Maybe you should take it to Trope Talk, or TLP the last idea.
Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Disambiguated per TRS:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16906767350.32574600&page=4#comment-91
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: A time travel trope that has real-life examples?, started by KaiserMazoku on Feb 15th 2012 at 7:15:55 PM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Unclear Description, started by SeptimusHeap on Aug 28th 2013 at 6:28:21 PM
[[blue: "Just as planned."]]
"* Neon Genesis Evangelion... Well, briefly put, the vast majority of the entire plot could have been avoided if the main cast had been open and honest with each other, instead of being stuck in Cannot Spit It Out."
This was one of the examples given, but I think this one creeps into YMMV territory too much - especially given what can be said on its mental illness.
But also, it comes off too much as X Just X
It probably can be made into an example, but should that be done or should something else be done?
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Can we delete the analysis page? It's completely blank.
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Done.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I'm noticing a lot of examples that don't involve any alternate timelines but simply present some relatively small event which touches off the events of the story and without which presumably those events would not have happened. Can these really be counted as examples of the trope if canon never examines any alternative sequence of events?
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I think that if it is very clearly only due to a seemingly inconsequential thing that everything else happens, it still counts, whether or not there are alternate timelines. Particularly solid examples would be those kinds of movies where just before (or after) the climax or conclusion, we're treated to a flashback/summary of the chain of events that lead up to it. Again, assuming that chain was all based off of the first event, and not a series of different events that pile up. In that case it would be more of a Rube Goldberg Plot, or perhaps BatmanGambit/GambitRoulette/AllAccordingToPlan if planned - which it could possibly also be if it is still For Want Of A Nail.
Edited by 67.237.178.43
Playing with:
Subverted: A slave gives a piece of his bread out of charity to a hungry soldier The soldier has an epiphany due to that random act of goodness, so he forgives his enemy The enemy so happens to be the son of the lord of the land The lord of the land is so happy to have his son back that he decides to free a slave... Guess which slave.
Dunno how to make the "Playing with" section and today i thought of this. Its mine so no need for sources
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I'm not really sure that's a subversion. Probably more like Downplayed. At least, if the slave is the original one who gave the bread to the soldier, which is what most would probably guess with "Guess which slave." It might be subverted if it was a completely unrelated slave, but really when For Want Of A Nail is subverted, it generally just becomes In Spite of a Nail. Also, I've only looked at a few Playing With pages, but they tend to spell everything out rather than use phrases that lead the reader to draw their own conclusions. Viewers Are Morons, perhaps?
Also... the enemy bit kinda makes things very hazy and hard to follow along. Is the slave a member of this "enemy's" side? The same general thing happens if you remove that bit and just make the soldier the son of the lord or something.
I'm having trouble seeing how the poem for which this trope takes its name has anything to do with the time travel implications in the trope's description. I had no idea what the trope was until I read the page and laconic about 3 times each, and the title still seems entirely non-indicative. The name and poem seem to suggest a general snowball effect within a plot, but the trope is about... Time travel effects and AU's? This really needs a rename.
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Agreed, what's wrong with "Butterfly Effect"? It's more commonly known than that poem, at least.
Possibly the fact that Butterfly Effect seems to link to Butterfly of Doom which is very much a different (although related) trope. Also, while I hadn't heard the poem before, I had heard the "for want of a nail, (the kingdom was lost)" part almost as far back as I can remember. It seems to be fairly common to me.
Edited by 67.237.178.43
Question: In stories dealing with these nails, it strikes me that the "Nail" seems to be an Instant-Win Condition. e.g. Protagonist travels to a Bad Future, his True Companions turn into a Decapitated Army (and The Federation or La Résistance writ large being a Keystone Army). 'Command & Conquer: Red Alert'' seems to be similar at least with the political geography of that time, (though I could drum up a justification for having Oder–Neisse line be the frontier in that game, though it would require previous Russian Aggression followed by a cease-fire).
In reality, things get a bit more complicated. For example: It's just plain unknown whether Eli Manning would've gotten to Super Bowl XLVI if he hadn't won Super Bowl XLII, let alone won it. Conversely, it's unknown which Super Bowls the Patriots may or may not have participated in had they gone 19-0. (The other long-term cases would likely have played out mostly as depicted with minor variations... Then again, changing Terry Bradshaw's Two-Pair into a genuine Four-peat might not be minor...)
The point is that while what is lost from the timeline from a lost nail is apparent, what replaces it becomes unclear the longer between nail and kingdom.
In fact, I just had a thought that sums it all up:
What about the new DirecTV ads they have out now? "When you pay too much for cable, you get angry," devolving into things ranging from taking in too many stray animals to getting a grandson with a dog collar.
Why was the bolded Everything Ever removed from the Real life tab? I thought it was a pretty cool and poignant example of how Everything Ever, without exception, can be traced back to a single seemingly ininfluent decision if you look back hard enough. It shows how this trope occurs at all levels, and I think it'd be better to keep it in the page.
A while ago, it has been decided that For Want Of A Nail should be a disambiguation page for several tropes (as per discussion on the Trope Repair Shop), since there have been many instances in which the trope has been misused. However, for want of that, the original meaning of the trope (if I got this right) has been lost: that being, a minor event creating a chain reaction that leads into a huge event, i.e. Disaster Dominoes but NOT Played for Laughs (and possibly less exaggerated).
With For Want Of A Nail being split like how we did now, we don't really have a straight version of a chain reaction trope like it anymore, with Disaster Dominoes being a purely comedic take on the trope in which everything specifically gets worse and worse, which I don't feel works for every case of a chain reaction. The other pages that For Want Of A Nail directs to now don't have a lot to do with chain reactions either: in fact, most of them (specifically Alternate Self, Butterfly of Doom, In Spite of a Nail, Point of Divergence, Split Timelines Plot and What If?) have more to do with alternate timelines and timeline changes, which a chain reaction trope doesn't have to be about (In Spite of a Nail in particular subverts the chain reaction trope). The only thing that comes kinda close is It Began with a Twist of Fate, and even that is a very specific version in which the main character gets involved in a story because of a simple decision.
So I feel like there's a few things we could do for the return of a proper chain reaction trope:
- Reinstate For Want Of A Nail but make it specifically about chain reactions in general (not recommended)
- Expand the scope of Disaster Dominoes to include straightforward examples of chain reactions
- Create a new trope for chain reactions played straight
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