| abstract
| - Bathos is a story-telling technique that follows serious ideas with the commonplace or ludicrous. The juxtaposition of these ideas creates humor. It has its origins in poetry, where lofty prose would be followed with an anticlimax of sorts. It later evolved to cover any instance where the serious is mixed with the surreal or commonplace in order to provide humor. The trope name comes from Alexander Pope, who wrote Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry in 1772, in which he mocks the abuse of tropes and figures of speech by bad writers. In it, he notes that juxtaposing the serious and the trivial creates unintentional humor, which sinks serious poetry. Bathos can be both intentionally invoked or unintentionally present. It most often appears intentionally in comedic works or those with a comedic undertone, although not always. Unintentional bathos is described on this site as Narm. Subtropes include:
* The Comically Serious
* Ignored Enemy
* The Last of These Is Not Like the Others
* Sophisticated As Hell
* Wangst Often present in Surreal Humor. Bathos may cause Mood Whiplash when it does not appear in an otherwise comedic segment of the work. Compare Gallows Humor, where the comedy is used by characters within the story as a tension breaker. Please do not place examples that better belong on Narm here or on any main page. In other words, only intentional Bathos belongs on this page.
- Bathos is a literary term, describing phrasing wherein utmost seriousness is coupled with base humour to create effect (in this case, usually comedy). The expression is used by TV Tropes to mean the same thing as "Narm." Badfic is often riddled with it. Unintentional bathos can be caused by many things; for example:
* Sudden changes in the tone of the narrative. The example given by the "Turkey City Lexicon" is "There will be bloody riots and savage insurrections leading to a violent popular uprising unless the regime starts being lots nicer about stuff";
* Use of inappropriate lyrics in a songfic, the classic example being "Every Breath You Take" being used as romantic (it's about stalking);
* EXCESSIVE EMPHASIS!, which MAKES IT LOOK LIKE THE CHARACTERS ARE SHOUTING or ACTING REALLY BADLY!!!11!!!one!!!1;
* Poorly-thought-out similes/metaphors or other descriptions;
* Excessively blunt narration; for example, the infamous rape scene in "Legolas by laura": "and then one of the orcs striped her and then he raped her and then laura said 'go away you bastard'". Also applies to titles; for example, Chaser Wolf's "Shadow Rapes Matthias";
* Prominently placed misspellings or malapropism, e.g. "My name is Salina Rose, AND I AM A PIRATATE!" See "My Immortal" for many, many examples;
* Unfortunate placing of a funny word;
* Just plain silly phrasing. While you may have perfectly good reason to use them when being attacked, phrases like "Holy fucking shit!" are not conducive to gravitas.
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