Two tropes / needs a split: Water Works

The trope's laconic entry says "Being held in contempt for crying." Most of the main description seems to describe this as well. However, it also says "This is for tears that really are a sign of weakness." In other words, being a crybaby or crying with little reason to do so, regardless of whether they are held in contempt for it or not. That is the definition that I usually see potholed and listed on example pages, and many of the examples on the trope's page are that.

In short, this is two tropes, not one.

edited 28th Aug '11 5:20:57 PM by Insignificant

I think I agree with you about there being two tropes here. Being held in contempt for crying seems to me to be related to interactions between characters or between a character and the setting (i.e. some societies/groups may be more tolerant of crying than others). I would point to the part of the trope "characteriz[ing] others as cold-hearted and callous" by showing their lack of tolerance for crying as evidence of that.

Seemingly being a Cry Baby or crying at lot needlessly (in that the character is clearly portrayed as crying instead of doing something useful) seems like another trope to me. I feel like that trope would be more of a character trope.

edited 29th Aug '11 5:06:34 PM by LouieW

bump.

bumping again.

bumping yet again. Can this topic not die?

Well, I am not sure if this will keep the thread alive, but there is now a page action crowner for this trope here. Feel free to add other options as you see fit.

I added the third option in order to have a Cry Baby character trope possibility, but I think that trope could possibly be launched later even without a split.

edited 10th Sep '11 2:35:04 PM by LouieW

After reading through the article, I found very few examples for the "held in contempt" half of this trope. In fact, a lot of the examples are just "this person cries." There may actually be more wrong with this trope than I originally thought.

For me, when I think of a title, I think of "Character crying more tears than physically possible" which is often present in comics and animation.

bump.