Misused: Mad Lib Fantasy Title

Note: This thread was proposed by Orbiting.

Mad-Lib Fantasy Title is suffering from a somewhat low wick count considering its age (51 wicks, and dates back to 2007), with most of its wicks being either simply stating the title of the work with no further context, or else potholing it to complain about a title being too generic or too weird. (And sometimes both at the same time.)

I don't really think this is tropeworthy in its current state. Fantasy works don't really have a clear enough title convention for a single trope to encompass, and the current description tries to list every popular trend without explaining why any of them are noteworthy or more than passing fads in media, which leads to it making strange assertions like The Dark Tower being a Mad-Lib Fantasy Title because it has "The Dark" in it.
I'd recommend redirecting it to Meaningless Meaningful Words, or disambiguating between that and Title Tropes.
Wick check results:

• Correct use: 20%
• ZCEs and potholes: 53%
• Other complaining: 8%
• Misuse (should be listed as another Title Trope): 8%
• Indices, JFF, etc.: 10%
• Aversion: 2%

Paging ~Orbiting to the thread. The originally proposed reason was Complaining, but I took a look at the wick check and felt Misused was more fitting.

Anyway, I think it should be merged with and redirected to Meaningless Meaningful Words.

most of its wicks being either simply stating the title of the work with no further context

I've noticed that's a thing with almost all Title tropes.

Regardless, I agree with the Meaningless Meaningful Words merge/redirect.

Title tropes are notorious for that since so often there's no context to provide.

Merge this one.

Sounds good to me.

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge

Merge

Another vote to merge.

I'm not really sure what this has to do with Meaningless Meaningful Words rather than having some deep words in common. A title like Elf Queen of Shannara is perfectly clear. A title like Shadow and Bone sounds grandiose but makes sense when you look at the story. And it's like...almost snobby to say, "Well, why don't you just say Spiderwick Story?" Then again, I'm personally not at all sure what MMW is trying to be, and it too reeks of complaining or at least YMMV..

Rather I (surprisingly) think this is JFF material — I don't think we can nail down fantasy title trends as a trope, but in the vein of all the fantasy title generators on the world wide web (from a quick google: [1] [2] [3]), pointing out said trends is still within our wiki's purview.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 21st 2022 at 9:08:14 AM

Merge with Meaningless Meaningful Words (and yes, I have added many more words to Mad-Lib Fantasy Title to prove my point)

Edited by Nen_desharu on Oct 21st 2022 at 1:48:59 PM

I'm against moving this to Just for Fun. Pardon me if I sound like I'm channelling Septimus by saying this, but that part of the site is not a dumping ground for pages TRS strips of their trope status, especially because a list of assorted words that may or may not be used in fantasy titles isn't particularly fun.

I still stand by my existing vote to redirect this to Meaningless Meaningful Words, and I think it's worth mentioning that we recently cut Mad Lib Metal Lyrics for being to Heavy Metal lyrics what this is to titles of fantasy works.

Edit: Also, the reference to Meaningless Meaningful Words in Mad-Lib Fantasy Title's description has been there since 2013. If this isn't a type of Meaningless Meaningful Words despite the description saying it is, then that text remaining for almost a decade is a serious oversight.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 22nd 2022 at 2:08:19 PM

I agree with Sync that 1) Mad-Lib Fantasy Title isn't inherently Meaningless Meaningful Words 2) Meaningless Meaningful Words seems to have issues of its own.

Honestly, the page quote and the description seem to be talking about stock work titles for the Fantasy genre and trends related to them. And none of the examples given really scream Meaningless Meaningful Words.

Maybe just redirect to Title Tropes?

Edited by Karxrida on Oct 22nd 2022 at 12:08:49 PM

Redirecting to Title Tropes instead of Meaningless Meaningful Words (similarly to how we redirected You Gotta Have Blue Hair to Hair Colors and Turtle Power to Index in a Half Shell) works. I was mainly objecting to the Just for Fun proposal.

Edit: Or disambiguate between Title Tropes and Meaningless Meaningful Words.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 22nd 2022 at 4:26:13 AM

Disambig might work.

Disambig would be a better course of action.

to disambig to Title Tropes and Meaningless Meaningful Words

I can support a disambig

What about removing examples and wicks, and just having a page about trends in fantasy titles? It's one of these Tropes in Aggregate where it isn't always clear if any one case is an example, but the trend is very visible.

That's kind of what I envisioned with my proposed move to JFF. It's not really any one trend is the problem with keeping it in Main/, but common fantasy title formats are a thing.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 23rd 2022 at 8:04:24 AM