Shouldn't "Aluminum Christmas Trees" be YMMV?

I don't know, honestly, how should a proper Freakier Than Fiction example look like. You said "acknowledgement"? Like, how?

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My problem with Aluminum Christmas Trees as an objective trope is that it assumes an ignorance on behalf of the audience. "The audience will not be familiar with it" is a bold statement that assumes Viewers Are Morons, and all of them are equally ignorant. It's very subjective what one viewer finds realistic or unrealistic, you can't just put everyone in the same hat. Where is the line?

Furthermore, we cannot know how intended the reaction is on the creator's behalf. Did they think "I'm going to put in this plot element in the story so that the audience will find it weird and then will be surprised when they find out it's real", or did they just put in that plot element because they thought it was normal, and it's just found weird retroactively because of time and/or cultural differences? Or perhaps they didn't even know it was real and it's Accidentally-Correct Writing? Who knows?

Edited by Snicka on Feb 10th 2020 at 10:15:19 AM

An strictly In-Universe-only example of Freakier Than Fiction is similar to the Cassandra Truth, someone dismissing the truth because it's seen as too outrageous (may involve Who Writes This Crap?!). It could also be an adaptation or Ripped from the Headlines trope, comparing the source information with how the movie is mundane in comparison. It becomes trivia when it brings up quotes from the creators or production notes on why they changed something.

The better examples on the page would be Pain & Gain comparing the movie to the real life events, and the In-Universe example of Stranger Things where the characters get involved with Framing the Guilty Party by claiming several deaths to be a corporation hiding a chemical spill rather than the truth of breaching into a parallel dimension.

I think what Freakier Than Fiction means by "acknowledgement" is that the work's creators intentionally change details because they'd be too outrageous for fiction- it'd shatter the Suspension of Disbelief, despite being true, so they downplay it to make it less unbelievable.

The examples involve creators changing details to make the audience less skeptical.

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Meanwhile, in-universe examples of Aluminum Christmas Trees (i.e. characters dismissing something real as unrealistic) are covered by Eskimos Aren't Real.

I mentioned it somewhere else, but I believe Genius Bonus is relevant to this whole discussion.

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It's kind of the inverse?

• Genius Bonus: A minority of viewers are geniuses and understand this reference
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A majority of viewers are dumb and don't understand this reference

Except there seems not to be intention of fooling viewers in the latter case.

To make a long story short, Aluminum Christmas Trees is an OLD trope, one that is rendered mostly redundant with Reality Is Unrealistic. We can make broad discussions on the distinction between them, but functional use on the wiki is going to be the same.

Maybe move it to JFF, and keep examples off of actual pages or something, because Reality Is Unrealistic does cover it.

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"work's creators intentionally change details because they'd be too outrageous for fiction-"

What I'm saying is that only a few of the examples talk about the creators. This will need a Word of God, right?

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Not necessarily; if they're based on real-life events, all you need to do is compare the works' portrayal to what happened in real-life and realize that they toned down the events.

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How do we know that they based the part of the story on real life events, or that they're merely coincidences? (My guess: namedropping the event's exact name and/or the name of the involved people?)

Digress: "Funny Aneurysm" Moment and Harsher in Hindsight might be related to it (i.e something similarly harsh IRL comes after the work portrayed it)

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Well, usually the story itself would be based specifically on those events; it wouldn't just be a single scene or moment taking inspiration from real life. At least, AFAIK.

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Nope; nada; veto. As mentioned , the work itself must be based on a Real Life story, not just loosely fictionalized, before Freakier Than Fiction can be used.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

From Home Page.YMMV: "The article might call for a value judgment and your judgment call could be different from another troper's." Are "this is obscure" and "this is well-known" value judgements? What is obscure and what is well-known definitely differs between people.

Also, from Audience Reactions: "An Audience Reaction is objectively not present in the work at all." While the plot elements that can be considered Aluminum Christmas Trees are in the work, their obscurity isn't. The audience's disbelief is something that objectively cannot be present in the work.

I, too, feel that this "trope" relies on the audience's knowledge for an example to apply.

Something also occurred to me about this: if a show becomes famous and an example becomes well-known to exist as the result, would it then no longer apply?

Like a product version of a Colbert Bump? Which is trivia...

I want to take this to TRS for various reasons.

Edited by Tabs on Feb 13th 2020 at 10:14:45 AM

Such as?

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• being in the Main/ namespace rather than YMMV/
• if not in YMMV/, having a description that contradicts that (first sentence: "An element that exists or existed in Real Life but is assumed to be fictional by audiences, often because it seems too unlikely, bizarre, or kitschy to be real.")
• getting muddied with Eskimos Aren't Real if meant to be used in-universe
• requiring author intent(???), which cannot be troped

I'm gonna pull an example

• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • "Blood moon" is an actual colloquial name for a lunar eclipse (generally a total lunar eclipse). A lot of fans consider the name of the phenomenon in BotW to be overly dramatic, unaware of this fact.
  • The ridiculous-looking Durian fruit may seem made-up to anyone who doesn't live in southeast Asia, but it's one of the most realistic items in the game. Despite its enormous size, it grows on trees, and its strong smell and "king of fruits" nickname from the ingame description come directly from the real version.

Serious? Blood moons and durians? I can't dispute the entry because where's the bar?

Edited by Tabs on Feb 13th 2020 at 10:27:53 AM

Apparently, EskimosArentReal.Real Life is also a page, which is basically the same as Aluminum Christmas Trees except not necessarily tied to a specific work. Still, it often does mention specific works, for example for animals like Tasmanian devils, hedgehogs and wolverines, or for places like Madagascar or Abu Dhabi, making these examples redundant to Aluminum Christmas Trees. It's also not YMMV, since the bulk of the examples are in-universe.

Edited by Snicka on Feb 16th 2020 at 10:33:20 AM

so should we put a No Real Life Examples Please on it?

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I wouldn't oppose that, though decisions like that need to be made at the designated cleanup thread with crowners and such.

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No, the difference is that Eskimos Aren't Real is about a person believing that something doesn't exist, while Aluminum Christmas Trees is when a work portrays something that most people believe isn't real. However, Eskimos Aren't Real may be too common in real life.

I encountered this thread when discussing whether we should list tropes with this property; we've come up with Hellfire and Year Inside, Hour Outside. What evidence is required to make a TRS thread to make it YMMV?

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Eskimos Aren't Real is apparently supposed to be in-universe examples. So why does it have a Real Life page? And how is it supposed to be different than ACT?

It looks like we have a broad approval, if not consensus, that Reality Is Unrealistic and Aluminum Christmas Trees should be YMMV. Is there anything else being discussed first? Any reason not to get a crowner for this thread or should it wait for a TRS? (I believe Unexpected Character was changed to YMMV via thread as opposed to TRS.)

NRLEP and IUEO aren't the same thing. IUEO just means it takes place "in universe", and disallows meta moments. On a technicality, real life is just as "in universe".

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 4th 2021 at 2:01:38 PM

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