Misused: Ambiguous Situation

big to the redirect idea

Late to the party, but read the whole discussion, I'll agree with the redirect idea. If there's tropeworthy concepts left untouched, we can yard/TLP them.

Redirect

I wouldn't be opposed to redirecting, but thinking it over, I think I like the IUEO suggestion a bit more. We could maybe split off an "alternate scene interpretation" to catch at least some of the broader use, though that may be a discussion for another thread.

Are there any IUEO examples, though?

I could try and find some in the wicks and on-page examples.

There aren't any according to the wick check's creator, so making this IUEO isn't an option.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 21st 2022 at 7:45:23 AM

Re: IUEO examples

The Dr. Strange example mentioned in post #11 could count as one, I think.

There's also the Waynes' death in The Batman (2022). The possibility that Thomas and Martha's death were caused by either Marconi or Falcone is brought up, but Alfred admits that ultimately it's impossible to know for sure, and it could have been just a random mugging.

As for the on-page examples, here's some:

Anime & Manga

• A Cruel God Reigns: One of the continuing points of crisis between Ian and Jeremy is whether or not the car crash that killed their father and mother (step parents respectively) was caused by an error in Greg's driving, a faulty car attribute, or Jeremy's tampering. Because it is never solved and could have been any of the three reasons, heavy strain is placed on Ian's willingness to try to forgive his stepbrother and later on his budding romantic feelings for him. Even more strain is placed on Jeremy because he can't be sure whether or not he accidentally killed his mother, and therefore he can't put the guilt behind him or forget about what Greg did to him to make him sabotage the car in the first place.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • A big ambiguity that is touched on occasionally but never truly addressed is whether Haruhi is a god or not. It's one of the early theories that Koizumi presented, and a large number of fans assume it to be the case, but even Koizumi himself doesn't know if it's true or not. He says it's just the worst case scenario that his Organization is acting on. Or at least that he claims it is acting on.
  • Multiple explanations for various happenings are also presented. For example, Koizumi claims that Haruhi created the espers and either attracted time travelers and aliens or created them, while Mikuru says that Koizumi is lying and that the residents of the future have their own goals. Nagato refuses to say what the IDTE thinks because neither she nor the previous two have the slightest bit of proof that they can show to Kyon and any of the three could easily lie to him. And, of course, any of the three could just be wrong.

Fan Works

• Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls: In-Universe, the whole "Quincy arrows completely destroy the souls of Hollows" is this, as no one is really sure, according to what Shining Armor tells Twilight.
  • Sweet Cider later comes to suspect that that statement might be a lie, or at least a half-truth.
  • After the climax of the Camp Everfree events, Celestia notes that the inconsistency between the souls of Soul Reapers killed by Quincy arrows still remaining in the reincarnation cycle vs. the disappearance of the souls of Hollows slain by the same weapons, and how the cycle remains intact despite centuries of Quincies killing Hollows.
  • What exactly does happen with the souls of the inhabitants of Equestria and the other nations of their world after death? It's been noted that Equestrian culture barely deals with the afterlife at all, and if Sunset wasn't proof enough that Equestrians have souls comparable to those on Earth, Human Chrysalis and her brood were able to eat the souls of some Timberwolves. But there's no clues as of yet what happens to those souls after death, with Soul Reaper Flash noting a specific absence of the kind of negative spirit energy that would be expected from an ancient battlefield like what they're passing by. The Beast Realm is also apparently connected to Equestria, but where that fits in is anyone's guess right now.
• In the Frozen (2013) fanfic The Arrangement, Hans reveals that he has King Agnarr's signet ring shortly after the two parties part ways. Elsa accuses him of stealing the ring, but Hans claims that Agnarr gave it to him, and tells her to ask the king himself when they meet again later. Of course, the King and Queen's ship sank while they were on their way to Corona, rendering it impossible to confirm Hans's story. Hans's mother believes that Hans is somehow responsible for Agnar's and Iduna's death (since the timing and circumstances is extremely convenient for the prince), but there is no evidence for either conjectures.

Literature

• Pavlov's Dogs has a major character killed on screen, but is seemingly resurrected. The characters are caught between the belief it's an imposter, the actual person, and even mental instability setting in.
• Ramona Quimby:
  • In one book, the Quimby sisters are made to cook dinner as punishment for being Picky Eaters. They make a dish that they themselves dislike, but which the parents claim to like. The narration and the actual sisters speculate on whether the parents actually liked the dinner, or if they were pretending to like it to spare their daughters' feelings, without ever coming to a conclusion.

Edited by Adept on May 21st 2022 at 9:41:13 PM

Added a disambiguation option in addition to redirecting.

Still not sold on IUEO since it doesn't look like there are too many of them, so cutting the out-of-universe wicks might result in a low wick count. However, I'll add it since some have been posted.

Late to the discussion, but reading over all the options, I'm somewhat hesitant towards each of these options. "Situation which had more than one feasible cause/outcome" is definitely a tool creators use deliberately. If we take the redirect option, we're cutting examples that don't neatly fit into a predefined box (such as the Ramona one), whereas requiring IUEO would restrict anything that wasn't outright stated, but clearly has multiple interpretations (admittedly don't have an example on-hand). Nonetheless, I see the point about trope decay. Personally, I feel the best course would be to go forward with IUEO, but I would, alongside that, create a YMMV item in the vein of "Alternate Character Interpretation" (which I know was brought up earlier).

Regarding this post: I'm a little unsure about the possibility of yarding "the story suggests more than one version of the event could have happened and supports either," just because it hews closely to Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane to me. I don't know if I'm off-base here, admittedly - perhaps it could be a supertrope? (The same post already mentioned other tropes with similar but more specific conceits, like Never Found the Body and Or Was It a Dream?)

ACI is YMMV because there is supposed to be a intended character interpretation but fans use wiggle room to see/argue for otherwise. Other Ambiguous trope exist because the ambiguity is intentional.

Is there any examples of Ambiguous Situation that would not fit other ambiguity tropes? (We also have Unreliable Narrator, Unreliable Expositor, and The Un-Reveal.)

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 21st 2022 at 3:01:58 AM

Actually, could we make the YMMV thing a crowner option?

I wouldn't mind seeing this on the crowner either.

Also, would it be okay if we ran the crowner for longer than the usual three days, considering how many wicks there are? I can't help but wonder how and why it mushroomed so much so quickly, but that's probably a question for another day.

I don't quite see the point of disambiguating between all three of This Might Be an Index, Uncertain Doom and Ambiguous Ending, since the latter two are already part of the former. Unless uses that sound like Uncertain Doom or Ambiguous Ending really stood out in wick check, but then linking to This Might Be an Index may be unnecessary.

What if it were renamed to make it clear it has to be intentionally ambiguous on the story's part?

Intentionally Ambiguous Situation, Purposefully Ambiguous Situation?

As for "examples of Ambiguous Situation that would not fit other ambiguity tropes", here's one:

• King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table: The final fate of Ragnell, and whether or not she and Gawain are Percivale's parents. At the opening of the Round Table, Merlin says that "the bravest knight now sitting here" would be Percivale's father — which, as Launcelot had yet to arrive, would seem to indicate Gawain. However, ultimately it is left ambiguous.
  Some say that [Ragnell] died, but others that she fled away into the deep forests of Wales and there bore a son to Sir Gawain who in time became one of the noblest of all the Knights of the Round Table; but whether that son's name was Percivale the old tales do not tell us. Some call him simply 'The Fair Unknown' – but his adventures were so like those of Percivale that we may well believe that in a tale now lost this was indeed the name of the son of Sir Gawain and the Lady Ragnell.

Edited by Twiddler on May 21st 2022 at 4:57:54 AM

Ambiguously Related and/or Ambiguous Ending might cover those.

It's broader than that. It's also:

• What happened to this character?
• Does Character A exist?
• Is Character A the same person as Character B?

And while the quoted passage is from the ending of a story, the implications go beyond that one story, as other stories take place afterward and involve those characters mentioned. So it's not just about the ending, it's about the connections between these stories and their characters.

Ragnell shows up in one story. Percivale's mother shows up in another story. Whether these two are the same person is left up to interpretation, and not covered by Ambiguous Ending or Ambiguously Related.

Ragnell's son (who may or may not exist) is mentioned in one story. Percivale shows up and is mentioned in other stories. Whether they are the same person, again, is left up to interpretation and not covered by Ambiguous Ending or Ambiguously Related.

@Blue Guy: The alternative possibilities don't always involve the supernatural, as the examples I posted show. Ambiguity on whether a character's death is an accident or murder, for instance, wouldn't fit Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane.

Another potentially related trope is "Rashomon"-Style, but that requires the parties presenting different versions of the event as the "truth", and doesn't cover ambiguous speculations.

Edited by Adept on May 21st 2022 at 9:37:04 PM

My attempts to find examples that don't fit a clear subtrope...

• The Big Bang Theory - Howard receives a letter from his father but refuses to read it. Despite this, everyone else in the main cast comes to know what it said. They each reveal a possible description of the card to Howard (and the audience) which, besides Sheldon's, is never confirmed nor denied. While this *is* listed under The Unreveal, the ambiguity would exist without said unreveal.
• Despair Island - Heather dies of a Non-Gameplay Elimination. While the possibility of suicide is brought up, it is never confirmed nor denied. This is distinct from Ambiguous Doom, as this example debates the cause and motives for death, whereas ambiguous doom is about whether the death occurred in the first place.
• Going back to the Ramona example, whether her parents lied to spare her feelings, would, in my opinion, be too far a stretch from its closest match, Unreliable Narrator. Though it's hard to put into words, I think the difference us point of view and brevity.
• I'll also mention "What's under Edd's hat" from Ed, Edd n Eddy here, though we're never given much on the matter besides a brief Unreveal using camera panning. Specific ideas fall under fan speculation.

The first three examples are in-universe and clearly deliberate. These examples, however, are what I was able to come up with from memory (and a quick scroll through relevant pages, nothing scientific) that, in my opinion, don't neatly fit into the box of an existing subtrope or require too much reading between the lines. Seeing my leaning towards in-universe examples only, though, my cutoff methodology is likely flawed.

Is renaming a possibility? (was tired and forgot I already proposed that a few posts up)

Anyway I thought of another example that doesn't seem to be covered by any existing subtropes. In the Pound Puppies (2010) episode "Once a Ralph, Always A Ralph", there's ambiguity around Ralph's motives and allegiances, whether his blunders that mess things up are deliberate acts of sabotage, whether he's just lazy and apathetic or whether it's an Obfuscating Stupidity act, and whether his winking has meaning to it or whether it really is caused by his conjunctivitis as he claims. Other characters wonder about these things and have different opinions on whether he's up to something, and almost none of these questions are answered by the episode's end.

Edited by Twiddler on May 22nd 2022 at 1:37:52 AM

^ Btw, the wick check has a whole category for ambiguous character motivations. There's just no mention of character reactions to it.

Edited by eroock on May 22nd 2022 at 2:43:35 AM

If the current crowner ends up being closed without consensus (which looks likely at this point), does anyone have any ideas for what to vote on if we redo the vote? I'd rather not add new options to the current crowner, but we could have another crowner with completely new options and none of the current options (aside from maybe clarified versions of what's on the current one) if the current one closes with no consensus. (Alternatively, we could just close the thread.)

I could also clock the thread after this crowner is called if no consensus is reached, to give everyone time to provide feedback on what to do after that.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 22nd 2022 at 7:01:36 AM

I've thought it would be an easy case, but apparently people want to keep the trope as-is? I guess if everything fails we'd have to make a watch for Speculative Troping examples, and moving examoels to subtropes where applicable.

Edited by Amonimus on May 22nd 2022 at 4:04:58 PM