Misused: What An Idiot

And Complaining as well. What An Idiot is a trope that has been plagued with problems for years. The trope is supposed to be about characters making such horrible decisions that they become unsympathetic, to paraphrase the Laconic. While this definition is already inherently complain-y, it is also often misused for situations where no one necessarily acted stupid given the situation, as well as simply to complain about the decisions of characters.

A wick check specifically discovered that:

• 35/100 examples, or 35% were used correctly (and even then, many were very complain-y)
• 27/100 examples were ZCEs or unsortable, and
• 38/100 examples were misused

Looking through the wicks, a ton of them are filled with complaining and bash-y language. Many are also misused—the characters involved behaved exactly the way one would expect them to behave given their situation, such as if the characters were not in their right mind when they made them.

For further reference, here is the Tropes Needing TRS description of the problem:

As for what to do here, the only idea I could come up with is moving the trope to Darth Wiki due to all the complaining. It's not a very good idea IMO, but I'm really stuck here. We likely cannot cut due to the 46,500 inbounds.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Opening, but as with many other wick checks on YMMV items I get the impression that many of the "misused" examples on What An Idiot Wick Check are more like "things I don't find stupid" and redundancy is not misuse.

Imma set a clock, since the case here is not airtight.

Well I did not do the wick check, so that wasn't my fault.

Maybe this should have been marked as "Complaining"?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 12th 2021 at 8:35:44 AM

Yeah, I think that may work.

The issue is, if WAI does require the action to be something the character wouldn't be expected to do under the circumstances, then those tropes ARE misuse- because in-universe circumstances justify the act. That, of course, is if the trope isn't just a judgement call on the audience regardless of context.

There are also overlap concerns with Idiot Ball but that check is still in the works.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 12th 2021 at 9:17:37 AM

Since the problematic examples basically fall into "doesn't explain why it's stupid", I think the easy way to deal with ZCE/misuse is a cleanup. The most common use of the trope follows the "You'd Expect - Instead" format, even if informally, and it seems to be working well.

It being the YMMV version of Idiot Ball, however, may need a closer look.

The Idiot Ball concern is why I raise my eyebrow. I've never seen the tropeworthy aspect of this. Most entries seem to forget the "No longer sympathetic" angle by complaining about characters' actions even if they aren't meant to be sympathetic anyway. And Idiot Ball has a more concrete definition and limits it to more notoriously stupid moments, as they come from characters who aren't supposed to be this stupid.

If ya'll don't mind waiting until tomorrow / late tonight I can get the check done. I've had a long weekend so far and don't have the energy to finish it right now. If we need it done faster someone will need to help me.

Another room for thought: What An Idiot is marked as Audience Reactions, but 55% of wicks are not within the YMMV namespace, I suspect these are natter-like potholes.

So my understanding of some idiocy tropes/items are:

• Idiot Ball: Character does something uncharacteristically stupid, so characters either intentionally written to be idiots or characters firmly flawed or incapacitated enough to not think clearly aren't examples.
• Too Dumb to Live: Character puts their own life at risk by doing something stupid. As far as I know there is no "uncharacteristic actions only" restriction for this one.
• What An Idiot: Audience reaction about how a character doing a dumb thing could have taken a different course of action.

Edited by Albert3105 on Dec 12th 2021 at 1:27:13 PM

Sounds about right. Also noting that Idiot Ball is a Rule of Drama subtrope, so the characters have to do something unusually unwise for "the plot" to happen.

FWIW, there is a cleanup, but it’s in Short Term. Maybe it needs to be moved to Long Term?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 12th 2021 at 3:18:39 PM

So I didn't get a response on my above comment. Should the What An Idiot thread be moved to Long-Term?

(I can work on the Idiot Ball wick check if needed as well.)

I've also noticed a lot of examples of What An Idiot that are about a character unambiguously written to be an idiot doing something very much in character. For example, Homer Simpson making a boneheaded decision is not out of character and shouldn't change how anyone sees him.

Also Lamar in Grand Theft Auto V. Lamar is explicitly characterized as naive and prone to dumb decisions, yet he has been repeatedly listed under What An Idiot.

The same goes with characters that are established to have flaws that clearly explain how they might do something idiotic, like Hot-Blooded or Extreme Doormat.

Edited by Albert3105 on Dec 13th 2021 at 11:50:56 AM

I also see this applied to one off characters. Does that even make sense? How can it subvert prior characterization if we've never seen them before?

Sit tight guys, I'm working on the Idiot Ball wick check right now. Should be done soon-ish.

I can assist when I have time.

Feel free; I'll go ahead and save my current progress now then. We only need twenty more wicks. Don't worry about checking for all the What An Idiot overlap if you don't have time, I can run through later and do that if necessary.

Edit: Courtesy link.

Edit 2: This is an open invite BTW, anyone who wants to help out can feel free to do so.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 13th 2021 at 4:18:29 AM

I'm busy tonight, but I'll look into it if I have time.

Well, I decided to just go ahead and wrap up Idiot Ball Wick Check. Some initial thoughts:

• The overlap was less blatant than I thought. Obviously in this check my way was to just check the YMMV pages for the works I was looking at and see if there were repeated examples. That doesn't mean there's not a duplication issue, though- it's possible people just use one trope or the other at random. I will say that a lot of the misuse matches some of the misuse WAI has, that is that people use it to whine about things or complain about intentionally dumb characters acting dumb, or even ignore context for the sake of nitpicking.
• There's a decent amount of correct examples, but there's even more examples that are just lacking in proper context, and only slightly less misuse. Plus, I was generous with the first folder, as I threw in a bunch of them as a judgement call.

So, yeah, there's the check.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 13th 2021 at 2:46:18 PM

My thought was that What An Idiot should be limited to unintentional examples (Idiot Ball and Just Eat Gilligan are intentional but contrived idiocy, Didn't Think This Through and Too Dumb to Live is when the consequences of their idiocy are shown/discussed), otherwise WAI applies to every stupid decision by definition of stupidity (there was an obvious better option) such it's redundant with every Stupidity Trope (almost all the valid WAI could have been move to an objective trope like Forgot About His Powers without losing anything but complaining).

I might be having trouble understand WAI's theoretical definition and how it's supposed to be different to just audiences reacting to idiocy.

I had an idea for "Unintentionally Unintelligent" for when they are portrayed as making a smart or justifiable under the circumstances decision but audiences digress, or at least think is was less intelligent than presented. Thoughts about that as a replacement or supplement to WAI?

Other possibilities to consider:

• Make In-Universe Examples only (the Trope Namer and almost all page quotes are examples of such showing we wouldn't be want for them) and move out of universe to other stupidity tropes.
• Make Darth Wiki so those who like using it to complain about idiocy have a place to.
• Require all examples use the You'd Expect/Instead format.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Dec 14th 2021 at 2:47:01 AM

I like these three (for darth, Crowning Moment Of Stupid?), but I'm not sure how does one write someone stupid unintentionally and not get a Plot Hole (Idiot Ball kinda is one, but with a purpose) without examples. Maybe there can be a new YMMV (or WMG, brief Fix Fic?) for people to write how specific situations could have been avoided.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 14th 2021 at 2:02:23 PM

Well, we don't use "Crowning Moment" anymore so it could just be called "Stupid Moments".

Question (since I legitimately don't know), how would such a trope be different from the now cut Wall Banger?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 14th 2021 at 7:35:40 AM

I didn't catch Wall Banger in my lifetime, but I guess it would address the "lack of rules or even good style" used as the cut reason.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 14th 2021 at 3:41:53 PM