Vague and misused: The Three Faces Of Adam

Based on the description and the examples there are two tropes here:

1. Ambitious youth (hunter), accomplished adult (lord), and authoritative elder (prophet).

2. Wise teacher (mentor), failed student (big bad), student with potential (young hero).

I believe each are tropeable if they can get examples behind them.

Again, I strongly disagree there is a trope to be found. The Eve and Hecate trope exist because this is a common triad of women portrayed throughout fiction.

This trope (and I think any like it) would simply be a random selection of three different types of characters. Of course you're going to be able to find examples. Fiction is a broad topic, and when you have vague horoscope-esque descriptions like these, they can be warped in so many different ways it can be broadly applied to extremely different characters.

I am seeing a trope where someone gathered a common archetype of a younger person, a middle-aged person, and an older person and cobbled them together and said they were a triad.

I could just as easily throw another together: Boisterous boy, harried adult, blathering senior. Let's see...Rugrats, King of the Hill, Pokemon, Harry Potter, Scrubs, The Good Earth, Avatar: The Last Airbender...

That doesn't mean it's a trope. It means that I found three common ways those age groups are portrayed, and I found works where all three were present. I could give them all silly titles and vague, convoluted definitions and it would be just as valid as the trope here.

Actually that would be a trope it is a character interaction / Group Dynamic trope.

I literally just made something up on the spot. I had no context, no proof. I didn't think of an example in tropes. I just thought of three common portrayals of age groups, and then thought of works where all three were present.

That is not a trope. It is a random assortment of three different tropes. There is zero pattern to it.

edited 4th Mar '12 11:03:38 PM by helterskelter

I agree with raso. If the those three types of characters are all present (I don't think they are actuallly) and interacting in all of those stories I think that makes it a trope.

A random assortment would be more like three common portrayals of age groups in different stories.

Make the middle-aged person a parent, and this is basically the same thing as The Hecate Sisters. So according to your argument, The Hecate Sisters wouldn't be a trope either.

The point is that you could pick any group of characters at random and make a trope out of them if you wanted to.

I could say "let's make the Hecate Brothers" trope, and it will be about 3 guys, a stupid one, a sneaky one, and a stubborn one. But if we were going to do that, we'd end up with thousands of tropes about every single meaningless grouping of characters.

What's described in The Three Faces of Adam might be a trope, but the page as it is now is just "let's pick three different personalities male characters sometimes have and make a trope out of them," with no hint that there's any actual meaning behind it.

edited 5th Mar '12 3:18:16 PM by abk0100

I want to take the two tropes I believe The Three Faces of Adam were meant to be back to YKTTW. It couldn't hurt. If no one adds anything or supports it we drop the whole thing. Would that be okay?

Go ahead, it's better than nothing.

edited 5th Mar '12 5:31:52 PM by shiro_okami

Yeah, that'd be good.

The sense I get from the article is of an ambitious young man, an established paternal man, and an elder. This combination is not apophenia. It is explicitly introduced in the work to demonstrate how approaches differ at these stages of life. It is male-specific because the the personalities and behaviors are quite distinct from those of men and women.

Most of the examples don't fit, though.

Also, the terms you're using are better, I think. "Elder" has vastly different connotations than "prophet" does.

edited 6th Mar '12 2:06:43 AM by Spark9

"I could say "let's make the Hecate Brothers" trope, and it will be about 3 guys, a stupid one, a sneaky one, and a stubborn one. "

Ummm, so, Comic Trio? Ed Edd And Eddy, The Three Stooges.... that trio?

There are some Ensembles that are common enough to trope. This is the basis for the existence of an entire index of tropes. This one isn't just "there are three guys", or "there are three guys, one young one middle aged and one old" or even "one impulsive, one a paternal authority figure, and one an advisor". It is "of the three important male characters, the young one is impulsive and proactive (and probably The Hero), the older one is paternal, authoritative and reactive, and the oldest is an advisory Mentor type who's largely inactive".

Seems like a (common) trope to me, just that like The Hecate Sisters and Five-Man Band it gets a lot of non-examples shoehorned into it. It'd be a shame to lose it altogether.

Incidentally, the "Hunter Lord and Prophet" terminology suggests this trope was originally proposed somewhere off the wiki, anyone know if that's the case? If the trope needs improving it'd be a good place to start.

edited 6th Mar '12 7:38:59 AM by johnnye

Okay, I've YKTTWed them. They're currently called, The Three Stages of Career and Wise Teacher Failed Student And Sucess.

edited 6th Mar '12 7:29:53 PM by atheywa

Career? It'll do for now, but I think we need a better name. The trope has nothing to do with careers.

I was thinking 'life' but that sounds to vague. Everyone has a life but these people have a life that is going or gone somewhere. There's also 'man' but I want this to sound unisex.

@Fast Eddie and Spark 9: I think "Prophet" is definitely needed; it can't just be replaced with "elder". The point is that in ancient societies, a man too old to fight or do other physical work is still valuable to the community by his wisdom and ability to communicate with the gods or the supernatural as a priest/prophet.

That is true. But it does not match the majority of the examples. So hunter/lord/elder is a different "trope" than hunter/lord/prophet, but both of them are equally valid.

I think we should keep prophet. Also, I think the trope might work better if we make the ages more flexible, considering that each stage focuses more on the roles of the trio opposed to their ages.

Made a few edits to the description.

edited 7th Mar '12 8:12:50 AM by shiro_okami

@ shiro okami: That's fine if you want to make changes to The Three Faces of Adam but I'm trying to guide the The Three Stages Of Career YKTTW to what I think the concept was originally meant to be. If you have concerns with my two examples please take it up in the comments section.

The trope you added, Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life, fits into mentor's new hope, not The Three Stages of Career.

edited 7th Mar '12 11:41:47 AM by atheywa

Making changes to the actual trope would be pointless if it's going to be replaced. I made the changes so that the description would be clearer and fit the existing examples better. I don't have a problem with your examples, but I'd prefer that the trope fit the existing examples than brand new ones.

Also, I don't see why Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life doesn't fit the Hunter.

All things considered, I think we might be interpreting the original trope differently.

The existing examples don't fit with each other and don't even try to explain what they're trying to be. They never did.

Maybe you're trying to make a third trope. If you can come up with examples that explain how they fit with what you're describing then you should start your own YKTTW.

Question for Eddie: since the majority in the crowner said to cut, and there is disagreement here about what the trope is in the first place, would you be okay with sending it back to YKTTW?

Made my own YKTTW, saving some of the examples in the old page. It's called The Three Stages Of Achievement.

edited 9th Mar '12 9:57:58 AM by shiro_okami

Not exactly perfect, but my examples actually have context now.

edited 10th Mar '12 10:29:15 AM by shiro_okami