Mondegreen Cleanup

The trope Mondegreen is experiencing a decent amount of misuse, being consistently used as an audience reaction even though it's In-Universe Examples Only. The latest TRS effort decided that the best option was to simply leave the trope as is, but create a thread designed to cleanup the trope's misuse. Septimus gave us a headstart with Sandbox.Mondegreen, but now we've gotta go through and decide what to do with any example that isn't In-Universe.

Let's get this thing active!

Issue is, I find Sep's sandbox to be a bit confusing. It's just a lot of stuff going on and I find it a bit overwhelming. I'd probably just run through the YMMV wicks on the related page and do it that way, and then remove said wicks from the sandbox later.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 4th 2021 at 8:19:58 AM

Great first step! I imagine a lot of them could potentially end up under Memetic Mutation (though we probably wanna wait until that TRS thread closes), Beam Me Up, Scotty!, Lady Mondegreen (since people seem to forget that exists), and potentially Common Knowledge - overall, a lot of the examples are probably salvageable, even if they have to be moved.

I'm gonna Cut List the wick check sandbox - that'll get rid of some of them right off the bat

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on May 4th 2021 at 8:25:14 AM

Yep ~

I edited my post slightly because I forgot about Sep's sandbox. But however people decide to tackle these wicks- via the sandbox or directly on the related tab- it's a good idea to start with the YMMV section.

So how do we feel about invoked examples for creators? The first thing that comes to my head is from the wick check, where Nirvana mentioned that they were fine with Weird Al poking fun at their easy to mishear lyrics. Is that fair game, or should it be reworded to remove the wick?

Can you post the example here?

• Food Songs Are Funny: When Weird Al asked Nirvana if he could parody "Smells Like Teen Spirit", they actually asked if the parody was going to be about food (they didn't mind that it was mocking the Mondegreen lyrics).

And this:

• Creator.Dave Allen: Monde Green: Allen's childhood recollections of his introduction to religion feature (naturally) very funny versions of these. A notable one is from when he first attended a funeral and misheard the attending priest's blessing as "In the name of the father, and the son, and into the hole he goes".

I think the second might be keepable?

The first one we can probably remove the wiki-wording for Mondegreen and pothole it to something like Something Something Leonard Bernstein or Indecipherable Lyrics. Or just straight up change it to Indecipherable Lyrics and remove the Mondegreen part entirely.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 4th 2021 at 8:39:28 AM

That makes sense if it's just the wrong wick, but just to be clear - we're gonna go with invoked examples by creators still being fair game? Cause I feel like they should be, but that's just my opinion and I could see others going either way.

Fair point, just wanted to clarify how we felt about creators talking about the concept. I'll keep that in mind

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on May 4th 2021 at 8:43:16 AM

I think so. My issue with the first one is that I don't really consider it "invoked", unless Nirvana actually called it a Mondegreen.

These examples on the main page don't seem to be in-universe, but they were widespread enough to be altered afterwards. Could they be moved to Accidental Innuendo or something?

• Paramount advertised their line of Peanuts videos in the late '90s with this promo, which opens with a man asking the viewer "You wanna talk about Peanuts videos?" Unfortunately, he didn't enunciate the "T" in "Peanuts" very well. (The line was later redubbed with a better pronunciation of "Peanuts".)
• A Hallmark greeting card, one of the kind that speaks, had to be recalled because the talking characters, Hoops and Yoyo, were thought to have said "black hoes" instead of "black holes".

Also I don't think this one was a mondegreen in-universe, just a beatboxing technique, as the entry says. I think he just got weird looks cuz he's a pig randomly beatboxing out loud.

• A GEICO commercial has Maxwell the pig listening to a rave on his smartphone and singing to the beat as "boots and pants and boots and pants...", getting strange looks from the people around him. (It's actually a basic beatboxing technique — another one is "boots and cats".)

Yeah, cut the last one and move the others to AI.

Starting on the YMMV-wick cleanup with the A's section. There's an example I'm not sure what to do with, from YMMV.Air Zonk:

• Fridge Brilliance: Much like the example for PC-Genjin, PC-Denjin is a Mondegreen of PC-Engine and also translates into "PC Cyborg".

Does this count as in-universe?

Also, bump so this thing can be active enough to close the TRS

Edited by WarJay77 on May 11th 2021 at 11:51:26 AM

I feel like if it's so YMMV that it's all the way in Fridge territory, then it doesn't count as In-Universe - but I also don't know the source material, so I can't confirm it.

I'm also removing the examples I check from Septimus' sandbox, whether or not they stay or go, just so that we have some method of confirming which ones have been checked already

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on May 11th 2021 at 12:07:35 PM

Ah, right, I forgot about that.

What do we think about this one on Ascended Fanon? It's a fandom mishearing that was acknowledged by the creator, so it's a bit of a middle ground.

• "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix; the lyric "excuse me while I kiss the sky" was so commonly heard as "excuse me while I kiss this guy," that Hendrix changed it. He was also known to point and kiss in the direction of a guy (usually his tour manager) immediately after singing the line.

Hmmm...I'm a bit torn. On one hand, the acknowledgement gives it a bit more validity, but it's still an audience reaction at the core.

Thinking it over a bit, I'm inclined to view it as the creator invoking it - even if it was an accident, the creator seems to agree enough to acknowledge it that way and either change it or keep it that way. It's YMMV at the core, but the extra legitimacy makes me think keep. Any objections?

I'm good with that.

Still running through the YMMV/ pile. Got up to the D's; checked about 40 wicks in total. Also removed from the sandbox.

Also bump to make this thing more active so the TRS can close.

Down to the G's...and another bump...

So I'm clear on what we're doing here:

• Remove all self-contained Mondegreen entries if they aren't In-Universe or at least feasibly so

What do we do with the potholes and such?

Either remove them or replace them with something that works better - we've found that common ones are Common Knowledge, Memetic Mutation, Indecipherable Lyrics, and Something Something Leonard Bernstein. If nothing works as a replacement, then just go ahead and cut it away

A lot of potholes though are just "here's a word fans misheard", which can be cut, especially if it's already under Memetic Mutation (which a lot of them are).

Don't forget to remove checked pages from the sandbox.

Looks like the YMMV stuff is done, and I removed them. Also, the Wrestling/ space.

I can't speak for anyone else but I work pretty directly off the sandbox for things like this, if only because (for me) it's faster and I can get more done in less time.