Not Tropeworthy: Awesome Ego

I know that Awesome Ego is already a YMMV reaction, but I don't think it even warrants that. The page is literally a list of arrogant characters that people like. There is nothing else. Should we also have similar page for humble characters, loud characters, meanspirited characters...(Etc)? No.

It doesn't help that there's a real life section, which is bad both because it's flamebait for editors who don't like the people in question, and it's flamebait for fans of the people who might believe that they're not arrogant or boastful.

Using the inbound count tool, the article has 51 inbounds since January 1 of this year. That's quite a few, but I still don't think we should keep a page that is "<Personality trait> characters that people like". And if we do, could we at least change it so it has a point? At least Unpopular Popular Character has an interesting contrast between the two qualities.

edited 10th Sep '12 2:02:40 PM by Scardoll

Egos usually aren't awesome. They are arrogant and unpleasant. That's the point of this page.

We should probably cut the page and start over from scratch, but there's a real concept hidden in there. Characters who have big egos are traditionally portrayed as assholes, but they can also be portrayed as lovable. The page has a few good examples of this, such as Tom Haverford from Parks And Recreation and Barney from How I Met Your Mother. The challenge is defining the page so it's not just "narcissist who This Tropette wants inside her."

I'm not sure it needs to be redone completely. It's about characters that people like despite their huge egos. It usually means they're able to back up their egos, but not necessarily.

About not having characters who not just one troper likes, what do we do with The Scrappy, which shouldn't be what one troper hates?

^I don't think that one is salvageable. That said, examples still get removed if there is no wider proof for the assertion.

Sorry that I didn't respond earlier.

The issue I see with the "large egos are usually detestable, yet the character is popular" idea is that we already have something pretty similar with Unpopular Popular Character that also includes any possible other "tropes" where a disliked person is popular.

edited 20th Sep '12 2:43:50 PM by Scardoll

This is indeed trope worthy. It's about what the audience thinks. Moreover, the Unpopular Popular Character is not necessarily egotistical, just as the Awesome Ego is not always unpopular.

So should we have "tropes" for timid popular characters, sarcastic popular characters, and lazy popular characters?

That's my problem with this page. It's just "here's a list of awesome guys are arrogant." Most of the entries don't even provide evidence for that character's popularity, they just say he's cool and popular and has an ego.

edited 20th Sep '12 8:38:47 PM by Scardoll

Well, it's perfectly possible to intentionally write an extremely arrogant character with the intention of having them be liked by the audience. For example, Evangeline from Negima, Gilgamesh from Fate Stay Night or Keima from The World God Only Knows.

The trouble there is that I don't really know for sure what those three have in common apart from the obvious. Well, the first and the last aren't meant to be taken terribly seriously.

edited 20th Sep '12 8:43:12 PM by Arha

This is the guy who launched the Trope here. The key component to count as Awesome Ego, is a character who is popular BECAUSE he's arrogant, IE: Old Spice Guy. If the character is simply arrogant AND popular, IE: Draco Malfoy, then it's not this trope. To count as Awesome Ego, the characters ego must be a fundamental part of his appeal

Exactly. This is tropeworthy.

That being said, I really think the page needs some cleanup, namely getting rid of (or Expanding on), all the entries that are just a characters name without any context whatsoever.

Also, with flamebait on the Real Life section, we COULD get rid of it, or we could go the Crowning Moments approach and say "First come, first served."

edited 5th Oct '12 2:57:06 PM by Lunacorva

x3 And how do we decide on who is or is not popular because of their arrogance? Using the Draco Malfoy example, there's probably a few readers out there who like him because of his arrogance, depite how J.K> Rowling did not intend for readers to find that trait endearing. Basically, what if there are people who are of the opinion that character X is awesome due to their arrogance, despite how the writer/director/etc did not intend for that trait to make them likable? Not just about unintentional popularity, but any occasion that a wiki editor might like a character for their arrogance despite how most people generally don't.

I think the criterion is fairly simple: are there a good number of fans who like the moments when the guy shows his ego? If you can point to dialogue (or even gestures) that are both awesome to watch and quite clearly bragging/smug/condescending, it's this trope.

I also think it needs some clean-up. Sherlock Holmes is arrogant, but he likely doesn't realise it, and it speaks mostly of his lack of social skills (our ego is an empathic thing, it's how we see others seeing ourselves; Holmes doesn't care much about that). There may be adaptations that qualify here, but I don't think the original does.

That's a YMMV trope, though. I think there may be something objective in this, but I don't think the likes of Keima (silly arrogance) and Gilgamesh (deadly asshole arrogance) can fit under the same definition. You've have to scrub stuff about how popular they actually are as well. And I'm not sure we don't already have that.

You don't need YMMV to make this work. Replace "popular" with "entertaining" (as in, their egomania is written to be be an entertaining character trait) and you're done.

Define entertaining.

To make this trope not YMMV it should be about author's intention (granted, we can't always know it). Regardless of whether we actually like a character or not, important part is that author tries to make him likable.

We are not supposed to like Draco. Maybe feel a bit sorry for him in last two books, but not actually admire him. His egoism is presented as wrong and unpleasant trait.

On the other hand Kuzco’s huge ego is also shown to be wrong, but he is funny protagonist and we are supposed to care about him.

edited 10th Oct '12 9:35:08 AM by kundoo

Thing is, this requires a bit of familiarity with the work to know whether somebody is popular, so people can easily put in something that doesn't count if it's from a work the page's curators aren't familiar with.

With that in mind, I wonder which definition of likeable we mean here. Many characters are likeable because they're people real people want to know in Real Life, because they're likeable. Other characters are likeable because they provide tension, motivation, and Evil to the plot, so they're liked as characters, but not as people. Most well-written villains are like this.

What I mean is that a character with a huge ego can be entertaining, but not someone you'd actually like to know. If that makes sense.

edited 11th Oct '12 5:46:37 AM by AnotherDuck

Clocking.

Okay, I vote we redefine this to 'comedic arrogance' unless we already have that trope. Do we?

...I don't think we do, off-hand.

That would require renaming, thought, too, lest we end up with an Artifact Title.

Are we sure that "comedic arrogance" has enough in common with the current page? Otherwise, you might want to start a YKTTW for that and do something else (like nothing) with the current one.

Well, we'd need to check the examples from this page. There's also a potential trope for characters who are supposed to be appealing and cool because of being arrogant but that one is sort of like Evil Is Cool. Maybe it's what the writer had in mind, but probably too subjective to pin down well.