To-do list:
The following changes have been made to Ambiguous Situation:
- Turn into a Super-Trope to several other "Ambiguous" and "Unclear" tropes that better fit the current use, similar to what TRS previously did with Hate Sink, requiring examples to be moved to subtropes that fit
- Set a requirement for the work to imply that the situation may or may not have happened (or other possibilities), with some degree of In-Universe merit for either.
Thus, the following need to be done:
- Update the description of Ambiguous Situation to match the revised definition.
- Clean any wicks that don't fit.
This trajectory can be explained by a decay of its original meaning over time into something broader and fuzzier.
The definition started out
as:
A trope is in play but it's not made clear which one.
The narrative purpose is most likely to induce a sense of mystery. It required the examples to spell out which alternative tropes a situation is playing with. Obviously this limited its use.
The definition successively loosened up, the original requirement to have alternative tropes in play was dropped and now we have: A scene is open to alternative interpretations.
The transformation was completed two weeks ago when a troper changed the Laconic from the original to the new definition after I opened a discussion on Trope Talk.
Let me get this straight, I don't like the trope in either old or new form for the following reasons:
- it has a strong subjective component, not everyone brings the same level of expectations to a scene
- the fact that a work has limitations and simply cannot spell out everything in every scene even if it wanted to
- unintentionally sloppy storytelling can be mistaken for this trope
Wick Check notes:
- 75 examples were checked
- Of the 5,724 listings of the trope almost half of them appear on character sheets although one would assume this to be a plot trope.
- 24% of the examples are potholes for speculative comments or things like "maybe" or "possibly".
- This is one of the tropes you better experience rather than read it up. Hence, my categorization is subjective. And also not mutually exclusive.
- It was not apparent from the examples if the mentioned ambiguity was noteworthy, meaning if it had any impact on the experience of the scene.
Results:
- 5% comply with a loose take of the original definition, meaning "a trope is at play or maybe it's not"
- 20% cover situations where a plot point is unclear while a scene plays out
- 24% describe unclear character motivations (it's unclear why X did this)
- 13% describe uncertainty about a character's identity independent of any scene
- 17% describe unclear aspects from a character's past or things that might or might not have happened off-screen
- 12% were other tropes, mainly Uncertain Doom or Ambiguous Ending
- 9% I could not make sense of
I struggle to come up with a proposal here. If it was up to me, I would trash this because of my complaints listed above.
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 28th 2022 at 8:10:54 AM
the Retromancer
Unintentional examples could just be Faux Symbolism or Epileptic Trees.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I suppose the new crowner could have an option for whether to restrict it to intentional examples (minus the IUEO restriction in the similar option on the current crowner) and move unintentional examples to Faux Symbolism, Epileptic Trees, and other YMMV items.
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 22nd 2022 at 7:38:13 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Yeah, this one is rather difficult - it's very hard to measure the tradeoffs between increased specificity, which will cut legitimate examples, and which options will require the least maintenance long-run.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Oh, and renaming could be another option on the potential second crowner, since that was suggested.
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 22nd 2022 at 8:10:44 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Since the current crowner is stuck with no consensus for any of the options, I brought up the idea of cutting it short tomorrow with the other mods, so I'm currently planning to do that.
Thus, I can hook a new crowner tomorrow, but I'd give everyone time to suggest options before doing so, which means options for tomorrow's crowner can be suggested now.
So far these are the options that have been suggested:
- Restrict to intentional ambiguity and move unintentional ambiguity to Faux Symbolism, Epileptic Trees, and other YMMV items
- Rename
Those two options aren't mutually exclusive, and if anyone has any more options to suggest, I'd appreciate it if it's specified whether they're mutually exclusive or not with the two options above.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Not mutually exclusive, but rewrite the description and put in a commented out request to only include examples that don't fall under a subtrope. Alternatively, remove on-page examples in favor of "Ambiguous Situation - Other" (or whatever name we land on). This can help curb misuse, make it easier to monitor, and remove clutter.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
We'd be rewriting the description anyway if we decide to forbid unintentional ambiguity and move those examples elsewhere, but further edits probably wouldn't hurt. Do you have any changes in mind?
Also, I tagged the page since it looks like that was overlooked.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Maybe doing something similar to Artistic Liscence, organization-wise? I might be veering off-track a little bit, but other than general changes that fit the trope to whatever requirements we land on, I think placing like with like would make it easier to see whether an example is intentional or speculative.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I don't think you're veering off-track. Now's the perfect time to discuss how to fix the trope (particularly if it's something that could be a crowner option) since I'll probably end up throwing out the current crowner tomorrow; the reason why I'm waiting until tomorrow instead of doing it immediately is to give it one last chance, so to speak.
If we want to set it up like Artistic License, I suppose we could vote for whether to add this to No On-Page Examples and/or add other Ambiguous (whatever) tropes; they wouldn't be mutually exclusive and we could do one without the other, but setting it up like Artistic License would mean removing on-page examples and just listing other tropes.
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 22nd 2022 at 3:12:44 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Logic Girl
The only trouble is, how do we know whether it's intentional or not?
For every low there is a high.
Berserk Button: misusing Berserk Button
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
At least two possibilities are brought up in the work itself, but never confirmed either way.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I think one part of that idea was to turn this into a supertrope to the other Ambiguous (whatever) tropes, similarly to how the most recent thread for Hate Sink turned it into a supertrope.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
The Man Outside Reality
I like that idea.
the Retromancer
Can be an alternative to disambiging.
Edited by Amonimus on May 22nd 2022 at 3:35:58 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Supertrope option could work.
Yeah, with you bringing up Hate Sink, I realize I like that format compared to Artistic License on account of being able to preserve examples that don't neatly fit an existing subtrope. Personally, I'd rather some unnecessarily broad examples be listed when they could go under a subtrope than cut/shoehorn those that don't fit in well. I also think letting these examples accumulate will make it easier to determine whether there's ever need for a new subtrope (see: Artistic License – Physics).
I also generally agree with keeping examples to those that are intentional, which in practice would be similar to IUEO, but avoids the unintentional confusion of requiring examples to be spelled out in-universe.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I unhooked the crowner since it failed.
Feel free to suggest crowner options we could have whenever we try again; I might wait a while before hooking another crowner to see where discussion goes first.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
the Retromancer
The page already mentions "Super-Trope to Ambiguous Ending, Ambiguously Gay (and its Sister Trope Ambiguously Bi), Ambiguously Evil, Ambiguously Human, Ambiguously Related, and Ambiguously Jewish. May be a Riddle for the Ages involving Shrug of God.", that needs to be addressed.
For the crowner so far I've heard:
- Turn into a Super-Trope to select several other "Ambiguous" and "Unclear" tropes that more fit the current use, similar to Hate Sink, requiring to move examples to subtropes that fit.
- Additionally mark as No On-Page Examples, similar to Artistic License.
- Restrict to intentional ambiguity and move unintentional ambiguity to Faux Symbolism, Epileptic Trees, and other YMMV items.
- Set a requirement for the work to imply that the situation may or may not have happened (or other possibility), with some degree of In-Universe merit for either. (does it sound the same)?
- Split off examples of Ambiguous Idendity.
- Split off examples of Ambiguious Motivation.
- Just close and setup a cleanup to remove Speculative Troping and move examples to more specific tropes.
- Rename
I'm kinda grasping so I need a review first, options could be redundant or poorly worded.
Also since the old crowner had additional options would be best to archive it at above post to see what failed.
Edited by Amonimus on May 23rd 2022 at 12:29:12 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I don't know how to find it, but the options were redirecting to This Might Be an Index, disambiguating, and making IUEO for intentional ambiguity that's acknowledged in-universe. Any further votes regarding intentional ambiguity wouldn't have an IUEO restriction.
Anyway, were the options in that post mean to be listed alongside the two options I previously suggested?
These:
- Restrict to intentional ambiguity and move unintentional ambiguity to Faux Symbolism, Epileptic Trees, and other YMMV items
- Rename
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 23rd 2022 at 4:02:32 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
the Retromancer
Good job on me for not remembering what happened just a day ago. On other hand just so happened to have it in browser's history.
- Disambiguate between other pages, such as This Might Be an Index, Uncertain Doom, and Ambiguous Ending.
- Make In-Universe Examples Only, with examples requiring characters to provide in-universe comments regarding the ambiguity
- Redirect to This Might Be an Index
^^^ Just a comment regarding the entry "Just close and setup a cleanup to remove Speculative Troping and move examples to more specific tropes":
While reviewing the entries in my wick check I could not draw a clear line between reasonable ambiguity and Speculative Troping. I wonder what guidelines such a cleanup effort could go by.
Edited by eroock on May 23rd 2022 at 2:28:04 AM
Yeah, I concur that "intentional ambiguity" is absolutely a thing creators do but I don't think it is sustainable as a trope.
Wanted to wait a bit to either come up with an idea or see if anyone else would, but I think the best rule is to require some acknowledgement of ambiguity in the work itself. This can either be through addressing multiple possibilities, providing one possibility but establishing reasonable doubt, or providing some acknowledgement that we have no idea.
I think this will cover the bulk of intentional examples (afaik the ones we've discussed so far meet one of these criteria) while putting a high bar against speculative troping. This lets us keep the trope while reducing long-term upkeep. We have similar restrictions on other tropes for the same purposes, and I believe a set of criteria such as this will layout the context required for an example.
I can think if a few downsides to this approach. The first is that, again, it will cut some clear-cut examples (however few) that don't meet our specificity requirements. However, seeing as our mission is to document examples of tropes, removing a few good ones (while we still have many others) to take out bad examples is a fair tradeoff. I am also a little on the fence about the "we don't know" qualifier, as while it indicates the trope is in play, can also be a cover for lazy writing, be played for laughs, etc. Finally, and what I consider the main sticking point, is that while these standards would work in most situations, for some of the subtropes/sister tropes, such as Ambiguously Gay and Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, we currently hold a lower bar for acceptance, which if raised, would be (in many cases) missing the point.
As a side note, I know renaming has been on the table for a bit, and while I wouldn't be opposed (or in favor, for that matter), I can't think if any names that are equal or better at conveying the idea.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I hooked a crowner with the options listed in this post, minus splitting since Yarding is a free action.
Crown Description:
What should be done with Ambiguous Situation?
The trope description says:
Should it be narrowed to only include intentional examples?