Misused: Holy Shit Quotient

The incredibly short description for Holy Shit Quotient says it's about the number times the average viewer says "holy shit" during the course of a work. Got curious after some misuse was added back to YMMV.Steven Universe The Movie with the user completely under the assumption that it deserved to be there, especially after a comment by someone in the "Is This An Example" thread, so I decided to see how this Audience Reaction was handled on other pages. And hoo boy...

To sum up, everything is either misused, a ZCE, or both. I'd also like to mention that I only took it from YMMV pages because it's an Audience Reaction, but there are dozens of wicks from elsewhere. The few I checked of those seemed to just be misused potholes or mentions of the trope by name.

Anyway, I move that the definition be changed to "Moments that made the audiences' jaws hit the floor", in addition to non-YMMV wick cleaning and ZCE commenting, considering that's how it's used universally across the wiki anyway.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Oct 9th 2019 at 2:36:37 PM

Looks like this got silently opened.

Anyway, my immediate thought is to split this thing up:

• The current definition gets moved to JustForFun.Holy Shit Quotient, with JustForFun.HSQ as a redirect. That's really the only way we can use this properly.
• We create a new page for Shocking Moments or something to that effect. That's how it's used, and it definitely feels like a legitimate Emotional Torque.
• The pages Holy Shit Quotient and HSQ are kept, with the former serving as a disambiguation page between the two concepts and the latter pointing to the disambiguation page in Main/.

I'm fine with the proposals.

This is one of those pages that only exists because TVTropes originated as a project on a Buffy fansite.

Having a formal Shocking Moments thing might cut down on the misuse of the various Wham tropes.

I agree with the proposal.

proposals

Wouldn't Shocking Moments be covered by Gut Punch?

From the description of Gut Punch:

"This is not simply about shocking events, though a Gut Punch is a good way to lead up to a Wham Episode. This is about a single moment that instantly and clearly establishes that the tone of the work as a whole is fundamentally darker than what the audience has been led to expect."

It's similar, but a GP is a specific scene where a work proves itself to be darker than expected, while a shocking moment is just that; a scene that shocks the audience. Phrasing it in a way constantly heard in math class, all Gut Punches can be Shocking Moments, but not all Shocking Moments can be Gut Punches.

Still wondering if we don't already have "a scene that shocks the audience" page somewhere.

Unless someone can find such a trope, I'm defaulting to agreeing with other posters that Shocking Moments is a Missing Supertrope.

To everyone who said "yes to the proposals", do you mean Crossover-Enthusiast's (in the OP) or mine (post number 2)?

Pinging:

• ~Berrenta
• ~War Jay 77
• ~Crossover-Enthusiast
• ~GastonRabbit
• ~miraculous

I like your proposal.

Yeah, should've been specific.

I was referring to yours.

Oh sorry it was your proposal which I liked.

Agreed with making a Shocking Moments audience reaction. Once created we can move plenty of the Wham Episode and Wham Line examples to that.

x5 Your proposal.

They'll still be valid tropes right?

I don't see a proposal to merge or cut them, no. This is just removing all the "oh man, this moment was shocking!" misuse.

Wham tropes are supposed to be moments that are both shocking, and change the status quo of the work as a whole. But it's been misused as any moments that are shocking. By making this a Shocking Moment, hopefully it can curb the misuse of the Wham tropes.

I'm a little worried about this proposal. Now, I know the Whams are overused, and in general I like the idea of having a "this shocked me" trope for people to use. My problem is that I've been seeing a lot of Whams overcut because "there was some foreshadowing here, it doesn't count" or "it didn't change literally everything, it doesn't count."

So I'm worried that a lot of valid "the author intended this line/shot/episode to hit you with a WHAM" examples are just going to be shuffled off to an audience reaction where they can be ignored.

For what it's worth, my proposal involved misuse of HSQ, not the Wham series of tropes.

I got what you were talking about in your proposal, but there is something I'm curious about. Would Shocking Moments be a supertrope to Wham Episode, Wham Shot, Wham Line, etc.? Other people mentioned those (mainly regarding misuse, not their relationship to Holy Shit Quotient), but nobody mentioned whether Shocking Moments would be a supertrope to those.

Edit: I should probably clarify that this post is simply meant as a question regarding the proposal, and not an argument in favor of or against anything.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 14th 2019 at 5:38:00 AM

No, since Shocking Moments (or whatever we call it; I meant it as a working title, unless you all like it) would be YMMV while the Wham tropes would be objective, much like any other trope creating a general emotional impact.