Vague and misused: The Three Faces Of Adam

But why is this a trope? What pattern here are we seeing as a triad? I see three individual tropes mysteriously grouped into one.

Please, tropers, ask yourself why this trope is here. I cannot find a legitimate reason for its existence.

It is a trope because it occurs in that pattern.

What's the pattern? Any amount of character tropes are going to appear together at the same time at some point. I wouldn't say these groups of tropes appear with any more startling frequency than most common ones.

If the trope is going to be expanded to talk about common portrayals of men at different cycles of their life, okay, but that's not anywhere near what this trope is saying.

I think it might be a trope, but the examples in the YKTTW do a really bad job of arguing the case. Most of them just seem like 3 male characters picked out of a large cast that each sort of fit one of the personality-types.

Take the Lord Of the Rings example. It says the Hunter is Boromir, the Lord is Aragorn, and the Prophet is Gandalf. Okay, but why is it Boromir and not Frodo or Sam? Why is it Aragorn and not Legolas? The description includes so many traits for each person that they all fit in their own way.

And the Star Wars example. It says the 3 are Luke, Vader, and Obi-Wan. Why is Vader the lord (aside from the obvious reason) and not Han, or even Leiah? Why is Obi-Wan the prophet and not Yoda or the Emperor?

If this is going to be a trope, it should be limited it instances where there's a very clear group of 3 male characters that all play off each-other, not when there are 3 characters in a story that just happen to fit the description.

This is my feeling. But I don't think there's an actual trope of a triad concerning characters with consistent roles and traits that play off of each other. I think we're just inventing one.

When I think about it more, I can actually see the Star Wars example. Luke is new to being a Jedi, Vader is one at the top of his game, and Obi-Wan is the old retired Jedi Master.

The Lot R example still seems bogus to me, but I'm starting to understand what the trope is supposed to be. Mabye it's just the description that's confusing me.

If you have to say "when I think about it more" it doesn't work. The human mind can twist and bend anything into a pattern if it wants to. People can see Jesus on toast.

With the other triad tropes, the characters are actually presented as a triad and there should be an unambiguous presentation of three characters as a triad such that when I say "The three guys from X" we all understand which three guys and I don't have to tell you more. But say "The three guys from Star Wars" and I don't know who those are. Of course, you can give me those three and then get me to connect them with some horoscope connects but I can connect every actor in the world to Kevin Bacon, I'm good a making connections as long as you give me enough points of access and if I'm forced to.

If it was a real pattern, we just wouldn't have a crowner with a supermajority saying it wasn't.

edited 11th Mar '12 7:35:52 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

For starters, let's kill all the examples that don't have a strict group of three characters. If it's four or more characters, it's a shoehorn, not this trope (and that includes Lord Of The Rings with its nine-man fellowship).

Since the name is bad (it has nothing to do with The Three Faces of Eve) and it sound's like it's trying to describe more then one trope there are three new trope based on it. They are Three Career Stages, Mentor's New Hope, and The Three Stages Of Achievement. If any or all of them are now or can be improvements from the original they should be launched.

edited 11th Mar '12 5:07:35 PM by atheywa

Sure, but we should still clearly define (and potentially rename) this page here. Otherwise it will just stick around in its current problematic state, since the cut has been veto'ed.

But if the new tropes cover everything that the old ones do, but better, then the old one should be cut in favor of the new ones.

Won't we just end up leaving the current page as a redirect for one of the new tropes that's launched?

Or a disambiguation page?

That works too

A redirect is fine, but can we please take our effort into working on the YKTT Ws? Are they improvements from the original?

Bump. This doesn't seem to be cuttable, should we redirect it somewhere? The Three Faces of Eve or The Hecate Sisters (dunno which is the best one)?

Good idea. It should redirect to the faces of Eve because that's what the name refers to.

The name or the trope?

Crowners swapped.

I don't see what we achieve by making this a redirect. It seems like a pointless compromise-for-compromise's-sake, which ends up being neither one thing nor t'other.

• Are we proposing to make Three Faces of Eve gender-neutral, when it's a trope entirely about the nature of femininity? This seems ridiculous.
• Are we going to soft-split that page into "Adam" and "Eve"? In that case, we're acknowledging that something about T Fo A is tropeworthy, in which case I don't see why we're getting rid of it in the first place.
• Are we just going to have any reference to "the Three Faces of Adam" direct people to a tangentially-related trope about female ensembles without changing the latter trope at all? If so, why not just delete the trope outright?

How could it be merged when the name seems to say one thing, the description another and the examples a third?