Objective or Subjective?: Informed Attractiveness

I just cut most of the 'Real Life' examples for being irredeemably awful, and renamed that section 'History'. It's not perfect, but I think something like that needed to be done before the trope is mended entirely.

I think it would be best to cut the real life folder completely, don't even let it exist as history.

This. I don't think this trope can exist outside of media.

The "Informed X" tropes are about when something is told, but not actually shown in the work. Attractiveness is not something that can be objectively proven or disproven, so Informed Attractiveness is a Bad Snowclone.

It can be objectively shown in other characters finding someone attractive. That's as far as the trope is concerned.

Characters finding other characters attractive is objective. Characters being attractive is not. You cannot objectively disprove the characters' claim that "Character X" is attractive. That's why Informed Attractiveness is a Bad Snowclone. An Informed Ability can be objectively proven not to exist. Informed Attractiveness can't.

The part of the description makes zero sense. Anyway, I can't find any other trs threads older than this one so something tells me that this is one of those cases where changes were made to a trope definition without discussion. So we should probably have a crowner to decide on a definition for this trope because the YKTTW says this is when audience does not find a character as attractive as the work makes them out to be.

Yes, and the trope is 'We're told this person is attractive, but objectively everyone hits about the same attractiveness level.' One person is elevated above the rest in the eyes of the cast but they are not actually that different.

Er, no, an Informed Ability is not proven not to exist. It's just something that we have to take the authors word for because there's nothing else that makes that character special other than what we're told. I think you have the wrong idea of what the informed tropes are.

edited 12th Oct '11 4:37:43 PM by shimaspawn

I think you misunderstood my post. Allow me to rephrase what I said:

Informed Ability is when we are told a character has a certain ability, but the work does not show any evidence that they have said ability. The fact that an ability's existence is not backed up can be proven because an ability is an objective attribute. Attractiveness is not. You can't prove that "Character X" is not as attractive as the other characters claim him or her to be because attractiveness is subjective.

edited 12th Oct '11 5:08:47 PM by Insignificant

But what if the informed ability is "The character is the best fighter in the southern hemisphere" or somesuch? Then the character is shown fighting, but not fighting particularly better than anyone else? The character can obviously fight, but how is it shown that they're the best? In fact, as I recall, the Informed Ability pagequote is about personality traits, and whether you find those traits to apply particularly to the character may be up to how you interpret the character's actions. Informed Ability isn't any more binary than Informed Attractiveness is.

First of all, Informed Ability has no page quote, and a personality trait is not an ability. Second of all, you're completely missing the point. My point was that attractiveness is not an objective, provable attribute, and therefore a trope about a character not being as attractive as other characters claim does not make any logical sense from an objective standpoint.

Informed Attribute was split off.

edited 12th Oct '11 6:07:38 PM by 20LogRoot10

Yes, attractiveness is not objective. Hence, this trope.

The show cannot easily express the character's attractiveness simply by filming them. So it has a character express this fact. This is not necessarily bad. It's just perhaps not as elegant as conveying this in a different way.

Alternatively, characters could show how attracted they are to this beauty, or the camera could film them with heavenly light, music and breeze. This might work, or it may seem silly.

edited 12th Oct '11 8:10:00 PM by Routerie

I think it was supposed to be about a mix of I Feel Angry as well as other stuff. Maybe.

bump, this page really should have a YMMV banner, least with the current definition.

Not really, the thread consensus seems to be pointing the other way.

This thread hasn't reached a consensus. Most of this thread has been a debate over what the definition of the trope is. The trope's current description contradicts itself, so what it needs is a definition clarification.

This page was meant to be an Audience Reaction for cases where the audience does not find a character as attractive as the work makes her out to be. That's what the YKTTW says. I'm pretty sure that not only did someone try to force this to be a objective concept but also did so without a trs thread.

edited 22nd Oct '11 4:18:42 PM by captainpat

Then whoever made the original title did so wrongly. They cloned a set of tropes that were objective.

Agreed, it needs a rename and also a trope description that doesn't contradict itself.

bump.

bump.

We should just revert it back to it's original definition and make it an Audience Reaction.

Makes sense to me.