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Misused: Unintentional Period Piece

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themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him
#176: Jan 16th 2025 at 1:40:01 PM

OK so there are a lot of inbounds here — enough that we can't disambig anymore.

Definition-Only, maybe. Septimus proposed it and I believe Kory said D-O conversions are alright with admin approval.

Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
costanton11 Since: Mar, 2016
#177: Jan 16th 2025 at 2:23:43 PM

If the trope isn’t workable, Definition Only seems like the way to go.

AegisP Kindhearted SSSSSNAKE Man Since: Oct, 2014 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Kindhearted SSSSSNAKE Man
#178: Jan 16th 2025 at 3:02:48 PM

Definition Only.

As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.
Nen_desharu Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire from Greater Smash Bros. Universe or Toronto Since: Aug, 2020 Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Nintendo Fanatic Extraordinaire
#179: Jan 16th 2025 at 7:26:40 PM

D-O then

Kirby is awesome.
UchuuFlamenco Since: Jul, 2017
#180: Jan 16th 2025 at 7:43:11 PM

Should the definition and the description remain the same if it becomes Definition-only, though?

Rainbow Pomeranian Lover from Central Illinois (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded)
Pomeranian Lover
#181: Jan 17th 2025 at 1:45:23 AM

Edit: Never mind, I realized that my question was already answered. (asking if Definition Only means it needs to be cut from work YMMV pages)

Edited by Rainbow on Jan 17th 2025 at 1:53:25 AM

jandn2014 SMILE! from somewhere in Connecticut Since: Aug, 2017 Relationship Status: Hiding
SMILE!
#182: Jan 21st 2025 at 9:24:21 AM

Definition-Only is fine.

CanuckMcDuck1 PEPSIMAN from Japan Since: Sep, 2023 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
PEPSIMAN
#183: Jan 22nd 2025 at 5:03:23 PM

[tup] to making the hypothetical Iconic Of Its Era a definition-only page.

Do not mess with creatures which you do not understand.
AegisP Kindhearted SSSSSNAKE Man Since: Oct, 2014 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Kindhearted SSSSSNAKE Man
#184: Jan 22nd 2025 at 5:04:00 PM

Definition Only for me.

As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.
Lymantria Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph from Toronto Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: Historians will say we were good friends.
Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph
#185: Jan 22nd 2025 at 5:24:36 PM

What would happen to UPP then?

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RallyBot2 (Elder Troper) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
#186: Jan 22nd 2025 at 5:48:43 PM

[up]That's what we're here to figure out, though I don't think there's a way to save it at this point.

Lymantria Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph from Toronto Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: Historians will say we were good friends.
Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph
#187: Jan 22nd 2025 at 5:54:24 PM

I will note that many UPP entries almost remind me of IMDb’s lists of anachronisms for period pieces, only in reverse. Listing every dated element can be interesting, but it is partly inevitable and not very meaningful. Would Iconic Of Its Era need to be definition-only?

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Discar Since: Jun, 2009
#188: Jan 22nd 2025 at 8:38:32 PM

I can't remember, are we still allowed to redirect and rename on high-inbound pages? I know the big point of contention was "too many disambiguation pages."

[up] I think Iconic Of Its Era can definitely have valid examples. We have plenty of tropes about the historical context of a work, with examples. Though I'm already imagining annoyingly strict requirements, so we'll see how that goes.

Edited by Discar on Jan 22nd 2025 at 8:39:44 AM

Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.
Lymantria Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph from Toronto Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: Historians will say we were good friends.
Tyrannoraptoran Reptiliomorph
#189: Jan 22nd 2025 at 9:11:27 PM

[up] See here. With 33,000 inbounds for UPP, it apparently can’t be disambiged, but it can be renamed if the admins okay it, and a definition change might also be okay. I feel like, whatever we do, we probably shouldn’t leave the page and examples as-is.

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WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#190: Jan 22nd 2025 at 9:41:33 PM

At the meta thread, ~Morgan Wick mentioned that they think the wider troper community actually understands UPP more than we do. I'd kinda like to know what that means, since no such arguments have been made here and if we somehow "don't get it", I'd like to know what we're all apparently missing.

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number9robotic (Experienced Trainee)
#191: Jan 22nd 2025 at 11:19:06 PM

(glances at the wick check and sees the widespread misuse caused by lack of enforcement)

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WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#192: Jan 22nd 2025 at 11:29:26 PM

I'm skeptical too, but if they're confident that we're missing the point, they should be able to back it up.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#193: Jan 25th 2025 at 4:57:09 AM

You'd have to ask someone who regularly contributes to the page (or at least adds examples of it); I'm not sure that even if you asked they'd be able to articulate it. I was more getting at the idea of a general understanding of how to use the page, even if that general sense doesn't fit the TRS regulars' definition of what's tropeworthy.

I made that comment in the context of Kory saying "not everything needs a clear point besides 'people like it' or 'it's fun'", and more broadly, the idea that a page's usage doesn't have to be perfect. In other words, I suspect the administration would say that this thread is nitpicking too much and trying to make the page more rigorously defined than it needs to be. As long as the page follows some sort of pattern, even if that pattern might not be what we'd consider tropeworthy, they'd be fine with it - and I'm not sure they'd even consider the existence of a pattern necessary.

All of which is to say that I'm not sure the thread is wrong to have a problem with how the page is used based on the definition of a trope that we're accustomed to, but that we should consider the tension between that definition and the looser, more free-wheeling sense the rest of the troper base has. I don't think it's as severe a problem as Critical Research Failure, which was not only effectively used to get around the cutting/renaming of Did Not Do The Research and related tropes but whose name made the sort of nitpicky examples that infested it seem worse than they were, but it probably does need a wrench of some kind taken to it. But given the admins' problem with "cutting popular content" I wouldn't assume any solution that involves cutting "any dated element" examples would pass their muster if they were asked to weigh in on it.

VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
Calendar enthusiast
#194: Jan 25th 2025 at 12:10:54 PM

I've been pondering, and I wonder if UPP might be describing two different, though perhaps complementary, tropes.

For example, YMMV.Jem has this:

  • Unintentional Period Piece: Good lord, you can't get any more stereotypically 80s than this. The big colorful hair and makeup is just the beginning before we go into the music, the cars, the casual fashions, anything and everything about this show is the 1980s! Getting into the music, the whole show is very much a creature of the music video era. Each episode spent considerable time showing music videos for both the Holograms and the Misfits.

That's definitely a valid example by anybody's definition. If you watch Jem, it really it really is the most 1980s thing in the universe, and embodies the decade in a way that, for example, The Transformers, which also came out in the 1980s and takes place in the same universe, does not.

That said, you could reasonable give Jem a setting update without drastically changing the story, because the idea of a girl using super-advanced holograms to become a pop sensation with her friends isn't intrinsically tied to the 1980s. (Indeed, the 2010s comic did just that, but also made some other changes because the writers wanted to approach it differently).

Meanwhile, YMMV.Animorphs has this:

  • Unintentional Period Piece: Joe Bob Fenestre and Web Access America are blatant references to Ted Turner and AOL Online, lending themselves to a then-topical Take That! that AOL was an evil corporation with plans to take over the world. As of The New '10s and The New '20s, AOL has been completely merged into Yahoo! and those sorts of jokes are now lobbed at Disney and Amazon.
    • The society it takes place in counts towards this too. In the aforementioned review, Pop Arena discusses how the very premise of the series really only makes sense in the context of its 1990s setting, that being a time when the US was enjoying a period of perceived peace and prosperity, with no real rivals. For example, the plot of "The Deception" revolves around the idea that the United States has no serious military or economic rivals and is unprepared to enter another major war. This was a major sentiment in the 1990s, but is all but forgotten today. Tellingly, the Yeerks don't seem to stand in for any particular foreign enemy or ideology.

Again, this looks like a perfectly valid example (Animorphs also makes great use of Free-Range Children, which many people point out is unrealistic in the 2020s). While there are plenty of references to brands and companies that were common in the 1990s, they don't really define the books, to the extent that I believe reïssues at some point changed a bunch of specific companies to generic references (eg "Radio Shack" became "the computer store"). Conversely, the books are pretty hard to disentangle from their sociopolitical context (particularly The Alien (#8) and The Warning (#26), which are about Internet culture), and as such a setting update would require substantial reworking.

So my point is that these two look like they're talking about different ideas. The Jem is about a works that embodies its era, while the Animorphs example is about a work inextricably tied to a particular era. (Obviously, a work can be both). I wonder if there might be value in spinning the latter off into a separate trope.

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underCoverSailsman Peeks from Under Rocks from State of Flux Since: Jan, 2021 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Peeks from Under Rocks
#195: Jan 25th 2025 at 12:25:22 PM

[up]So: Asthetically Of Its Era vs Story Of Its Time? Is that what you're getting at?

(Just using the straw names to refine definition)

VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
DaceyMormont Since: May, 2020
#197: Jan 26th 2025 at 9:14:58 PM

[up][up][up][up] Right, so what that it's used both improperly and inconsistently? People are having such fun with a little bashing and is that such a bad thing?

themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him
#198: Jan 26th 2025 at 9:27:39 PM

[up] Excessive complaining is against our site rules and is discouraged. See Complaining About Shows You Don't Like.

Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
DaceyMormont Since: May, 2020
#199: Jan 26th 2025 at 9:31:44 PM

I get that, but plenty of it happens regardless.

jandn2014 SMILE! from somewhere in Connecticut Since: Aug, 2017 Relationship Status: Hiding
SMILE!
#200: Jan 26th 2025 at 9:34:30 PM

To clarify, the prime issue here wasn't really negativity (there's a folder on the wick check for "complaining", but quite frankly, most of them strike me as lame quipping more so than anything); the issue was that this page has no real boundaries as to what renders a work "dated", so we get entries like "the characters mention a brand that later went bankrupt? How dated!". There's also the subtle yet severe issue that the Laconic claims that this is intended to be about "works that were meant to be timeless", but there's no means of actually proving that any work was meant to thoroughly stand the test of time, with few exceptions.

I still do think there are legitimate cases recognized outside of just this website, but the page as it is is stuffed with frankly silly, useless nitpicking that's not even interesting.

Edited by jandn2014 on Jan 26th 2025 at 12:36:47 PM

18th Apr '25 1:29:12 PM

Crown Description:

Unintentional Period Piece has long been heavily misused, frequently attracting examples that list literally every single dated thing in a work. This crowner will determine how best to fix this item.

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