Misused: Uncanny Valley

Where would these examples from Metroid Dread go?

• Uncanny Valley: In designing and animating the E.M.M.I., the developers have somehow managed to apply this trope to ''non-humanoid robots''. An E.M.M.I. essentially has a head, a "torso", and four long limbs, so you'd expect it to move more-or-less like an animal, right? ''Wrong''. That thing bends its limbs and "spine" in ''all the wrong directions'', performing unpredictable and anatomically impossible feats that even on a robot look just plain wrong. It looks less like what you'd expect of a robot and more like an unearthly MechanicalAbomination, making a foe that's already frightening enough in gameplay alone even scarier. Unlike most examples of Uncanny Valley, however, [[TropesAreTools this one works in the E.M.M.I.s' favor, emphasizing how unnatural and dangerous they are.]]
• The [[VideoGame/MetroidFusion SA-X]]'s hair. [[labelnote:Explanation]]A FreezeFrameBonus in "A Glimpse of Dread" shows the SA-X, the infamous HumanoidAbomination BigBad of ''Fusion'', in 3D for the first time. Not only is its humanoid face (copying Samus herself) more clearly visible than in ''Fusion'', but it even copied her ''hair'', an added detail for its 3D depiction. Some fans find that it makes it [[UncannyValley even creepier]], while others entertain the idea of a [[EvilIsSexy Zero Suit SA-X]] actually existing because of this apparent confirmation that it copied Samus' human traits. One fanfiction author may be among the latter group, having done a similar thing with [[VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes Dark Samus]].[[/labelnote]]

It's not in-universe as in-universe characters never note the uncanniness, but it's almost certainly intentional by the creators (they recognized the creepy response but if they knew/invoked why is speculative) and defiantly well received for it. This seems a grey area in the in-universe an unintentional split. Should such just be moved to Nightmare Fuel?

That was why I wasn't voting up for the "unintentional" in the name. Both of those are the YMMV versions of the trope because they don't refer to in-universe commentary/reactions.

Just added a name suggestion for the YMMV trope - Unnervingly Realistic.

I believe the crowner was already called so no one can vote on that name.

Isn't Uncanny Valley an actual term even off the site. It's smarter to use it in the new name.

Yes, it is a preexisting term. The main change here is that the name Uncanny Valley alone will be an In-Universe Examples Only trope for when characters perceive something as being in the uncanny valley, while the YMMV examples of audiences feeling that way are going to be moved to Unintentional Uncanny Valley.

Yes, it's a real term, plus we seem to be preserving the meaning, so renaming it makes no sense anyway.

Those Metroid Dread examples belong in Nightmare Fuel, not this trope yes.

Personally I think Unintentional Uncanny Valley is too clunky. I like the sound of Unnervingly Realistic more. But majority rules.

We want to keep the Uncanny Valley name since it's a pre-existing term.

Just a reminder that the reason the page hasn't been split (and why Unintentional Uncanny Valley is a red link) is because we need a description for at least one of the pages. No rush for people who aren't good at writing descriptions (I'm certainly not); just thought I'd mention why we aren't at the wick cleaning stage yet.

I think I'll copy the current description of Main.Uncanny Valley to Sandbox.Uncanny Valley (description for the IUEO trope) and Sandbox.Unintentional Uncanny Valley (description for the Audience Reaction) because the current description might have some pieces that work better for one but not the other; that was the case with Political Correctness Gone Mad's split.

Edit: I copied the description of Main.Uncanny Valley to the sandboxes and made no changes other than removing the image and quote from the Audience Reaction's sandbox, and I drafted Laconics. Help with the descriptions would be appreciated.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 23rd 2022 at 7:49:40 AM

So, I made some changes to Sandbox.Unintentional Uncanny Valley and Sandbox.Uncanny Valley, so they're no longer carbon copies of each other or Main.Uncanny Valley (they were originally duplicates of Main.Uncanny Valley for the sake of having a placeholder and making it easier to copy text that can be reused for the two new pages), and acknowledge that one's an Audience Reaction and the other is a character reaction.

The former has more text because there was more text to borrow from the current page, since both Sandbox.Unintentional Uncanny Valley and the current incarnation of Main.Uncanny Valley are Audience Reactions. However, Sandbox.Uncanny Valley ended up having less text because the original page didn't really focus on in-universe examples (the closest was a paragraph about Intended Audience Reactions), so I'm less sure about whether its contents are sufficient.

Anyway, I wanted to know how the sandboxes look before moving them to Main/, and as always, anyone who wants to make further changes is free to do so.

It's been a day since my last post and I didn't get any feedback, and since I posted both here and in the meta thread in an attempt to get more feedback, I think I'm just going to move the sandboxes to Main/ in three days if nobody objects.

Looks fine to me.

I'll move the sandboxes into place later today. I need a break after dewicking Murphy's Law, adding a buttload of to-do lists to pinned opening posts, and moving the sandboxes for Prongs of Poseidon and Devil's Pitchfork into Main/, because this split involves moving example subpages in addition to Main/ pages.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 16th 2022 at 7:09:13 AM

Yeah, I know I said I would move the sandboxes half a month ago. I haven't forgotten about this; I just haven't felt up to handling the move because it's kind of complex, since it involves moving Uncanny Valley's current definition to a new name and turning the old name into an IUEO trope, and with that comes moving Uncanny Valley's examples over to Unintentional Uncanny Valley (kind of a stopgap since examples are more likely to be Audience Reactions than character reactions due to it being YMMV, so most of the examples will probably stay there instead of going to the objective trope), followed by moving in-universe examples back over to Uncanny Valley and figuring out the indexing for the retooled Uncanny Valley (Unintentional Uncanny Valley would probably be on the same indexes Uncanny Valley currently has).

If anyone else feels like handling this, since there shouldn't be any problem with handling the Trope Transplant already due to the approval the sandboxes received combined with the lack of objections, I turned Unintentional Uncanny Valley into a redirect to make it open to editing for non-mods.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 5th 2022 at 2:19:40 PM

I was concerned that a month would pass without anything else being done so I move the good in-universe on page examples I found to Sandbox.Uncanny Valley. I found 11. Not sure if that's enough or if they all fit though.

Most of those look good. The Franchise.Dragon Age one, though, I think does not fit. These critters don't look remotely human other than the hands - and even that seems a bit exaggerated. Might be another trope, but I don't know it off the top of my head.

Edited by underCoverSailsman on Jun 23rd 2022 at 8:54:42 AM

This is odd, because Sandbox.Uncanny Valley has a definition that is much broader than what the actual concept is...

Nugs I would have never put in uncanny valley territory because they aren't humanoid. They're basically large, bald rabbits.

In-universe people joke a lot about how creepy nug hands are, I'm not sure if we have a good trope for that reaction though

I just added anything that was marked in-universe and looked like it fit although I wasn't sure about the Nugs example. I removed it from the sandbox.