Topic on Talk:You Must Be This Tall to Enter

Summary by Robkelk

This was 99% a duplicate of Ability Required to Proceed, right down to the same typos in the same places. Merged the differences and redirected this page to that one.

Umbire the Phantom (talkcontribs)
HeneryVII (talkcontribs)

Yeah, I think it's the same thing, vote to merge.

Jlaw (talkcontribs)

Isn't You Must Be This Tall to Ride specifically for amusement park roller coasters and such?

Umbire the Phantom (talkcontribs)

Yes, and the idea of that title was evidently to paint a picture of gated-off sections of a world as blocked by a "You Must Have This Ability to Proceed" sign - which, there you go.

HLIAA14YOG (talkcontribs)

I think it's a sub-trope. Also, Ability Required to Proceed seems to be a videogame trope through and through, while this one is mostly used outside video games, sometimes as a kind of joke or setup for a short character to try trespass it in a comedic way.

EDIT: Sorry, I had not read the page yet. It is the exact same trope and I am confused of why there is two pages for it.

Kuma (talkcontribs)

I vote on merging the two pages due to their similarities.

Jlaw (talkcontribs)

I see what you mean, hmm. What if we moved the examples to Ability Required and put nonvideogame examples of the rollercoaster limits on this page instead? I can list a few shows and movies that do this:

  • The Proud Family: Penny's date Carlos is kicked off a rollercoaster when the operator points to a sign saying "You must be this wide to ride" and saying he's too big. He does later ride it, but to rescue Penny's twin siblings when they sneak onto a coaster, and isn't following any protocol at that point.
  • Scooby Doo's Arabian Nights has Sinbad's boss nearly kicked off a waterfall ride with real treasure because he's way too short, as an employee compares him to a parrot display with the size requirements. The boss proceeds to destroy the display and declare that he is tall enough, intimidating the employee into letting him onto the boat.
  • Similarly, What's New Scooby-Doo featured a Red Herring suspect in the theme park episode, a kid told he was too short to go on any of the rides. At least, he was to the audience. He was even disappointed when Velma broke it to him gently that she and Freddie didn't consider him a suspect because even with stilts, he'd be too short to fit into the monster costume.
  • In Steven Universe, Mr. Smiley is forced to put up these signs for legal reasons. Peridot seems like she can pass, but Mr. Smiley pats down her hair to figure out her actual height. He fails to notice when Steven and Amethyst shapeshift to make themselves taller, and the episode plot focuses around how Peridot can't shapeshift despite her best efforts.
Umbire the Phantom (talkcontribs)

The entire problem is that the split seems wholly artificial on the basis of "is video game" versus "isn't" when they're two halves of the same exact trope.

Jlaw (talkcontribs)

Apologies for missing something; I didn't see any nonvideogame examples on either page.

Umbire the Phantom (talkcontribs)

No worries, it seems a non-zero amount of the leftover stuff from pre-fork TVT focused excessively on video game implementations of tropes.

GentlemensDame883 (talkcontribs)

Yeah, agreed with Umbire in that it seems like an artificial split, not like with Back Stab vs In the Back where there's a clear differentiator to create the divide.

Jlaw (talkcontribs)

My concern about merging the two is that height limits sometimes aren't overcome in a story, or even in real life. "Ability Required to Proceed" seems to imply that you will gain the ability eventually.

Umbire the Phantom (talkcontribs)

...which is another reason to merge IMO, because the height limit metaphor is a bit shaky.

The name doesn't imply that you eventually gain the required ability to me, only that this ability-based barrier exists at all - worst case, we can tweak the description to reflect it better.

Jlaw (talkcontribs)

I think then if the description is tweaked, since in videogames you can gain the ability for most barriers, it could probably help. Probably I'm pontificating at this point lol.

Umbire the Phantom (talkcontribs)

Probably.

The description adjustment's gonna be needed if we get consensus on a merge, I figure.

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

It looks like we're going to get that consensus, but the discussion hasn't been running for even one day so far.

Assuming we get the consensus, please redirect the page we aren't keeping to the page we are keeping, so that we don't break any links. A mod can delete the redirect once all of the links have been fixed. @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

Speaking as a troper instead of a mod, my vote is to merge.

HLIAA14YOG (talkcontribs)

I vote to merge but I'm confused at what name we use. I will side with "Ability Required to Proceed" just to be informative, but I'm inclined to accept an opposite opinion because virtually there is no difference and the second name is more humorous. We may as well flip a coin.

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

I've just come in on this entire discussion in a single solid block. I'll get back with an opinion when I have the chance to read and ruminate on the two pages.

QuestionableSanity (talkcontribs)

Merge into "Ability Required to Proceed".

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

It's been two weeks now, and I see no objections to merging "You Must Be This Tall to Enter" into "Ability Required to Proceed".

I'm busy today, so this will be done tomorrow if I'm the one doing it. Any Troper can move the examples over and make sure the description has all of the points mentioned in both current descriptions.

Robkelk (talkcontribs)

I see the tropes are more similar than I supposed. The description text was 90% identical, and the example sections are the same. I would not be surprised to discover the examples are identical, too. EDIT: They were, except for two sentences.

So, yeah, definitely a case of a duplicate trope... this time, turned Up To Eleven.

Why did we even bother having this discussion? Two pages with the same text are obviously duplicates of each other.

Easiest merge I've ever done.