Discussion Main / JustifiedTrope

What is justification different from handwave? I looked, but no one said why.

I notice examples of this in the Playing With section of a trope page for tropes that don't even require an in-universe justification: Action Girl for instance - like really, is the concept of a girl who can hold her own in a fight seriously chipping away at your Willing Suspension of Disbelief, Mr. He-Man Woman Hater?

I don't understand the page quote. Is that meant to be an example of a justified trope? If so, it is not clear.

The second example's intentionally-epic-fail-explanation needs an addition: TRACER ROUNDS DO NOT IGNITE THINGS IN THE FIRST PLACE. That is all.

People are potholing Justifying Edits to this page, despite that we ask them not to. We should probably mention the Justifying Edit in the text.

Not a comment on the page, but a question. As the article mentions, quite often people attempt to "Justify" a trope by explaining how it is a really clever bit of writing and not at all cliche'd, which is not what "Justified" means. However, it is used in that fashion so often that a lot of people do think justified just means "used well" (Or, at least, handwaved), not that it is a trope required by the narrative of the story.

I'm wondering, how can we describe a trope as being justified without it looking like a Justifying Edit?

As an example, the use of Fail Polish in Strangers In Paradise. There is no question that the trope is there, and it was probably used in order to make the characters more pleasing to look at, but the plot of the series revolves around Francine (The chubby girl) losing a lot of weight and becoing more self-confident, and Katchoo (The ragged, worn out girl) getting a handle on her drug and alcohol problem and dealing with her emotionally crippling personal history. Both of those developments, by definition, would require Francine to become a much thinner woman and for Katchoo to no longer appear emaciated and hungover. Now, it does not quite cover why Katchoo's breasts seem to grow or Francine's legs seem to lengthen, but nobody said it was perfect, and their general physical improvement is a perfectly justified result of the events of the story.

The problem is that, when I read the actual example on the SiP page, it even seems to me like it's saying "Yeah, the artists did it, but it doesn't count because it makes sense and we all know that being good automatically means it isn't the trope" (Or something like that).

Thoughts?

I think a lot of times people say "..which is justified" they really mean ".. which should come at no surprise, because.." It's not as if other uses of the trope were U Njustified, merely that they're normally more surprising.