Everyone Is Right Handed is listed as an omnipresent trope, meaning that only special cases such as aversions and subversions are worth noting in the examples list. In practical terms, this means that nearly all the "examples" from the page are examples of left handed characters. However, we already have a page serving that purpose, which is linked to in the description of Everyone Is Right Handed, and there's a huge overlap in the example lists between the pages.

The two are not strictly duplicate tropes, but it seems to me that there really isn't much use in having both pages.

First off, The Southpaw needs the baseball digression removed. Especially if it's actually Significant Left Handedness.

Second, Everyone Is Right Handed is not omnipresent, at least to me. I'd say to allow straight examples.

edited 2nd Aug '12 10:27:43 AM by SeptimusHeap

This strikes me as only being significant in drawn or written works. In live action, it's likely to be coincidental because most actors are right handed (because most people are right handed).

It's also significant in modeled works, like 3D video games.

I'm counting CG under drawn.

I agree, it's not omnipresent.

Right-handedness isn't omnipresent, but its far too common to list examples. Its aversion is also far too common for examples. Absent significance, neither is a trope.

I'd lean towards scrapping Everyone Is Right Handed and keeping only plot significant examples of The Southpaw, along with a rewrite to make it less baseball-centric.

edited 2nd Aug '12 12:18:31 PM by Desertopa

It also seems not to be thriving.

Right-handedness isn't omnipresent, but its far too common to list examples.

Then it's a good thing this trope isn't just "right-handedness, " as the description makes pretty clear.

And the trope also currently doesn't list examples. But it does list aversions, which are also too numerous and meaningless to record.

no argument there

What significance to the storytelling does being right or left handed have, that isn't A Sinister Clue?

Could be a sign that the character is The Lancer, The Rival, the Evil Counterpart, or a similar trope to a right-handed character, I suppose. I know that's the case in Final Fantasy IV, at least.

Weapons that are made for one handedness, for example?

As in, "this character is opposed to the hero one way or another"?

Not necessarily the hero, but yeah, essentially "this character is the reversed mirror image of that one in some significant way".

I disagree that it's too common to list examples. Even among Omnipresent Tropes, very few tropes are that common. However, I am certainly onboard with dropping live-action examples, since the handedness of the actors is obviously not part of the story.

Also, if The Southpaw is supposed to be about left-handedness as an advantage, it totally should have been named Left Handy.

edited 2nd Aug '12 2:31:31 PM by troacctid

I think we should only list examples where there's some kind of plot significance to it. "The character uses this hand primarily" is not more of a trope than "this character has brown hair" or "this character wears a green shirt". "Character is left-handed but is forced to use right-handed weapons due to standardisation" does have a significance, though.

In a mystery, a person being left handed might be a vital revelation to the plot. In a fighting series, it could be a focus of considerable importance in fights, or for games in a sports related series. A character might attend a lefty-awareness rally to highlight the ways in which society subtly inconveniences left handed people, or embarrass themself at an important dinner by banging elbows with the person seated next to them.

There are lots of ways that a character's handedness could impact the plot. Arguably they're too numerous and disparate to count as a single trope, and many of them won't recur enough to be tropes in their own rights, but they certainly don't all fit into A Sinister Clue.

edited 2nd Aug '12 3:08:34 PM by Desertopa

But we agree they don't fall here either?

Well, in theory, it seems The Southpaw is supposed to be about characters being advantaged in athletic or combat pursuits due to lefthandedness, but in practice the examples seem to be "any left handed character."

If it's relevant, Dragon Warriors (a game unlike Dungeons and Dragons but with a similar feel) specifies that all sorcerers are left handed. It is only rarely relevant.

That question was mainly just about what sort of tropes we already have about handedness, what sort of tropes could be needed, and if there could be a collection or general trope for them. Also, a question rather than any kind of statement of how things are.

Anyway, leaving The Southpaw alone for now, I'm not sure I see Everyone Is Right Handed as a distinct trope, other than in limitations with games and similar things. In media without those limitations, it's just not true, and most of the time, which hand a character uses won't even come up. To assume everyone is right handed is faulty in its own, so I don't see a trope beyond those technical limitations.

Seems like another of those All X Are Y style demographic analysis tropes. Any thing worth looking at?