Unreleased Work Page Cleanup (Speculation, Spoilers, ZCE etc.)

Hey, noticed High Crate went a bit overboard again and commented out a lot of tropes that were confirmed by Word of God or were in promotional materials that were linked on the page itself on Doom Eternal.

Not going to comment them back in, but just a note since this led to some problems a couple months back.

Edited by ashlay on Jun 8th 2019 at 4:09:58 AM

So, is anyone going to check Sandbox.Stuber? I want approval before I move it to the Film/ namespace.

We've got a new policy now, and none of the tropes based on promotional material were commented-out.

• 1-Up: Unlike the previous game, you can find these in the environment. Should you die with an extra life, you won't be booted to the last checkpoint, but revived on the spot instead. You'll have to earn them, though. This example is based on the finished work, but the work is not released yet.
• After the End: The absolute state of Earth following the demonic invasion. A ruined husk where blood runs over the land like rivers teeming with monsters. This example is based on the finished work, but the work is not released yet.
• Alien Blood: The Cacodemons have their blue blood back, and Arachnotrons have blue blood as well. This example is based on the finished work, but the work is not released yet.

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Sandbox.Stuber is missing a release date, only saying "2019 action comedy film". The new policy requires new pages have a release date, in addition to an announced name and marketing.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Should the sandbox stay until the release date comes out?

It's coming out on July 12, I just forgot to add it.

Either we have enough to make the page or we shouldn't even have a Sandbox. (This is so "put unreleased works in Sandbox/" doesn't become the new "put unreleased works in DarthWiki/ or Advertising/.")

If a Sandbox is created, it's because the requirements to create the work page itself are fulfilled. The Sandbox only exists to get the page to a readable state.

I doing Sandbox/ namespace for two things. 1: I don't have a lot of free time, so I can leave it as a stub at first, then complete the rest later, and 2: I don't want what happened the last time created a page on a future work (I created a page for Good Boys using the Film/ namespace, sent it to this thread for approval, then HighCrate deleted a few of the tropes and sent it to the cutlist a few days later for being a stub. I added another trope [putting it up three] after he put it there, but the page still ended up getting cut. I then came here to talk about this and one of the mods recreated it.)

Yeah, you're doing it right. We just don't want Sandbox pages for future works sitting around for years.

Yeah, what I don't want is people creating early sandbox pages as an end-run around the rules, then copying them over without alteration as soon as live page creation is allowed. That would sort of defeat the purpose of putting limits on pre-release page creation.

It doesn't sound like that's what you're doing, so you're fine.

Cerotech Omega added the lyrics of Dynamax (Brand New World) to the Sword and Shield sandbox. It's commented out, but it's still super long.

I don't actually know if it's all the lyrics or just a long snippet.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Jun 8th 2019 at 12:29:08 PM

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If it's the full lyrics of an entire song, cut it. That's considered copyright infringement.

I wouldn't include it even if the game was already released.

Even then the full game may have a quote more concisely representative than an entire verse of a song.

Edited by Albert3105 on Jun 9th 2019 at 10:19:27 AM

Just gonna continue the conversation regarding the The Lion King (2019) page here. Apologies if this gets lengthy.

• Adapted Out: Based on current materials, Rafiki does not have his famous stick (referred to in The Lion Guard as a "bakorra staff") this time around. "Adapted Out refers to characters, not props, so this is shoehorning. It's also speculation; just because the stick is not present in the trailers doesn't mean it won't be present in the film."

The Adapted Out page lists several examples citing events, locations, and objects that were not included in the adaptations of their source material, so it at least in practice doesn't seem to be limited to just characters. And while there may turn out to be a scene where Rafiki picks up a stick as a nod to the cartoon, the original iteration of his character has it with him all the time since it's an important tool for his position as mjuzi (shaman). I won't argue this point too much until we see the film, just wanted to state my case for listing it in the first place.

• Animal Talk: As in the original film, all the animals (with dialogue at least) speak the same language. "Speculation. Just because it was true of the original film doesn't mean it will be true of the remake, and this entry doesn't have any citation."

I don't see how this is speculation. If you need direct in-trailer evidence, Timon and Pumbaa sing a duet and speak to each other and to Simba in the trailers, and you can also hear Rafiki speaking to Simba with the famous "It is time" line. There's also description of a scene screened at a Disney shareholders meeting a few months back that describes Zazu talking to Mufasa. Overall it just makes no sense for this story to not include this trope, so I don't see on what grounds this can really be called speculation at this point; calling this one out just seems a bit too conservative to me.

• Elephant Graveyard: Downplayed; the main trailer shows that while skeletal remains are present in the hyena den site, there are few if any that are clearly identifiable as elephants, likely because the filmmakers realize that elephant graveyards are largely fictional. "If there are no elephant bones, it's not an Elephant Graveyard, and thus Not An Example."

There are a few elephant bones but it's clear upon inspection of the relevant trailer screenshots that they're not all elephant remains, but rather an aggregation of both large and mid-sized animals that the hyenas brought back to their den site, hence why I have it labelled as downplayed. This is also another case where the trope page itself states that examples aren't as exclusive as you're implying; it essentially just says any creepy set piece with an aggregation of large (at least relative to the protagonists traveling through it) animal remains qualifies.

• Misplaced Wildlife: A downplayed example with the giraffes seen throughout the promotional materials, which specifically resemble the Rothschild giraffe subspecies/ecotype. Despite these giraffes presently only found in a select few protected regions of Uganda and western Kenya, their historical distribution was wider only a few centuries ago and likely would've encompassed the Serengeti-Mara region proper alongside their cousins, the Maasai giraffe (G. c. tippelskirchi), which don't appear in any of the footage despite being the most common giraffe in the region. "I tend to be suspicious of anything labeled a "downplayed example," and indeed, this appears to be shoehorning. It sounds like it's perfectly plausible for the Rothschild giraffe to be present in the setting."

It depends on when the story is set. (I did probably put way too much thinking and research into this, but I'm an ecology and evolutionary biology major so it's kinda my career to be obsessed over stuff like this.) Giraffe populations are quite fragmented today◊ due to poaching and habitat loss, so Rothschild giraffes are currently only found in a few relatively tiny portions of Uganda and western Kenya as stated, and none of those locations really match with where in Kenya the Pride Lands are located. (You can tell the location of the Pride Lands via the direction of the sunrise in the shot of the elephants walking beneath Mt. Kilimanjaro; it roughly matches with a south-central Kenyan placement near the border between Kenya and Tanzania◊.) The giraffe species currently and predominantly found in that region are Maasai giraffes, which look notably different. If the story is set a couple centuries ago then a range overlap might be plausible enough to cut this entry, but the most likely reason for them being Rothschild giraffes as opposed to Maasai giraffes is due to the former being the most commonly kept giraffes in zoos, and it's known that creature artists for Disney movies (this one included) tend to do their research at Disney's Animal Kingdom. It also helps the artists that Rothschild giraffes◊ are easier to design and more visually striking since they have big bold, bright patches with a more even distribution and geometric shape rather than lots of small scattered spots like Maasai giraffes◊.

Edited by ElasticPleurodeline on Jun 9th 2019 at 9:19:51 AM

• Adapted Out: You missed his most critical point - it's unknown on whether the stick will never appear instead of merely appearing in a non-trailer scene.
• Animal Talk: "If you need direct in-trailer evidence, Timon and Pumbaa sing a duet and speak to each other and to Simba in the trailers, and you can also hear Rafiki speaking to Simba with the famous "It is time" line." The in-trailer scenes of different species talking in the same language need to be directly written into the example.
• Elephant Graveyard: The trope refers to a very specific legend. If it's not a reference to the legend, it's a shoehorn.
• Misplaced Wildlife: "It depends on when the story is set." This is not given, so...

Edited by Albert3105 on Jun 9th 2019 at 12:50:47 PM

I've just added Dead Island 2, Phoenix Point, Daemon X Machina, Man of Medan and Control to the list.

Dead Island 2 in paticular looks like a big vaporware.

E3 so far:

• Cyberpunk 2077 has been given a release date, it can be un-grandfathered now.
• Minecraft Dungeons announced, gameplay footage given, no release date.
• Elden Ring announced, no game footage nor release date.

Edited by Albert3105 on Jun 9th 2019 at 5:24:10 AM

It appears that both Adapted Out and Animal Talk have example sections that disagree with their trope descriptions. Adapted Out's definition specifies characters, but ElasticPleurodeline is right, the example section includes plot elements etc. as well. Animal Talk's definition specifies that it's about animals having only one language while humans have several, but the example section includes also includes entries where different species or types of animal have different languages, where some animals can talk and some can't, and where humans are not present.

Both of them seem to be suffering from definition creep and either need dedicated cleanup or to have their definitions expanded to fit the misuse. That's beyond the scope of this thread, though, so in the meantime, Adapted Out is definitely speculation (since we can't know whether Rafiki's stick will be in the film or not until the film comes out), and Animal Talk at the very least needs a source citation before it can be unhidden.

Meanwhile, Elephant Graveyard is plain old shoehorning, and Misplaced Wildlife is speculation. We don't know whether the film will be set in a time period that would preclude that particular subspecies of giraffe. It seems unlikely that it canonically will be, since the original never got that specific about exactly when and where in Africa it took place.

Also, thank you for joining us in the thread and working through this with us, ElasticPleurodeline. This policy is a new thing for all of us, and I appreciate being able to talk through it with you.

Edited by HighCrate on Jun 9th 2019 at 3:17:14 AM

Also, yeah, Dead Island 2 has had no activity on the page since 2017. Some quick Google-Fu reveals that there's been no new news about it since 2016 when the original developers were pulled from the project and replaced. Since then, Deep Silver made a statement in 2017 and again in 2018 saying that the game is still in development, but that's it.

We should probably wait until after E3 before doing anything just in case, but unless something substantial comes out of E3, that sounds pretty Vaporware-y and like a prime candidate for cutlisting.

Can I get a moderator revert on Borderlands 3? Troper Discar has unhidden every hidden example while awkwardly slapping "the trailer shows that" before each one, whether it makes any sense or not.

I don't doubt that there are several entries that could be unhidden with proper context / citations, but he is clearly not acting in good faith to do so.

Edited by HighCrate on Jun 9th 2019 at 4:45:59 AM

Weird, I thought Discar was a mod. He started this thread, may I add.

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Not a mod. Been staying out of this thread because I don't want to yell at anyone.

But I was keeping a very close eye on that page, making sure to clean out any speculative troping and keep everything strictly limited to the trailers. Then High Crate commented out every example that didn't contain the word "trailer."

~Discar is the Forum Herald of the Trope Repair Shop, but they are not a moderator.

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"The trailer shows that" was copy+pasted into most (not all!) of the first-level indentation. The most egregious example is that Contrasting Sequel Antagonist is making a claim for the work's plot, which is specifically against the policy ("Do not list tropes in the following categories: [...] Tropes that depend on their role in the story.").

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Everything posted on Borderlands 3 has indeed been revealed and confirmed through gameplay trailers. Even the Contrasting Sequel Antagonist entry where Maliwan attacks the newly reformed Atlas corporation and requires you to repel them, and the Cult of the Vault's leaders the Calypso Twins being THE Big Bad.

Dang, I thought Discar was a mod. Silly me. Why do I get these things wrong?

But anyway, on the fence about Contrasting Sequel Antagonist. Might be workable, but might require the full story.

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