Unfortunate Implications Citation Discussion

Unfortunate Implications examples require specific citations. However, many tropers have difficulties distinguishing if a citation fits the criteria needed. That is where this thread thread comes into play.

Confused about whether a citation is legit enough? Ask here then.

07/24/2022 Update: Per this TRS thread, Unfortunate Implications is now Flame Bait, so wicks on non-Flame Bait pages need to be either removed or moved to Unfortunate Implications subpages; the cleanup work has been deferred to this thread.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 24th 2022 at 4:07:46 AM

• "One Bad Apple" has many a Family-Unfriendly Aesop about bullying. Among these are the wishful thinking that telling an adult will automatically solve the problem and that standing up to a bully will also make you a bully as well. Said morals are torn apart in this review by someone who actually was a victim of bullying.
• Fairly OddParents has the episode Love Struck, where Timmy wishes for a world without girls, meaning men and women are each moved to different parts of the world. While the women form a Utopia, the men side of the world is a disgusting dump, without rules or even cleanliness. Also the episode completely goes with gender stereotypes, saying girls can't like 'boyish' things like sport and have to like certain traditionally girly things, while all men are disgusting idiots. Add to that the claim of 'love' in this episode seems to be just up to what Cupid decides with his arrows (which seem like aphrodisiacs) rather than actual love. Cupid even tells Timmy they can't decide who their valentine is and that it is up to Cupid. And the only romantic love that exists is heterosexual since the men and women being separated means Cupid almost dies from the lack of it. The Mysterious Mr. Enter goes into detail on this.

Two examples from The Mysterious Mr. Enter were removed from Unfortunate Implications under the statement that they're reviewers/blogs, not proper citations. Is Enter considered a citation or not?

That's one of the troubles with smaller fandoms. Say, I know plenty of controversies in the Warrior Cats fandom, but there aren't exactly dozens of professional blogs interested in a children's book series about talking cats who beat each other up. Most, if not all, citations would be from Tumblr blogs or Youtube Analysis Channels, which aren't proper citations.

On another note, is RebelTaxi a good citation?

From YMMV.The Powerpuff Girls 2016:

• A few viewers, including RebelTaxi, have noted the accident implications of the Ambiguously Brown Bliss being an overly emotional Flawed Prototype that was replaced with "superior" white incarnations.

From YMMV.Tangled:

• Some people believe that Mother Gothel's design follows a supposed negative Jewish stereotype due to her facial features and curly black hair. However, she was far far more likely to have been designed after her non-Jewish VA, Donna Murphy.^note As a bonus, the people questioning the supposed "Jewish coding" are actual Jewish persons, whereas the OP of the first post is an anonymous and therefore it can't be said whether they're Jewish or not.

The example cites two Tumblr blogs. I remember I posted the Unfortunate Implications originally as just a placeholder until I found the website link I was looking for, but I couldn't find the link so I deleted the example for not being a proper citation. It was posted back with more content a while later.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Dec 30th 2018 at 7:32:37 AM

Gothel's design was based on Cher according to Wikipedia.

If fans are debating whether it falls under Unfortunate Implications, shouldn't it fall under Broken Base?

Only if there is very little middle ground in the argument, and said argument has also been going on for a long time.

I think it falls under "people making stuff up because they want to be offended".

The link in the following example:

• Unfortunate Implications: Jackson "Mad Jack" Neville is Unfortunate Implications: The Character. A muscular African-American car thief isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things, but for whatever reason Mad Jack is willing to murder multiple people in horrifying ways to cover up his actions. Mad Jack has murdered at least one officer with a soldering iron before melting him in an acid bath and potentially can kill Jayden by cuffing him to his own car and then mulching him in a metal grinder. Also his voice actor, David Gasman, is not even close to being Black while portraying an incredibly stereotypical black man voice.

Yeah, that's not a citation. It's just a character page on a wiki, and it doesn't even include a "controversies" header or anything of the sort.

So, are either RebelTaxi or Mr. Enter good enough citations or are they just internet reviewers?

Personally, I'd say yes, though only for smaller fandoms.

Larger, better known fandoms that draw wider media attention should probably draw from larger media outlets, IMO. No idea on how to enforce that, though.

That's a very arbitrary standard. Arbitrary standards encourage cliquish behaviour. I'd much rather an objective requirement that doesn't need to account for personal opinions.

I feel like the citation rule having limits is primarily meant to prevent someone from making an entry on their own blog or Tumblr page or whatever just to allow an example. By that reasoning internet reviewers are acceptable sources.

Edited by nrjxll on Jan 9th 2019 at 12:21:15 PM

I've asked on ATT and Analysis Channels aren't considered proper citations as they're considered basically blogs with animations. Reviewers probably have similar limitations.

Maybe it should be either be one respected and critical source (such as the news or an actual critic) or multiple less-respected sources? (such as internet reviewers). I can get the idea behind, say, not wanting something posted just because Mr. Enter complained about it, but what if Mr. Enter and ten other reviewers also complained? That might make a stronger case that it's an actual issue and not just someone's opinion.

I think that people are making this overly complicated.

The main reason for the citation requirements was to prevent super far fetched examples. Thus, a source can be everything except total nuts, I am not sure why all the other qualifiers were added but it looks supremely pointless to me.

Part of the problem is people are linking to random Tumblr posts instead of media sources, while that thread says something like "just about anything bigger than a blog should be fine."

I always thought it was anything that was more than just one person's opinion.

A blog is written by one person. If you have a column written by someone working for a larger media company, that column is most likely at least checked by others in the company. If you can point to a controversy caused by the implication, you probably also have a source. In that case, a blog written by a single person could count if that in itself points towards a more general opinion rather than just its own author.

I'm going to remove this example from Tangled's YMMV page because of improper citations:

• Some people believe that Mother Gothel's design follows a supposed negative Jewish stereotype due to her facial features and curly black hair. However, she was far far more likely to have been designed after her non-Jewish VA, Donna Murphy.^note As a bonus, the people questioning the supposed "Jewish coding" are actual Jewish persons, whereas the OP of the first post is an anonymous and therefore it can't be said whether they're Jewish or not.

If Enter is a viable citation then these two examples should be posted back to Unfortunate Implications:

• "One Bad Apple" has many a Family-Unfriendly Aesop about bullying. Among these are the wishful thinking that telling an adult will automatically solve the problem and that standing up to a bully will also make you a bully as well. Said morals are torn apart in this review by someone who actually was a victim of bullying.
• Fairly OddParents has the episode Love Struck, where Timmy wishes for a world without girls, meaning men and women are each moved to different parts of the world. While the women form a Utopia, the men side of the world is a disgusting dump, without rules or even cleanliness. Also the episode completely goes with gender stereotypes, saying girls can't like 'boyish' things like sport and have to like certain traditionally girly things, while all men are disgusting idiots. Add to that the claim of 'love' in this episode seems

There is an uncited Unfortunate Implications entry in I Favor The Villainess. It also happens to be the only entry on the page.

Is the proper course of action here to cutlist the page, or something else?

Should this thread be listed on the Unfortunate Implications article?

I read the entry and it sounds more like Family-Unfriendly Aesop so I switched it to that.

It doesn't seem like Family-Unfriendly Aesop. That's for a work with a valid moral, but one that's not in line with general morality (for example, "sometimes, violence really is the best solution"). Drawing a bad moral from a work is Warp That Aesop, which is a Just for Fun page on Darth Wiki that shouldn't be listed on a work's YMMV page.

Of course that doesn't mean violence is always the solution.

How do we feel about citations to journals that are behind a paywall?