Up to Eleven versus Exaggerated Trope

If I understand the first line of Up To Eleven correctly ("Exceeding the previous maximum, to an exaggerated degree."), it would mean the situation requires a set maximum to judge against. Does taking something to a ridiculous level count even if there was no "old max" established? If yes, what's the difference to Exaggerated Trope? If no, we may have a misuse of approx 90% on our hands.

Exaggerated Trope is a Trope Trope. Up To Eleven is not.

So playing a trope Up To Eleven would be wrong to say? What would be an example of Up To Eleven?

Edited by eroock on Feb 17th 2020 at 7:37:09 AM

If an objective was supposed to be completed 113%. Or Sequel Escalation but within the same installment. Up To Eleven is a tic used in place of "and then more happened".

Then most examples of Up To Eleven I have seen are used wrong.

Yeah, it's one of those tropes used in a lot of unrelated conversational/pothole circumstances when it really shouldn't be.

Exactly what I meant by saying it's a tic. And the definition seems really broad. I remove the occasional shoehorn but I don't wish to tackle cleanup.

There's also Readings Are Off the Scale

Aw man... although for examples limited to scales, I can see where the difference lies. One has numbers beyond the "max", while one wasn't designed to handle numbers beyond a certain reading.

Personally, I think many cases of Exaggerated Trope are just straight examples anyway. Same goes for Downplayed Trope, which often lends itself to shoehorning.

How so?

Because the difference is literally X but more or X but less, which is stated to not be worth a split.

By the way, I'm not really sure these pages should have examples on them. There's already an Example Sectionectomy on Intended Audience Reaction, Averted Trope, and Justified Trope.

Up To Eleven is basically just Fan Speak describing anything that is trying to top itself ("Last season was epic, this season was all of that Up To Eleven"). Funny enough, it kind of misses the point of the Trope Namer joke from This is Spın̈al Tap. The guitar amp has an arbitrary extra marker that the guitarist thinks makes it louder, but that's just a recalibration of the existing threshold rather than pushing beyond previous limits.

Exaggerated Trope is a specific Playing with a Trope type, thus only applied to specific tropes, and is not necessarily "bigger" but could be portrayed to absurdity. Such as a character wearing two Badass Longcoats and a scarf to get maximum Dramatic Wind.