Needs Help (single prop crowner 10/8/2018): Common Knowledge

That just sounds like Ascended Terminology which is a thing, it’s how Haganai got its English name.

That's exactly my point. It's a phenomena but there's no "official term" (and until recently anyway).

I really don’t get that all that much from reading the trope but I really don’t get much of anything worthy of a trope reading the trope page.

I would say just cut this and Ykttw Ascended Terminology.

For some examples. In Japan it’s heavily related to Portmantitle as series like Pocket Monsters and Pretty Cure became Pokemon and Precure respectively cause that’s what fans called it and they ran with it. And Funimation likes to name their series after the nicknames such as Haganai and Haru Chika.

edited 21st Apr '18 12:45:40 AM by Memers

Also what's wrong with the Pokemon Speak entry? That is a common misconception and to this day is touted.

I often find Common Knowledge used by fans of a work to basically defend the work by strawmanning detractors into being "wrong." It tends to come across as very "But ackchyually..." in my experience.

Seriously, it's very often just splitting hairs and sometimes I can think maaaaaaaaaybe it has a point, but others... just no.

You say that, but then you always encounter people who do that. But then again I'm a jaded Pokemon fan (jaded towards the fanbase, especially since social media's coming).

The comic books section has a lot of 'fans say x' when from this thread I gathered it's 'NON-FANS say x'.

' And by a similar token, it's commonly said of the Silver Age Superman that he had New Powers as the Plot Demands, and that all he had to do was add "super" onto a given word and that was something he could do, while his Post-Crisis incarnation removed all of that and codified his powers while removing a bunch of others. In point of fact, Superman's powerset was pretty much set in stone by the mid-50s, and the only powers he really "lost" after the Crisis were hypnosis, ventriloquism, and altering his facial structure (Super Breath and high intelligence were initially removed, but came back), all of which had been shown pretty consistently. Powers like "super-weaving" were just him being flowery about saying "I will use my super speed to weave very fast." The closest thing to New Powers as the Plot Demands he had was using Hollywood Science to apply his powers - for instance, using Super Speed to "break the time barrier" or spin or vibrate objects - or various gadgets he'd invented with the aforementioned intelligence. In point of fact, the Silver Age Superman was more of a Science Hero than anything, and usually defeated his opponents with his intellect. The main change the Post-Crisis series made was limiting the scope of his power, attempting to restrict him to city-scale battles rather than cosmic-scale ones and focusing more on the straightforward physical aspects of his abilities - and even then, being Strong as They Need to Be, he often fought on a cosmic scale anyway (albeit a noticeably lower one). '

' It's commonly stated by fans authoritatively that "Clark Kent is the 'real' identity, not Superman." In point of fact, this is probably one of the biggest points of Depending on the Writer in Superman comics, and even in stories that do utilize the idea, he's still shown affecting a personality and planning out specific mannerisms as Clark Kent to some degree or another. It's less a fact and more an Alternate Character Interpretation. '

' The Avengers are commonly thought to be Marvel's Alternate Company Equivalent to DC's Justice League, and is the superhero team of the Marvel universe. While that might be true in relatively recent years, for much of its existence it wasn't — that honor went to the Fantastic Four, who were canonically the greatest team of the Marvel universe and were made specifically as the answer to the Justice League, while the title of the most popular team in the '80s and '90s by-and-large was the X-Men. In fact, for many years, the Avengers were commonly thought of by both fans and writers as a dumping ground for character's not popular enough to hold their own series. To put in perspective, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man wants to be an Avenger. In the comics, he wanted to join the Fantastic Four, but was rejected because Reed Richards said they're a family first and a team second. It wasn't until roughly the 2000s where this started to shift for a number of reasons, namely the outside factors of the Fantastic Four's movie rights being held by 20th Century Fox, who made the So Okay, It's Average Tim Story Duology and later the Box Office Bomb Fantastic Four (2015). Meanwhile, the Avengers got a new lease on life with the Marvel Cinematic Universe starring them in some of the biggest blockbusters ever. It's no coincidence that the Avengers became Marvel's new focus in the comics, which started roughly in the early '00s. Since then there have been a massive influx of new recruits, to the point where the number of people recruited in the Avengers this millennium actually outnumber the amount recruited in the last millennium, despite having less than two decades compared to nearly four from the previous.

The Avengers in comics really could not have humbler origins; they started as literal filler material. They owe their debut to the fact that Bill Everett fell behind in completing the art for Daredevil #1. To take its spot in the printing schedule, Marvel slapped together the simplest possible substitute: All of Lee & Kirby's lower-selling heroes teaming up to fight Thor's already-established nemesis, Loki. '

Should the trope be split into two? Misconceptions by fans and general misconceptions? Many examples are geared towards fans more than non-fans.

The first two paragraphs of the trope description make it clear that Common Knowledge is not about fans' knowledge one way or the other. It's about "casual viewers of a series" and "the public zeitgeist." That is, it's about non-fans and their knowledge of the series.

I'm not sure myself whether this just needs a (large) clean-up thread or a TRS effort (a la The Scrappy thread). There seems to be confusion with Common Knowledge and Audience-Coloring Adaptation (e.g. Teen Titans' "original" line-up) and Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer. Maybe a proper wick check is in order to see the extent of this confusion. One solution to that issue, if it really is an issue, would be to include these tropes on the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions.

The Pokemon examples that are being discussed in relation to "casual fans" and "expert fans" (or whatever) doesn't seem to work for Common Knowledge regardless of who's right. I mean that both of those groups are fans of the series and the debate is between different groups within the overall fandom.

Moreover, one of the examples in the OP could work if it's trimmed to cut out the angry ranting. Namely, it could be changed to: "The Pokemon world is often stereotyped by non-fans as 'a bunch of kids enslaving wild animals and forcing them to fight each other,' except the plots of the various games usually revolve around kids freeing said animals from adults who literally try enslaving them." Like, that's all that seems to be needed for this. Specifically, (1) what the misconception is and (2) the assertion of the truth for non-fans. We don't need to know the ins and outs of the psychology of fictional creatures to understand why the (mis)conception is incorrect.

The confusion here likely comes from the difficultly of telling what people who aren't fans think of a series when you're in a fanbase. There's also overlap between non-fans and more casual fans.

edited 31st May '18 9:58:00 AM by Pichu-kun

Hell I have more stuff to add like how the misconception towards Ash, mostly due to memes.

Any idea what to do?

A better example of the trope (I think) would be one that was recently added to the Pokemon Anime's YMMV page, which goes "Gary's starter is commonly mistaken to be Eevee, the first and only Pokémon he sends out against Ash for a long time, as well as Eevee being the starter for the rival in the anime-inspired Yellow. He actually started with Squirtle." and is concise in explaining the misconception and showing what it actually was.

edited 17th Jun '18 11:49:53 PM by lalalei2001

The part about the capture of and battling with Pokemon seems to be rather defensive, trying to justify Unfortunate Implications of the game. I'm not sure where that "Pokemon WANT to be captured" comes from, and it comes off as a bit of a Happiness in Slavery argument.

The one about the age thing in Pokemon is also rather self defeating. "There are NO 10 year olds... at least as far as we know of" isn't proof of anything.

Is that a common misconception? I've never seen people claim it was an Eevee. Blue's starter? Yes. Gary's? It's made clear that Ash was an odd case, the previous trainers had Kanto starters, and Gary has used his Blastoise to fight Ash.

Doesn't Gary always pick the starter with an elemental advantage over yours?

I'd guess it's mostly from later games with stuff like 'Zekrom/Reshiram is staring you down' since you have to capture it to advance and it wants you to to stop N/Ghetsis or 'Necrozma wants to be captured', and stuff from older games/the anime that I can't recall at the moment.

Maybe stuff like that was added to later games because of the backlash? XD;

edited 18th Jun '18 9:44:32 AM by lalalei2001

His name isn't Gary (unless you want it to be), but yes, he always picks the advantageous starter. (Except in Yellow, where he only has the one choice.)

Isn't Gary the standard name? Or are the names only from the anime?

His name is officially Blue as of Pokémon Gold and Silver.

I kind of feel like this discussion has gone from the trope to particular Pokemon examples. Like, how can we make this trope more clear would normally be the priority. We can clean the examples section after we've executed something or decided on some sort of game plan...?

I think one solution to this problem is to add this trope to the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions (and pair it with Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer and Audience-Coloring Adaptation). That alone wouldn't fix it, though, so I think also adding to the description will be necessary. We've mentioned here about the distinction between "casual fans," "expert fans," and "non-fans," and I suppose we've discussed (in a way) having a discussion for particular examples. This may be one of those tropes that requires a long-term thread in order to discuss the various entries...

The Laconic pages for Common Knowledge and Cowboy Bebop at his Computer are "Something that is believed by the public to be part of a work or genre, but isn't." and "An official source gets facts wrong about a work.", respectively.

edited 19th Jun '18 12:27:47 PM by lalalei2001

Basically Beam Me Up, Scotty! except "facts" than dialog. Essentially false ideas or misconceptions perceived as truth because of Pop Culture Osmosis and Memetic Mutation.

Pokemon does indeed nees clean up but I still stand by on the two examples I put being questioned here.

edited 22nd Jun '18 4:02:53 AM by Ookamikun

Ignoring Pokemon for the moment, we have a clear definition for the trope, yes?

Common mistakes among non-fans is a distinct concept, but isn't that redundant with Cowboy BeBop at His Computer and Fandom Berserk Button (as of the latter's TRS thread)? I suppose it could be a supertrope if it's decided to not be redundant with those.

Edit: I now think making this a supertrope to Cowboy BeBop at His Computer and Fandom Berserk Button would be better than considering it to be completely redundant.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 27th 2018 at 11:08:42 AM