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The only "rule" is that the work page must be created first.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
I see. Thank you.
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... Fridge/ in particular seems like it, by definition, has to be done after the work comes out.
There was discussion about whether prerelease Headscratchers should exist
that went overwhelmingly towards "no," but the one mod who replied was on the "eh, why not?" side. The Headscratchers/ page in question is cut, however.
Yeah, I know there isn't an actual rule but it seems like common sense- Fridge is explicitly for things people realize after watching the work and having time to process things from a distance.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Tropes are explicitly for after you see the work as well; Speculative Troping "Speculative Troping is the unfortunate habit of troping based on what is "likely" within a work, instead of what's actually in the work."
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
I don't see how anyone can have fridge thoughts for a work that isn't even released.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
^^ which is precisely why I'm against creating prerelease pages in general.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
^ In some cases, a poster is all you need to get tropes, like for Pleasant Goat And Big Big Wolf Movie 8.
Edited by Mickoonsley19
If it were up to me, here's how I would handle things:
- Pre-release, production has not started yet: do not give it its own page. It may be mentioned in a creator, franchise, or predecessor's page (the latter two depending on whether it's the only such film), but not at length. Issues with casting, scripting, budgeting, and other things can affect what would otherwise be a done deal.
- Pre-release, production has started: give it its own page. It may only have a tropeless main page, a laconic, and a WMG page.
- Upon release, go nuts.
^^ Notice, however, that the only tropes we can verify about the work are DreamWorks Face, Face on the Cover, and Gratuitous English. Of which, DWF is misuse (Wolffie is smirking, but his eyes and eyebrows aren't doing the "face"). Speculative Troping is again rampant because people are assuming that trailers, Creators, and posters are always accurate.
^ Huh, that's more complicated than my version, which is "Darth Wiki, no subpages, indexed under Unpublished Works, and no Main/ wiki links until the first official release". Then I'd hold whomever moved the page over to the proper namespace responsible for verifying the trope examples. Edited by crazysamaritan Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
^ "Unpublished" is different from "unreleased". If there is promotional material such as a poster or trailer, that could count as a publication.
The reason why Unpublished Works is a thing is because the general public can't actually experience the work and verify that the tropes listed on the page are actually valid examples.
Meanwhile, although Trailers Always Lie, we can still extract some tropes from promotional material. This does have to be done carefully to avoid falling into Speculative Troping, but it can be (and has been) done.
That said, Fridge is specifically for post-viewing reactions, so it makes sense to restrict it to actually released works. After all, it's possible that the full movie will explicitly address these things, making them not Fridge (since "Fridge" means you only realize it after the movie is over and you're looking through your fridge).
Edited by Zuxtron
^ and ^^ : "Unpublished" can mean "canceled" or "upcoming", a distinction that is very much important.
^ : From the above-linked page: "Early information about the movie said that it would be about finding Bo Peep, as she wasn't in the previous movie because Andy's mom sold her. The reveal trailer, however, instead introduces the story of Forky, and the existential crisis of a spork being awakened as a toy because some kid glued googly eyes and put a pipe-cleaner mouth and arms on it. These two premises are more related than they might seem once you remember that Bo Peep is made of porcelain. Nobody would make a child's toy out of something as fragile as porcelain, leading to the conclusion that, like Forky, Bo Peep did not start out as a toy — she became one when Andy started playing with her."
What's stopping me from believing that this could be made explicitly clear by the film once it comes out? (If this is the case, then HA!) It's much like with the Headscratchers thread referenced earlier: the work's release can render all of these things null.
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I see no problem with tropes found in promotional material being used to make trope pages on unreleased works.
Keet cleanup
So as long as it is actually found there and not speculation.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
^And clearly marked as a trailer or promotional material trope? Because we all know trailers lie like a rug, and a trope present in the trailer might never be present in the main media. Trailers and promos are mini works in their own right these days.
I say any legit examples that can be found pre-release aren't worth the headache of cleaning up every bad one. The legit examples can just be posted later post-release when we know what did and did not actually happen.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
My experience has been that the vast majority of Fridge entries on an upcoming work tend to be completely wrong anyway. Especially Fridge Horror, which too many people seem to interpret as, "What's the absolute worst-case scenario I can possibly come up with based on this extremely limited and probably misleading information?"
It's usually to the tune of, "Bob is crying, and Alice isn't in this one scene — Alice must have died a horrible death in the meantime."
Then the movie comes out and it turns out Alice is just someplace else and Bob was crying because he stubbed his toe.
Edited by MrDeath
^ And then the person who added the wrong information never comes back and changes it post-release. If the tropers who added the initial entries actually updated them and maintained them, then that would be something. As it is, they just end up hanging around being wrong forever.
Now it occurs to me that I'm the one who added the Fridge Brilliance entry on Fridge.Toy Story 4, and I'd forgotten about it.
In hindsight, yeah, it's a silly thing to add that will probably be addressed by the work itself.
No page for an unreleased work should be made, ever. No work page, no Fridge Page, nothing.
Related to the above, tropes that are not actually in a work should not be listed on a work page. That includes, say, advertising of all sorts (trailers and posters and the like).
In total honesty I'm wondering if it might be possible to make work pages for trailers themselves if people are so insistent on troping them, seeing as, like someone pointed out earlier in this thread, trailers themselves are pretty much their own works at this point. It might at least offer a way for people to act on the hype without creating a multitude of locked pages.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Forgive the thread bumping, but I want to alert ya'll to my Thread about this issue. (Other thread got locked before I could :/)
I was thinking someone needed to make that thread. Thank you.
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Are these permitted? I interpreted Fridge as being for post-viewing discussions, which is impossible if the film hasn't come out yet. Fridge.Toy Story 4 comes to mind.