Not Tropeworthy: Awesome Ego

It's really not that difficult to pin down. It's simply a character who's arrogance is an appealing trait. The hows and whys are always going to be subjective, hence why it's in the YMMV section.

My understanding of the trope isn't so much that they're popular but that they have good reason to be arrogant-i. e., it isn't just a case of Small Name, Big Ego.

Now that I say that, I'm wondering how this differs from Insufferable Genius.

EDIT: Actually, rereading the page, it does seem like it's just characters who are popular because they're arrogant. I'm not really sure that's tropable.

edited 15th Jan '13 5:21:19 AM by ading

Insufferable Genius is an invoked Awesome Ego, i.e the work portrays it as awesome, while in Awesome Ego it's the fans.

Well, the two could be distinct. Someone's ego being played for laughs doesn't need to actually be warranted. You probably can't make an objective trope out of the author intending an arrogant character to be cool, but funny? Probably.

^ I think that "arrogance Played for Laughs" could be a trope, as could "a character who has the skills to back up their arrogance", but I don't see "someone who's popular because they're arrogant" as a trope anymore than "someone who's popular because they're lazy" or "someone who's popular because they're stupid".

Yeah, popularity due to arrogance isn't a trope and would be hard to even measure. I don't think this page is really limited to just funny arrogance, so that would have to be sent through YKTTW by itself. For this page I suggest we simply cut it. Well, too many inbounds, so I guess we'd redirect it Insufferable Genius or something.

This is an Audience Reaction. Also see @2

Yes, but the nature of the page means that the examples aren't going to be particularly consistent. X person thinks that a character's arrogance is great while Y and Z find it repulsive. The page says that a vague 'the fans' love the character. Any character is going to have some fans unless they're designed to be hated. Even then they'll probably pick up a few.

That is generally true of all Audience Reaction pages.

Are the opinions of the characters usually so in opposition to each other though? I mean, some people might find a character to be a woobie and at worst their critics just won't care about the character's problems. Maybe they get annoyed if they're all wangsty about it. Is liking a character for one particular characteristic really a full audience reaction deserving its own page? You're probably going to answer this question with 'Yes' and I'll feel silly, but do we have pages for people who like a character because the character is a jerk or really ugly or whatever?

You're right, this is a controversial trope, but that's why its a YMMV trope. People AREN'T going to agree wholeheartedly on who's ego is awesome and who's is just annoying, and many are going to think that ego's by their very nature are annoying and unlikeable. If we were to delete this page because of that, then we might as well delete every YMMV page.

And my laconic definition of Awesome Ego is: 'A character who's arrogance is an entertaining and or endearing quality.'

It's not only that people aren't going to agree but also that I don't see what makes this special in the first place.

I literally already addressed it in @2

And then I replied to that by saying what makes this different from liking a jerk or an ugly character or whatever else can make a character popular?

Ugly Cute also has a page.

Bleh. Still don't agree, but we should probably move forward with this. Option one is we leave the page as it is. Option two we run a crowner and then do what that says. Which sort of sounds like it'd take more time but leaving threads along without taking any sort of action tends to leave them to stagnate rather than making them get locked up.

A crowner for what options?

Well, I was thinking at least three options: Do nothing, get rid of it or redirect the page. Still, I suppose the thread basically doesn't think we need to do anything.

edited 15th Jan '13 9:30:38 AM by Arha

I don't think we need to do anything, or at least enough that would require TRS intervention.

According to the page, this includes characters who are skilled enough that they deserve to be arrogant and those whose arrogance is amusing/charming. I feel that those are both tropeworthy, but I feel they are distinctly different tropes and I don't feel they belong on the same page.

EDIT: Also, the page seems to imply that this is a subversion of a Narcissist. I don't see how. A character could be both a Narcissist and an Awesome Ego.

edited 15th Jan '13 9:48:55 AM by ading

Yes, that could stand to be clarified, but I think the error lies in misusing the trope Narcissist, not misrepresenting this one. It says, "That arrogant S.O.B that is constantly pissing us off..." which isn't true for that trope, but it is the opposite of this trope.

It's an arrogant S.O.B that we like.

Agreed, might need cleanup of examples, but nothing wrong with the trope itself.

Explaining the narccisist part above, when I wrote that summary, I didn't know The Narccisist was an actual trope. A more fitting line would be "You all know the Smug Snake right?"

A Smug Snake isn't necessarily disliked either.

I took a thorough cleaning to the page. I will also bring up the Real Life section into the cleanup thread for these.

Unless someone has a good case for other action, we should close this.