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Misused: Imagine Spot
Deadlock Clock: 25th Dec '12 11:59 PM
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Total posts: [6]

Misused: Imagine Spot get usage counts

Short version: I launched Fantasy Sequence as a Super Trope to this one, but now I realise this is already broadly used as if it means all fantasy sequences. I propose moving examples.

Long version:

I thought I was going to be able to clear this up without coming here, but I guess not.

Until I just changed it, the description used to start with: "The combination of a Dream Sequence and a Gilligan Cut, usually no more than a few seconds long, and commonly bookended by a Fade to White. Alice yells at Bob, "What am I, your maid?!". Cut to Alice cleaning the house in a French Maid Outfit. Cut to Bob's face — he's clearly just imagined the role, and Alice has just slapped him to snap him out of his imagination trance."

Now, that first sentence isn't quite right, because a Dream Sequence involves sleeping and a Gilligan Cut involves a cut from "I'm not doing that" to the character doing it. But otherwise, it's fairly clear what this is getting at: Something's said, cut to a fantasy sequence about it, cut back. If it meant all fantasy sequences, it wouldn't be speaking of Gilligan Cuts and only a few seconds and stuff.

The funny thing is, I used to think this meant any fantasy sequence. I'd probably seen people use it like that. But when I came to the page and paid attention, it was much narrower like this. So I thought, okay, Missing Supertrope, let's make that. No-one objected that I had it wrong (or said anything) at YKTTW in three days, and I wanted to get this out of the way, so I launched Fantasy Sequence.

The problem came when I came back to Imagine Spot to clean up its description. First, I had to delete all of the following on the basis that it really had to do with Fantasy Sequence in general (it's mostly covered there), not Imagine Spot specifically:

"May be used to show what would happen If I Were a Rich Man. A more mundane (and stealthy) version is the Daydream Surprise. Very frequent in commercials. If someone else can see, that's Imagine Spotting. Someone who does this a lot is a Mr. Imagination. If Bob's Imagine Spot causes him to lash out in anger at Alice over something that only happened in the Imagine Spot, that's Premature Aggravation.

If the Imagine Spot is a something the character is supposedly remembering, it may be a Crazy Memory. If it winds up being less fantastical than you'd expect, it's a Fantasy Twist.

Compare Separate Scene Storytelling."

I also changed the Laconic, which fit all fantasy sequences and thus clearly didn't fit the original description specifically.

But then I looked at the examples and realised they were more of a mess than I had thought. Often it's hard or impossible to tell, but it seems a lot of them, maybe a majority, are Fantasy Sequence but not Imagine Spot. At this point, I figured I can't just go moving a huge amount of examples without bringing it up here — especially when I'm not sure which ones.

My suggestion is still to move the inappropriate examples to Fantasy Sequence. (I expect there will be wicks needing sorting out too.) I'd just like to ask approval for and help with that.

edited 16th Sep '12 3:11:05 AM by VVK

World's Toughest Milkman
First, I want to say good job on spotting and creating the missing supertrope. I approve.

But sorting this out seems like it might be tricky with nothing but an unstructured conversation to guide us. Perhaps creating a sandbox, and soft-splitting the examples the way you think they should ultimately be split would be a good start. You can leave "Unclear/Uncertain" as a final category.
"Existential Despair" is an oxymoron.
I'm not sure how exactly all that goes technically. Sandbox? I mean, I broadly know what that is, but I'm not sure how you create one and where.

Edit: I guess it's just Sandbox/ImagineSpot? I'll get back to this when (and if) I have time again.

edited 21st Sep '12 1:31:29 AM by VVK

Ugh. I haven't had time, but I intend to do this.
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Total posts: 6

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