Scope of Author's Saving Throw

Some issues with Author's Saving Throw were recently raised in the cleanup thread, but only got a small response. I figure a more fucused thread about what the trope actually is, with particular focus on how it applies to Thematic Series, would be useful.

Last year, I made this post regarding the long examples list on YMMV.Fire Emblem Three Houses. A few days ago, ~Alley Oop offered a counter to some of the examples I had an issue with. This discussion of Fire Emblem in particular led me to a more general question of where this trope actually starts an ends.

I replied:

Thanks for the response.

I do think a lot of these entries do belong under Win Back the Crowd rather than Author's Saving Throw, as you suggest. And this gives me a nice segue to something I've been pondering lately.

What actually is the scope of Author's Saving Throw? In my mind it has to be, if not a retcon, at least retcon-adjacent. It's a story development introduced after the fact which influences people's perception of a (poorly-received) prior plot development (alliteration unintentional).

The canonical example comes from Green Lantern comics. In the infamous "Emerald Twilight" story, Hal Jordan, the second Green Lantern, loses his mind, slaughters the Green Lantern Corps, and becomes a supervillain called Parallax. A new character by the name of Kyle Rayner acquires the last Green Lantern ring and becomes the third, solo Green Lantern.

Fans hated this. Really, really, really hated it. There was a whole movement called Hal's Emerald Attack Team calling for it to be reversed, and this was in the days when email and Usenet were bigger than the World Wide Web. That kind of organisation was seriously impressive when social media had yet to even be conceived.

A full decade later, DC published "Green Lantern: Rebirth", which retconned the events of "Emerald Twilight". Suddenly, it turned out that during his Parallax phase, Hal Jordan had actually been possessed by a sentient cosmic entity who was the embodiment of fear... and was named Parallax. This development completely changes the reader's perception of "Emerald Twilight", since now Hal wasn't actually evil, he was under Demonic Possession. Hal didn't destroy the Green Lantern Corps, Parallax (who is not Hal) did. And so on.

Since Fire Emblem is a Thematic Series, I'm not sure the Author's Saving Throw can even apply outside of direct sequels (and I guess Heroes). To take the specific examples you argue with me about, everybody agrees that Three Houses manages these things better than Awakening or especially Fates, but that doesn't actually affect anybody's perception of Awakening or Fates, since Three Houses stars a brand new cast of characters in a brand new setting in a brand new continuity. Can you really call it a saving throw when it's a completely separate story?

Said ~miraculous:

Quoth ~nrjxll:

Thinking on it further, I suspect that people are using Author's Saving Throw when they mean Even Better Sequel, Surprisingly Improved Sequel, or Win Back the Crowd. I have some other thoughts forming in my brain, which I'll write down when I get back from work.

But in the meantime, any other thoughts?

It's on Tropes Needing TRS for suspicion of being too common to have examples. ~Fighteer brought it up last year on the complaint cleanup thread. While there might be something to the idea of "a retcon designed to correct a change in a serialized work that fans hated", right now "a change to correct a mistake the author made" is far too broad to mean anything.

Plus with no real way to determine if something was intended fixing without Word of God. People can add anything even stuff that isn't even possible with time limits or things the creators probably never heard off?

As I said before, this is another one of those tropes that depends on fans interpreting authorial intent, which never goes well. This is why some form of confirmation ought to be required.

I wonder how many examples we'd be able to confirm with Word of God. Probably not many.

Yeah but id rather have an accurate trope by it's definition rather than one where just playing a broad guessing game.

To me, AST should be trivia, since it deals with authorial intent/action. I don't see how it's an audience reaction.

I can see an argument being made that the true point of the trope is that fans think the creators fixed something, but that's kind of nebulous and might be covered.

The core of the trope is objective: a creator sees that fans don't like something, so they make a change against what they had originally planned in order to mollify them. "A change was made" is the objective part, but everything around it is trivia or audience reaction.

• There is an aspect of a serial or ongoing work that receives significant criticism or backlash. (Audience Reaction)
• The creator of the work makes a change to the work that results in that aspect being better received. (Audience Reaction)
• This change was made intentionally as a way to address the problem. (Trivia, since it is external to the work as presented)

Fundamentally, there is no way to know absent Word of God that any particular element of a work was changed from its original intent, nor that the change was meant to fix a problem in audience reception.

It reminds me of Creator's Pet, which underwent scrutiny for misuse and ended up getting four criteria: The Scrappy, Character Focus, Character Shilling, and Creator's Favorite. Without all four, it's not an example, and certain parts of it are Trivia that require knowledge of authorial intent.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 13th 2022 at 4:17:40 AM

Isn't "fans think a work has fixed a problem" covered by Win Back the Crowd?

Probably, that's why I added that bit at the end.

(TBH I'd rather just merge the two together rather than have this weird author intent game)

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 13th 2022 at 4:56:17 AM

That seems like the obvious fix, really. It gets rid of the necessity of knowing author intent, but if the author intent is known it can still inform the example.

And uh wouldn't that cause a bigger issue as people could anything they want?

That would pretty much ensure we would end up cutting it eventually.

Misread. Sorry about that. Yeah I agree with merging.

Edited by miraculous on Jul 13th 2022 at 2:51:34 AM

Why would it cause any bigger issues? It's just Win Back the Crowd... But an Intended Audience Reaction.

Oh uh. I thought the troper above was implying that we should remove the author intent thing totally. Didn't realise that was addressed to you. My bad.

I mean, like I've argued elsewhere, I don't think Author's Saving Throw should require that it was necessarily successful - which as it currently stands also furthers the overlap with Win Back the Crowd.

Another vote for merging with Win Back the Crowd, which would also neatly fix the weird edge case with Thematic Series.

I'd give a to merging Win Backthe Crowd with Author's Saving Throw.

I'd also give a to requiring some sort of confirmation that the creator(s) of the work intended for the change to fix the problem. This way we won't have people trying to play guessing games with authorial intent.

Hopefully it will also cut down on the amount of times people use Author's Saving Throw as a way to wonk about stuff they don't like or just use it as a way to say "This game did something X, which is good because I hated that previous game did Y."

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jul 14th 2022 at 12:05:14 PM

We need TRS to do the merge. Maybe I'll add this to my TRS to-do list.

I can help with the wick check if need be. Because some of the examples are written in a rather misleading way. For example, take this option from YMMV.The Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword:

The thing is, this has nothing at all to do with the Pro Controller (and at least it doesn't say it's for people who don't want to use motion controls). The game was originally released on the Wii and built entirely around motion controls; the motion-free option was added to the Switch remaster to accommodate people playing in handheld mode, which is mandatory on the Switch Light.

Interestingly enough, there's no mention on YMMV.Doom 2016 of the addition of motion controls. I recall a tweet from the developers who said they added it because it was requested by "literally everybody", but unfortunately I can't find it now.

Though I'm curious would a trivia trope for a decision confirmed by Word of God to alleviate a perceived issue be worth TLP?

No, because it's already wholly encompassed by the tropes already under discussion.

So I went and added Author's Saving Throw to the TRS Queue. Here's the wick check I did.

If the AST is an intentional part of the work, how is it different than Fix Fic (my impression is that the fix has to be the/a main plot of the work) other than the extra subjectivity of if it succeeded?

This deemed Better Than Canon can apply to non-fan works. So where do adaptions fit into AST or BTC?

My belief is that AST should be limited to in-continuity and story changes. Character changes have Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, adaptation or gameplay/presentation changes seem like they warrant their own YMMV.

AST is different than Win Back the Crowd in it can apply to just parts of the work while WBTC requires the whole work do so, AST can also apply to works otherwise too successful to have lost the crowd to win back. I wouldn't mind merging AST with WBTC (that would fix the prerelease examples problem), but if we go that direction I think it would be best to make AST a disambiguation to fix/win back entries. Alternately we can limit AST to cited examples.

TBH, I still think one of the biggest things that could be done to fix the overlap is just ditch the part about an Author's Saving Throw having to succeed. Just the intent would be enough.