"No Recent Examples Please" cleanup

The "default" time limit is from the event in question, so it would be the end of the war in this case.

Does the Ensemble Dark Horse wait apply to the work releasing or the character is revealed prerelease? (I assume work release asp releases suggest they're supposed to be popular and they might be to big/not as popular in the final product.)

It starts from release.

Thinking about adding the following to the crowner. Most of these are ones I mentioned previously, which can be seen below:

• Even Better Sequel (6 months after the work's release): To prevent knee-jerk reactions to a sequel's release.

• Surprisingly Improved Sequel (6 months after the work's release): To prevent knee-jerk reactions to a sequel's release.

• Audience-Alienating Premise (1 month or the end of the season/theatrical run, whichever is later): To prevent knee-jerk reactions and to make sure the work meets the requirement that it is commercially unsuccessful or a Box Office Bomb.

• Fandom Relationship Reactions (1 month): To base reactions on peoples' engagement with the actual work rather than pre-release speculation or expectations:
  • Fandom Rivalry
  • Friendly Fandoms

The last one can be two separate items on the crowner for simplicity’s sake.

One is one that has been discussed a couple pages back and I’d like to see some consensus if we should have a five or ten year waiting period, though I am leaning towards five as it seems to line up more with One-Hit Wonder and Franchise Killer with having more immediate effects:

• Star-Derailing Role (5 years, unless the actor retires): To make sure the actor’s standing has diminished.

I also have a couple new suggestions I’d like some feedback on too:

• Genre Popularizer (10 years): To allow time to prove that the genre’s popularity has changed, rather than just causing a passing fad.

• Hitless Hit Album (1 year): Some albums might not find success with their singles or even initially have singles until a while after the album drops, especially in the streaming era. Therefore, we ask you to wait and see if this is still the case during the album’s active cycle.

• Killer App (6 months): To see if people are actually buying the console for the game, instead of basing it on pre-release hype and early sales alone.

I think Killer App could be reduced to 3 months — I think the peak hype for a modern game dies down around that time.

I prefer Surprisingly Improved Sequel to have a much shorter waiting period (if it has any at all) than Even Better Sequel. I think it's easier to fairly see whether a sequel fixed flaws from its predecessors than to judge whether a good sequel is actually better than an already-good predecessor.

Edited by Albert3105 on Jun 24th 2022 at 1:58:45 PM

(This was originally on Ask The Tropers, but is also added here per request by Synchronicity. )

So I was browsing Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and theres already several Author's Saving Throw in them already. While gameplay videos have already existed right now as the game is nearing its launch, I believe that AST should be used after the game is released to ensure that those saving throws are valid. Any thoughts on the issue?

I feel like between Author's Saving Throw and Win Back the Crowd, at least one of those tropes (or a third separate one) should be flexible enough to allow for examples where the creators were aware of existing negative audience reactions to previous entries and went out of their way to show that they attempted to address it in pre-release materials (in many cases, appealing to potentially burned fans is half the entire point of sequel trailers, and they frequently make efforts to commit in the final product).

The negative audience reaction, subsequent effort to course correct, and audience response of positivity is self-evident enough to be worth documenting in some fashion, and as has been discussed on the dedicated cleanup thread for Author's Saving Throw, the effort doesn't always have to work 100% to count, as long as it's clear some implicit effort was made because of it (which also suggests that pre-release material should be allowed to count).

In the case of Xenoblade 3, specifically, while I've also tried to take down examples for a time, I should also note that Monolith Soft has been open about their interest in taking fan criticisms into accounts, and as someone tuned into the franchise discourse, several aspects of the pre-release footage and information are very clearly pointed responses to fan complaints in context, and certain things like improved character design are pretty self-evident (that one in particular has explicit Word of God backing it up).

Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 10th 2022 at 3:25:14 PM

Fair point

Yeah, I also think Author's Saving Throw examples being based on authorial intent, not whether they "succeeded", makes for a much healthier trope by being less subjective. I don't think waiting for the results is necessary - and I say this as someone who really doesn't care for pre-release troping in general.

Edited by nrjxll on Jul 10th 2022 at 7:44:04 AM

Yeah but is it easy to determine that without Word of God. Alot of entries as is are just guessing what the author might have intended ?

Oh, it's still subjective. It's just less subjective than also adding in the factor of fans potentially arguing over whether a saving throw actually worked.

You will rarely find Word of God for these things because admitting the previous entry had outright problems is a good way to lose face, but if the example can make a good case for there having been the kind of past widespread negative audience reaction that would bring about such a change it it should be OK. Hell, it should be implicitly required if only because not explaining the past negative reaction would make it obviously ZCE. Taking care to explain how said criticism was a common one would also cut down on fringe cases and ensure it to be an audience reaction as opposed to the creators just self-improving of their own will.

Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 11th 2022 at 5:01:21 AM

I've recently done some thinking about Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, and since The Scrappy is an example of NREP, then by all accounts, the opposite should be to IMO, in order to make sure that the rescuing sticks (especially when similar tropes like Vindicated by History also have a waiting period). Surely six months after the character's reception improves should suffice.

Eh, I don't think RFTSH suffers as much misuse to necessitate essentially a full year of a waiting period.

If that's too much, maybe 1-3 months would be better?

Edited by thecarolinabull01 on Aug 3rd 2022 at 2:03:37 PM

RFTSH is an opinion shift that can often happen with just a single episode, unlike items like The Scrappy which require a gradual and long-lasting opinion to dominate fandom, so I just don't think it's that necessary.

Next crowner when?

Are these to go with?

They look ok for the most part. Anyone is free to add crowner items if the tropes mentioned have been discussed.

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 9th 2022 at 12:31:18 PM

So do we add new items to the crowner or create a new one?

The current crowner description says discussed entries can be "added", which means it's not something that require a mod action.

Added Later-Installment Weirdness to the crowner.

Could we discuss "Written By The Winners - Real Life" and maybe lower it to 50 years? I find it particularly relevant to the US Civil War and World War 2 as a large part of the popular historical discourse (and to a lesser extant, the academic historical discourse, at least for certain periods of time) is influenced in many parts by the post-war actions of Confederate veterans and groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy (for the US Civil War) and by the memoirs of Wehrmacht generals and a desire by the French/British/USA to remilitarize West Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Block (in the case of WW2). The "quotes" section on The American Civil War even speaks of what I speak of (in regards to the "pop vs. academic historical understanding of the war" dichotomy). This trope is heavily nuanced in Real Life and I feel it worthwhile to discuss it.

Edited by Commander_Ysenir on Aug 22nd 2022 at 6:40:34 AM

Won the War, Lost the Peace still has issues related to recent events.

Edited by namra on Aug 26th 2022 at 4:36:15 AM