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Some of those are just "many events that are tracked to one single moment/decision - if that didn't happen (or things happened differently), the events in the story couldn't have happened".
My problem is that the original story of "for want of a nail" is NOT about timeline shenanigans. Wikipedia says that it's "reminding that seemingly unimportant acts or omissions can have grave and unforeseen consequences."
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Yes, I think the narrative is supposed to identify the nail, but many examples are about the audience inferring a nail instead. Many nails could be inferred, but the narrative doesn't point out as many as people imagine there are.
On the flip side, the "in spite of" trope does require more insight from the audience. It welcomes editors to infer what the different starting conditions were, because the focus is on how events play out similarly despite the changes. So I haven't really tried to work on community consensus or cleanup with either trope.
she/her
Incidentally, we actually have a "trope" that covers this. But it has collected 6 wicks in 8 years, and it's on Tropes Needing TRS for a reason.
There are numerous examples like that, though:
- In the Direct to Video Our Friend Martin, a teenaged African American boy, his white best friend, and two other kids, another white boy and a Latina girl, go back in time to save a teenaged Martin Luther King Jr. after learning that he was assassinated. When they come back to the present, the Civil Rights Movement never happened and as a result, the protagonist's "best friend" angrily tells him he doesn't talk to "negroes", Jim Crow laws are still in effect, the Latina girl works as a cleaning girl alongside her mother and doesn't speak English, the feminist principal now teaches home-ec., and doesn't respond to the principal's sexist insult. When he goes home, he learns that his mother, a self-employed businesswoman, works as a maid. Things only go back to normal when King decides to back in time, and accept his role in history.
- The Back to the Future film trilogy is a series of nails showing what would have happened if a certain event did or didn't occur:
- In the first movie, Marty McFly's father was a wimp who couldn't stand up to the bully Biff Tannen, but after Marty changed events concerning his father in 1955, he becomes a more confident and successful man who has Biff eating out of his hand, and Marty's family life has also improved.
- Also in the second movie, an automobile accident that would have happened in the third movie when Marty was racing with his friend Needles was the nail that caused Marty's future history to go down the toilet by 2015, eventually resulting in him being fired from the company he and Needles were working for. When the accident was avoided in the third movie, the YOU'RE FIRED message that Marty's girlfriend/future wife Jennifer Parker had received from the future was erased, meaning that their future could potentially become a better one.
- A major plot point in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Harry's youngest son Albus and Draco's son Scorpius get their hands on a Time Turner capable of traveling back years into the past rather than mere hours. They want to use it to save Cedric Diggory from dying at the hands of Voldemort. Their meddling in history results in two alternate timelines:
- The first timeline is caused when Albus and Scorpius disguise themselves as Durmstrang students to sabotage Cedric's attempt at the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament. Hermione spots them and suspects Viktor Krum of cheating, resulting in her not accepting his request to dance at the Yule Ball, going with Ron instead. Because of this, Ron never experiences any romantic jealousy over Hermione and never throws a fit about it towards her either. Instead, he continues to see her as a friend rather than a potential love interest. He does find love in Padma Patil and ultimately marries her, with the both of them conceiving a son named Panju. This makes Hermione an embittered woman who in her adult life becomes a Sadist Teacher at Hogwarts, venting her romantic frustrations at the students. Unfortunately for Albus and Scorpius, the changes to the timeline did not result in Cedric surviving, as his humiliation at the first task made him more determined at the other tasks.
- The second timeline is caused when Albus and Scorpius successfully sabotage the Second Task of the Tournament. The humiliation of losing becomes too much for Cedric, resulting in him enlisting into Voldemort's Death Eaters. At the Battle of Hogwarts, Cedric manages to kill Neville Longbottom, who, in the original timeline, managed to destroy Nagini, Voldemort's final Horcrux. Because Neville was killed before destroying Nagini, Harry failed in his mission to kill Voldemort, resulting in Voldemort gaining absolute power. In this timeline, Harry was killed by Voldemort so Albus is never born. Also, Draco Malfoy has become the head of the magical law enforcement, with his son Scorpius being a somewhat important figure maintaining a reign of terror at Hogwarts, ran by Dolores Umbridge as headmistress. Also, Hermione runs an underground resistance movement with Ron and Severus Snape as members.
That trope is so old and unloved it uses hyphens instead of colons! If "inferred For Want Of A Nail" turns out to be misuse, we at least have somewhere to put it.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
I can't tell with 4tell sometimes. I thought they were genuinely saying For Want didn't involve time stuff.
Which is why I included the "e.g.". I just listed those two because it was late and I couldn't think of anything else.
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NaNo 4328 / 50,000
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Timeline shenanigans are not a requirement.
A story with an Unnamed Parent can involve timeline shenanigans, but it isn't a requirement.
A story with a Robot Dog can involve timeline shenanigans, but it isn't a requirement.
Edited by crazysamaritan on Oct 9th 2020 at 2:07:35 PM
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
I'm with crazysamaritan.
OP, you were asking: "I thought this was only about In-Universe nails, e.g. time travel shenanigans or alternate universe fics that take a specific divergence point. Was I incorrect in this assumption?"
The answer is: yes, you were incorrect.
My first post was me going on a conjecture about the original usage of the term.
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NaNo 4328 / 50,000
I think you mean tangent, not conjecture.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
So how to differentiate For Want Of A Nail from Plot Pivot Point? If an incident is crucial to the development of the plot, it will most likely create massive changes to the status quo.
The latter is simply not thriving. Let's just Mercy Kill it.
Edited by 4tell0life4 on Oct 10th 2020 at 4:02:31 AM
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Let's save that for TRS, please?
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NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Just spitballing, but I think some of the “inferred nails” mentioned in the OP should not count as For Want Of A Nail, as they’re essentially speculating. The Inciting Incident can be minor, and say for the Avatar example, there’s nothing saying they would not have found Aang were it not for said tiff. Without spacetime travel, I think in-universe speculation about nails like should still count.
I never said time travel was required 100% of the time?
"I thought this was only about In-Universe nails, e.g. time travel shenanigans or alternate universe fics that take a specific divergence point. Was I incorrect in this assumption?"
Okay, I see what you meant.
Still... if we can logically track most events that happened in the story to "that certain moment", I believe it would count for the trope, even if the narrative itself doesn't outright point it out. Show, Don't Tell and all.
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I was told on the "Is This An Example" thread that this trope only applies cases involving alternate universes/alternate histories. Otherwise it's essentially just us writing AU fanfiction about how "things would have happened differently if they had happened differently". Literally all stories have points where events happen that affect the story, and if those events happened differently the story would b different. We cannot list that as a trope. It's too common.
Edited by TheMountainKing on Oct 10th 2020 at 12:23:37 PM
No, someone pointed out that as long as the "divergence point" is made clear in universe (i.e by the narration or similar), it can count. Like the original story of "For want of a nail".
I'm simply repeating the answer I was given in the thread. It seems like this trope is covering two distinct concepts, your definition and mine. One is where it is pointed out in-universe that a specific event/decision going differently would change things i.e. a character laments "if only I had picked up the phone that day...etc." The second is the "point of divergence" in an alternate universe story, which often isn't pointed out in-universe, the reader recognizes it because they are familiar with the "original version" (be that canon or real life). Maybe this second definition, being so important to certain genres of fiction, should get its own trope?
Edited by TheMountainKing on Oct 11th 2020 at 9:19:52 AM
I thought there's What If?
I think that's more for the general concept of alternate universe stories, that don't need to have one specific POD, like the page image. It actually lists For Want Of A Nail as if it's a subtrope. I mostly see For Want Of A Nail used to list the specific point of divergence.
Edited by TheMountainKing on Oct 11th 2020 at 10:14:33 AM
I don't mind lumping Alice saying "If only I had picked up the phone that day..." and speculating and the writer saying "What if Alice had not picked up the phone that day?" and writing something based on this speculation together under For Want Of A Nail. It's the audience going "would the plot have happened if Alice had not picked up the phone that day?" examples that I don't think should count.
Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 12th 2020 at 3:09:35 AM
I was browsing through examples on For Want Of A Nail to see if a trope idea I had was separate enough from it, and I ended up discovering a lot of on-page examples where no actual nail scenario occurs in the work itself; rather, that there was a nail possibility that things could've gone different had something else happened. Like these:
I thought this was only about In-Universe nails, e.g. time travel shenanigans or alternate universe fics that take a specific divergence point. Was I incorrect in this assumption? The description doesn't mention it, either.
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