This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Four Temperaments: From YKTTW
Sunder The Gold: Following the five-temperament model, Shinji Ikari is actually a Supine rather than a Melancholic. Compared to the stubborn (and often irritable) Melancholics who don't care what other people think, Supines tend to be pushovers because they worry about offending people. Unlike task-oriented Melancholics, people-oriented Supines actually want to interact with others, but they are introverted and thus do not initiate contact like Sanguines will. Once invited into a group, a Supine fades invisibly into the background — Melancholics stand out by standing apart, and Cholerics and Sanguines draw attention by their drive and energy; Supines are the Shrinking Violets of a group.
Rei is actually the Melancholic, because she stands alone and is comfortable with that. Melancholics like her are usually unenergetic and undemonstrative, and thus can seem depressed even when they're not.
- Melancholics: Emotionally undemonstrative, rational, perfectionist, stubborn, self-reliant, asocial, brooding, easily cynical or depressed, prone to irritability. When they get truly angry, their wrath is direct and brief.
- Supines: Observant, considerate, caring, Team Mom, Yamato Nadeshiko, The Quiet One, Cannot Spit It Out, tend to be nervous push-overs, tend to hide anger. Tend to be passive-aggressive — they don't get mad at people, they get even.
TMNT — Raphael is actually Melancholic, and Donatello is Supine because he's the quietest and least confrontational brother. Raphael channels his perfectionism towards physical pursuits, and he broods more than he philosophizes, both of which are still Melancholic. Donatello is intelligent and technologically gifted, but these are not necessarily Melancholic.
Zephid: I'm not certain Cartesian philosophy falls into wacky ancient pseudoscience. The pseudoscience of humors and temperaments was around the same time as Chaucer (it is referenced in the Canterbury Tales), but Descartes and his Meditations were published about three hundred years later and are serious works of philosophy.
[[Allandrel]]The TMNT example makes no sense. How is Raph calm and unemotional? He's the hot-head of the group.
Daibhid C: Yeah, it looks like the thinking was that "choleric" includes "qualified to lead", Leo is the leader, therefore he must be choleric. Which ain't necessarily so. In fact, I think it's more usual for The Lancer (like Raph) to be choleric, and quite certain that they're more qualified to lead than the leader (probably a level-headed, phlegmatic type)
Sunder The Gold: Cholerics can be bad as often as good, but in media tend to be "bad" most frequently — Cholerics are frequently Anti Heroes at best. This is why they often find themselves as The Lancer in an Ensemble despite otherwise being able to lead.
I've noticed that in Shounen manga/anime, Sanguine heroes are prefered because they can be the Idealistic (and often Idiotic) Kid Hero whose friendliness converts bad guys to his side after he beats the stuffing out of them.
Cholerics don't exhibit this type of behavior often — they tend to be just as mean as they are inspiring — and frequently are mean without being inspiring. A Choleric who manages to be inspiring is more balanced and more fit to lead. A Choleric who manages to be compassionate as well has wandered even closer to the fifth-temperament type of Phlegmatic. Being The Mario of temperaments, he's a natural leader who people are comfortable with and eager to follow.
Michelango, though Sanguine, is not the leader because TMNT is Western and started out much more serious, without the Defeat Means Friendship rule. Thus, Leonardo was in charge. He's either a traditional Phlegmatic (calm and rational) or a fifth-temperament Phlegmatic (temperamentally balanced, thus The Hero).
Kilyle: Gah! I can't get past thinking of these as normal words with modern associations. Melancholic = the guy who's always sad and pessimistic, phlegmatic = the guy who's got serious lung issues and is always coughing, choleric = the baby who's always crying and never able to be comforted, sanguine = the guy who's low-key and never lets anything get to him (i.e., "tranquil"). And my head may have for "sanguine" a meaning completely divorced from whatever that word ever meant, in which case I don't know where I got it. Isn't there any sort of substitutionary terms we could use that are closer to modern words? When I hear "phlegmatic," I sure don't think "hey, that's the Air guy, all wise and logical, The Spock."
Sunder The Gold: This is probably why an attempt was made to give them more modern labels. Cholerics are "Driving" personalities, who exhert their energies towards leading groups to accomplish tasks. Sanguines are "Inspiring" personalities, who exhert their energies towards interacting with and uplifting groups. Melancholics are "Analytical" peronalities who turn their energies inward, going somewhere private and quite for thinking and tinkering. Plegmatics are "Amiable" personalities. Though that's subject to the Phelgmatic/Supine confusion, I think.
I personally attribute a classical element to each personality. Driving is Fire, Inspiring is Air, Analytical is Earth, and Amiable is Water.
Other than that, perhaps it's simply best to see it as a matter of Extroversion versus Introversion and Task-orientation versus People-orientation.
- Driving: Extrovert, Task-Oriented. Focused on goals and on leading people towards those goals, or just using them.
- Inspiring: Extrovert, People-Oriented. Goes out and meets people. Lots of energy, lots of socializing. No particular goal except to personally have fun and entertain others.
- Amiable: Introvert, People-Oriented. Wants to be with people, but lacks the initiative to go out and meet them. Lives and works behind the scenes, helping others with little complaint and lots of patience.
- Analytical: Introvert, Task-Oriented. Usually just wants to be left alone to pursue private works and private thinking. Doesn't necessarily hate people or company — they could actually like both — but they have the least need for either.
An Ambi-Oriented Ambivert is someone who's comfortable focusing on tasks or people, and is equally comfortable with and without people. Such a balanced personality is probably extremely rare, however. More common is finding someone who is either Ambi-oriented or Ambiverted, but not both.
fhqwhgads: For the Hidamari Sketch example, how is Yuno Phlegmatic? She seems more melancholic to me. She's constantly angsting over how her exaggerated idealistic perspective fails to meet up with reality. For example, when she finds a sketchbook in a garbage pile, she gets depressed because she figures the book's owner had to give up their dream of becoming an artist. In episode 2, season 2, she's about to cut a few chunks of tofu into a pot of soup, but completely freezes when her friends make an offhand remark about how tofu is the most important ingredient in good soup because she's terrified she'll mess up the soup (and their expectations). Then there's another instance where Kishi an alumni, comes to talk to Yuno's class. After Kishi leaves, Yuno is compelled to go chase after her to ask whether Kishi thinks she'll will be able to "find a dream" too like Kishi did. I honestly don't see anything "unemotional" or "rational" about Yuno.
Looking further, I'm also having a hard time figuring out how they decided to type Sae as Choleric. She is the straight man most of the time, for instance, yelling at Miyako to stop eating all the meat out of the soup, but on the other hand, she writes melodramatic love stories based on personal experience! That's certainly not choleric at all. Then again, she's certainly not melancholic since she's only ever embarrassed by things; never upset or depressed. Phlegmatic doesn't really fit either. As mentioned above, she's usually the straight man.
As for Hiro, I'm really having a hard time seeing her as melancholic. Her main insecurities are her appearance and weight which she's constantly stressing out about, but otherwise she's relaxed, hard-working, and amiable. As I understood, Melancholic means you're depressed because the world doesn't meet up with your ideals, not because you're concerned with how you appear to others. I don't really see any temperament that fits her.
Miyako, however, is definitely sanguine.
BrightBlueInk: I'm a bit lost on some of these examples. For the Harry Potter houses, how is Hufflepuff phlegmatic? Don't the books describe Hufflepuff students as being "loyal and hardworking"? That doesn't seem to fit with being "unemotional" and "lazy". And for the example for Nerima Daikon Brothers, how is Ichiro melancholic? He seemed much more phlegmatic to me, considering a he's always half-awake and a running gag in the series is him barely reacting to anything, even when he's abducted by aliens.
Danifesto: The creator of Arrested Development said that he was taught a different template of four temperaments: patriarch, matriarch, craftsman and clown. I would argue that many of the examples in this trope would follow that trend...
Sunder The Gold: This is NOT how it works! Haruhi is a Choleric — she's extroverted and goal-oriented, using people to achieve her ends as she sees fit.
- Haruhi Suzumiya is a Four-Temperament Ensemble all in one girl: she is extremely enthusiastic about everything and is a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander (sanguine), has an extremely forceful personality and is the self-proclaimed supreme commander of the SOS-dan (choleric), but at the same time is prone to fits of depression (the title of the series is The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya ). The only one not readily apparent is phlegmatic; however, as Itsuki explains, she does posses an unspoken belief in rationality, which prevents her from, for example, telling the laws of physics to piss off. Additionally, some characters and fans believe that she subconsciously willed Mikuru and Yuki (the very embodiments of supine and phlegmatic, respectively) into existence; so it can be theorized that they are the expressions of these latent aspects of her personality.
- This is one of the reasons why she shouldn't be called a tsundere. She got even more personality changes.
- Kyon, the narrator, can also encompass all four types, though he defaults on Phelgmatic.
Insanity Prelude: I'm not fond of this example: Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic, where each character is a combination of two: Sandry is Sanguine/Choleric, Tris is Melancholic/Choleric, Daja is Phlegmatic/Melancholic and Briar is Choleric/Phlegmatic.
Combining them like that kind of defeats the point of the trope, doesn't it? I'm not sure what one each of them *should* be under though.
DoKnowButchie Re: The TMNT (again): Moved the example to comic books, and shifted the designations once again. This is how it was:
Raph, while occasionally depressive, has never been a Melancholic's perfectionism or creativity, and while Leo fits most of the criteria for Choleric, fits either Phlegmatic classification better, as Sunder The Gold said. Raph, who would be a good leader but for his hot-headedness (hence why he is The Lancer), then gets the empty Choleric spot.
Kilyle: I'm seeing good examples of two types for Sluggy Freelance here: Riff as the ultimate "easy-going, don't bug me" Phlegmatic and Torg as the excitable but unreliable Sanguine. I hope I have those right (finally). But I'm not so sure on the other characters; someone want to add them if they fit?
Oh, and this site offers a good quick look at the types, and, assuming it's right (Leader, Thinker, People Person, and Easy-Going), maybe should be given a link on the main page.
____ Amake: The way I learned it, Sanguine is a combination of wet and hot, Choleric is dry and hot, Melancholic is dry and cold and Phlegmatic is wet and cold. Where does Supine fit in then?
