I don't think it's straightforward at all. The criteria for what counts as "surprising" and "realistic" are inherently subjective. Frankly I think it just has too many moving parts to be a proper trope: if you need five paragraphs to get the definition across properly, you should think whether you're just overanalyzing things or jamming unrelated traits together.
While I do agree that "surprising" and "realistic" are probably way more subjective than they should be for this trope, the issue with making it a YMMV item is like... what would we even be documenting anymore? That the audience thinks that something that happened in a work is a surprise because it's realistic? It just sounds weird and feels insubstantial as an audience reaction.
Thanks for playing King's Quest V!I guess the YMMV part would be the "surprising" aspect. It wouldn't be an audience reaction so much as a "subjective trope", akin to things like Complete Monster or Big-Lipped Alligator Moment (the info is objective but people may not agree if it's there).
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI kind of assumed that the surprising part was supposed to be from an In-Universe perspective, not from the audience.
No, it's supposed to be the intention of the scene. It's meant to be surprising because of how sudden the realism is.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI'm not saying it isn't. I was just explaining what a subjective version would likely entail. It wasn't an argument in favor of it (or against it, honestly; it was just a statement).
Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 22nd 2024 at 5:03:07 AM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallTo Startsword's post, (#3): The reason that it got trimmed to the very tight set of moving parts that it currently boasts is that any time any one of them got loosened, the thing ballooned to "Something didn't go quite how I thought it would." which is... >75% of media to... everyone. Just a different 75%, depending on who you ask.
I do remember in the original discussions wondering - and perhaps expressing - that I wasn't sure if it really was a thing. I figured that having >1200 - 2000 of the then-extant entries left after cleanup would be on the high side.
Reading over the last few pages of the cleanup thread, I think the current state of this trope is honestly fine. Most of the stuff that's getting deleted doesn't seem worth documenting. This trope does seem to attract a lot of Square Peg, Round Trope because it's seen as a badge of honor, so I think some strictness to counter that is understandable.
Same. It's pretty straightforward. Did the work set up an unrealistic, presumably tropey outcome? Did it then subvert that?
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One thing that could possibly be clarified in the definition: The cleanup thread as a whole has determined, in light of the wide variety of human personalities and motivations, that character decisions and reactions cannot be classified as realistic or unrealistic. This includes but is not limited to:
- Emotional response to trauma
- Outcomes of court cases or Parliamentary votes, especially in fictional jurisdictions.
We might say that some are more likely than others, but it's fiction. Characters cannot be expected to be the dead average for their culture, and therefore off-center actions and reactions will show up.
Edited by underCoverSailsman on Dec 30th 2024 at 9:29:09 AM
"Also, character reactions cannot qualify under this trope, as real people's emotional and psychological responses to a situation vary wildly. We can't say any response is necessarily unrealistic in fictional scenarios, and not even the character's author can know such things."
From the "surprising" section

So I know that this site needs more rules and regulations to run now that it has more mainstream use, but I feel like Surprisingly Realistic Outcome has such ridged rules now it's borderline impossible to actually put it on a page without it getting removed. I've only successfully done it once so far and I can't be the only one having this problem, would it not be easier to turn Surprisingly Realistic Outcome into a YMMV so peoples attempts to put it on a page have a snowballs chance in Hell of actually staying there?