Are these Character Tropes?

and You both seem to miss my point. I provided links to those pages because I assumed you'd click them and check actual examples on those pages :) I'll copy them here then.

Mythology Gag:

• At one point, she's reluctantly persuaded to wear an outfit resembling her costume in the comics, though she dislikes it and prefers civilian clothes.
• While thinking up a codename for himself, "Citizen Steel" is one of the names Nate contemplates, but ends up settling on "Steel".
• Their appearance, moveset, and vocation are oddly similar to that of Bloodborne's Hunters. They relied on drinking special blood and mocked the use of shields, which were design choices in that game. And like most of the Hunters in Bloodborne, by the time your player character reaches them, both groups have gone mad from the very thing they swore to fight against.
• Kathy is named after Katherine "Kathy/Kate" Kane, the civilian identity of Batwoman in the usual continuities. Kate Kane was also a wealthy heiress in Gotham.
• Their name is likely based on the Bastard's Boys, Ramsay's men-at-arms in the books.
• In Vol. 2, when he has to reattach his old arrow-controlling crest, it gives him the same mohawk-fin appearance as his comic book incarnation.

All these examples do not refer to "overall franchise stuff" but rather to character names, appearance and skill sets. I'd say they belong to Character Sheets.

Edited by Asherinka on Dec 12th 2018 at 8:48:30 PM

Choice of clothes preferring civvie spandex is a character affectation. I mean how can she know that the revealing costume is the one from the comics. That's for the viewers. And since it's specifically alluding to those comics nerds who know the costumes, that's a gag about mythology...and it goes in the main page.

Same goes for the others...except for the "name is likely based"...either is actually based or it isn't...there is no room for "likely" on any non-YMMV, non-WMG, non-Headscratchers page.

Alright, sure, I can concede those specific examples are written to be character specific. Still though, I'm just asking you to please not keep bringing up how often a specific trope is used on character pages, because unless you can go through every single example and verify them as being ok, then usage just isn't a valid argument.

As for Mythology Gag, I do get how it can be used as a character trope, and its more convincing than Foreshadowing and Irony, but "meta" tropes like these I'm still very much on the fence about. I get the reasoning, but...eh.

They explained the problem better.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 12th 2018 at 1:09:33 PM

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I do appreciate the methodology above of Asherinka bulleting those examples like that. If anyone can do the same for Foreshadowing and Irony like that, from multiple works, I think that can allow us to better gauge whether it is character and story.

Yeah, I can appreciate that too.

My big problem with Foreshadowing and Irony though is that they just aren't about characters. I can see the case for Mythology Gag as the gag could be completely character related, I get that, I accept that. The other two though are entirely meta- while a character may do something that brings up a Mythology Gag, the action that brings up the gag is still a character action.

However, what can a character do to foreshadow besides, idk, say something foreshadow-y or the like? Even if the foreshadowing is specific to their character, like they foreshadow cheating on their wife and then go cheat on their wife, it's still completely meta, and something like Your Cheating Heart with a reference to the foreshadowing would be better than a foreshadowing-specific example.

Irony is a similar argument. It's just too meta of a concept, unless it happens in-universe then it doesn't exist in-universe and so I don't see it as a character thing.

However, I do admit this is all without seeing how on-page examples are used. Maybe I can be convinced otherwise. Maybe not.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

A side note re "character affectation". All "Adaptation" tropes are deemed Characterization Tropes, and they are all for the viewers as well. Are these really different?

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Let's do Foreshadowing — random pages (Spoilers!):

• His favorite film is Back to the Future. Three hard guesses on what his main goal is. (Arrowverse: Eobard Thawne)
• Hardly a Season One episode passed in which there were no clues about his true identity. (Arrowverse: Eobard Thawne)
• During the fight, when Cadenza plays music while fighting, she orders the villagers to "Silence that harpsichord!". Earlier on, Cogsworth asks Cadenza to play quietly before the "Be Our Guest" number. It's revealed that she is his wife, as both hold a certain distaste for music. (Beauty and the Beast (2017))
• Before the boss fight with Carmilla in 1, he muses that he can smell Carmilla's stench and that she can't smell the dead. This is one of the hints towards his true nature. While it sounds like he's waxing poetic, he's actually saying that Carmilla can't sense him nearby. (Castlevania Lords Of Shadow Allies)
• Early in Season 2, Melisandre tells him that fire is the cleanest death. Fast forward to "Blackwater".... (Game of Thrones - House Baratheon)
• Almost everything about Atreus' character, literally from his very first appearance, foreshadows The Reveal that he is destined to become Loki. (Followed by a long list of examples, see God of War Series – Atreus)
• His fellow Roidmudes are infinitely more expressive and emotional than he is which is a fairly early clue that they weren't made by the same scientist. (Kamen Rider Drive Roidmudes)
• Within the film, there are a few hints of his true nature. The first is when Starhawk chastises Yondu for trafficking children with Yondu insisting that he didn't know what would happen, which is intercut with Ego telling Peter that he hired Yondu to bring Peter to him, both of which hint that there was more than one child Ego asked Yondu to bring to him, and that something happened to those kids, which Gamora and Nebula discover when they find the cavern of skeletons. (MCU: Ego the Living Planet)
• Even if it wasn’t apparent at first, three of the images seen in his gym’s four monitors have come true; Corey’s suicide, Amaria’s (failed) attempt at suicide, and Kiki’s death at the hands of Solaris’s Garchomp. One remains at this point - specifically, what appears to be Lin being cut to pieces. (Pokémon Reborn)
• He wears the lower jaw of a canine around his neck. It can be seen under his armor, but it's most obvious when he's not decked out and ready for battle.(Dragon Age: Inquisition – Mages)
• The penultimate quest for the main storyline is "What Pride Had Wrought." One guess on the meaning of Solas's name! (Dragon Age: Inquisition – Mages.. and a long list of other examples foreshadowing who he truly is)

To sum up: most examples deal with foreshadowing related to character's true identity or their ultimate fate (death).

Edited by Asherinka on Dec 12th 2018 at 10:44:36 PM

Okay the second one of those is a ZCE and others I still think can be better summed up by other tropes while referencing the foreshadowing in the example... like, I get it, but it doesn't convince me that foreshadowing should belong on a character page.

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I'd like to note that I'm opening random pages and I haven't watched, played etc most of these. So I can't comment on ZCE :)

Yeah, that's fair, just saying that because it IS a ZCE, it doesn't help the argument much

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

And while we are at it, Irony (again, Spoilers):

• He has done atrocities all around the kingdom and has plenty of enemies, but he's killed by his own son for a slight he barely remembers. (A Song of Ice and Fire - House Lannister)
• He's infamously known for never smiling, but his corpse seems to smile as a result of his rotting flesh, which causes him to grin. (A Song of Ice and Fire - House Lannister.. and other examples related to the same character)
• Her last words to Zuko are "Never forget who you are!" She then proceeds to literally and willingly forget a significant part of who she is, and who Zuko and Azula are for that matter. (Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Fire Nation)
• It is Yuko who survives the lighthouse massacre, even though it was she who involuntarily started it in the first place. (Battle Royale)
• Two sets of it. Firstly, Metis was swallowed by Zeus the same way that Zeus's siblings (whom she helped rescue) were swallowed by Cronos. Secondly, she is technically a goddess of wisdom, but Zeus didn't have to work too hard to trick into turning into a fly. (Classical Mythology Titans)
• Despite corrupting the people around him by making their humanity go out control, he himself is implied to have lost control of his own humanity.(Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss)
• The sole warrior incarnation of the Doctor is one of the only ones to actually die of old age. (Doctor Who – War Doctor)
• At the end of the Kid Buu Saga, it is Vegeta who comes up with the way to defeat Kid Buu. How, precisely? By using the Genki Dama, the technique Goku originally learned to try and kill him. (Dragon Ball: Vegeta)
• The Saiyan arc and much of the Namek arc was spent making sure he couldn't get the Dragon Balls. The next wish the Earth's Dragon Balls did, inadvertently, revived him. (Dragon Ball: Vegeta.. and other examples related to the same character)
• Illberd summoned him to fight against the empire with all of his hate. Zenos, who is a high ranking commander with the empire, captured the primal, fuses with him, and takes control from within to fight for the empire when he goes to fight the Warrior of Light. (Final Fantasy XIV Primals And Beastmen)
• Despite being the Queen in the North, she points out to Robb that she doesn't know where Winterfell is. She in fact never gets to see Winterfell before her untimely death. (Game of Thrones - House Stark)
• Ionia dampened her powers and sent her to Wizarding School hoping she could learn control, but Syndra's love of her magical power led her to kill her master and go out of control. (League of Legends: S)
• Loki, the God of Lies, has been lied to his whole life about his true ancestry. Frigga informs him that Odin kept it a secret because he didn't want Loki to feel different, yet Loki had always been treated like an outcast. (MCU: Loki)
• In The Avengers, Loki chides Black Widow for "bargaining for one man" while her world is "in the balance," but in Avengers: Infinity War, Loki ends up in the same situation and eventually gives Thanos the Tesseract, because he can't bear watching his brother getting tortured to death. This helps Thanos getting closer to his goal of killing half the life in the universe. (MCU: Loki.. and other examples related to the same character)
• He was the agent in charge for Project T.A.H.I.T.I., as revealed in "Nothing Personal". However, he was so horrified at the side effects of the procedure, he threatened to quit if it wasn't shut down. After his death, Director Fury subjected him to Project T.A.H.I.T.I., complete with the memory alteration process. (MCU: Phil Coulson)
• One of the Galaxy's most notorious mass murderers and top enforcer of a neo-Imperial organization was born and raised on Chandrila, the homeworld of Mon Mothma and the New Republic's first capital. (Star Wars – Kylo Ren.. and other examples related to the same character)

I am unsure how to sum those up, but I'll try: the source of irony is the mismatch between expectations based on character's status, words or plans and what actually happens to them as a part of their personal arc.

PS I should definitely stop doing it, I just noticed that each time I copy more and more examples :)

Edited by Asherinka on Dec 12th 2018 at 1:21:15 PM

Reading that, my understanding of what irony actually means takes a nosedive... And I'm not sure I think any of those belong on a character page.

Because the character pages aren't different trope lists than the main work page. They're just a way of sorting character tropes so they're easier to find.

As I mentioned above, they're the same trope list, and should in theory have the same level of spoilering. I also don't think it makes any sense to treat character pages as something you can only read if you accept any and all spoilers, while the main page is safe (ish). That goes especially with the rampant use of plot tropes on the character pages, since that means it's impossible to check what you can read and not without needless risk of spoilers. Anyway, the spoiler thing is a minor issue on the whole with regards to this.

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As I've said, I don't know half of these works, but this does put a smile on my face. And they are directly related to character arcs so I'd keep these examples on Character Sheets.

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Speaking about Shout-Out s:

• In Another Note, he gives one to Catcher In The Rye. (Death Note – Main Characters)
• His Devil Trigger mode, while being reminiscent of Vergil's in appearance, takes the form of a blue armored demon that floats above Nero and encircles him. This is a common depiction of Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the God of Storms. (Devil May Cry - Heroes)
• To Radagast. He's referred to as "Friend to All Living Things" and his "wizard-colour-thing" is Ridcully the Brown. (Discworld Wizards)
• Clara tells the previous governess "I regret to inform you the position is filled", right before floating up into the sky with a black umbrella on her arm, in an Affectionate Parody of Mary Poppins. Bonus points for her not being dressed too dissimilarly from said character, since she's using her "Ms. Montague" governess persona at that moment. (Doctor Who – Clara Oswald)
• Oswin referencing a catchphrase of Mae West verbatim: "Come up and see me sometime." (Doctor Who – Clara Oswald.. and other examples for the same character)
• He possesses a weapon called Vera and a Ghastly Hat that he doesn't wear. Hmmmm... (Dragon Age: Origins – DLC Characters)
• He's also a magic user who works with an organization of "Wardens", and wears clothing that he himself enchanted to protect against magic, arrows, and unsightly stains. When selected during combat, he may respond with a battle cry of "I am mage, hear me roar!" (Dragon Age: Origins – DLC Characters)
• To chemist and pioneer of electricity Michael Faraday. (Fable III - Prof. Ernest Faraday)
• On a meta level. The Prima Official Guide just couldn't resist putting the lyrics to Mister Crowley as the quest descriptors. (Fallout 3 - Mr. Crowley)
• In Summer Scramble, she says Miriel has a "brain the size of a planet." (Fire Emblem Awakening: First Generation Females)
• Constantly comparing himself and everyone around him to mythological figures. (Hamlet of all characters)
• Her name is a reference to Evil Dead's protagonist. During the Virmire stage, she can also make a comment about her "boomstick." (Mass Effect - Ashley Williams)
• She also romances Shepard with by quoting Walt Whitman (a.k.a. Dead Poets Society). (Mass Effect - Ashley Williams)
• Two of her epic-class skins are called "Posh" and "Sporty". (Overwatch - Damage T to Z)
• Her origin story as a female pilot who disappeared mid-flight is basically a cyberpunk retelling of the story of Amelia Earhart, but with a much happier ending. Her look is also clearly inspired by Earhart. (Overwatch - Damage T to Z)

There seems to be two cases here:

• A character themselves (their appearance or personality) is a shout-out to another character or person — I'd keep those on Character Sheets unless there is a better trope for that;
• A character says lines that are a shout-out to another work — If a character often does it, I'd move the entries to Speaks in Shout-Outs; otherwise I'd move those to work pages.

PS I have no idea how many of those are intentional so don't quote me on that. I'll just assume there are no misuses here.

Edited by Asherinka on Dec 12th 2018 at 2:13:10 PM

My overall opinion after reviewing all these examples:

• Keep on Character Sheets:
  • Mythology Gag: if related to character names, appearance and skill sets
  • Foreshadowing: if related to character's true identity or ultimate fate
  • Irony: if its source is the mismatch between character's status, attitude or plans and what actually happens to them later as part of their character arc ("Expectational Irony")
  • Shout-Out: if character's appearance or personality is a shout-out to another character or person
• Move to Speaks in Shout-Outs: if a character often says lines that are Shout Outs to other works
• Move to work pages: otherwise, i.e. if a character just says a couple of lines that are Shout Outs to other works

The list is not exhaustive, and context matters.

Edited by Asherinka on Dec 12th 2018 at 2:33:42 PM

Thanks to Asherinka for these bullet points. Because looking at them laid out like that illuminates actual patterns and allows us to see how these tropes are used/misused.

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I think I have a clear rule about Foreshadowing in a character page. It only works if it foreshadows a revelation that the character at the time knew and deliberately hinted at. Like in Game of Thrones, when Ned Stark tells Jon Snow in Season 1, "You are a stark...you may not have my name but you have my blood" he is signalling a revelation that he and he alone knows. That is a character foreshadowing and it only applies to Ned's character page and his actions and not Jon Snow's. Or in the case of Melisandre her signalling her plans to get Stannis to flirt with Human Sacrifice and so on, that works if it is signalling something she was planning to do later on. Or if Littlefinger hints that he's behind some shady stuff...Foreshadowing doesn't work if it's foreshadowing a later turn of Character Development or plot turn that the character had no idea about conceivably. That's plot and story and not character. I think most of Asherinka's Foreshadowing examples are Plot signals and not something about the character's own agency and action. Like that example above about "Back to the Future" being someone's favorite film or the music cue anticipating that, (i think there's a Leitmotif trope for character's music) foreshadowing a later plot turn. A character page could only use Foreshadowing and Irony as long as it is grounded on the character's own knowledge, POV, and viewpoint. So on. That stuff about Ego the Living Planet refers to stuff other characters say and not what he says and does, which already foreshadows plenty.

Now I am going to admit...this kind of nuance is virtually impossible to enforce. This is high level real-life magazine and literary agent editor stuff. So there may need to be sub-tropes like [Character Foreshadowing] and [Plot Foreshadowing] to sort and divide this. At the very least, I think this could be a new norm to follow from now on but again it will be hard to enforce.

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Not to be that guy, but a lot of those examples under irony are not really ironic and don't qualify for the trope to start with let alone trope misuse. I mean the Foreshadowing and Mythology Gag examples are legit just a case of whether it applies on Character page and so on. Some of these wouldn't fit even in the main page under Irony. I mean Kylo Ren born in the Capital of Mon Mothma, well what's ironic. The Republic became the Empire and legally voted in Palpatine. So yeah Chandrila has a lot of imperial and resistance connections. If you want, you can say it's ironic he was born in Cloud City which was actually neutral territory and which revolted against his grandfather and hero. I will say the Coulson character Irony example fits, but the one with Loki is closer to stuff like Hourglass Plot or how his plot led to him taking arc entirely different from where he started.

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As for Shout-Out in Character pages, so long as the character is quoting or referencing some real-world text or media, then it's fine but if their appearance or action, unbeknownst to them, alludes to something only the audience can pick up. That's the main page. And you know, knowing literature, music and art stuff has stuff like Bookworm, Cultured Badass, Gentlemen And A Scholar, and all other smart tropes where you can use this example as an indicator of sophistication, worldliness, knowledge and so on. So it's not even necessary. When characters make references they are signalling or indicating something about them, what books they read, what music they listen to, which makes them relatable to us...i.e. they reads my stuff/they're smarter than me...and so on.

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Ultimately character pages should present the character and its tropes based on their experiences, appearances, and general presentation...what makes this character, this version of a character, different from others, what defines them, and so on. All that is independent from plot, from style, and so on which does depend on audience familiarity and engagement in the real-world to something the characters wouldn't know.

Re Irony — Well, I understand tropers who added those examples, all of them. From the trope page:

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In truth, a more fitting term would be "Expectational Irony", since that is what it covers. Situational Irony is when the outcome of some situation or action is the exact opposite of the expected or intended outcome.

A man who is accused of being gay tries to prove he isn't by discussing his muscles and virility with his (male) friends, however this comes across as an attempt to flirt with them.

Take the trope Failsafe Failure, for example. The expectation is for safety features to ensure that something is, well, safe, and then the safety feature itself turns out to be dangerous.

Or see the tropes The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

This, in a nutshell, is what people mean, or think they mean, when they say "that's so ironic."

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Re Loki specifically, the second example is one of the most ironic ones in my opinion. "Who would have guessed" and "if you only knew", and all that.

PS You seem to imply that tropes apply to characters only if the characters have agency. But tropes like Adaptational Nice Guy have to do nothing with character choices or something the characters would know (they are about creators' choices about the character) and still go to Character Sheets by definition (see Characterization Tropes). I think the same applies to Mythology Gag and the like.

Edited by Asherinka on Dec 12th 2018 at 3:04:55 PM

Those stuff define what is unique about that version of a character especially since Adaptational Tropes apply to licensed versions and not original characters. So it's important. it's what defines that version of the character as apart from all others.

Applaud you both for the effort and thought put into these posts, by the way.

I agree with Revolutionary_Jack on this. Foreshadowing, Irony and Shout Out are just too meta and I will stand by the notion that character pages should be troping the characters and their role in the work itself, with Adaptational tropes and the like still discussing a character's personality in a given work despite the purpose being to show how the adaptation changed them; Adaptational Jerkass for example just saves us the trouble of saying "X is a Jerkass... but only in this work". The other meta tropes however apply to the out-of-universe narrative, so I would agree that they should only be on character pages if they're in-universe, because character pages should in theory be troping who and what a character is and what they do, not what happens to them or whatever meta stuff involves them.

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Yeah, I think that's a workable definition of what counts as Character Tropes. Information the character tells us. Either by design, by costume, by voice, by other audio/visual features, and all of which distinguish from other versions of that character (if its adaptation, if not then its an original character and so doesn't count). Anything meta works on a plot level. Character Foreshadowing or something like that, such as when they hint at a future betrayal or them knowing some secret is different from Plot Foreshadowing where composition, lighting, and music says they aren't long for the world.

Exactly.

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I think it's really really hard to define a line here because context is really key here, I still feel that if a trope has a description (that of course relates to the trope and isn't shoehorned) and that describtion, that wouldn't fit to a more strictly defined character trope, gives us insight about a character, then it would/should fit on the character sheet. To go back to franchises, I don't know if it would be fitting to put a trope like that on the main page that covers the franchise as a whole if said trope only relates to one certain character.

I would agree that in many cases it would be better to make character sheets spoiler free. It is not allowed to put trope names in spoiler tags, and should stay that way, so if a character sheet has a trope about a death of the character, then you would already read the trope name and get spoiled even if the description is whitened out. So you might as well just remove all spoiler tags and have a warning at the top.

Eventually someone is going to have to tabulate a tvtropes Manual of Style. Unofficially, via the rules and so on, it is enforced but since the norm is usually "List of Don'ts" it cultivates the Ain't No Rule mentality that makes it hard to establish clear norms.

And you know context is ultimately in the eye of the beholder without some objective criteria. Like the stuff about Foreshadowing only working if it ties to information the character actually knows and deliberately hints at is clear and objective...there isn't any subjective interpretation there. That's an example of objective criteria. The same applies to Mythology Gag and Shout-Out...Irony is of course the big problem since not many pople

Making character pages entirely spoiler-free...that's something I suggested a few posts back, and now I want to play devil's advocate and claim that there are parts of the current arrangement I like. For instance, I discovered and got into some works based on the tvtropes pages. I can't be the only one who was like "Okay this is the plot and so on"...then go to the YMMV page and see the reaction and opinion tropes, and then go to Character pages and while avoiding spoilers get a hint of the dynamics and so on. Tvtropes is partially a site to introduce newbies to works after all and what separates it from wikipedia and other dry encyclopedias is precisely the human element, and the way it allows fans to present a work as it really is rather than how it was first marketed or the dry historical way it's done.

Is Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World a character trope? The description makes it look like an aesop for the audience but the Played With page makes it sound like a characterization trope.

It's a plot trope the way I see it. Possibly a concept or premise trope.

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What about Evil All Along? Troper rva98014 thinks it is a plot trope. When moving back an example from the character page to the main page, his comment was: Evil All Along is a reveal that takes place within a narrative as it generally is something revealed within a story.

So is this a character trope because it involves just one character or is it a narrative trope because it does only describe a switch in the audience perception of the character?

Edited by eroock on Feb 5th 2019 at 7:08:50 PM

Character trope.

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