Complaining: Bad Writing Index

I'll go ahead and add Fantastic Aesop and Space Whale Aesop to the crowner, then.

I think it's weird that Space Whale Aesop is doing better on the crowner than Fantastic Aesop. They're very similar tropes. I've explained why I think they should be on the page, but could someone explain why they think either shouldn't? It might convince some people.

Like I said, Fantastic Aesop has an unnecessarily bitchy tone for a trope that's not actually rooted in real life at all. Space Whale Aesop being about unrealistic consequences of realistic problems is something that has much more obvious reasons for being a problem for readers. I actually think there are enough legitimate reasons to use it to vote them both down, but that would be my guess as to the general reaction.

My guess is both are supposed to be used as allegories for RL issues, but Space Whale is more prone to the problems that ruin the applicability.

Fantastic Aesop: Non-realistic causes works because it's easy to see the intended allegory.

Space Whale Aesop: Non-realistic consequences don't work because they tend to be too far removed from applicability to work even as an allegory.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Aug 2nd 2020 at 7:40:23 AM

While I agree that Like Is, Like, a Comma and Meaningless Meaningful Words should be taken off this index, I do want to stress that dialog is a matter of writing. Y'know, the dialog has to be written, and it can be written well or poorly. When audience members comment on the dialog (say some forced exposition) we're talking about the writing, and people may even phrase their comments as "This scene is not well written" (as opposed to "edited" or "composed"). Really I'm commenting on someone's reasoning from a few pages back about how these tropes are "not bad, is a character dialog trope" as though dialog is somehow excluded from an index about writing pitfalls.

Fantastic Aesop is not equivalent to Space Whale Aesop, and if it were, it would need to go to TRS as a duplicate issue. Moreover, it isn't a subtrope. It was originally called "Useless Aesop" which is not the same to SWA. This concerns (apparently intentional) aesops that are nonsensical. Whereas SW As are contradicted by real life (e.g. humpback whales have nothing to do with a fictional race of aliens), the FA is — simply put — totally useless to real life situations.

That said, there seems to be a lot of overlap between these two tropes, and FA probably should go to TRS. For one thing, the description is formatted like a Playing With/ page, which isn't kosher and does cause confusion.

Thanks for responding.

While looking at the trope pages to address your points, I noticed that both Fantastic Aesop and Space Whale Aesop are on Unexpected Reactions to This Index, making them both Audience Reactions. So they shouldn't be on the index anyways. There might be other entries on that index that will need to be removed as well.

That's weird. They're on an index of audience reactions, but they're not YMMV? Sounds like a job for Tropes Needing TRS then.

Alright, the downvoted items have been pulled or simply omitted. Are we missing anything else?

I think the line between a trope and an audience reaction is a difficult one to decide or detect.

WaterBlap, I'll clarify what I meant about the character dialog tropes. My standard for a trope to be "not bad" is "There is an obvious way to use this trope straight in a way that improves the work." "Straight" excludes parodies or spoofs, and "Obvious" just wards off rules lawyers. When I said that they're "character dialog tropes", I meant that, even if they're bad if they're a part of an author's writing style, they can be used to add detail and personality to a character by applying it to their dialog, which improves the work, so they shouldn't be on the page.

A random thought. Do we have an index of negative audience reactions?

I don't have anything else to remove. We could probably move to a project thread whenever and just keep doing the same stuff there.

also, Bold Inflation got removed in an earlier edit, so it needs to be added back still.

Edited by JXZ on Aug 2nd 2020 at 11:58:58 AM

If that's alright with everyone, we can call the thread done.

Edited by Berrenta on Aug 2nd 2020 at 10:57:17 AM

Re: Bold Inflation: My best guess was that it was pulled as it focused on wiki editing. I'll add it in for writing in general.

Edit: Okay, that may collide with Emphasize EVERYTHING the way I was writing it.

Edited by Berrenta on Aug 2nd 2020 at 11:27:27 AM

@Serac: They're not YMMV because their issues arise from their objective in-work logic as opposed to Audience Reactions. If the audience reacted in the intended way or a way not worth troping they would still be examples of that trope.

A separate category for unintended but not YMMV tropes would be worth considering.

Are we ready to close this TRS thread and make a long term projects thread for this index?

Probably long term since new additions will be curated. Like with Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard.

Edited by FridgeGuy2016 on Aug 7th 2020 at 7:32:39 AM

don't know if it goes in the long-term or short-term section, but I think so.

I think Long-Term would be better.

Long Term would be correct here, yeah.

Indeed, let's go with Long-Term Projects.

Closing.