Topic on Forum:Trope Talk

Proposal accepted by consensus, rename performed.

A point was brought up here about how the term has aged poorly, is based on an obscure reference, and not very descriptive of the actual meaning in a manner useful for aspiring writers to understand.

Hence my rename suggestion, which should cover the same ground, and be far more applicable.

The actual trope as defined now refers to a moment in a story so out of tune with the rest of the plot it gets no mention elsewhere within it due to it's dissonance with the rest of the story. It's a bizarre moment that generally serves little point than to interrupt the plot.

Frankly, this is term I feel, while based on a joke found amusing at the time of its creation, it could stand to make more sense and be retooled to be more useful for understanding it's purpose (or lack thereof) in the story structure.

If a rename is approved, I will be happy to run a bot to fix all mentions of it across ATT.

I could make a joke about how the trope name is so out of tune with what the trope is about that it goes all the way through and comes out the other side as perversely appropriate, but I won't. <grin>

I agree. While I in general want to keep the special flavor that makes troping fun, this is a trope name that's only survived this long due to being grandfathered in. I vote in favor of the rename.

I do request, however, that when you do bot it away, you not overlook instances where the abbreviation BLAM is used in text to refer to it.

I'll do my best, but I just realized the new term creates a bit of Accidental Innuendo when it's abbreviated, so I think I might go with "Dissonantly Bizarre Story Moment" instead to avert this, and all abbreviations to match.

Oh, wow. How did I miss that? Yeah, that works.

Actually, I never had a dislike for this trope name, despite it being obscure, because it is obviously something that doesn't belong.

That said, if we rename it, I'm going to suggest:

Non Sequitur	→	Non Sequitur
Big Lipped Alligator Moment	→	Non Sequitur Scene
BLAM Episode	→	Non Sequitur Episode
Big Lipped Alligator Movie	→	Non Sequitur Movie (both redirects)

The worst part of BLAM for me is the M -- this is not really a momentary weirdness, it's a whole scene. And if it ain't BLAM, it ain't ham!

That works even better, IMO.

Agreed - Labster's proposal is probably the best we'll get. It has the advantage of most people knowing what a "Non Sequitur" is, and we can use "Non Sequitur" as the top-level category for the whole shooting-match.

Well, if there no objections, the renaming can begin, and when that happen, Gethbot shall make sure the links are all fixed.

Well, uh, a couple objections. First, a philosophical one, which was one of the issues you in that article you just linked to, Geth: that language doesn't have to be winner-take-all. Using bots forces uniformity; are we sure we want to enforce that uniformity? Or, in more concrete terms: I would have been happier if Nakama had remained the trope title on anime/manga pages. Is there a subset of pages where Big Lipped Alligator Moment would serve as a better title? I can't think of any, but I feel like I should at least ask that question.

The other objection is your bot, Geth. Is Gethbot smart enough to alphabetize lists? If you're just looking for a rename job to test out your bot, why not do a replacement on Pieta Plagiarism to Pietà Plagiarism? That wouldn't have complex issues like collation or choices about piped links. I'm just thinking Dai-Guard might be the better choice here.

Alright, fine. I use AutoWikiBrowser as my bot engine of choice, which is less flexible than your Perl driven bot in some ways, so I'll handle the item you suggested if you want Dai-Guard to work on this instead.

Also, I'm not entirely sure on that first point you brought up either, so you may want to give this your own look see to make sure this won't be a bad idea in hindsight for some pages.

Fixed the Pietà Plagiarism links.

I guess I'm just worried that this thread is only a couple of days old. And that while we have essential agreement within the administrator group, there really hasn't been any community input. And on a scale of one to Rain Man, this is only slightly embarrassing, so there's no real need for speed.

Although, I have to say, I'm surprised at which way we ended up going as a project. I thought we'd end up keeping more of the goofy "traditional" names, but I think there's a strong academic streak here. (Just wait until I suggest renaming Narm to Bathos!) There's nothing wrong with it, but I'd like to see if anyone has a contrary opinion.

Well, we already have pages for both "Narm" and "Bathos", so that wouldn't be a renaming project.

IMO it's rather descriptive, in that "you see a big-lipped alligator" gives an impression that it's not just a non sequitur somewhere, but one that affects the pacing and elicits a reaction.

But derivatives are less clear, yes.

OK, now we're onto a week here. TBeholder makes a good point. In my view, it's this: If a line is a Non Sequitur, it can have a place in the story for several reasons, like humor or characterization. If it's a scene or two, it's probably indicative of bad writing, unless you have some other things going on like Nonlinear Storytelling, Random Events Plot. Or indicative of bad editing, where most of the context was left on the cutting room floor. So it's not exactly parallel.

And yet... it's the best parallel I can think of. We're either going to have to name it after some obscure thing -- because, again, this only happens in bad writing -- or throw adjectives together like Geth's proposal, or use a well-known term like "non sequitur".

...and now it's three months later. What are we doing about this one?

I still like Labster's table of suggestions the best.

Let's do it, then.

As per Labster's suggestions:

• "Big Lipped Alligator Moment" renamed to "Non Sequitur Scene".

• "BLAM Episode" renamed to "Non Sequitur Episode".

• Redirects updated.

• Category pages updated.

@GethN7, would you run that bot, please?

Of course.