RetGone vs Unperson vs the Third Option which no longer ever existed

The confusion seems to go all the way back to the YKTTW...

AFAICT, Unperson was originally intended to mean "A Government Conspiracy or The Syndicate destroys (and/or fabricates) evidence to make it look like someone never existed" and Ret-Gone was intended to mean "Someone uses magic or Applied Phlebotinum to make it so that someone actually never existed".

There are lots of misplaced examples, in both directions, which are easy enough to fix (assuming the descriptions above are actually correct—the Ret-Gone page seems to agree with them, although Unperson is unclear as to whether conspiracy is necessary or not, and the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions and Laconical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions each have their own incompatible take on the matter).

But in addition to that, there are also lots of examples on both pages that don't fit either of those two descriptions. Eg:

• On Angel, Angel has memories of his son Connor removed from all of his friends minds, so that only he remembers Connor ever existed.

This is clearly not Ret-Gone (since Connor still existed). You could argue for lumping it with Unperson, but Your Mileage May Vary if you see Unperson as being inherently a trope about evil conspiracies. (Certainly plots like the Angel one have nothing in common thematically with Nineteen Eighty Four-like plots.)

I think the right fix is to add a third trope, with the distinction then being:

• Unperson: Shadowy groups destroy evidence of someone's existence, to further their own nefarious purposes.
• Ret-Gone: Magic or phlebotinum causes someone to never have existed in this timeline. (For Want Of A Nail, this ought to cause noticeable changes to the backstory, unless the Ret-Gone character was a total Red Shirt.) Sometimes someone will have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory about the Ret-Gone character.
• Forgotten But Not Gone: Magic or phlebotinum causes everyone (or nearly everyone) to forget about a person, but the person really does (or at least did) exist. Unperson can sometimes be a subtrope of this, if your Government Conspiracy has good Applied Phlebotinum.

Oh, and Erased From Existence (the original YKTTW name) is currently an alt title for Unperson, which is particularly bad since Laconic.Ret Gone is "Character is erased from existence". Sigh. Anyway, it only has 6 wicks anyway, so it should probably just go away.

OK?

edited 31st Oct '10 3:01:49 PM by dna

I don't like the idea of making Unperson the subtrope. Personally, I think we should just have Unperson be "Everybody forgot Bob existed" and Ret-Gone be "Bob retroactively failed to exist." Then, maybe we can break Unperson into subtropes based on the how and why, if people want to.

Well, it wouldn't be a full subtrope. There would just be an area of overlap, "conspiracy makes people forget" where it could be considered either trope depending on how it was played...

Also, Unperson normally isn't about people forgetting. If we were lumping, it would be Unperson = "destroying evidence that Alice existed (sometimes even including people's memories of her)" vs Ret-Gone = "making Alice never have existed". (And actually, that's what the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions claims is the distinction now.)

edited 31st Oct '10 4:54:40 PM by dna

The above is my understanding as well. For example, under Unperson I listed the Humanx Commonwealth methodology of placing a world or subject Under Edict, which means that all public records are purged or hidden of any mention of the subject, computers are programmed to lie about it, and if it's a location (like a planet), automated guardians are deployed to make sure nobody goes near it without authorization.