Are these Character Tropes?

I think the trope is more about the character's allegiance than the reveal event. Thus, character trope.

the context was for Evelyn from Incredibles 2 where she was actively trying to disguise her allegiance thus it felt more like a story reveal than a character trope. But I guess it could work if you change the word to "motivations".

Edited by rva98014 on Feb 6th 2019 at 5:05:10 AM

So would Contrasting Sequel Antagonist be a story or character trope? To me it seems to be an analysis of two characters and how they differ from each other within two distinct narratives. Examples of this trope seem to cover character traits, motivations, circumstances, personalities, etc. As such it seems pretty heavily tied to how the characters are used within a narrative to be a purely character trope.

It's a duo trope focused on one of the characters. I'd say it's a character trope. The point of it is to describe the character using a previous character as a reference/contrast.

Edited by AnotherDuck on Feb 7th 2019 at 9:08:11 PM

I removed Black-and-White Morality from MCU Spider-Man because it is a story trope, not a character trope, but it was added back. The trope's context is as follows:

"Not surprisingly for someone his age, he has a very black and white view on crime and life. He takes Iron Man at his word that Captain America and his team are in the wrong during the airport battle and leaves Aaron Davis webbed up to his car just because he is a convicted criminal. Toomes recognizes this and tries explaining to Peter that the real world is a lot more grey and he can't think that way, though he is clearly self-motivated and stalling for time."

While the trope does describe Spidey's motivations, perhaps there is a better trope that can be used in a character page like For Great Justice or Principles Zealot. What do you say?

Black-and-White Insanity

This discussion might be relevant. He's not insane, it's not due to rigid adherence to principles, but rather naivete, so Black-and-White Insanity and Principles Zealot / For Great Justice don't really apply. If that one trope is misused, probably the correct trope is just missing.

Edit: what about Wide-Eyed Idealist?

Edited by Asherinka on Feb 22nd 2019 at 9:06:03 PM

Hey, is Foreshadowing a character trope? I never got that.

You can foreshadow elements about a character, but that's a plot trick. A characterization trope should be about them as a person.

Like before, it would depend on the context. If it involves a singular character, then it can be a character trope. But if it's for the story at large then it's not.

Somebody moved questionable examples up from the character page to the work page of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

• Greater-Scope Paragon: The Spider-Man of Miles' universe dies near the beginning of the film, and Mile's promise to him that he'd destroy the Super-Collider is one of his initial driving forces
• Odd Name Out: Gwen Stacey the only member of the Spider-Gang who doesn't have an Alliterative Name.

Where do these example belong?

Edited by eroock on Mar 16th 2019 at 9:36:26 PM

The Odd Name Out one definitely is a character trope.

I don't know how the first one is an example, though.

^ A promise to that character drives the plot. The promise itself is listed under The Promise and Comes Great Responsibility. This is a nod to the character the promise was made to.

Edited by eroock on Mar 17th 2019 at 10:38:39 AM

As I've worked on the various tvtropes examples, I've come to see that the Big Bad trope while, of course, is a "character as device" trope tied to a specific character/characters, is not really appropriate to list it on the character page of a work unless that work is completely a one-shot deal with no sequels, series, or spin-offs.

To me, this is because the role of "who is the Big Bad" is so tightly tied to the story. For example, in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse you have four characters (Kingpin, Doc Ock, Scorpion, Green Goblin) who have been Big Bads to Spider-Man in various stories throughout the comics. It just happens that in this story, Kingpin takes the honors and the others play henchmen.

When a work becomes a series, the general trend at tvtropes is to have a story page for each work of the series and a single character page for the entire series.

In this situation adding Big Bad to the character page almost always requires clarification of some kind (ie.. this character was the "Big Bad" in the sequel but only a henchman in the first installment)

To me, this really indicates that this trope is more strongly tied to the story than other "character" tropes.

Thoughts??

^ Character tropes needn't be permanent, like Took a Level in Kindness or Suddenly Voiced which describe a Character Development. In the same way I don't see why a character being a Co Dragon in installment 1 and becoming the Big Bad of installment 2 cannot be handled by mentioning the respective time window of their role on their characters sheet.

Edited by eroock on Mar 17th 2019 at 8:55:28 PM

^ Of course character tropes aren't permanent, I never meant to imply otherwise. And yes, as pointed out, a character's development arc can be handled by making references to the specific installment in which the trope occurs.

To me it's more an issue that the general rule of thumb at tvtropes is to not have excessive amounts of tropes being duplicated on both the story and character pages.

The definition of Big Bad opens with "The character who is the direct cause of all of the bad happenings in a story." To me, it just seems that because the trope is so heavily tied to the narrative, in terms of administrative effort, it is better suited to reside on the main story page, than on the character page.

It starts with "the character", for crying out loud.

See Characters as Device for how tropes can straddle the line between "character trope" and "story trope".

A trope about a character used as a plot device for the story is a character trope any way I see it. It describes the character's role in the story.

Can A Boy and His X be listed in character pages? It's a story trope, so I'm not sure.

It's a story trope that focuses on a particular character, so it can be in both work and character pages.

If the relationship with the X is integral to the character, I'd say it is as much a character trope as a story trope.

Do Kick the Dog and Pet the Dog belong to Character Sheets? I believe they do since their main purpose is to show the true character of a person. As Laconic puts it, these tropes are for gratuitous bad or good actions that serves to darken or lighten a character.

However webroot removed them from several character pages as "plot tropes".

Edited by Asherinka on Apr 24th 2019 at 8:45:54 PM

You know, I was wondering the same thing, too.

Kick the Dog and Pet the Dog are plot tropes, yes, but they're ones that are tied to a character doing it, so they can be put in a character page.

They are plot tropes, but they establish a character's personality and morality, and so can be specifically applied to them. This makes them suitable for a Characters subpage.