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Does Surprisingly Realistic Outcome need to return to TRS?

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jandn2014 SMILE! from somewhere in Connecticut Since: Aug, 2017 Relationship Status: Hiding
SMILE!
#1: Sep 14th 2024 at 11:41:44 AM

As (most of you) probably know, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome is a trope with a troubled history. Once known as Reality Ensues, a 2020 TRS thread decided to disambiguate the page and move the trope to its current title, as the trope was experiencing widespread misuse—it's intended to describe a moment in a work that's unexpectedly realistic for its genre, but was very often being used as "anything remotely realistic happens in a work".

It's been over three years since the thread closed, and yet... in spite of TRS's best efforts, I really don't think much was fixed. It's clear that the rename hasn't helped curb misuse much when misuse continues to pop up on recent works. From the dedicated cleanup thread, here's entries from Deadpool & Wolverine (not even two months old), here's entries from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (released only just about a year ago), here's some entries from Octopath Traveler II and The Oregon Trail (2021) (2024 and 2021 respectively), here's some from Robot Dreams (released earlier this year), and so on. A vast majority of these display the same old misuse of either "plot naturally happens" or "something realistic happens, but it's not surprising or genre-subversive".

Sure, it's possible that misuse may still be lingering due to poor cleanup—with tropers simply moving entries to the new title without accounting for how valid they are or not, setting a false precedent for new entries—but part of me even thinks that the name makes the problems worse in some instances—”Surprisingly Realistic Outcome”, aside from being a very clunky and prescriptive title, also sounds very “formal”, which may be misleading some people into thinking this primarily is a “serious”/dramatic trope in line with something like Deconstruction, when many examples are comedic in nature.

So... what should be done? Does cleanup need to be more extensive? But Surprisingly Realistic Outcome has nearly 10k wicks, and it's been proven again and again that people are much more reluctant about cleanup when there isn't as clear as a metric for how much is done (like when a trope is cut, renamed, or disambiguated). Does it need to make a return to TRS at some point to address these issues once again?

EmeraldSource Since: Jan, 2021
#2: Sep 15th 2024 at 1:13:56 AM

It's probably an identical problem to Unintentional Period Piece, the idea is not really a trope as much as an analytical concept. It's a fun idea, the popularity is why we feel compelled to make it work, but may not be repairable. I think maybe because the original idea is rooted in "fiction is fake, thus when it feels realistic is notable" which is probably not the healthiest approach.

Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.
MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#3: Sep 15th 2024 at 3:14:14 AM

It does seem like it has the potential to be a "badge of honor" showing that this work is so much better and more realistic than those other works.

Coachpill Taxidermy (he/him) from Gen Z Since: Aug, 2022 Relationship Status: Baby don't hurt me!
Taxidermy (he/him)
#4: Sep 15th 2024 at 8:55:22 AM

Reality Is Unrealistic sort of has a similar problem, where people will assume that since fictional societies and lifestyles are usually a monolith, the times when they aren't are always going to be notable even if there are other reasons for it being that way. I've seen it used to describe things that are really Aluminum Christmas Trees (something obscure and bizarre-sounding mentioned by a work turns out to be real, as opposed to conventions in reality being overly limited), up/downgrades or exaggerations of real life circumstances (Fiction Isn't Fair and/or Literary Agent Hypothesis), and so on.

This is going to sound kind of silly, but both that and SRO—though to be fair SRO is likely the more problematic of the two since I know RIU isn't fully well-defined—get used as what I think of as a "Jenga" trope, where there's a lot of emphasis put on picking out the right building block of a story to restack at the top, the "middle" block usually being the best option since it contains the unrealistic things needed for the story to last as long as it does between the beginning and end. So when the middle piece is suddenly on the top, it's viewed as every single realistic thing happening before the unrealistic stuff. In SRO's case, the other "blocks" (tropes that better fit so-called "realistic" circumstances) are things like Deconstruction and Wrong Genre Savvy, which themselves get misused a lot, so I think the combination of those two in examples with their more-or-less intended definitions creates a dissonance where some tropers use it as a badge of honor to try to prove that the example is realistic on its own merits.

Edited by Coachpill on Sep 15th 2024 at 11:56:32 AM

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StarSword Captain of USS Bajor from somewhere in deep space Since: Sep, 2011
Captain of USS Bajor
#5: Sep 15th 2024 at 9:09:29 AM

I've always understood Reality Is Unrealistic to mean specific and possibly citeable people thought something in the work was unrealistic when it actually wasn't, like Jonathan Nolan flipping an 18-wheeler in The Dark Knight (a practical effect involving a real, full-size 18-wheeler) and people on the Internet thinking it was "bad CGI". That one is already an Audience Reaction as well. [down] No, it's not either, I was misremembering.

Back on topic, I've kind of come to the conclusion that Surprisingly Realistic Outcome just has too many moving parts to be a proper trope. E.g. the "surprising" criterion is inherently subjective, and I've found some of the cleanup thread's calls on what counts as an "outcome" to be questionable.

Edited by StarSword on Sep 15th 2024 at 12:51:46 PM

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Coachpill Taxidermy (he/him) from Gen Z Since: Aug, 2022 Relationship Status: Baby don't hurt me!
Taxidermy (he/him)
#6: Sep 15th 2024 at 9:35:36 AM

RIU actually isn't an Audience Reaction, but people have argued that it should be. (Unless you're talking about Special Effect Failure?)

I do kind of wonder how many SRO examples could just be moved to Lampshade Hanging, [x character] has a point, Bait-and-Switch, Ludicrous Mêlée Accuracy in "need to be skilled with sharp weapon" cases and Negated Moment of Awesome. Even the page image looks like it would fit right in with the last of those tropes. (I also don't suppose renaming it again, but this time to Realistic Bait And Switch, would be helpful? tongue)

Edited by Coachpill on Sep 15th 2024 at 12:36:47 PM

Your goateed philistine is sashaying towards us. | 🧱
EmeraldSource Since: Jan, 2021
#7: Sep 15th 2024 at 10:45:05 AM

I've generally treated both Reality Ensues and Surprisingly Realistic Outcome as an expectation being set up by the narrative or anticipated by the characters, only to be handed a dose of what the more likely outcome would be. This is intertwined not with tropes but broader storytelling conceits, and thus not connected to Wrong Genre Savvy (ie "I saw it in a movie once") or Subverted Trope / Deconstructed Trope.

An example would be from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the Gang split up into individual plotlines for an episode. Frank decides to take his illegal shenanigans to a vaguely similar but ultimately different group of friends running a bar and they end up getting hit with a dozen violations and forcibly shut down. This reflects on both Frank's expectations of what would happen as well as imply that the structure of the show and the misadventures of the Gang are only possible because they are the main characters.

But yeah, most examples I've seen are basic "The drug addict dies of an overdose" or "Acting crazy means people will treat you as crazy."

Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.
themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
jandn2014 SMILE! from somewhere in Connecticut Since: Aug, 2017 Relationship Status: Hiding
SMILE!
#9: Sep 15th 2024 at 7:46:44 PM

[up] Huh, forgot that that happened.

In spite of everything, I do think there's a legitimate trope buried under this mess, one that isn't already covered by others. I think this is distinct from Deconstructed Trope in that a Deconstruction has the trope happen but explores unexpectedly realistic flaws and consequences, while Surprisingly Realistic Outcome typically has the trope not occur at all. I recall one of the TRS threads bringing up a cutaway from Family Guy as an example, where Peter attempts to dive into a pile of gold coins, only to end up injured because the accumulated pile is solid. That's a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome because the expected consequence is that the pool is liquid-like, only for it to not occur in favor of a more realistic result. A Deconstruction would likely first play it straight, only to show an unexpected consequence, such as sickness caused by so much direct exposure to gold dust. (I'm aware that this scene is listed as a Deconstruction, but I wouldn't exactly consider it an example myself.)

Still, the issues here are so pervasive and widespread that if the trope is kept, I think it might be best to restart it from scratch, ensuring misuse gets completely wiped out rather than simply moved to the new name.

Edited by jandn2014 on Sep 15th 2024 at 10:46:57 AM

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