Critical Snowclone Failure (NEW CROWNER): Tall Dark And Bishoujo

Any opinion on that writeup?

I'll assume Aloof Sandworm is a placeholder name.

I am totally supporting that one hundred percent.

Yes, it's my default placeholder name.

The big problem I see with that description is that actually a fair wad of the supposedly correct examples, (the one's I’m familiar with anyway), discussed on page 1 of this thread are mostly about characters who are simply aloof, distant with people, with a side tendency towards being imposing physically, either through beauty or height, but this can as easily be a factor induced by their aura of command or serenity or distance as an actual physical thing. Often to the point where they seem physically distant to look at, as well as in personality. Popularity only plays a key part in a small number of the examples.

It feels more like a milder, non-royalty, and self chosen/natural personality form of The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask than what you've described. Though maybe these are separate tropes in their own right.

Once again it comes down to. How do you define a trope with such a broad base of examples.

We should probably have a crowner for the new name.

Yeah, definitely.

So, what have the proposed names been?

Attractively Aloof and I'm not sure what else.

Okay, well, let's just assume for the moment that the trope will go with that name. Doesn't matter. For the trope people have argued we'll be lacking, I think I know what we should do. Namely, it's not really related to this trope. What I think is that it's a tall, busty girl who is relatively more mature than her compatriots. She's either a Cool Big Sis type or an Onee-sama. She'll likely either be The Tease or fairly stoic and quiet.

I think disregarding the appearance completely makes the trope too broad and vague. Aren't the characteristics associated with it? Aloof, antisocial but popular and usually dark-haired. I can see height being optional, though they tend to be imposing.

I know it's too late but I still don't understand why we're redefining this when it's already a trope (just with a misleading name).

^^ The dark haired thing is fairly common, yes. I'm not sure if it's required. We haven't set in stone what we're redefining it to just that it needs to be tweaked a little. I thing both height and sex are irrelevant to the trope.

^ Because it seems too narrow.

Attractively Aloof would be much more clear than Tall, Dark and Bishoujo. Rosalie of Twilight is listed as Tall, Blonde and Bishoujo, linking to this. We can't call her Tall, Dark, and Handsome but she is beautiful, classy, tall, statuesque, but pleased with her physical beauty and hostile toward Bella and jealous of her humanity.

Should a blonde character be allowed to count if she's considered attractive?

It's not too narrow. The physical characteristics are part of the trope. It's very rare that the character type doesn't have the physical appearance and when they don't it's normally just a height variation. Not one in hair colour or even style. Getting rid of that gets rid of the majority of the trope.

Just because it can in theory exist without the appearance doesn't mean it does. In truth the character type, at least in Japanese media always has the physical description. Height may very. Exact colour of dark hair may vary. But they'll always be either tall or otherwise have a very composed posture that makes them appear taller. They will always have long dark straight hair. They will always have a certain personality.

You're widening it for the sake of widening it. Not because you have any examples of it actually being wider.

The physical appearance goes back to the traditional Japanese woman and cultural expectations. It doesn't exist in a vacuum but is part of a wider national stereotype.

No. It's not just about being aloof and attractive.

edited 5th Dec '12 2:48:59 PM by shimaspawn

Shimaspawn: I'm pretty sure there is a supertrope about aloof popular characters. It'd probably be a supertrope to some examples of All Girls Want Bad Boys. The broody, loner guy with lots of fangirls. I also think some types of Sugar-and-Ice Personality qualify. Is the aloof, dark haired, tall popular girl thing a trope? Yeah, but I think it's a subtrope. On the other hand, I've been thinking that that is something that should probably be dealt with separately. We've enough to do as it is. So for the meantime, why don't we just put broadening the trope aside.

Okay, let's start over. Physical characteristics are that the trope is for girls, they have to be tall, they have long dark hair and they tend to be more generous in their proportions. As far as personality goes, they're usually fond of teasing, more dignified than their peers or act like older sisters. Quite possibly all three together. They tend to be very popular, especially with younger girls, but it's not attention they normally court. It just kinda happens. Am I missing anything? If not, we need to come up with a fairly short name that catches the essential points here.

edited 5th Dec '12 3:30:50 PM by Arha

If we're going to rename it but we're throwing out Attractively Aloof as suggested in post 82, then what are the possibilities of new names?

If we're not calling this trope "Attractively Aloof", I still think someone ought to YKTTW it, since it seems to be a Missing Supertrope.

You're free to YKTTW as many missing supertropes as you want, but it tends to work far better to do that then trying to expand a distinct subtrope. People have a far harder time grasping a supertrope if all the examples are from the same subtrope. This leads to trope decay. Make your supertropes from scratch and they'll be healthier.

What might we call this that's more specific then Attractively Aloof but not Tall, Dark and Bishoujo? I noticed Aloof Sandworm is a placeholder but sandworm doesn't make any sense. What are our options?

Sandworm is just the word we use as a placeholder when we don't have an actual word to use for a trope name. It's a TRS convention for "We don't have a name yet, but we need to call it something, and we need to make it clear it's just a placeholder and not a real suggestion."

That said, Tall Dark Feminine And Aloof? Still a snowclone, but at least it's not stuck on a weird Japanese word.

edited 7th Dec '12 7:31:20 AM by shimaspawn

I was thinking of something similar. We're probably not going to be able to think of something clever as a title so I was mostly thinking of changing the last word to something more appropriate.

New writeup. We halted attempts to broaden it but the old definition seemed like it needed to be fleshed out to me.

edited 7th Dec '12 8:00:48 AM by Arha

I'm not convinced that dark is part of this. Sure, most examples from Japanese media have dark hair, but that's because this character type is unlikely to bleach or dye her hair, and in Japan, that generally means dark or black hair. In other parts of the world, not so much. Examples from Sweden might be blond, or from Ireland might be redheads.

For a supertrope, yes, but this is something that's consistent even in series with tons of weird hair colors.

That's what I was thinking Xtifr. Of course if she has dark hair when there is a variety of colors it makes it look like dark is the key part of the trope, with tall and feminine being implied.

Deeeeeeeeeeeeerp, wrong thread. >.<

edited 11th Dec '12 10:01:29 PM by lu127