Vague and misused: The Three Faces Of Adam

Crowner called.

Threw it on the Cut List, but there are a few wicks to clean up before:

• A Christmas Carol
• Always Male
• Characters.A Song Of Ice And Fire Deities And Religions
• A Song Of Ice And Fire Tropes S To Z
• Black Dagger Brotherhood
• Chronicle
• Literature.Chronicles Of Magravandias
• Characters.Classical Mythology
• Series.Community
• Crappy Vamps Vs Werewolves Epic
• WMG.Digimon Xros Wars The Young Hunters Leaping Through Time
• Distaff Counterpart
• VideoGame.Dragon Age II
• Dune
• It.Elenco Provvisorio T-V
• Ensembles
• VisualNovel.Fate Stay Night
• VideoGame.Final Fantasy XIII
• Series.Glee
• Hanna Is Not A Boys Name
• Harry Potter
• Series.Heroes
• Intersections
• Sandbox.Jeysie
• Knight, Knave, and Squire
• Anime.Mawaru Penguindrum
• Mouse Guard
• Noble Male, Roguish Male
• Sandbox.Power Trio
• Power Trio
• Anime.Rurouni Kenshin
• Spell My Name with a "The"
• Film.Star Trek
• Star Wars
• The Hecate Sisters
• Literature.The Iliad
• Literature.The Odyssey
• The Three Faces of Adam
• Sandbox.Trimurti Trio
• Film.Tron Legacy
• TVTropesTheTVShow.Trope List
• TheDresdenFiles.Tropes N-Z
• TheLordOfTheRings.Tropes S-U
• Characters.Vampire The Requiem
• ComicBook.Watchmen

edited 3rd Mar '12 3:23:25 AM by SeptimusHeap

I cleared that list from the top down as far as Sandbox.Jeysie. I left the edit reason "Trope is being cut per TRS discussion https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1327413995051052300&page=2"

edited 3rd Mar '12 7:22:03 AM by Madrugada

^Exactly the reason I used for the rest of the wicks. Now the only ones are on TVTropesTheTVShow.Trope List, which is locked, and The Three Faces of Adam itself.

And I just got TV Tropes The TV Show. So we're good to cut, right?

The last wick is on the page itself, there are no subpages, so yes, it's ready for cutting.

Thanks for the Tv Tropes The Tv Show page, by the way.

De nada. It's one of the perks of being a mod. Don't forget that there's also the "Edit Request For A Locked Page" thread, for things like that, if there's no mod taking part in a TRS thread to catch it locally.

And I left a note on the page discussion that all the wicks are gone but one. If it isn't cut, it will because of the inbounds. I suppose we could Faux-redlink it if that prevents a cut.

edited 3rd Mar '12 7:57:30 AM by Madrugada

I was indeed intending to go to the Edit Requests thread if it hadn't been caught here.

About faux-redlink: let's wait and see. So far, I've noticed only one trope getting a crowner-sanctioned cut request declined, and even then it was by Admin decision and the page redirected to something else.

And the cut was just declined! What do we do now - redirect it to The Three Faces of Eve?

God, no.

I've recutlisted it with a more detailed reason, a link to this thread, a note that the wicks are gone, and a request that it be faux-redlinked if the number of inbounds is too high to allow cutting.

Well, it has been declined again. We'll have to redirect and fake-redlink then. Or just cutlist another time?

Why is it declined, and by who? All I see in the cutlist log is "there may be discussion [on its talk page]" and the talk page of this non-trope is mostly people suggesting to remove it.

Why? Likely because of the inbounds. By who? No way to tell that. It's fairly problematic, but there is a thread already about that.

Reads like a trope to me. Plenty of examples. Good usage. What is the complaint, again?

^That it is simply a gender-flipped version of The Three Faces of Eve or possibly The Hecate Sisters and redundant to that page is what I see.

ETA: And that the definition was confusing and that the discussion page was basically just "Is this a trope?"

edited 4th Mar '12 10:40:04 AM by SeptimusHeap

@ Fast Eddie I think it definitely reads like a trope. I know of two examples that should be there because they fit just as the page describes.

The examples listed are actually a problem though. None of them (that I see) apply to hunter-lord-prophet. Some of them are (or try to be) a young hero, an older Big Bad, and an elderly Mentor, which might be a trope in it's self, but it's separate from the hunter, lord, and prophet as they are described.

The title is also a problem. The hunter, lord, and prophet is not the counterpart to the child, wife and seductress. The Three Faces of Eve is a movie outside the trope, but The Three Faces of Adam doesn't exist outside so it doesn't make sense to call it Adam.

I'd never heard of The Three Faces of Eve before, but looking over that page there's a lot of shoehorning going on. At least half of the examples read like "my favorite work has at least three females in it, and they kind of fit if you squint". It's the problem Five-Man Band has, except much worse.

But speaking of The Three Faces of Adam - first, it claims to be the counterpart of The Hecate Sisters, so it really shouldn't have a name that's Snow Cloned off another trope. Second, as with Eve, most of the examples strike me as random shoehorning.

For example, if "the prophet" is the old man looking back at his life, then why on earth does this include Dr. Manhattan, Thor, Qui-Gon Jinn, Gandalf, and Michael Jordan on there? It's mostly just:

Step 1. This guy is older or more sensible than this other guy

Step 2. ???

Step 3. Prophet!!!

edited 4th Mar '12 12:38:50 PM by Spark9

Well played, good sir, well played.

I'm pretty sure this is a trope. In a lot of Ancient Greek literature, for example, there's a definite sense of progression from young hunter, to mature king, to old priest/prophet. (Many scholars agree that when a male character in Greek myth dies young, it's because he has in some way failed to progress from the "hunter" stage.) Achilles, Agamemnon and Nestor in The Iliad are clear examples. But, just as with the equivalent Distaff Counterpart tropes, this is being shoehorned into any work that has three or more male characters.

edited 4th Mar '12 12:58:47 PM by DoktorvonEurotrash

If we are going to keep the trope, we absolutely need a new name and make it gender neutral. It might help to keep the description, too.

Note that one of the problems is that it is redundant to either The Three Faces of Eve or The Hecate Sisters.

It's close to being a gender-flip of The Hecate Sisters, but there are subtle differences. And if it was truly redundant, it would have been cut already.

Hence why it needs a rename. If the trope is sticking around and everyone realizes the name problem, why don't we stop talking about it already and make a crowner for renaming?

edited 4th Mar '12 6:09:46 PM by shiro_okami

It's a form of gender-neutral age progression where The Hecate Sisters is strongly feminine age progression. If it began in Ancient Greek literature then I think it would be fine to give it a masculine title while mentioning that it can be feminine too.

It has absolutely nothing to do with The Three Faces of Eve. The hunter is a young man, not a child or a seductress or even a stable wife/husband.

Why would you make this gender neutral? It is about men and how they are at different ages. It is utterly about gender.

No, it's not. While the trope is written as Always Male, there is nothing in the description that would make it unique to men.

Eddie, have you read this thread? Have you read the discussion page for it? What is the trope you see? All I can see is "A work has at least three male characters, and one is young, one is middle-aged and one is older. Or wait, maybe it's '...one is impetuous and driven, one is in control, and one is introspective and comtemplative'. Or, you know, it could be any way that you want to mix up those six characteristics."