Misused: Uncanny Valley

I'm just paraphrasing what was said earlier, but let me edit the post to make it shorter and very explicit.

Yeah, I think what threw me off is that you said there would be two def only tropes, and I wasn't sure what that meant.

I liked the idea of turning the current page into definition-only and spliting the examples into unintended and intentional situations, though deciding which cases are supposed to come across as eerie and which are not can addmitedly be difficult. I've always thought there was a missing super trope to things like Creepy Long Arms and Marionette Motion, which despite using the Uncanny Valley to a degree, are objective, main tropes.

Red Right Hand seems to be focusing in on a single trait, there doesn't seem to be a broad trope for the concept of the character being deliberately creepy to show that they are evil. I suggest "Uncanny Character" for the broad trope — the character as deliberately creepy as a sign that they are evil. Red Right Hand and the related tropes it lists (Vader Breath, Tainted Veins, etc.) would be subtropes of this. And then the relationship to Uncanny Valley is clear. This is a very specific term for an imperfect simulacra of a human. The uncanny valley case would be specifically a properly formed human that is 'off' somehow, not weirdly deformed.

One additional thought: There is an 'in universe' reference to the Uncanny Valley in Frankenstein itself... just not with that particular phrase.

So the concept has a very solid history, and I think this example qualifies as 'intentional', but many other cases can be very hard to delineate clearly.

I'm not sure why people aren't sold on the def-only thing; splitting will not fix the misuse problem.

My reasoning is that I prefer preserving examples with the name (with Uncanny Valley being the In-Universe version), so I'd rather clean up the page/wicks, do the split if others want, and revisit the issue of Definition-Only after that has been finished. I think being labeled "subjective" was the problem here, because sometimes editors think that YMMV means anyone's opinion counts, rather than it needing to be representative of a large group of audiences.

Well, okay, but a majority of examples don't actually qualify as being Uncanny Valley. That's the issue at the core. Even if we give one of the splits the same name, it'll continue being horribly misused to mean "creepy looking". While a lot of the in-universe ones were correct, still not all of them were.

I guess my thought is, it's best to prevent the misuse however possible, even if it requires a more extreme action be taken.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 14th 2022 at 11:02:12 AM

I read that, but it wasn't really the issue, the issue is that a lot of these things are common reactions... but don't fit the UV definition, which is very specific. I don't think it has as much to do with the whole "personal opinion" thing as you're making it out to, which is why I didn't take that point as a reason.

I only want to say that turning the main Uncanny Valley into a Definition-Only Pages could lead to more misuses: without having some examples to see what fits the trope (something not human that looks too human and looks creepy) and whatsnot (something evil and weird that doesn't even look human to begin), future tropers could make more mistakes.

Splitting between YMMV and IUEO without making a definition-only page seems to be winning, so my plan if it stays that way is to run a crowner for whether the YMMV page or the IUEO page keeps the Uncanny Valley name.

I'd prefer to have one of them keep the name (since, as I've previously mentioned, it's a preexisting term) while using a different name for the other, similarly to how in-universe examples of Adorkable were split off into Endearingly Dorky when the former was made YMMV, but in this case, it's possible that the inverse will happen with the split (i.e., the original page becoming IUEO and the new page being the YMMV one).

Hrmph, we'll see how this goes I guess. If one of them has to keep the name, I guess it'd be less problematic on the in-universe one.

Yeah, I think the in-universe one should keep the name.

"Uncanny Valley Discomfort" or "Uncanny Valley Revulsion" or something could be the YMMV trope, I guess.

I still really need to ask, though-

How, exactly, are we defining the YMMV one? Are we still going to be cutting all of the misuse? Or is it broader than the actual definition of Uncanny Valley?

My issue here, even before I started checking wicks, was that UV is something very specific, and nobody seems to be using it correctly. So I don't want a title that attaches itself to Uncanny Valley if we'll just be incorporating the misuse anyway.

A lot of the misuse would fall under Accidental Nightmare Fuel. Setting those aside, is there a pattern to the remaining misuse cases?

What if we made a UsefulNotes.Uncanny Valley page for the analysis subpage and other informations about the term?
I'm just afraid that naming one of the soon-to-be-made pages uncanny valley might not stop the misuse: if it is the main IUEO one that keeps it, people might keep using it at YMMV subpages and there won't be any sign saying it is a Main Page trope, and if it is the Audience Reaction one to keep the name, so users might not even know that there is an objective trope in the first place. What do you think?

Edited by good-morning on Mar 17th 2022 at 6:22:24 AM

Out-of-universe examples of IUEO tropes appearing on YMMV pages (or even the main pages for works if editors see that there's no YMMV banner, but don't check if it's IUEO) wouldn't be a problem unique to this. It's a common problem due to not every editor being aware of the IUEO policy.

As for the proposed Useful Notes page, I think that purpose would have been served by the definition-only page that was proposed, but lacked consensus, so we should probably stick to using Analysis pages.

Definitely needs more naming ideas first because I'm trying to think how to make it sound not like Accidental Nightmare Fuel (and main differences, now that I think about it).

Well, I suppose the descriptions for the IUEO version and the YMMV version could be drafted in the meantime while everyone brainstorms names for the YMMV version.

I suppose the description sandboxes could be given placeholder names like Sandbox.Uncanny Valley IUEO and Sandbox.Uncanny Valley YMMV since we don't know what the YMMV version's name will be yet.