Needs Help: Refrain From Assuming

Hoo boy, this one is a mess.

First, this is not a Main/ page in the slightest, since it clearly involves other people mistaken about the song title.. However, the examples vary between vague "the title of this song is X, not Y lyric" (YMMV audience reaction) and "this media reported the song title as X" or "another artist titled their cover of the song based on a lyric saying X, instead of the original title" (more along the lines of Trivia). Then there are examples that don't even fit the definition - in other words misuse. It's not heavy, but it's there - mostly cases of "people think X lyric is the title, when it's really Y lyric". The laconic being broader than the actual definition in the description is probably related to this - but I'm not sure if this is part of the cause or is the symptom. Some example cleanup is needed, along with clarifying the definition.

The definition itself currently seems to be "audience can't remember the Word Salad Title, Non-Appearing Title, or title that appears only once in the song, so they assume the title is something repeated through the lyrics". but it never states that completely...yeah, the description needs some straightening out, which is probably why examples are a muddled mess. And then there's the trope name itself - while a clever pun for those who know music, it doesn't exactly indicate music-based trope, or even tell that the trope has to do with titles of songs. (This isn't a major issue compared to the other stuff, but...)

So there's a YMMV item here, along with some stuff that needs to be filed under Trivia (possibly even a new Trivia page), some example cleanup, and maybe a rename to boot. Quite a bit of work to be done. So...how should we go about this?

edited 5th Mar '17 8:50:56 AM by TotemicHero

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Opening...

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Of all the tropes on Title Confusion, this one and The "The" Title Confusion are the only ones not marked YMMV (which makes 3/5 YMMV). I find that they're all Audience Reactions, since they're specifically about how people confuse the titles in various ways, rather than what the works do with titles. Can be compared with Non-Appearing Title, which is an objective trope.

edited 8th Mar '17 10:44:16 AM by AnotherDuck

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Inclined to agree with Another Duck on that one.

Also, bump for additional opinions.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Final bump to see if anyone else actually cares to offer their thoughts before we start doing things.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

The Main/ namespace isn't reserved for actual tropes; YMMV and trivia items still get to use it.

I've always seen Refrain from Assuming as a sort of YMMV take on Non-Appearing Title, with the latter covering most but not all of the former.

Fair point - I meant normal work page examples, but I guess I phrased it incorrectly in the OP. My mistake.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

So...I assume we have (admittedly limited) consensus that the page should be tagged as YMMV, so can we have that done at least before getting to work moving/cleaning up examples?

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Bumpity.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I don't see why this is in TRS at this point in the discussion. Is this trope fundamentally broken in some way? Does this only need an Audience Reaction banner and cleaning up? Is there a redefinition involved or is this really just cleaning up the trope?

As far as I can tell right now, there may be an issue with being a duplicate of Non-Appearing Title, but the extent of the discussion seems to be that one is YMMV and the other isn't, but the discussion hasn't been particularly explicit.

I'm not convinced that they are duplicates, though. In Refrain from Assuming, the singer keeps singing a particular phrase and that phrase is not a part of the title. Also, that seems pretty objective to me on a foundation level. Then there is Non-Appearing Title, in which the title just so happens to not be in the song at all. I see overlap with these two tropes, but not a fundamental duplicate, i.e., you don't have to repeat a line in a Non-Appearing Title but you do have to repeat a line in a Refrain from Assuming.

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That's only half the definition; the other half is that 1) someone concludes the repeated phrase IS the title, and 2) that the title itself is not also a repeated phrase. The former part is what makes it YMMV, and the latter is where the misuse that I've seen comes from. (It doesn't help that checking for misuse is very hard when you don't know the lyrics to the majority of the songs in the examples.)

The main thing is indeed cleaning up the examples. However, there's a twist in that some of the examples are "citeable" - that they reference a specific person or group making the mistake, instead of members of the general public. As I noted in the OP, at that point it's not exactly correct to call that specific example YMMV. The question is what to do with this type of example - delete them, leave them, or move them to a different page? And if the last - what page?

Finally, as I noted, the trope's name doesn't really tell us anything - the musical pun in the title is a little too subtle, I think. So I was also bringing up the trope for possibly renaming on top of all this - a combo platter of issues that led me to make this thread in TRS.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Neither of those necessarily say YMMV. If the repeated phrase is not the title, then you would erroneously assume that it is the title. I'm saying that it isn't "some random troper" who makes that assumption, but rather anybody would. You can objectively say that.

I think either of these options — assuming you're also talking about going through the wiki off of this one page and cleaning those examples also — ought to have a wick check. I looked at three random wicks and saw one person misusing this as meaning "character assumes something incorrectly," so I think there's merit to the name confusion. But name changes need wick checks anyway, and a wick check would support the claim that this is used as YMMV.

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

I'm not sure how to discuss this with you if you can't see how the above text indicates an audience reaction. I guess all I can say is that, yes, the wicks do deserve a check, and I can try to go through them in the next day or two.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Just because somebody concludes that the lyric is a part of the title does not make is an Audience Reaction. Unless you literally mean the audience is reacting, but that would be "everything" rather than what the Wiki means as "Audience Reaction."

edited 3rd Apr '17 8:31:35 PM by WaterBlap

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That's objectively false. I wouldn't make that assumption, therefore the claim that anybody would is false. Some people would. It's a subjective assumption.

Actually, that explicitly makes it an Audience Reaction. If the trope defines itself by how the audience concludes something about the work, it's an Audience Reaction. That assumption is not inherent in the work, and you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it's the intended reaction in most of these cases.

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There's been a lull in discussion, so I'll contribute that I agree with this Duck.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I can see how you could make a case that "song repeats one phrase over and over, in such a way and to the point that you might assume said phrase is the title" might not be YMMV, but as we'll see in a bit such a page might not be workable.

Let's break down the various use cases listed in the OP:

• A) "However, the examples vary between vague "the title of this song is X, not Y lyric" (YMMV audience reaction)
• B) "and "this media reported the song title as X" or "another artist titled their cover of the song based on a lyric saying X, instead of the original title" (more along the lines of Trivia).
• C) "Then there are examples that don't even fit the definition - in other words misuse. It's not heavy, but it's there - mostly cases of "people think X lyric is the title, when it's really Y lyric"."

I think all three of those cases can be the same trope - case B can be the result of cases A and C, so even if an example appears to only be case B, that's only because it's using case B to illustrate the other two cases. Cases A and C have the commonality that people think a certain lyric is the title when it's not; the difference is whether or not the real title is a Non-Appearing Title, which for an audience reaction may not be enough of a distinction to split, especially when the description does already say that the real title can appear in the song, just not as much as the perceived title. The OP does state case C more narrowly to Water Blap later on, that the title can only appear once to not count as misuse, but I do think that if the perceived title appears more often and in a place more associated with being the title, or even if people just get mixed up on the title enough even if it might seem to defy logic, it's still close enough to the spirit of the page that it could be included. (This is also an argument for the name: case C is more justifiable when the perceived title appears in the chorus and the real title doesn't. Of course, I just used "chorus" instead of "refrain"...)

However, I can see the argument that including case C would make the page too broad, especially if case B is treated as wholly separate (that is to say, not necessarily resulting) from case A and C, and the page definitely can't be objective and include case C (if the title appears in the song enough times, isn't it almost as likely people would remember the real title even if the allegedly perceived title appears more often?), but restricting it to case A and to objectivity would make it a subtrope bordering on The Same But More Specific of Non-Appearing Title. (For the same reason, examples of case C may need to be scrutinized to see how common the confusion actually is.)

The OP is right in that case B is technically a trivia-type phenomenon, and if we were to find a case, or perhaps three cases, where someone said "I know this isn't the title but I called it that anyway" (either with regards to a cover, or a mention in a piece of media where a fictional character is meant to be wrong about it), that would justify moving those examples to a separate page, though even then it might have to be restricted to covers to avoid just being a "subtrope". Otherwise I don't really have a problem with an audience reaction that can be "cited" with reference to other media having that reaction, especially when the relationship between case B and the other two cases can work both ways: people can think a given phrase in the song is the title because they heard it used that way in a piece of media. But if there are enough examples where a case of case B is not known to be either a reflection or a cause of case A or C outside of its creator or a character within a work, then it can probably be split.

The C case is included in the current definition. It doesn't say anything about where the actual title appears, or whether it does at all. It just says that the line people assume is the title is "prominently featured". And after the first paragraph, there's no definition of the trope, but talking about how and why the Audience Reaction appears, some results, and a specific case for opera.

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This is almost certainly YMMV, but I think the definition is otherwise fine as is.

A few examples on the page are currently written in a rather condescending tone, but that's a minor point compared to whether it's YMMV or not.

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Locking per New Year Purge.

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