Misused: Madness Tropes

I've had this on my to-do list for a while; and wow, is there a lot that needs to be done here. ^note Things that have been dealt with are marked off.

This actually isn't just about Madness Tropes - there are a few other indices with a lot of redundant overlap between them. The main problems I've noticed:

• Madness Tropes
  • Index has examples on it that are only tangentially related, even for such a broad category as 'madness'. (Driven to Villainy? Chewbacca Defense?)
  • Trope descriptions are unnecessarily loquacious and do not have a standardised format, resulting in walls of text. (Some descriptions are useful, certainly, but "Mad God: When a deity is insane" should not even need to be said.)
  • Tropes are not completely sorted under the right soft-split headings.
  • But the soft-split headings ('Characters', 'Issues', 'Symptoms', 'Ways to Break Character and Twist the Plot', and 'Remedies') overlap with each other somewhat, which might be part of the problem.
• Split Personality Tropes
  • Not thriving.
  • No description, so it appears to be pretty much up for interpretation what it's supposed to be an index of - it has everything from Split Personality and Talking to Themself (obvious) to Demonic Possession (...understandable) to Hearing Voices (understandable, but in a perpendicular way to tropes about possession!) to Evil Twin (not the same person) and Sexier Alter Ego (Flat "What").
• This Index Has Had a Hard Life
  • Not thriving.
  • I don't think it's being misused, particularly, but given the amount of internal variation it's hard to be sure. (Is the Cloudcuckoolander really implied to have had a hard life?)
  • There is also lot of overlap with the other three categories.
• Hollywood Psychology... actually seems to be doing okay, but dealing with the other three indices will invariably involve it anyway so I'll make a note of it anyway.

So... what should be done? I do have a few thoughts, but there's also a lot about which I'd like some discussion.

• Remove tropes from Madness Tropes that are already on Hollywood Psychology Done.
• Redefine This Index Has Had a Hard Life and clean up examples that do not belong.
• Figure out what Split Personality means, and determine whether it is a complete sub-category of Madness Tropes or just overlapping.
• Make sure Hollywood Psych contains all the tropes that belong there.
• Reorganise Madness Tropes.
  • 'Characters' could be separated into subcategories.
  • Giving a category to sanity seems straightforward enough - for Only Sane Man and Friend to Psychos, for instance. (Sanity Tropes is a redirect.)
  • I also think it would be useful to separate characters who are not (or not necessarily) crazy except in the colloquial sense (Genius Ditz, Cloudcuckoolander, Stalker with a Crush) from those who do suffer in some way from a mental ailment (Madwoman in the Attic, Shell-Shocked Veteran, Reluctant Psycho).
  • We might also have a category for character types defined by their role (Defective Detective, General Ripper, Mad Doctor).
• Make sure all four indices are visibly mutually linked via category boxes or whatnot, and make sure there are no other indices that should be listed as well.

...your thoughts, please?

edited 22nd Oct '12 5:16:37 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

My personal opinion has always been that any index with trope descriptions for everything (which, to my knowledge, is currently only Action/Adventure Tropes) can have them stay, but they aren't really necessary. So half-hearted efforts like this can be axed pretty easily.

I don't see what the problem of overly-broad indexes is supposed to be, though.

I don't think the broadness of the categories is the problem here. The lack of organisation (on Madness Tropes) and the lack of a clear definition (on Split Personality Tropes and possibly This Index Has Had a Hard Life), on the other hand, is. There's a lot of overlap and misuse between the three, and Split Personality Tropes and This Index Has Had a Hard Life have fewer than ten wicks apiece.

I only really think the broadness of Madness Tropes is problematic because it's so huge that reorganising it will be highly non-trivial.

edited 26th Sep '12 9:21:46 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

...buuuuuuump?

If no one else cares I guess I'll take it as carte blanche.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Seriously, if I'm the only one who cares about these pages I'll clean it up myself in the manner of my choosing.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Fixed the tag. No wonder this didn't gain any interest.

I think that it might be better to put each of these tropes into a TRS thread if their pages are the problem.

Not sure about this page, though.

edited 12th Oct '12 6:21:26 AM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Well, I thought combining them into a single thread made sense because what's done to fix each of them will most likely affect the others, and to keep threadspace open in TRS. I can create new conversations for Split Personality Tropes and This Index Has Had a Hard Life if you think that would be more productive, though.

What about this page is it that you aren't sure of?

edited 13th Oct '12 2:44:48 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I tried splitting off Split Personality Tropes, since the work there is to its own thread, but there are 382 threads open in this forum and a current cap of 100.

I've created a sandbox page for each index and have been taking notes and experimenting with categories there: Split Personality Tropes, This Index Has Had A Hard Life, Madness Tropes.

This Index Has Had a Hard Life seems like a good starting point, as the problem there seems relatively straightforward - the page title suggests it's about characters who have endured hardship, and the page description says it's about 'the psychologically broken ... those who are mad, not the why and the how', so it's currently doing the work of an index and an half. So... I've divided it into tropes about characters having had an hard life, and tropes about the psychologically broken. I think we should just redefine the definition to match the title, and move the rest to Madness Tropes. Done.

edited 22nd Oct '12 5:17:59 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I think I'm ready to launch Sandbox/This Index Has Had A Hard Life to its proper page. Any suggestions?

Here's the current description.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Looks good to me.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

AAAAAAAAH SOMEONE ELSE IS IN THE THREAD WITH ME

Oh! Feedback! Yay! Okay, then, I've gone ahead and amended This Index Has Had a Hard Life accordingly.

I'm still working on Sandbox/Split Personality Tropes and Sandbox/Madness Tropes - I have some provisional lists on both, but there are a lot of tropes I simply don't remember the meaning of, so I'm slowly working my way through and reviewing them.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Oops... I left this for long enough that the sandbox pages were deleted. >_<

Here's the progress I've made on Split Personality Tropes. There's absolutely no description, so no wonder there are so many things running together here. Here are the categories I can identify:

---

Split Personalities - A character's mind is composed of multiple fragments, which are nonetheless all part of the same person. In the aspects more similar to schizophrenia, one personality is in charge but hearing advice from the other(s); in the form closer to dissociative identity disorder, each personality becomes active or seizes control at intervals, usually in response to emotional state or external stimuli.

• Funny Schizophrenia
• Gollum Made Me Do It
• Hearing Voices
• Identity Amnesia
• Jekyll & Hyde
  • Hyde Plays Jekyll
• Not Himself
• Split Personality
  • Split-Personality Merge
  • Split-Personality Makeover
  • Split-Personality Takeover
• Superpowered Alter Ego
  • Superpowered Evil Side
• Talking to Themself

Brainwashing - A character's mind is altered as a result of external interference, either simply changing their personality entirely, or installing a way to make them obedient (often a split personality) that the character is not consciously aware of. Can be sort of an halfway ground between split personalities and possession.

• Evil Feels Good
• The Heartless
• Identity Amnesia
• Jekyll & Hyde
  • Hyde Plays Jekyll
• Not Himself
• Sexier Alter Ego
• Superpowered Alter Ego
  • Superpowered Evil Side

Possession - An entity from outside enters the character's mind and controls them. Can sometimes be indistinguishable in practice from split personalities, but frequently is explicitly differentiated by the story and is treated differently, and has many of its own tropes.

• Demonic Possession
• Gollum Made Me Do It
• The Hat Makes the Man
• Many Spirits Inside of One
• Not Himself
• Powers via Possession
• Sexier Alter Ego
• Symbiotic Possession
• Talking to Themself

''Became Their Own Antithesis - Straightforward, long-term character growth results in a portion of themselves that is at odds with who they were before or the rest of who they are now. Similar to the first form of brainwashing, but natural instead of artificial.

• Evil Feels Good
• Future Me Scares Me
• The Heartless
• Not Himself

None of the above? - Tropes which don't seem to have anything to do with anything.

• Evil Twin - I can only guess this is a result of Enemy Without and possibly because an evil twin is the most obvious example of a Shadow Archetype Character Foil, because I have no other idea what it's doing here.
• Heroic Safe Mode - A character going into safe mode experiences a drastic change in behaviour that can be comparable to being taken over by a split personality, but I'm not sure it's the same thing. Up for debate, though.
• Shadow Archetype - It's a theoretical representation of the traits a character rejects, and obviously is relevant to the discussion of some of these tropes, but it itself is not an example.

I haven't actually sorted these yet

• Enemy Within
  • Enemy Without
• Flip Personality
• Ghost Memory
• Helpless Good Side
• The Killer in Me
• Literal Split Personality
• Living Memory
• Split at Birth

edited 23rd Jan '13 10:58:39 AM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Ok, bumping this in hope I can help get this done.

To address the OP's points:

• Split Personality needs a new description. The current one is so heavy on Real Life aspects that it doesn't work.
• Hollywood Psych like the other Hollywood tropes is an Artistic License trope, so everything slightly unrealistic should fit there.
• With Madness Tropes, are you suggesting a split?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

[gasp] HELP!

• Wow, I hadn't even noticed that. That's definitely true, and possibly part of why Split Personality Tropes is such a mess.
• Makes sense. Does that mean we should remove the caveat about non-duplication on Madness Tropes, or no? (I favour 'or no' myself, but I imagine
• I'm not really suggesting anything yet so much as 'looking for suggestions' (which hasn't gone very well), but I think it might be helpful. When I was trying to reorganise Madness Tropes to clean up tropes in the wrong category it made sense to try to use 'character types' as a subcategory. But there are a lot of tropes - like Mood-Swinger, for instance, which is also an 'issue' - that would belong in other categories as well. Since part of the whole point of cleaning this is to eliminate redundant entries in the index, it might make sense to just create a new index just for insane character types.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Eh, my question about Madness Tropes was more along the lines of "What is your proposed fix?"

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Well, I've been trying the reorganise the index into categories that are more meaningful, more manageable, and more clearly distinct from each other than those currently on the page. So far I have 'causes', 'conditions', 'symptoms', and 'remedies', as well as a list of 'character types' which overlap with the other categories and, as mentioned, could plausibly be its own sub-index.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I am inclined to agree with the reorganization.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Here's as far as I've gotten with the reorganisation so far:

---

Characters

Sane Characters

• Friend to Psychos
• Only Sane Man

Craziness by Career

• Defective Detective
• General Ripper
• Mad Artist
• Mad Bomber
• Mad Dreamer
• Mad Doctor
• Mad God
• Mad Oracle
• Mad Mathematician
• Mad Scientist
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend
• Psycho Lesbian
• Robotic Psychopath

Crazy-Eccentric

• Bunny-Ears Lawyer
• Cloudcuckoolander
• Crazy-Prepared
• The Cuckoolander Was Right
• Genius Ditz
• Mood-Swinger
• Neat Freak
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant
• Talkative Loon
• The Wonka

Crazy-Dysfunctional

• Broken Ace
• The Caligula
• Crazy Cat Lady
• Crazy Survivalist
• Cute and Psycho
• Death Seeker
• Living Doll Collector
• Madwoman in the Attic
• The Mentally Disturbed
• Nervous Wreck
• The Ophelia
• Psycho Electro
• Psycho for Hire
• Psycho Supporter
• Psychopathic Manchild
• Pyromaniac
• Reluctant Psycho
• Royally Screwed Up
• Shell-Shocked Veteran
• Sociopathic Hero
• Stalker with a Crush
• Stepford Smiler
• Windmill Crusader
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds
• Yandere

---

Madness Tropes

Causes - Tropes about the origins and instigations of mental disorder.

• Becoming the Mask
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil (and/or crazy)
• Brainwashed and Crazy
• Cabin Fever
• Clothes Make the Maniac
• Damaged Soul
• Driven to Madness
• Gaslighting
• Go Mad from the Isolation
• Go Mad from the Revelation
• Go Among Mad People
• Heroic BSoD
• Heroic Safe Mode
• Humanity Is Insane
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place
• Infectious Insanity
• Love Makes You Crazy
• Mad Love
• Madden Into Misanthropy
• Mind Rape
• Mind Virus
• Murder Makes You Crazy
• Ocean Madness
• Post-Historical Trauma
• Psycho Serum
• Rape Leads to Insanity
• Space Madness
• Terrible Ticking
• They Called Me Mad!
• This Index Has Had a Hard Life
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity

Conditions - I'm concerned that Conditions and Symptoms could be easy to confuse. My intent is for Conditions to be based on a cognitive or existential understanding of the disorder, and Symptoms to describe the behavioural consequences. What the character experiences versus what everyone else observes, so to speak.

• A God Am I
• Ambiguous Disorder
• Black-and-White Insanity
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality
• Categorism as a Phobia
• Chronic Hero Syndrome
• Chronic Villainy
• Crazy Sane
• Death Seeker
• Fighting from the Inside
• Genius Ditz
• Hallucinations
• Hearing Voices
• Idiosyncrazy
• It's All About Me
• Napoleon Delusion
• Reluctant Psycho
• Sanity Slippage
• Sanity Slippage Song
• Sanity Strengthening
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder
• Through the Eyes of Madness

Symptoms - Ways to show the audience that a character is not of sound mind.

• Angst Coma
• Apocalyptic Log
• Ax-Crazy
• Broken Smile
• Caligula's Horse
• Companion Cube
• Consulting Mister Puppet
• Crazy Consumption
• Crazy Memory
• Crazy People Play Chess
• Creepy Cleanliness
• Creepy Monotone
• Delusions of Doghood
• Dissonant Laughter
• Dissonant Serenity
• Dumb Struck
• Freak Out
• Full-Frontal Assault
• G-Rated Mental Illness
• Hidden Eyes
• House of Broken Mirrors
• I Reject Your Reality
• Imaginary Enemy
• Imaginary Friend
• Interacting With Shadow
• Laughing Mad
• Limp and Livid
• Lunacy
• Mad Eye
• Madness Makeover
• Madness Mantra
• Madness Montage
• The Madness Place
• Mind-Control Conspiracy
• Mood-Swinger
• Murder Is the Best Solution
• Neat Freak
• Power Born of Madness
• Room Full of Crazy
• Shattered Sanity
• Slasher Smile
• Stalker Shrine
• Sticky Fingers
• Talkative Loon
• Talking to Themself
• Tears of Fear
• Troubled Fetal Position
• Unstoppable Rage
• Trigger-Happy
• Villainous Breakdown
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? (Phobia supertrope)

Remedies & Resolutions

• Battle in the Center of the Mind
• Bored with Insanity
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!
• Heroic Willpower
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight
• Kind Restraints
• Percussive Therapy
• Sanity Ball
• Sanity Has Advantages
• Split-Personality Merge
• Split-Personality Takeover
• Survival Mantra

Left Over

• There are an handful on the list that seem to be specific ways sanity and insanity can directly affect the plot - There Are No Therapists and All Therapists Are Muggles, Cuckoo Nest (a type of plot in itself), Essential Madness, Insanity Immunity, No Medication for Me, and Secret-Identity Identity. Some of them might be fit into sections above, though.
• Settings - Bedlam House, Cloudcuckooland, Escape from the Crazy Place, Mental World, Black Bug Room, Happy Place, and Wonderland
• Perception by society at large - Chewbacca Defense, Crazy Awesome, Insane Troll Logic, Insanity Defense, Lunatic Loophole, Obfuscating Insanity, You're Insane!

edited 23rd Jan '13 10:50:22 AM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

...bump?

O crap I scared away Septimus

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

You want to soft-split this index, right?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Yes.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I like the proposes soft split.

Soft split is fine by me. Not sure exactly about the leftovers, but I don't think we need to be too strict. Worst case, we can simply have an other section. But "Settings" isn't a bad suggestion for some of them.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Okay, that sounds reasonable.

Anyone else?

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Ooooooookay, then...

What do I do to soft-split the index, exactly?

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable