Agreeing overall. Some of these tropes belong on Rule of Perception, Truth in Television or Acceptable Breaks from Reality, but not on Reality Is Unrealistic.
Berserk Button: misusing Nightmare Fuel
Another confusing thing about this list is that the description that accompanies each trope sometimes explains how the trope is usually played in fiction (Audible Sharpness, Hollywood Hacking) in a sarcastic tone, while others explain why the trope is unrealistic (Lead the Target, Raptor Attack). Although a bit of critical thinking can help differentiate between the two, it can lead to a moment of confusion when you read that "If one overhead fire sprinkler goes off, the rest will too" and spend a second figuring out whether it's talking about in fiction or real life.
- I would like to respectfully disagree to some of the tropes you picked.
- Audible Sharpness: Define negative effect in this context. This trope is about people seeing something so often on film or TV etc that they believe that it is also true in real life. There is nothing in the description talking about negative reactions. Bet you $5 that many people who have never heard a real sword pulled from a real sheathe believes that it makes a metallic noise.
- Beeping computers: Again, define negative reaction.
- Beneficial disease: Saying that this is common knowledge is flat out wrong. Sorry, but one round of Google will tell you that.
- Clean pretty childbirth: Bet you $5 that most young boys know jack-all about what real childbirth is like if they've only seen it on TV. I certainly didn't.
- Dreaming of a white Christmas: Prove that is common knowledge.
- Endangered souffle: The trope description makes it clear that this is a dying trope, but tended to be true at the time.
- Incurable cough of death: Yes, absolutely. That would be the realistic version.
- Instant death bullet: Bet you $5 that you will find many people with no firearms experience think gunshots are instantly lethal thanks to film. Which like I said before, is the whole point of the trope.
- Lead the target: Prove that is common knowledge to people with no firearms or videogame FPS experience.
- Nobody poops: I actually agree with you here... but at the same time, I have known multiple guys who were surprised to learn that women poo. That is not a joke.
- Percussive maintenance: Prove that is common knowledge. I have read stories on Google by real repairmen about customers who have taken hammers to broken televisions after the screen went blank, genuinely hoping to fix it.
edited 12th Dec '17 3:41:00 PM by thatsnumberwang
^ I think you are arguing the wrong way around. E.g., even if 50% of the audience is thinking Instant Death Bullet is a thing, they may still be fine with a character taking half a minute to die. If you can convince us that a majority will find the latter scenario unrealistic, you have a case.
Btw, Audible Sharpness is not about sounds made when a sword is sheathed but when it's waved through the air.
edited 12th Dec '17 5:24:15 PM by eroock
So let's talk about how we would determine if Reality Is Unrealistic applies. The main issue here, though you could argue otherwise, is that Reality Is Unrealistic describes a "general audience reaction", as opposed a "potential misconception". That is to say, even if one person could concievably believe something they saw in fiction to be true, that wouldn't be enough to qualify it as a Subtrope.
Now, keeping that in mind, let's think about how some of the examples would apply:
- Audible Sharpness - If this were a subtrope, then you are saying that most people would be surprised if a fictional blade didn't make noise as it was swung?
- Beeping Computers - Has an audience ever been put off by a silent computer? Certainly not as long as the mute function has existed. If so, when?
- Beneficial Disease - In this case the trope is realistic when played straight, with chicken pox being a well known (though misguided) example. For it to be a subtrope, that would imply that it's use was routinely found to be unconvincing.
- Clean, Pretty Childbirth - If this is a Subtrope, you are implying that a graphic depiction of childbirth would be unconvincing to the audience? In a kids show maybe, but kids shows don't feature graphic depictions of childbirth, so it's a moot point.
- Dreaming of a White Christmas - It just occured to me that both white and non-white christmas's are equally realistic, so I'm not even sure how you could provide an example here.
- Incurable Cough of Death - If this were a subtrope, that would imply that it would seem strange to the audience if a character had a cough and then survived?
- Instant Death Bullet - The point of the trope is not "misconceptions about things in media", the point is, "realism in media being percieved as unrealistic". If this were a subtrope, that would imply that the audience would be distracted if a person was shot and didn't die instantly, which is ridiculous considering that in most media, bullet wounds are even less lethal than IRL.
- Lead the Target - While I'm sure there are a few who could be put off by this, the concept of leading a target is fairly universal in every day life, so I'm not sold on this as a subtrope
- Percussive Maintenance - Much like Dreaming of a White Christmas, Percussive Maintenance can be both realistic and unrealistic depending on the circumstances, so it doesn't work as a subtrope.
Also, a note on "proof";
The burden of providing proof lies with the party making the claim. In this case, that would be those claiming that the above are subtropes, while I would simply point out that there is no given evidence that they should be. You'd be right to say that I need to back up my claim of "common knowledge", although I think most people already understood where I was coming from in most of the examples given.
edited 14th Dec '17 8:04:48 AM by zer0h
Blapper of Water
We recently
had another thread on this. Wick check for examples on the wiki in general can be found here and it should still apply.
Remember that if something is Truth in Television then it is precluded from being Reality Is Unrealistic. RIU has to do with things that are not true being generally perceived as true.
The particular issue here is the subtropes list, so here's my take on the suggested changes from above:
- I disagree concerning:
- Audible Sharpness: "Negative reaction" is irrelevant... Since most people don't brandish swords anymore, it's safe to say this is RIU.
- Clean, Pretty Childbirth: There's no reason why everybody should know this.
- Dreaming of a White Christmas: I don't see how this is "common knowledge" because it does always snow in some parts of the world. Young people are likely to think it always snows on Christmas (as in, "regardless of location") if they grew up in such a region.
- Everyone Gets Their Turn: It is not obvious especially to introverts (who are less prone to communicate in social settings) and other less-than-social people. These types of personalities may come to understand the world partially through watching media and so they may actually think, for a while at least, that this is true. I think that's enough to include it on Reality Is Unrealistic.
- Lead the Target: If this were common knowledge then it wouldn't need to be said. Not everyone has trained in using firearms.
- Percussive Maintenance: I disagree that this is "common knowledge" as to the fact it doesn't work. The description on the trope page even erroneously claims that this is Truth in Television. Kind of kills the "common knowledge" argument on the spot.
- Bitter Almonds: This one is a bit odd. It is partially true according to the description. Strictly speaking, it is not Truth in Television, so I think it's fine to stay. The argument that "nobody knows" is actually in support of keeping it.
- Boom, Headshot!: I don't see what needs clarification. It is not easy to make a clean headshot but the trope is about how it is very easy in video games to make a clean headshot.
- Endangered Soufflé: This doesn't work that way in RL and even though it may be discredited as a funny gag there is no reason to expect non-cooks and others who've never tried to make a souffle would know this.
- Instant Death Bullet: This is something discussed when learning to use firearms. "One shot isn't enough to take somebody down" and "A pistol isn't going to stop somebody who wants to kill you" are things you will probably hear when learning about using firearms for self-defense. Therefore, I think it fits with RIU, since experts feel the need to explain that it doesn't work that way in RL. Also, "noteworthiness" isn't a criterion for RIU.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: The entire concept of this trope is Reality Is Unrealistic + speech patterns. Moreover, it is the case that most people don't perceive their own speech patterns (e.g. people pronounce the word "city" as "cidy" with a D sound but they'd never "admit" to it because they don't realize it 95% of the time).
- I agree concerning:
- Beneficial Disease: This is Truth in Television given the example of cowpox being beneficial against smallpox. I disagree that it's "common knowledge" but the TIT status disqualifies it for RIU.
- Nobody Poops: Despite the argument of "common knowledge" being exceptionally weak, this one is clearly common knowledge because — well — everybody poops in RL.
- Teens Are Short: I would go so far as to say that people expect teens to be taller than older family members due to people in RL usually commenting about changes in height.
- Beeping Computers: There seems to be some Truth in Television to this.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Everybody coughs at some point but they don't die from it.
- Not sure about...:
- Technicolor Science: This trope was originally "portrayals of scientific labs are unrealistic" so the label of RIU may be a holdover from that. IDK.
edited 12th Feb '18 7:42:28 AM by WaterBlap
Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty
Audible Sharpness is a weird thing because it CAN be true with certain kinds of scabbards or sheaths that either have metal fittings at the mouth or are all metal.
The issue in fiction is that it's often a default sound effect even when the design of the blade and sheath involved render it nonsensical.
edited 13th Feb '18 7:47:49 PM by shoboni
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
I would like to argue that "Super-Trope to" is incorrect wording, and should be changed to "Supertrope to Subversions of".
Reality Is Unrealistic describes the lack of a trope being seen as unrealistic. All Deserts Have Cacti (for example) describes a trope that doesn't apply for most deserts. A subversion would seem unrealistic.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Clock is set.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
How sweet it is
Clock expired; closing.
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
This looks like it should be a pretty easy one.
Reality Is Unrealistic is a Reaction trope, which applies to cases where people in real life, find realistic portrayals of something (or the real thing) unconvincing, and favor the more common, tropey version.
The misuse here is luckily not so much in the examples as it is in the listed subtropes, which are either not well defined in the context of being a subtrope of Reality Is Unrealistic, are completely unrelated, or are well-known, everyday phenomena that nobody over the age of 5 would find or has ever found hard to believe (mostly this one).
The offending tropes are:
There are several others, such as Hollywood Hacking and Raptor Attack, which are now widely discredited, but should remain in place, since they still may have applied at the time of a work's release.
Some of these might be valid, but they'd need clarification or an example of an instance where they either were distracting to an audience or influenced someone's thinking, as per the definition of Reality Is Unrealistic.
in addition to removing these, I'd also suggest that the definition be clarified to emphasize that this is, in fact, a reaction trope, and not just a more cutesy synonym for Artistic License.
edited 5th Dec '17 12:32:27 PM by zer0h