Misused: Uncanny Valley

To-do list:

• Move the current Audience Reaction definition of Uncanny Valley to Unintentional Uncanny Valley (description is being drafted on the Sandbox.Unintentional Uncanny Valley sandbox) and reuse the name Uncanny Valley for an In-Universe Examples Only trope (description is being drafted on the Sandbox.Uncanny Valley sandbox).
• Move out-of-universe examples to Unintentional Uncanny Valley and keep in-universe examples under Uncanny Valley. Cleanup is being tracked using the Uncanny Valley Wick Cleanup sandbox.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 11th 2022 at 3:41:52 AM

Opening. Cleanup is definitely needed, but I'd rather not rename because it's a preexisting term.

I suppose making it IUEO would be an option due to how many in-universe examples you found.

Split the "Audience finds a character or visual just too unsettling" YMMV to In-Universe "A character whos design stands out is a red flag".

IDK if I'd support IUEO if only because this is such a thing, but I guess it's also probably a little too subjective of a thing, and nobody has the exact same reaction?

Eh...

I guess I could see it, but I wouldn't be thrilled about it.

Edit: The split, however, I think would be totally viable. Like what we did with Adorkable and Endearingly Dorky.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 11th 2022 at 4:49:55 AM

That might be doable. Maybe we could retain the name Uncanny Valley for one of them; probably the subjective version, like the aforementioned Adorkable and Endearingly Dorky.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 11th 2022 at 3:50:54 AM

My other idea is that Uncanny Valley be preserved as a def-only while we create a much broader "audience finds a character unsettling" trope. It'd take a lot of wick cleanup, but we'd do that anyway.

With that, I gotta go to bed before my eyes fall out. See ya'll when I'm awake ~

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 11th 2022 at 4:51:51 AM

That sounds like a good idea, since that's what the Mondegreen thread did with another preexisting term.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 11th 2022 at 3:51:46 AM

Here it is the Trope Talk thread discussing whether Uncanny Valley should be split between in-universe examples and audience reactions.

I support the Adorkable - Endearingly Dorky style split. I think keeping the original name and term as a trope is important.

"A character whose design stands out is a red flag" — isn't that just Non-Standard Character Design?

I guess we have two options here for how to do a split:

• Split off in-universe/invoked examples into their own trope, similarly to the split between Adorkable and Endearingly Dorky, with Uncanny Valley being the YMMV version.
• Split both in-universe/invoked examples and Audience Reactions into two new pages, and turn Uncanny Valley into a YMMV Definition-Only Page for the term itself, similarly to how Mondegreen became a Definition-Only Page after it was split.

There's precedent for Definition-Only Pages being YMMV; that's what ended up happening to Fetish Fuel, Jossed, MST3K Mantra, and Bellisario's Maxim.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 11th 2022 at 11:06:28 AM

Or Red Right Hand.

Edited by Eiryu on Mar 11th 2022 at 11:06:05 AM

I thought that Nonstandard Character Design was more of a visual trope about how a character is stylized for the viewer, not in how they look to other characters. Similarly, Red Right Hand is about a specific physical trait (a birthmark, eye color, scar, etc.), not the overall sense of "this creaure looks amost human but not quite" that Uncanny Valley is about.

No, but they're probably related. A lot of "This character looks human but not quite Right" is very frequently a way to indicate a character is a villain or a monster or something.

Right. Uncanny Valley is just about that uncomfortable tingling you get when a character looks slightly too human but not human enough to actually be human; it confuses your brain and scares the shit out of you, and while that can be intentional, it can also just be creepy-looking animation.

An in-universe version would be the same thing, just with characters talking about in-universe movies, dolls, masks, etc.

A supertrope would be more like "fans find this thing to look really really disturbing".

Not sure how the objective version would work without making the full decription. In my head there are characters who are Obviously Evil but on some subtle level, like having an unrealistic Cheshire Cat Grin, having some quirk to the way they walk or using photographic eyes in a cartoon medium. There are some techniques to invoke Nightmare Fuel with the smallest visual touch.

Or you know, characters commentig I Have A Bad Feeling About This.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 11th 2022 at 9:03:55 PM

Sure, but that's not inherently Uncanny Valley, which is the big issue here. It'd fit the broader supertrope of things just being "off", but UV is a very specific reaction that occurs for a specific reason.

The closest we have to I Have A Bad Feeling About This is This Is Gonna Suck.

Edited by FernandoLemon on Mar 11th 2022 at 3:37:40 PM

We could split between intentional uncanny valley (IUEO) and unintentional uncanny valley (YMMV).

I think that's the best solution in my opinion. Since this seems like a trope that could fall into both categories.

Edited by MatthewWayne on Mar 11th 2022 at 12:18:31 PM

I still want to do something about the misuse though, since a split alone won't fix that. Hence why I'm sort of liking the idea of splitting the two concepts while preserving Uncanny Valley either as a subtrope of a broader concept, or as a definition-only page.

I would prefer the former over the latter. Making something definition-only makes it harder for casual tropers to find and learn about something in my opinion.

Let me keep track of this for now because it would be difficult to remember later.

• Split into two, an YMMV and an IUEO, tropes.
• Split into three, a Def-Only, an YMMV, and

• Split into two, an YMMV and an IUEO, tropes. Additionally, make the YMMV one Def-Only.
• Don't split, just make it IUEO.

e: simplified.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 12th 2022 at 9:13:29 PM

I'm not sure what the second option is saying, but yeah, that's about the size of it so far.

I think the second option in that post would have the same result as the second option in my proposal.