Not Tropeworthy: Some Anvils Needto Be Dropped

There's been attempts to fix the problems with Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped for a while now. Theoretically, it's supposed to be "something has a heavy handed moral but it's better because it's so heavy handed", but in practice it's entirely "this work has an important moral that everyone needs to agree with". Every single bullet, both on the SANTBD page and on work pages, comes off as something written by a Soapbox Sadie Single-Issue Wonk. The Sandbox Wick Check (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/SomeWicksNeedToBeChecked) has declared basically every wick to be a misuse.

Despite attempts made to cleanse the trope page, SANTBD is still used for stuff like this:

"We Will Rock You [the stage musical] pretty much lives off the 'Don't be like everyone else' Aesop."

"2point4 Children ended one of its Christmas specials with Bill giving an extremely un-subtle speech about how easy it is to become homeless and doesn't just happen to "other people.""

"The climax of "Battlefield" [The Doctor Who episode] has the Doctor rant about how modern warfare can bring untold destruction, yet the person responsible never has to see the consequences because all they have to do is push a button. With the advances in technology since then, this scene is sadly just as relevant nowadays.

[From the Web Original Unraveled YMMV page] ""When Can Mario Retire" drops the important fact that millennials were born in an age where they literally cannot retire even if they did everything right." [there's also a Tear Jerker entry on the same page reiterating this point, giving me very strong Single-Issue Wonk vibes]

Even for a YMMV trope, SANTBD is very subjective, not helped by there being two factors at play - one being whether the work is Anvilicious in the first place, second being whether the moral justifies the Anvilicious-ness. I don't really see a future where this trope gets any better, especially because the subject matters that Anvilicious Aesops tend to center on attract some very strong emotions.

I'm putting my cards on the table and saying "SANTBD is not tropeworthy, 'cause even when used correctly the trope is just "Anvilicious but not done badly", which is just playing with the Anvilicious trope and thus not its own trope". Getting rid of a complaining magnet is just icing on the cake. Also: I'm concerned that removing some individual SANTBD bullets will cause people to take it personally ("Oh, you removed my ZCE about how a video game that lets you shoot up Nazis is an SANTBD because it's important to kill Nazis? Then clearly, YOU'RE a Nazi!!!"), so I think chopping down this tree at the base might be a better move than pruning the branches. We can replace it with a bold banner at the bottom of the Anvilicious page that "TROPES ARE NOT BAD" and merge the scarce few decent bullet points into Anvilicious.

Meh, opening, although I would consider expanding the "trope" to fit the misuse. You see, normally morals - especially heavy handed ones - often get an icy reception among audiences so the aversion is somewhat notable.

Except "Anvilicious Done Well" is already what it's supposed to be, and the misuse is "an Anvilicious Aesop I agree with".

Notably, the oldest version of the page in the Internet Archive already has this sort of misuse creeping in at the fourth non-ZCE.

It's been pointed out that this being used as a "done well" variant of Anvilicious has caused Anvilicious usage to lean more toward examples that are thought to be done badly.

The previous Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped TRS thread had a vote on whether to adjust both Anvilicious and Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped to match their usage (which might have meant moving them to Darth Wiki and Sugar Wiki, respectively), but that didn't happen. The only thing that came out of that thread is that Anvil of the Story got launched with nothing else being done.

This trope is like, Anvilicious but Good. Except Tropes Are Tools, and I think it would be okay for an entry for Anvilicious to say that while a moral is heavy-handed, it still works. I support this:

To be honest, morals especially when heavy-handed are usually perceived as bad. So I don't think that merger works without watering down Anvilicious a lot.

I am also of the opinion that expanding this trope would be a bad idea, per the reasons already discussed above.

I...yeah. I'm not sure how to fix this one.

When we made Anvil of the Story, somehow we were all convinced it would help. Then it launched and we all realized how pointless it was, but it exists now and that's...something, I guess?

As for this one, the hardest thing is the fact that it's literally described as "An Anvil, but GOOD", which should go against everything Tropes Are Tools tells us, but it's also YMMV (or is it an Audience Reaction?) and that means it's subjective, and maybe that means the definition is okay???

Or we can redefine it for how I always see it actually being used: A heavy-handed message that the audience appreciated having. Basically, instead of "Heavy Message Makes Story Better", it's "Heavy Message The Audience Likes". And I'm not sure if either of those definitions are actually good, but if we redefine there's less cleanup to do.

I always thought the "audience reaction" part was important here; i.e., the trope is for works that get praised for having a good moral and not being subtle about it, while Anvilicious is just "the work has a moral and is not subtle about it".

I think that forcing some of Anvilicious' mentions to be positive would also help that trope's negativity issue. If people see more positively received Anvilicious aesops alongside the negatively ones it'll paint Anvilicious as more of a morally gray trope.

A part of me thinks this should be one of the Definition-Only Pages if it can't have any good examples... that or locking the page and maybe doing an example drive for potentially legitimate examples and making it clear what counts.

Sort of defeats the purpose of Anvil of the Story which was conceived as the neutral supertrope to both of the anvils. Also leaves me wondering why we'd need Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped in that case.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not arguing against the idea, but these are points we need to consider.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 12th 2021 at 2:11:00 PM

My ideal "not taking into account any of the work that has to be done" solution is to just have one "heavy handed Aesop" audience reaction, although I haven't really participated in the Anvils discussion until now so apologies if this was already brought up.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 12th 2021 at 1:17:02 PM

Another thing to keep in mind with regards to the "moral the audience likes" is the "preaching to the choir" issue. When stripped down to the barest bones, a lot of the morals even on the Anvilicious page are probably decent to good morals, it's just the audience already knows it or is sick of hearing it. For instance, take a toilet training video aimed at very young kids and their parents. That very specific audience would probably say that, "yes, 'don't poop in your pants' is a SANTBD". But TV Tropes' audience is probably ~0% potty training toddlers and relatively few parents of potty training toddlers, so they'd probably laugh at the "don't poop in your pants" anvil and put it under Anvilicious. Gray areas like these are why I'd say that Anvilicious, SANTBD, and the (honestly kinda pointless as it is) Anvil of the Story tropes should all be merged into one trope.

I remember that on the clean up thread it was said SANTBD is not supposed to about the message itself. It's supposed to be about when being heavy handed instead of subtle improves the delivery of the message.

i've always thought it was odd that SANTBD and anvilicious were the same trope with one being "good" and the other being "bad" considering how that flies directly in the face of Tropes Are Tools. even if they aren't technically supposed to be that, that's what they're most commonly used for just by virtue of how they're defined. i genuinely think it'd be a good idea to just have anvilicious be a neutral trope and include positive examples of it along with negative ones.

Because morals often annoy people. "Heavy-handed" is not generally a praise. So a positive reception is slightly unusual.

Regarding why people voted on launching Anvil of the Story, I think a lot of people expected Anvilicious and Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped to be changed to refer to negative and positive anvils, respectively (which could have meant moving them to Darth and Sugar, but wouldn't have to mean that), not that we'd end up with a supertrope without those changes being done.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 12th 2021 at 5:57:17 AM

That Would have been nice and I think what people were aiming for.

I mean, morals don't always annoy people. I don't think most people inherently hate morals, but I might be wrong.

I think "Heavy-handed message that's done well" is an inherently flawed concept. Most tropers aren't going to add examples unless they already agree with the message.

I'm pretty sure that's why moving it to Sugar Wiki was suggested. In fact, we used to have SugarWiki.Anvils That Needed To Be Dropped, which was merged with Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped.

Well, I am pretty sure that heavy-handed morals are far more likely to annoy people than not.

But would moving it back to Sugar Wiki really change anything, since you can still add Sugar Wiki tropes to YMMV pages?

I think having a trope that's basically "X trope, but good" is a bad idea. Look at The Scrappy, which is about characters who are hated by the audience. Imagine if we created a trope called Some Characters Need To Be Scrappies to cover instances where The Scrappy is well written. It would basically be used by people to defend characters who are labelled The Scrappy. I think the same thing is happening here. People are using Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped to defend morals they like that were labelled heavy-handed.

I didn't mean I agreed with keeping "X, but done well" separate. I meant I think that's why people suggested it.