As currently described, this trope feels like either a YMMV trope (in that the judgment of whether a philosophical tangent adds to or detracts from a work is inherently subjective) or a violation of Tropes Are Not Bad. Were I maintaining this page, I'd be inclined to change this to Waxing Philosophical, add a simple "Done correctly, X; done poorly, Y), and leave the judgment to the viewer.
Edited by blahpers Hide / Show Replies
Yep, this seems like a huge YMMV trope to me too. Especially given that somebody seems to have applied it to Ayn Rand. The trope Author Filibuster absolutely applies to her, sure. But considering the number of readers who, in clearly observable reality, had Holy Crap moments upon reading the filibuster in Atlas Shrugged, I don't think there's any plausible case to be made for considering Ayn Rand's filibuster to be on an equal level with randomized regurgitation of first-year philosophy in an effort to sound deep. It was a philibuster done with actual philosophy that I happen to disagree with. Whatever you think of the arguments or the writing, it wasn't just an Ice-Cream Koan.
There's certainly an Informed Wisdom subtrope of Informed Ability. But I would trust very few people to distinguish "I disagree with this philosophy, which is also fake and regurgitated and the author was wrong to think it sounded deep" from "I disagree with this philosophy, but the author was trying to do more than sound deep". I'd expect them to just apply 'Fauxlosophic' to every philosophy they already thought had the 'bad' attribute.
The trope is pointing to a real phenomenon, but the level of probable disagreement about instances makes it in clear need of YMMV.
Edited by EliezerYudkowsky
Outright challenging the inclusion of Heroes. Unless someone can find a narration in that series that had nothing to do with any part of the plot or characterizations.
Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024). Hide / Show Replies
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).
Lacus from Gundam SEED shouldn't have been pulled. While her speeches were vaguely topical, they were still out of place narrations over combat scenes and honestly, a little bit rambling. The purpose of her talking fits in with this trope.
Being somewhat related to the subject matter at hand doesn't necessarily disqualify it. This trope is basically a use of a voiceover to Contemplate Our Navels, which Lacus' speeches most certainly are. She's discussing the nature of man, truth, and war which while somewhat related, is most certainly not actually talking about the subject at hand.
Edited by Larkmarn Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
I'm going to prune the description because, as mentioned in the archived discussion, it tries to be "self-demonstrative" of Department of Redundancy Department, which just makes no sense. Here's the original in case it's still needed:
" Philosophical narration, dialogue, or exposition that has little to do with the plot, usually of the same vague nature as what a first-year philosophy student uses to pad out, lengthen, expand and/or decorate his term paper.
When a movie, television show, or other such narrative wants to simulate or create the illusion of more depth than it actually has or possesses, it can can use Fauxlosophic Narration to have some character, whether it be protagonist, villain (especially the Nietzsche Wannabe), or innocent bystander, (especially The Philosopher) talk about "Big Topics", like Destiny, Death, Destruction, Desire, Despair, Dream, Delight, Destrucity - or maybe Delirium, - not to mention Life, the Universe, and Everything. This overall doesn't add, expand, or complement anything to the story; rather the intent, the goal, the desired effect is to put more Faux Symbolism and Mind Screw (True Art Is Incomprehensible, after all), and make the story's characters and events seem grander and more fantastic, while also being more generalized and increasingly vague at the same time. This usually backfires or otherwise fails, as the faux intellectualism is both insulting and distracting to anyone who has the brains to figure out this narrator is speaking a lot of words and phrases and clauses that don't actually mean anything, and in-universe, this just ends up as a Red Herring.
It may be an attempt to change a character's purported wisdom from an Informed Ability. It doesn't work.
Post Episode Trailers use this quite often to mask the actual events of the coming episode.
A product of the desire to Contemplate Our Navels, and maybe of attempts to do a Private Eye Monologue. Is not used so that Evil Sounds Deep. When the author uses this to convey a message, it can overlap with Author Tract. When a character, not the author, does this, it becomes Holding the Floor. If particularly nonsensical, this can become Word Salad Philosophy. "
Um...yeah, how is this not a YMMV trope? Everything fits the bill and the fact that it needs a note telling people not to abuse it for narration they dislike perfectly demonstrates how subjective it is.
Either that, or it needs to be clarified as something done INTENTIONALLY to make a character come off as pretentious and pseudo-intellectual.
Edited by jjgp1112