Weirdness Censor: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

In some universes, ignoring the antics of the main characters goes beyond [[Somebody Else's Problem|somebody else's problem]]. It seems that with your average person, their attention span is wholly taken up with the gray mundanity of their everyday lives. They simply ''refuse'' to see anything too strange.

If it's ignored because they're incapable of seeing it, it's [[Invisible to Normals]]. Compare [[Bavarian Fire Drill]], which exploits similar psychological tendencies. Contrast the [[Fisher Kingdom]], where the world itself is the censor. Frequently [[Pink Elephants]] are invoked when the only evidence of the character's having drunk anything is what he claims to have seen that is being dismissed as a hallucination.

 

 

This can sometimes lead to [[Artificial Atmospheric Actions]] where NPCs merely treat all sorts of odd stuff as an everyday occurrence.

== Fanfiction ==

 

 

== Film ==

** In Angel: After the Fall, the masquerade gets broken for all of LA when its sent to a Hell dimension. It is put back on Earth via time reversion to the moment it was taken, undoing all deaths and damages, but everyone retains their memories. So some people want to dismiss it all as a delusion, but most know better. {{spoiler|And one particular devil named Eddie Hope isn't letting people who committed atrocities in Hell have the luxury of engaging their inner [[Weirdness Censor]]}}.

* Taken to extremes in the surrealist [[BBC]] Three Sketch Show ''[[The Wrong Door]]'' when no-one seems to find a woman dating an Albertasaur odd at all, merely commenting on his age. Even when he eats one of their friends in front of them no one bats an eyelid.

** "Boom Town": The Doctor tells Mickey that people don't notice the TARDIS parked in the middle of 2006 Cardiff, despite the anachronistic look of a 1960s police box, because of this. Torchwood has the spot the TARDIS was in retain its effect permanently. "The Sound of Drums" later [[Retcon|Ret Cons]] this (or adjusts the explanation) to say that the TARDIS has plot-specific [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that causes people to quite intentionally not notice, "like when you fancy someone, but they don't even know you're there."

** "The Sontaran Strategem": {{spoiler|This time, regarding a Sontaran teleporter in the office of the headmaster of a "genius school." Justified in that everyone would assume it was just another weird device invented by the genius kid. Unless, like the Doctor, they'd seen one before.}}

** Even in one of the novels, a necromancer comments that their seers ''suspect'' that Baal is responsible for the destruction of Mount Arreat in the Lord of Destruction expansion pack. Not only do the necromancers usually seem more aware of what's going on than the rest of the world, but Baal was anything but subtle during his assault. Baal wasn't exactly skipping merrily to the summit, though. He killed cities and possibly ''kingdoms'' that were in his way. Who's left to say what really went on besides some reclusive, not terribly credible barbarians?

*** In the absence of forensics science, evidence of the Prime Evils rests entirely on eye witnesses. The demons weren't exactly leaving a lot of those... and most of them would likely be [[Cassandra Truth|thought insane]] by anyone who hadn't been involved in the previous conflicts. Marius is a clear example of this, narating his misadventures with the wanderer from inside an [[Bedlam House|asylum cell]].

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask]]'' is an aversion: though the townspeople at first ignore the moon, by the third night most of the townspeople have fled, and those who stay have resigned themselves to the probability that the world (or a large portion of it) will be destroyed.

* Hilariously done in ''[[Fate Stay Night]]'', when Rin gets so angry at the protagonist that she breaks her (entirely fake) "perfect student/school idol" image in front of their classmates to shout at him. The entire area goes quiet... ''everybody'' stops and stares... and suddenly go back to what they were doing, oblivious of what happened, having subconsciously repressed those memories to maintain their "perfect" image of her. This happens on ''two separate occasions''.

** In the fifth collection of Megatokyo, Gallagher FINALLY detailed [[Word of God|his explanation for this phenomenon]]: "[http://wikitokyo.mt-talk.net/wiki/What_is_Megatokyo_all_about%3F ...the main theme of Megatokyo is how everyone has different perceptions of the world around them...]" Everyone sees the world slightly differently. Piro and Largo are on the extreme ends of the scale--Piro only sees "mundane" things (and dismisses the fantastic things as mundane things) and Largo only sees "fantastic" things, and comes up with fantastic explanations for the mundane things he sees. Everyone else is somewhere else on this scale, nearly always between those two extremes.

** It seems as though [[Dark Magical Girl|Miho]] has the power to ''turn off'' other people's [[Weirdness Censor|Weirdness Censors]]. In [http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1000 this comic], she tells Kimiko to open her eyes, which leads her to notice that the restaurant is under attack by killer robots.

* Most of the populace of Generictown in ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' appears to have this trait to one degree or another (especially Mr. Bystander). Even Bob himself often refuses to acknowledge just ''how'' bizarre the situations are that he finds himself in. The only castmember completely free of this trope is Jean, leading her to exclaim at one point, [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20071006.html "Ye gods! I'm the only sane person in town!"]

* Played up to the point of parody in [http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=070304 this] ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' strip.

[[Category:Urban Fantasy Tropes]]

[[Category:Weirdness Censor]]