Unfortunate Implications Citation Discussion

Personally I think video essayists like Kyle Kallgren or Lindsay Ellis should be treated as valid citations as they format and present their work in a more structured way than a blog post, and I'd even allow select other reviewers if the point isn't just purely a throwaway joke. But of course this could all change depending on how the TRS goes.

How reputable is the Youtube channel cited on Coco? Because unless I'm reading this completely wrong, it seems to be arguing that "international borders exist" is an unfortunate implication in and of itself.

Well, some do argue that, but that's a discussion for outside this wiki...

Though I could see possible discomfort given the controversy associated in the U.S. with crossing the Mexican border specifically.

Never heard of the creator, but the entry's justification is pretty poor. It's basically taking the line of depiction = endorsement and that media shouldn't depict unpleasant things.

An equivalent argument would be claiming a movie that depicts the afterlife as being ruled by a king is Unfortunate Implications because it might be a little too real to lower-r republicans in countries with a repressive monarchy.

It's not like the movie portrays this as a good thing, just a thing that is.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 12th 2022 at 12:08:30 PM

Yeah, that was what seemed odd to me too.

The entry addresses that though:

As a lover of the movie, I do recall that the border was treated as more of a necessity and not an inherently bad thing.

I looked it up and yep, it's not just one video saying it. However people involved in the film had nicer things to say about the plot point.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 12th 2022 at 12:19:48 PM

I'm personally torn because I know what they were going for; it's just a way to represent the fact that the living can't go to the world of the dead and vice-versa. It might be just a modern take on things like the river styx and the coin ferry system. It's not as simple to just remove such a thing, unlike the Monster's Inc comparison where it was proven that laugh energy was better anyway.

But like... I also see where people are coming from here where it's kind of an iffy thing to put in a movie about Mexico. And if it's what people think, then it's valid by default.

For reference, as far as sources go, Medium is not a guarantee of legitimacy, as anyone can upload whatever they want to that site free of editorial oversite. It's not much different from, say, some rando's Wordpress or Tumblr.

If numerous sources are saying the same thing, then so be it. But the fact that they were posted on Medium as opposed to some other site should not be mistaken as a sign of more validation.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 12th 2022 at 12:34:33 PM

I mean, that entire point might become moot if the TRS goes a certain way.

These two entries on YMMV.Huniepop 2 had no citation so I cut them on sight. Entries read like complaining about personal gripes to boot. Edit reason that up (“I'm honestly surprised that no-one else has mentioned this.”)

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Jul 13th 2022 at 1:51:13 PM

Green Antarctica uses a few forum posts as a source for its UI example. Thoughts?

• Unfortunate Implications: Green Antarctica draws on many works of late 19th and early 20th century European and American literature such as those by Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Subsequently, some readers have discussed their belief that the Tsalal, a dark skinned race whose culture revolves around committing grotesque atrocities, unintentionally draws on racial and cultural stereotypes of non-white indigenous peoples that were widely believed by white Europeans and Americans, including said authors, when these works were first published. This was another reason why it fell out of favour by the end of the 2010s, especially as the second half of the decade saw an increase in sensitivity to racial issues in fiction.
  Constant Dreamer: Green Antarctica's natives were explicitly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, in which the protagonist at one point sails towards the South Pole (Antartica being terra incognita at the time of writing) and finds an island called Tsalal populated by natives with pitch-black skin who are unfamiliar with the color white and are, of course, totally evil. Green Antarctica then goes on to lazily copy large swathes of Lovecraft's works as if there wasn't enough racism already.

Edited by MrMediaGuy2 on Jul 18th 2022 at 1:05:32 AM

I think we have a problem with Green Antartica where it is both obvious to anyone with half a brain that it is incredibly offensive and too obscure for us to get good sources on that offensiveness. The third linked thread has someone say the author admitted it was a bad idea and they should've made them a completely inhuman gray instead. If someone can find a direct quote of the author acknowledging they fucked up it could count

Keep in mind, the TRS thread is also discussing the creator intent issue (as well as potential political bias). Examples like these are disallowed currently, but depending on how the discussion goes...

Should the Unfortunate Implication redirect be added to the Flame Bait tag?

Eh, it can probably just be dewicked safely without bothering.

So we are keeping the Unfortunate Implications pages, just axing off-page examples?

Before we decided UI acknowledged/regretted by the creators of said work didn't need normal citation as their word was citation enough. Is that still the case or should such be moved to Creator Backlash?

The only change is that it's Flame Bait now. The way we handled citations before will continue to be the way we handle citations until the problem is inevitably brought back up again.

I dewicked the Unfortunate Implication redirect and cut it to discourage linking (since it wouldn't display the Flame Bait tag... really wish the admins would make a Flame Bait Redirects index).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 24th 2022 at 4:25:53 AM

So, was this removal valid?

I'm sorry, I don't quite get what changed here.

It being Flame Bait means it can’t be listed anywhere other than the trope page itself, not even in YMMV tabs.

Edited by costanton11 on Jul 25th 2022 at 9:48:29 AM

Probably a dumb question, and I apologize if so: What about links to it in trope descriptions?

Can't link it anywhere in a "main" page (main, headscratchers, ymmv, fridge, etc, and this includes descriptions). Discussion and forum threads are ok.

Edited by Edgar81539 on Jul 25th 2022 at 10:57:26 AM

It is appropriate to wick to Flame Bait in trope descriptions, if it's relevant to the trope itself. For example, we're allowed to wick to So Bad, It's Horrible in the trope descriptions of So Bad, It's Good, because it discusses how the two tropes contrast and relate with each other.

You're just not allowed to have it wicked in the entries themselves (unless it's in-universe or talking about it from a meta perspective).

Found these on the YMMV.Dragon Age II page.

• As Zero Punctuation mentions in his review of Dragon Age II, the Dragon Age franchise is not exactly subtle about its Fantasy Counterpart Culture coding of Andrastian humans after European Christians and Elves after minorities (by Word of Gaider), nor the rather heavy-handed way it handles in-universe racism. This creates a rather unfortunate implication when it doesn't allow the player to pick anything but the dominant race and class (human of noble blood) which can be seen as troubling.

Yahtzee: Much like the first one, Dragon Age II is all about the representative messages, and can't go more than five minutes without someone being really, heavy-handedly racist against mages, elves, dwarves, goldfish, etc., which is why I find it somewhat ironic that you're only allowed to play a human this time around, when the last game let you pick from an entire Burger King Kid's Club of racism backstories.

• According to this thesis the most egregious example of Human Privilege showcased in this game is the quest Magistrate’s Orders in which a magistrate asks Hawke to aid him in shielding his son Kelder from justice for preying upon and murdering elven children. The implication being that the magistrate only reached out to Hawke because they are a fellow human noble (even though Hawke was a refugee at that time) and would be expected to display the same prejudice and entitlement that he does. Granted, this could be another example of the game reflecting reality a little too well, which can unsettle some players.

Also noticed that they hadn't been added to the main (well, Video Games) page of the trope. Decided to move them to the page, then started to worry that I might have been too hasty and that moving them might not have been the correct course of action, given that both respectively only appear to reflect the opinion of one person (and the second offers an alternative interpretation at the end), and an argument could be made that neither sources are technically professional. Are these edits acceptable enough to be put on the Video Games section of the main page, or should they just be completely erased?

Edited by WiryAiluropodine on Jul 28th 2022 at 7:15:28 PM