown]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_down_emoticon_3571.png "[thumb down]"){kind=small}
To it being an in-universe only trope.
I'm only content with this one just becoming a DW trope.
Edited by MasterJoseph on Aug 8th 2019 at 2:56:18 AM
IPP Wick Check created.
Short-Term Projects herald
Please elaborate.
I believe any In-Universe expanses can be put under specific Stupidity Tropes (like Enraged by Idiocy).
Frolaytia X Qwenthur of Heavy Object
ME agreed.
I just realized the audience response to stupidity is that they did something stupid seems like People Sit on Chairs. (And that they don't have this reaction when done by established idiots shows it's redundancy with Idiot Ball.)
WhatAnIdiot.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic
- "School Daze - Part 1":
- Twilight is given the opportunity to open a school for friendship by the Equestria Education Association. However, she is informed by Chancellor Neighsay to do things "by the book". She gives his way a shot, only for it to prove wholly ineffectual.
You'd Expect: For her to buck the book, do things her own way and listen to her friends.
Instead: She continues to force her friends to teach boring lessons to the new students.
- Twilight is given the opportunity to open a school for friendship by the Equestria Education Association. However, she is informed by Chancellor Neighsay to do things "by the book". She gives his way a shot, only for it to prove wholly ineffectual.
Unless anyone objects, I intend to remove since Twilight being bookish to a fault is a well established flaw so there's no reason You'd Expect her to do differently. (If You'd Expect her to know better by now, it should state when she learned better.)
If if we move to Darth Wiki, would entries like this be allowed due to it being more just for fun as opposed to serious? (Dethroning Moments are also Darth, but have more stringent rules than most tropes.)
YMMV.The Dark Crystal Age Of Resistance:
- What An Idiot: After learning the truth about the Skeksis, Mayrin somehow thinks it’s a good idea to personally confront them and announce she’ll be leading a rebellion against them, with no apparent plan if they do anything besides just letting her go. This goes exactly as well as you’d think.
Besides lacking the You'd Expect requirement. This can be moved to Too Dumb to Live with nothing of value being lost. Move?
Sounds good to me.
- In the season 2 finale Bohman captures the denizens of LINK VRAINS and prevents them from logging out so he can use them as Wetware CPUs. SOL Technologies alerts the media and they warn everyone to stay as far away from Link VRAINS as possible. What does the general public do in response? Why, they start logging in en masse so they can see what's happening for themselves, of course! Sadly, this is Truth in Television, and exactly what Bohman was counting on to happen.
If it's Truth in Television and something Bohman expected, why would the audience have expected anything different?
That's more an example of villain-exploited Bile Fascination and Just as Planned, isn't it? Cut it.
Short-Term Projects herald
Found these on YMMV.Avengers Endgame. Second-level bullet points are my comments, not in the original.
- While Thanos is a full-on Genius Bruiser and constantly averts this trope, his final action is surprisingly nearsighted. After wrestling the Gauntlet from Tony and locking it back in place on his hand, he should have realized that Tony actually ripped the Stones out given that there was no overwhelming surge of power that coursed through his body...the same one he felt twice in the span of only a few minutes. However, he only realizes this just after he tries snapping his fingers, only for nothing to happen whatsoever. Although, given the entire war he endured and his clear smug glee at having seemingly wiped out all of his enemies, it's rather apparent that his arrogance and fatigue was probably clouding his judgement. And of course, given that Tony was able to use the Stones without the need of a Gauntlet at all (just his armor alone), it was a complete blindside move that even Thanos didn't expect, and sooner realizing the Stones were out probably wouldn't have saved him either.
- Basically, Thanos is tired and caught off guard. This does not make him stupid and it feels like a case of adding a Justifying Edit when the example should have just been removed.
- The Time Heist is intricately designed under the constraint of the team's limited supply of Pym particles, leaving absolutely no room for error. However, it's not until after the original plan has been derailed that anyone suggests going back in time to steal more Pym particles, something you'd expect to have come up at least once during the prep phase.
- This one seems fine, but the wording of the next entry starts off by mentioning this one...
- There's also the even stupider mistake that would have made the Time Heist a lot simpler: send Thor back in time with Stormbreaker to just after his past self shoved the axe into Thanos's chest, chop off his arm that has the gauntlet filled with all six Infinity Stones, take this severed arm back to the main timeline, and extract the Infinity Stones before performing the second snap. Not only does this use only two lots of Pym Particles per trip, meaning that it can be attempted twelve times according to how many particles the team actually has; and not only does it create only one alternate timeline which happens to be a good ending to Infinity War, with there being no way of Thanos coming back to the present to attack them since he couldn't go anywhere with no Infinity Stones and an axe in his chest; but there is no way nobody should have thought of this: Steve, Natasha, Rhodey, Thor, Rocket and Bruce were all there when this was going on, and Thor himself personally drove the axe into Thanos's chest, and remembers this even when trying to drink his memories away, meaning that there is little excuse for any of the plot to happen. note
- First off all, that idea is more of a big brain moment, so I'd say it would have been a "what a genius!" moment had they done it, rather than a "what an idiot!" moment in that they didn't. Second, this also seems to be include justifying natter.
Much like with Critical Research Failure, I say that if you come across a What An Idiot example and feel and urge to make a Justifying Edit, just delete the example.
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!
Yeah, delete the first and last ones. As for the middle one, how's this for a rewrite:
- Since all the people who know how to make Pym Particles are dead, the heroes have a very small supply, thus putting a sharp limit on their ability to time travel. The problem is, there is nothing preventing them from using one of their limited jumps to travel to a time where the Pym Particles are available and stealing a bunch in order to have more options. Made more blatant because Steve and Tony end up doing exactly that when their part of the Time Heist fails.
The following are two entries for RWBY. They've actually been re-added without edit reason after having been removed for not being the trope. As to the entries themselves, they have been padded out a bit from what I removed in March, but they don't address the basic problem with them being on the page in the first place.
So, I want a second opinion about whether they should be examples of the trope. I'll explain in Bold text my issues with validity of the examples as currently written:
- RWBY:
- In Volume 5, Yang tracks down her estranged mother, bandit leader Raven Branwen, in order to use her mother's semblance to find Qrow, who's currently watching over Ruby. Raven however doesn't want Yang getting involved in the conflict between Ozpin and Salem, in which Qrow is a key player on Ozpin's side.
- Raven actually raises the subject of the conflict between Ozpin and Salem because she wants Yang to stay with her. It's not about preventing Yang getting involved in the Secret War. It's Raven being selfish (selfishness is a key character trait of Raven's).
- You'd Expect: That Raven would figure out that Yang obviously cares about her little sister, and keep this in mind when trying to persuade her. At the very least, you'd think she wouldn't do the stuff mentioned below if she genuinely wanted to win Yang over.
- The show makes it clear that Raven is aware of how much Ruby means to Yang — she just doesn't seem to like it.
- Instead: Raven tells Yang that Ruby is "a lost cause" if she's with Qrow, and tries to convince her to abandon Ruby. She does talk about Ozpin's duplicity as well as the Ozpin-Salem confict, but she consistently acts as though finding Ruby and staying out of it are mutually exclusive.
- The show has made it very clear that Raven's right: Ruby is so determined to help that finding Ruby and staying out of the war is indeed mutually exclusive.
- Result: Raven's attempts at getting through to Yang by warning her about Qrow, Ozpin and Salem all fall on deaf ears, since Yang's sole concern is to find her sister, and she knows and trusts Qrow far more than she does Raven. Raven eventually just gives up and offers to portal Yang to Qrow and Ruby, while making clear that if Yang accepts, the two of them will be at loggerheads the next time they meet. Yang takes the offer, and after getting Qrow and Ozpin to confirm what Raven told her, she decides to stick with them to protect her sister, in exchange for them not keeping any more secrets.
- Raven isn't trying to warn Yang, she's trying to bribe Yang into staying with her. She's not even subtle about her goal: she keeps saying to Yang that if Yang agrees to stay with Raven, she'll give Yang all the answers and more. Her warning about Ozpin actually does sink in because it's Yang's determination to keep questioning and attacking Ozpin's decisions that leads to the blow-up described in the next entry below.
- In Volume 5, Yang tracks down her estranged mother, bandit leader Raven Branwen, in order to use her mother's semblance to find Qrow, who's currently watching over Ruby. Raven however doesn't want Yang getting involved in the conflict between Ozpin and Salem, in which Qrow is a key player on Ozpin's side.
In short, the above entry is misrepresenting the scene (Raven fails to warn Yang about Ozpin) when it's really a different scenario (Raven wants Yang to stay with her) that can never succeed because the plot needs Yang to reunite with Ruby and get involved in the show's main storyline.
- In Volume 6, the heroes have retrieved the Relic of Knowledge, and plan to take it to their ally General Ironwood in Atlas. This is tricker than it sounds because the Relic draws Grimm to it, a fact Ozpin knows well.
- You'd Expect: Ozpin would warn the rest of the heroes of this, not just because they might want to modify their travel plans accordingly, but because he'd promised not to hide any more information from them.
- Ozpin has been consistently shown to fear the release of any information that might increase negative emotions enough to attract the Grimm. When confronted about the Relic, he states he's afraid of the group negativity it would cause and describes the Relic's attraction as 'faint but undeniable'. The audience and heroes don't like that response, but it's consistent characterisation.
- The fandom knows he's an Exact Words character and spotted at the time Yang demanded he keep no more secrets or she'd walk that he didn't promise not to hide any more information. He simply said 'Understood'.
- It's not clear what alternative travel plan the troper thinks would work. Grimm exist on land, in the wilds, in the air and in the sea. There is no travel plan possible that avoids the issue. Now, different arrangements could minimise the number of people exposed, but this 'You'd Expect' entry doesn't go there.
- Instead: He says nothing, out of fear that knowledge of this fact would cause increased anxiety within the group, and lead to more risk of Grimm attacks.
- As noted above, this is consistent characterisation for Ozpin. He is much more afraid of attracting the Grimm through negativity than any other character, even other experienced adult Huntsmen. We don't know why. He also says the Relic's attraction is 'faint', but we have no idea how faint that is because the characters don't explore it.
- Result: In their ignorance, the heroes take the Relic onboard a packed public train, putting dozens - if not hundreds - of innocent people in danger when a massive horde of Grimm attack it, and meaning that Ozpin has to reveal the secret anyway, at the worst possible time. It also means that, when Ozpin tries to convince Ruby to give him the Relic, it comes after yet another bit of dishonesty from Ozpin, ultimately resulting in Ruby not co-operating and using the Relic to find out everything else Ozpin's hiding from them. The knowledge she and the others obtain, particularly the part about Salem supposedly being unbeatable, shatters the group's faith in Ozpin.
- The train is outfitted with Grimm defences and has trained Huntsmen on board (albeit fairly incompetent ones), so the train is obviously geared up for potential Grimm attacks on this railway line regardless of whether or not the Relic is on board. The show actually never claims the Relic is why the attack occurred, but it is the fandom's primary interpretation so that's why this entry assumes that.
- Ozpin volunteers the information as soon as he heard what the heroes' plan is for saving the train: it relies on masking the emotions of the people on board to make them 'invisible' to the Grimm, so they'll no longer have anything to be attracted to. Ozpin immediately tells them the plan won't work because the Relic will attract them.
- The rest of the entry isn't about taking the Relic on the train (which is what it initially claimed to be about) but about further acts of dishonesty after they're off the train that lead to things coming to a head. The entry initially claimed to be about the specific incidence of hiding the Relic's Grimm attraction and getting on a train with it, not 'Ozpin has multiple examples of dishonest behaviour and eventually the heroes lose their patience with it'.
- Most importantly, this entry assumes that, if the heroes had all known in advance that the Relic attracts Grimm, they'd have never travelled by train. Yet, Ozpin did know and still made the decision to travel by train. Why did he make that decision? We don't know. The heroes were too angry to explore that question. Had there been a proper discussion in advance of taking the train, would the heroes have done things differently? We actually don't know.
In short: the entry is turning an in-universe argument about Ozpin's behaviour into a YMMV situation; however, 'Audience agrees with heroes at a moment when the story wants the audience to side with the heroes against Ozpin' is not the What An Idiot trope.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 13th 2019 at 12:54:10 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
I hate that "you'd expect/instead" formatting... it just seems so aggressively negative. Are we still using it?
First example: Yeah, that's just someone complaining about Raven's character, and missing the point about her cowardice, selfishness, and overall hypocrisy.
Second example: Again, all just complaining about Ozpin's intentional and apparent flaws.
For both of these, a number of the points are raised in-universe, making them examples of Calling the Old Man Out and What the Hell, Hero?. They're already listed there. Well, Ozpin's are, this particular instance of Yang yelling at Raven might not be.
On the trope page, yes. On YMMV pages, no.
I'm not a fan of the layout either.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Short-Term Projects herald
I think the "You'd Expect/Instead/Result" formatting was done in order to make it more clear what the characters should have done, as discussed in the 2017 TRS thread. That said, I agree that in practice, all it does is pad out examples.
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!
Yeah, I'm the guy who added the two RWBY examples. Though I'd hardly call it an "Edit War". Someone took them down once, and I put them back up once after adding more details that I considered necessary based on why they were removed, and they remained undisturbed for months.
So for the first of the examples:
- I'd hardly call it just "complaining about Raven's character, and missing the point about her cowardice, selfishness, and overall hypocrisy." Really, I'd say that Raven's character/personality is besides the point here. The point I was making from the start was that, whether Raven's trying to get Yang to stay out of the Ozpin/Salem conflict or "wants Yang to stay with her", as you put it, telling her to give up on Ruby was never going to work in either of those scenarios.
- As for the fact that "Ruby is so determined to help that finding [her] and staying out of the war is indeed mutually exclusive.", that's certainly true, but as far as I recall, Raven doesn't know Ruby enough to be certain of that. I felt it would have made more sense for Raven to say something along the lines of "You might want to try talking Ruby out of helping", instead of just saying "If she's with Qrow, she's already a lost cause".
For the second example:
- I'll concede that the train was prepared for potential Grimm attacks. Though regarding the bit about how "different arrangements could minimise the number of people exposed, but this 'You'd Expect' entry doesn't go there." I didn't think I needed to put it there, seeing as I already alluded to it down below in the 'Result' part: "In their ignorance, the heroes take the Relic onboard a packed public train, putting dozens - if not hundreds - of innocent people in danger when a massive horde of Grimm attack it". That was the point I was attempting to make; the heroes might have wanted to try and reduce potential casualties, perhaps by trying to get an airship, or a less busy train, or even just travelling alone again.
- As for keeping this particular secret, after he'd already told them about Salem, the maidens and relics, as well as his ability to reincarnate and give people the ability to turn into birds, the information that the relics could draw Grimm to them hardly felt like an earth-shaking revelation anymore.
- Ozpin's fears over what would happen if he told the others the truth about the relic ultimately felt very much overblown, since despite having the relic and knowing that it draws Grimm, the heroes never encountered any more Grimm until the finale. Well, none besides the Apathy, but they were more tied to a specific location that the heroes coincidentally stumbled upon.
Edited by jaydude on Oct 14th 2019 at 7:28:28 PM
@RoundRobin: Unlike What An Idiot, Idiot Plot is potentially salvageable as a trope. Make it so Idiot Plot requires at least two different idiotic decisions and at least two characters being idiots (Just Eat Gilligan is when everyone makes the same idiotic decision of ignoring something that could fix the problem).
Fixing Idiot Plot is desirable, but best done as a separate project. Fixing What An Idiot is big enough that this should be done before focusing on anything else.
Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jul 29th 2019 at 12:23:21 PM