The Grand Unified Appearance Trope Clean-up:

We do have the somewhat more specific Evil Wears Black already, though Batman is a prime example of Dark Is Not Evil.

right, but there's a difference between Black is Evil, and Black is Mysterious.

Black is Mysterious just because its undefined and hard to see in the dark. So a character may wear black to symbolize that their interests/personality/motivations aren't obvious.

If you're evil, that's pretty clear from the start.

Even so, that's not something specific to women, and it's not something we have examples for. The goal of this thread is to clean up existing appearance tropes, not make up new ones from whole cloth that are kind of inspired by ones that aren't working.

So dewick and cut?

I think Woman In Black can be fix to make it less making it woman who wear black and ZCE.

I think to fix it though we'd need a new name, new description, and new examples, which means we'd be making a new trope.

I'm fine if it has to go there.

Women in black is about a dangerous kind of sexy and presence, easily noticeable in a crowd that she is important, even though those concerns could be completely unfounded.

Men in black typically have a shrouded look to them with a lot of shadows and such.

Two different looks and tropes I think.

That sounds like a wardrobe choice for Femme Fatale mixed with Notice This. Can you suggest a more indicative title than Woman In Black? Otherwise, I say we begin the dewicking.

That's pretty much identical to Lady in Red.

black is mysteriously trying to downplay her presence

red is mysteriously trying to play up her presence

pretty much the same trope by a Red Oni, Blue Oni type of distinction

edited 6th Sep '16 10:27:43 PM by acrobox

No I disagree with that distinction.

The big difference I think is black is more about sadness or scorned, like the person has been emotionally or physically tortured and such.

edited 7th Sep '16 6:52:11 AM by Memers

that's not what the trope descriptions say.

from red

A Lady in Red is sexy. She might be morally ambiguous but she mostly displays a form of sexual availability, a signal that she's ready to fulfill a guy's sexual desires. The Woman in Black may be sexy and enticing but, in sharp contrast to her crimson counterpart, she is also openly menacing and sexually unavailable, especially if her outfit covers her whole body.

from black

Strangely, the trope is more the polar opposite of the Lady in Red than that of the Woman in White in terms of concepts. In fact, the Lady in Red brims with offers of quenching one's lust and gratifying sex, whereas the Woman in Black clearly conveys that desiring her is outright dangerous or forbidden or a free ticket to certain death.

The danger and mystery of red is that she conspicuously makes herself seem open and easy. the danger and mystery of black is that she makes herself seem distant, and hard to get. But both are supposed to be attractive and alluring. Nothing really says anything about the motivations, backstory, personal scars that make them appear the way they do.

We still need a name that would encompass such an idea.

Aloof Woman In Black (for the somewhat "benign" variant where she's not truly a danger to one's life, just that she's distant and may very well cause you considerable trouble if you push your luck with her) / Sinister Woman In Black (for the truly dangerous kind) and Sultry Lady In Red seem to be the logical solution IMO.

edited 7th Sep '16 11:28:44 AM by MarqFJA

the truly sinister version is already covered by Dark Is Evil and all the other black=bad tropes.

I believe we've already established that "Adjective+X in Y color" does not fix the problem. The name needs an overhaul not a Band-Aid. Furthermore, Aloof Woman In Black does not sound significantly different from Aloof Dark-Haired Girl. The tropes themselves may be significantly different or not but the names are quite similar.

edited 8th Sep '16 10:52:20 AM by ChaoticNovelist

Based on the guidelines, sounds like it might be worth cutting and any improved variants are better off sent to the Trope Launch Pad.

I just found out about this thread from a Trope Repair Shop thread. It's a long thread. It looks like you move from one trope to the next? I wanted to try searching it, because I have been meaning to complain about Nice Hat somewhere. I'll try to keep it short, because I don't want to overwhelm the current discussion. Every time I see that trope linked, it just seems to be used as "this character has a hat (because hats are memetic!)". I just quickly glanced at the Anime and Manga page, and several were already written like "these characters have nice hats, naturally".

I checked the Anime and Manga section for Nice Hat page today and it doesn't look bad. It could use improvement but there are a lot of examples with context.

Are we ok with dewicking and cutting Woman In Black? Re-launching might work provided a better name could be found and new trope was distinctive from Evil Wears Black.

The only other option I could see is making say a Mysterious Beauty trope that covers both Woman In Black and Lady in Red as like a soft split. That'd be the only thing I could say save the wicks for.

Otherwise I'm mostly okay with dewicking and cutting.

edited 15th Sep '16 10:12:13 PM by acrobox

I'll make a list of any "mysterious beauty" context that I find. Otherwise, 765 wicks in total; let's get to work!

Update bumb: Woman In Black is down to 727 wicks.

Update Bump: Woman In Black is now at 699 wicks.

Edit: I'll put the wick check on the next page

edited 15th Nov '16 5:20:12 PM by captainpat

Maybe limit to the shy timid type and boss, serious type.