Complaining: Eight Deadly Words

Eight Deadly Words is a YMMV item with an established name and concept, having originated from a Usenet post in 1991. It describes an Audience Reaction wherein the readers of a story do not care about the characters or what happens to them, often being because they are very bland and uninteresting, or because they are obnoxious, unlikeable, and cruel.

This trope has been to TRS before. In 2014, a TRS thread on this YMMV item voted to make it In-Universe Examples Only. A decision, however, was not reached. It appears that someone unilaterally made it that way anyway, until Ferot_Dreadnaught expanded it to include out-of-universe examples requiring a citation from a critic (with apparent mod approval), as was discovered by this Trope Talk thread. A very confusing series of decisions, which likely created the current problems for this Audience Reaction.

Eight Deadly Words came to my attention thanks to an entry on YMMV.Hoops that was neither In-Universe nor had a citation, but was all complaining. This did not bode well to me, and I decided to do a wick check to see how many examples lacked both requirements. Full information in the wick check, but here's the quick results:

• 12/50 examples, or 24%, were correct In-Universe or cited examples,
• 32/50 examples, or 64%, lacked a citation or weren't In-Universe,
• 4/50 examples, or 8%, were ZCEs,
• 1/50 examples, or 2%, were unclear, and
• 1/50 examples, or 2%, were unclassifiable

Additionally, I noticed a lot of complaining. I decided to mark complaining examples with red text, and found that:

• 28/50 examples, or 56%, were used to complain or had complaining in them, and
• 22/50 examples, or 44%, were not used to complain or were less complain-y.

It appears, based on the results and specific wicks, that this YMMV item is instead being used to complain about media having unlikeable characters. Most examples lacked a specific critic citation (often saying "audiences think" or "critics think"), and there were very few In-Universe examples.

My proposed solution would be to make this page Definition-Only. I do believe this is a legitimate concept for a YMMV item, and is worth noting since it already exists as a concept and is a legitimate Audience Reaction. However, since many tropers clearly aren't aware of (or are listening to) the citation or In-Universe rules for this YMMV item, and since there are very few In-Universe examples in the wicks (but lots and lots of complaining), I believe it is not worth having examples allowed for.

What does everyone else think? Any other proposed solutions?

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Opened. Making it definition-only sounds fine, but it would still be YMMV (similarly to Jossed and MST3K Mantra). However, 12 out of 50 examples being valid for a page with over 350 wicks isn't terrible, so tightening the restrictions or making it IUEO may still be doable.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2022 at 1:21:02 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Overlap with Too Bleak, Stopped Caring?

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I thought about that. I think Eight Deadly Words is a broader concept though since it also includes bland characters.

In practice however there is considerable overlap so you’re right there.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Actually, now that you mention it, we could possibly make Eight Deadly Words definition-only and transplant any examples that fit Too Bleak, Stopped Caring instead to the latter.

Edit: I looked at the wick check and one wick related to boring characters refers to So Okay, It's Average, so maybe we could transplant examples about boring characters there, but that would be more of a case-by-case thing than examples related to bleakness.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 14th 2022 at 1:59:15 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Since there are a dozen in-universe/cited/discussed examples, maybe it can disallow offpage examples, and the only wicks allowed discuss the term itself?

Yes, but the Venn diagram of them is not a pair of concentric circles. (Too Bleak, Stopped Caring requires the audience to care first, I think.)

I don't get how something in-universe can be going under YMMV. Isn't it a proper trope then? Same as we split Once Done, Never Forgotten from Never Live It Down?

I don't know about this trope's history, but I'm guessing it started as a straightforward YMMV trope, but was turned into In Universe only to prevent complaining.

That would be allowed if we make it a Definition-Only Page.

It's true that a trope that's In-Universe Examples Only can't be YMMV, but this isn't indexed under In-Universe Examples Only. It looks like the plan mentioned in the opening post was never implemented, or was reversed at some point.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

My vote would be to keep this as a YMMV page, only allowing entries with citations and removing any in-universe examples.

I think the problem is, that's already the case and it's being misused.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

What is removing in-universe examples while changing nothing else supposed to accomplish? The only time in-universe examples aren't allowed for YMMV items is if they have an objective in-universe counterpart to be listed under instead, which this doesn't. Plus, I don't think it's worth splitting in-universe examples of this into a new trope because there aren't nearly as many of them as with the other objective/subjective splits we've done in recent years, meaning the new trope would probably be wick-starved right out of the gate.

I'd still rather make this a definition-only Fan Speak page, due to overlap with other Audience Reactions.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 15th 2022 at 7:38:19 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I'll second Definition Only.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

This bears addressing.

Review Show reacting/rating Work Name can have Audience Reactions. Things that the character of the reviewer say are In-Universe. Thus, when Critic says "I don't care what happens to these characters", it is an In-Universe reaction. However, this is In-Universe to Review Show, not to Work Name.

Any YMMV entry displayed by Critic goes on the main article for Review Show and is crosswicked to the trope article. It doesn't apply to the work itself and should not be indented as part of Work Name if there is an entry for the work.

In-Universe (and the "invoked" tag) includes several other situations, including discussed, conversed, and defied. Audience Reactions that are In-Universe to a review work are not, just by virtue of this work, considered valid examples to the parent work. It takes more than "this reviewer" or "these three reviewers" to be a valid reaction. They are supplemental (at best: see the cleanup thread) to what reaction a large proportion of the audience think/say about a work.

(Not a moderator post because I'm too busy with other things to run this past the others. One of them can edit this if group consensus is that it needs to be pink.)

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

When this came up in Trope Talk, I pointed out that if the intent is to be in-universe to the reviewer (which is an unintuitive use of "in-universe" to begin with when the typical reviewer's universe is the same as the audience's), then the example section should be organised by the medium of the reviewer rather than the medium of the work.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Correct

Non-Fiction works still operate within their own set of "in universe" rules, such as NRLEP tropes being allowed.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I did say "unintuitive", not "illogical", and made that comment parenthetical for a reason. :P That would involve moving basically every example into the Web Video folder, I think, and I don't think it would actually stop misuse, but it would be consistent. I think I would still prefer making the page definition-only, though.

Is it written down in Administrivia somewhere that "in-universe" can be used that way? (Just because NRLEP doesn't actually include the term, and the typical use of in- or out-of-universe is to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction, especially within a work that blends them together.)

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I'd make it Definition Only. The other tropes mentioned cover it just fine, usage threshold aside.

Could I add "require one or more citations of reviews" to the crowner?

Citations are already required for out-of-universe examples. The problem is that a bunch of examples don't have them.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Added a TRS banner

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I've noticed Audience Apathy and I Dont Care What Happens To These People as redirects. Should they stay for Eight Deadly Words or they can direct to Too Bleak, Stopped Caring instead?

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I'll leave them alone for now, but I'll wait and see if anyone else chimes in.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.