Misused: Uncanny Valley

As Macron mentioned on the meta thread, getting in-universe examples might be tricky. It'd be easier if we could do the swap ahead of time and fill the page out as we wick-clean, but then it's a gamble if we'll actually have enough...

Would it be possible to kick the IUEO version back to TLP for an example drive?

As someone that didn't think the split was necessary to begin with, I don't mind yarding the in-universe trope if we can't find more examples.

We could do that and keep the sandbox open for examples as we wick clean. Then we can revisit it if it gets beefed up.

I went ahead and swapped in the sandboxes on Main.Uncanny Valley and Main.Unintentional Uncanny Valley and updated the indexing. I'm aware that I planned to do that a month and a half ago, but better late than never.

Before I do anything with this trope, I'll make a sandbox at Sandbox.Uncanny Valley Wick Cleanup to keep track of namespaces.

Hey, how do we feel about Intentional Audience Reaction cases? I'm trying to start cleanup but I keep running into examples like "It is immediately obvious that there is something off about these clowns: their movements are oddly jerky, almost robotic, and they bend themselves in ways the human form should not bend" and "The Thin Men of XCOM: Enemy Unknown were apparently designed with this trope in mind. Taking on the appearance of gangly suited humans, they were specifically engineered to be spies that can blend into crowds with ease, though it does not take much effort at all to see something's not quite natural about them. Picture the Half-Life G-Man with sunglasses and hisses like a snake when his cover is blown and you're not too far off"

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 5th 2022 at 8:47:42 AM

If it's unambiguously an Intended Audience Reaction, I'm tempted to say to leave it under Uncanny Valley instead of moving it to Unintentional Uncanny Valley since the former is an objective trope and the latter is exclusively for unintentional Audience Reactions. (It should be added to Unexpected Reactions to This Index if it isn't already; I'll check to see if it is.) I admit that I never really considered what to do with Intended Audience Reactions because they didn't really come up (or if they did, I forgot), in contrast to how they came up early on in the Annoying Laugh thread from a couple of years ago.

Edit: Added Unintentional Uncanny Valley to Unexpected Reactions to This Index due to the unintentional aspect.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 5th 2022 at 12:10:04 PM

Makes sense. I've decided to just start with YMMV though because that way it's either all movable examples or things that need to be cut.

I had a similar question myself- Who's Lila?, for instance, has the characters make a lot of creepy and unnatural faces, and the ability of the player to alter Will's face can result in some unsettling faces, but given that the game is openly inspired by the works of David Lynch and thus filled with Surreal Horror, the strange faces only add to that feel, which I'm pretty sure was the intended effect.

I deleted the example from that page because Uncanny Valley is very specifically about nearly-human non-human objects that just look creepy because of how human they are. It has nothing to do with creepy faces or unnatural poses or whatever. So that was just straight up misuse of the concept, intentional or not.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 6th 2022 at 1:36:39 PM

7099 wicks, including the ones that got moved to other pages; for now I can't keep track of those I'll worry about them later.

It's always fun when you can spend hours removing wicks for a trope and then refresh the related page to see that no dent was made.

Stumbled upon UncannyValley.Pokemon Detective Pikachu. Thoughts?

I swear every movie ever in the past 30 years claims to have "photorealistic CGI".

Ahem. Reading the page it sounds more like one person's complaint about the graphics than documenting what is actually unsettling about the new designs. I can agree about Lickitung, Gengar and Ditto are horrifying, they just need to be described as such.

Even if they're creepy (which I agree that they are), to count as Unintentional Uncanny Valley it needs to be creepy because of being too humanoid yet not humanoid enough. Mr. Mime and Jynx, for instance.

Do you think the image on Unintentional Uncanny Valley should remain in the main Uncanny Valley page?

I'm fine with either page. And questions like that would have to go to IP.

I actually wasn't sure which page to put it on when I was drafting the split, but if you think it should be moved, I think Image Pickin could provide a better answer than I could (since, as I said, I was unsure).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 12th 2022 at 10:02:54 AM

~scifimaster92

Hi there. I noticed you moving a few wicks to Unintentional Uncanny Valley. And that's good, but please be more careful. You keep leaving non-example wicks behind that I still need to clean, and a lot of the examples you've moved have lacked the context necessary to actually be moved. Unintentional Uncanny Valley has a strict definition and so it's important to only move the examples we're positive count.

i see that Intended Audience Reaction wicks were mentioned earlier, is there a clear consensus on that? i already moved one example i'm certain is a case of that to the main page (Kirby and the Forgotten Land's final boss, an Angelic Abomination with realistic humanlike details added to emphasize its creepiness and unearthliness), and i can help with moving other intentional examples if that's a definite part of the trope. i think the main and laconic would need a bit of rewriting if that's the case though, since right now it only mentions in-universe reactions and doesn't account for intended audience reactions.

Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of allowing Intended Audience Reactions alongside In-Universe examples of Uncanny Valley.

Edited by MyFinalEdits on Jul 25th 2022 at 12:39:06 PM

I've already moved a ton of those, so it'd sure be silly if I downvoted this.

Maybe create a new trope called Accidentally Uncanny?

...Unintentional Uncanny Valley

Yes, we aren't getting rid of accidental examples. They're just being moved to a new Audience Reaction while the old name is being reused for an objective trope.