Misused: Ambiguous Situation

Ambiguous Situation is a trope existing since 2010 which has gained inflationary use in the last couple of years (see chart).

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:

1. it has a strong subjective component, not everyone brings the same level of expectations to a scene
2. the fact that a work has limitations and simply cannot spell out everything in every scene even if it wanted to
3. unintentionally sloppy storytelling can be mistaken for this trope

But it's really the current definition that opens itself up to all kinds of speculations and trivialities beyond any actual situation or moment.

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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.