Not Tropeworthy: Some Anvils Needto Be Dropped

Well, The Scrappy is defined by being bad so "The Scrappy But Good" is just a contradiction in terms. "Anvilicious But Good" isn't.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Could we pivot away from the inherently negative sounding "heavy handed" to the more neutral "obvious"?

The Laconic for Anvilicious says "An Aesop is enforced excessively", which sounds neutral to me. Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped is when a work is praised for being Anvilicious, and it's an Audience Reaction while Anvilicious seemingly isn't. It definitely shouldn't just be "this work has a moral I agree with."

I don't see what the point of Anvil of the Story is, it just looks extremely redundant with Anvilicious.

"Excessively" is a neutral word, now?

^^"Anvilicious" doesn't really mean "obvious".

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I agree there are cases where Anvilicious can be well done, but having a trope for those instances just invites people to gush over morals they like. I think a better strategy would be to emphasize that Tropes Are Tools and just because a work isn't subtle doesn't mean it's automatically bad.

No, the comparison is valid. Declaring a moral/Aesop "heavy-handed" is already a subjective judgement with negative intent. By definition, saying that "the moral was delivered with the subtly of a falling cartoon anvil" is to say that the delivery bothered you. The article's original definition was that the moral/work was improved by a heavy-handed delivery, but that is not supported by the wiki's use. People add it only when they agree with the message of the work. It is just as much a contradiction in terms.

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The only thing that I thought the cleanup project would help do is show that people would put the same morals under But Done Poorly and But Done Well.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Thinking we should just merge with Anvil of the Story.

The way I see it, Tropes Are Tools makes "X but done well" pointless.

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I don't think the use on Sandbox.Some Wicks Need To Be Checked supports the notion The article's original definition was that the moral/work was improved by a heavy-handed delivery, but that is not supported by the wiki's use.. Most of the use is neutral or perhaps implicitly supportive, that does not change the fact that "heavy handed" (syn. Anvilicious) is not normally a neutral term.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Potentially yes, but I think I'll wait for more opinions before I take a stance yet.

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I agree that "Heavy-handed Morals" But Done Well vs But Done Badly is a completely useless distinction. While it might describe a real phenomenon, in practice, whether a particular example fits one or the other boils down to whether or not the audience agree with the message, and because no Aesop is universally accepted, then every single example could theoretically qualify as both Anvilicious and SANTBD.

I seem recall a discussion that purports SANTBD not as a heavy-handed moral whose inclusion improves a work, but that it directly addresses a hot-button topic that's on the buzz around the time of its release (e.g. a movie about racism made and released at a time where racial tensions are at an all-time high). I'm not sure if that's workable as a concept, but I think it's a little better than simply gushing that "the moral is good, ergo the work is good for speaking so clearly about it."

Edited by Adept on May 14th 2021 at 11:46:38 PM

Examples of subtropes always qualify as examples of their supertropes; that's just how the system works. However, it's preferable to only list an example under an applicable subtrope instead of also listing it under the supertrope.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 14th 2021 at 9:01:28 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

It's an old discussion, technically. You can find plenty of past opinions.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I meant, more opinions on other potential options for this trope.

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But Anvilicious and SANTBD are not sub/super tropes to each other. Both are subtropes to Anvil of the Story, and if the distinction between them is so loose that most examples can qualify for both, then the split becomes meaningless, and that's discounting the fact that trope done well and trope done badly is already a bad way to distinguish tropes to being with.

Edited by Adept on May 14th 2021 at 11:53:29 PM

If SANTBD is about how the heavy handedness improves the Aesop regardless of liking/agreeing with the Aesop, it should be possible to dislike the Aesop while liking how in your face the Aesop is. It doesn't seem humanly possible to separate liking the Aesop from liking the handling, hence the Trope Decay.

A thought I had is replacing it with "Validated Aesop" for when out of universe events cause the Aesop to be well received/seen as justified in it's heavy handedness. I can't think of any other way to salvage SANTBD as repeated cleanup attempts failed to separate gushing about the Aesop and the intended definition.

Is that possible? Under what circumstances would someone appreciate a heavy-handed Aesop they disagree with? If anything, their disagreement is why they find it heavy-handed. People are more likely to notice things they dislike and think about those things more- negativity bias. So it's easier to call an Aesop "heavy handed" if you don't like it, because you're probably exaggerating how heavy handed it even is, because you don't want to be told about it.

See for example how big a deal some people make about social-justice morals in media lately. Obviously a lot of people like those things, but to the people who disagree with the message, they often just end up wonking about it- because to them, it overshadows the rest of the work and they end up assuming it's a bigger of a deal than it probably was in context.

TL;DR: I think the logic works the other way around. Anvilicious exists in part because people don't like certain messages, and that's why it's so negative. You're not likely to find a message "heavy handed" if you agree with it, unless it's a case of Don't Shoot the Message.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The example was to explain how it's impossible for most tropers to separate liking the Aesop and liking how the heavy handedness improves the Aesop, hence why no amount of cleanup has fixed the misuse of almost always neglecting the latter requirement.

If Anvilicious and SANTBD purely come down to disliking/liking the Aesop, the Anvil part is irrelevant, leaving complaining/gushing about the Aesop which isn't trope worthy. (Would those in your example inclined to disagree with the message be meaningly more likely to accept it if it wasn't so heavy handed about it or seen as invading works they'd otherwise like?)

Also, Anvilicious has its own misuse (awaiting separate cleanup) with only a minority of examples being used to complain about the heavy handedness, which for now argues against heavy-handedness being seen as a good or bad thing.

Agreed. So to merging them.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 16th 2021 at 12:30:45 PM

But if we focus only on the presence of an Anvil without commenting on how it impacts the perception of the work, then both are redundant to the Anvil of the Story, which is why it might be better to just fold both Anvilicious and this one into the supertrope if the only thing you can add to the entry when adding the more specific subtrope is needless complaining or gushing about how well/badly the heavy-handed moral is executed.

I definitely think that merging the two subtropes into the supertrope is a great idea, but I am still a little bit concerned about the complaining/gushing issues inherited from the subtropes. A lot of the examples, especially on SANTBD, are complaining or gushy ZCE's, and I'm not sure how to treat them going forward into the Anvil of the Story future, especially when the SANTBD gushing involves sensitive issues. The reason I came here instead of trying to clean up the ZCE's directly on the SANTBD page is I didn't want to delete a ZCE from a Troper trying to right a great wrong and either start an edit war or have them harass me in my D Ms. (Anvilicious, for all its faults, at least inspired less impassioned supporters and I was more okay with wiping away a few ZCE's without fear of reprisal.)

Once we get the merged Anvils trope, we can figure out how to rework it to curb complaints/gushing if need be.

It sounds like we agree SANTBD should be merged. We can wait on that until Anvilicious gets it's own cleanup to decide how to go about the merge (merge to Anvilicious, Anvil of the Story, or what)?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 26th 2021 at 3:27:44 AM

Honestly, I don't think a merge is necessary. There are other options that would probably work better.

What options would you suggest then?

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We've tried multiple times to clean up SANTBD, all of them failed to curb or weed out misuse. I've explain why it's theoretically impossible to prevent (humanly impossible to separate liking the Aesop from liking the handling).

If there's any specific other ideas than merger this is the time to hear them.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 27th 2021 at 3:17:40 AM

Well, we could convert Anvilicious into a value-neutral term and make Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped a subtrope with the original meaning. Has that been tried?

Tried? Anvilicious being value-neutral was the default state. However, because it is a pejorative name, as pointed out, the examples themselves became complaint-magnets and SANTBD / Sugarwiki attracted the "positive" versions.

Creating the supertrope Anvil of the Story was the most recent TRS, a value-neutral term. All previous discussions have confirmed to clean up misuse and not change the definition.

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What has been proposed but failed to gain consensus (not exhaustive because 2012 and six or more threads):

• Merge the two
• redefine one/both to fit misuse
• move Anvil to Darth and SAN to Sugar

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.