Misused: Dead Little Sister

Not really, I think.

I agree; I can't think of any real distinct meaning within a story. Both may be people you care for and perhaps want to protect.

So does that mean that some of the misuse should be migrated over to Lost Lenore? (And should the description of that be tweaked? I haven't looked at it.)

Some of the misuse can be sent that way, the description can be expanded and then that takes care of that. A lot of what we have are basically ZCEs, though, which will probably just get zapped or commented out.

I would actually say yes - or, rather, that "dead love interest" is different enough from "dead character as motivation" that it should at least be a subtrope. A full merge would not be a good idea.

How is it different?

Now, this is mainly just speculation on my part without reading the descriptions.

Losing a love interest seems more tied to losing your will to live on. A love interest is an equal. Maybe not an equal in combat, but a mental equal. It's someone who's tied to your wants and desires. If someone like that dies, you don't think you can live on.

Losing a little sister is more akin to losing your right to live on. A little sister isn't an equal, but someone to protect. Someone you have an obligation to protect. Normally you can live on, but since you failed, you don't think you deserve it.

You don't have the same kind of relationships to the two types, and subsequently the emotions aren't the same. I'm however not sure how much practical difference it makes, though.

The practical difference, I think, would be more the way in which, for example, a character with a dead love interest will be affected in their approach to any possible future love interests - a facet that won't exist with the broader trope. Things like that.

Something like that, yes. A love interest is not the same relationship as a little sister.

That sounds like The First Cut Is the Deepest to me.

That's specifically about how it affects future relationships, and not how cynical the character's outlook on everything else is.

The Lost Lenore is a reoccurring pattern that has a large number of different elements associated with it. Some of those elements are tropes. Some are not. But the sum of the whole is greater than it's parts.

I do believe that a supertrope for death of a character as a driving force for the action is a good trope. From what I've seen, there seem to be several distinct flavours of it:

• Brother/Sister/Child/Someone young and innocent and under your protection: This tends to make for characters that feel that they have failed and that they need to redeem themselves. They are generally very determined in nature.
• The Lost Lenore: This tends to make for more avenging characters that have a hard time replacing their lost love. There's generally an overarching romance theme to these plots. These character generally are turned cynical and tend to have their hearts closed. Getting over that loss and letting someone new into their life is a huge struggle.
• Fallen Brothers In Arms: This is the story of the old war vet who feels that he must carry on the memory of his fallen brothers. Generally this is tinged with PTSD and the inability to let go of the war that killed them.

Examples that don't fit these three categories tend to be a general supertrope for character motivation. As motivations go, death tends to colour not just an individual character, but the entire plot of a work. It's one of the big ones.

Incidentally, I'd like to note with respect to the OP that American Mc Gees Alice and Alice Madness Returns are actually both correct use, if insufficiently described. (The death of Alice's family, including her older sister, lead directly to her fatalistic outlook and cynical self-pity in conjunction with and by way of her incarceration at Rutledge.)

Okay. Still, there's such staggering misuse that even if I incorrectly identified even half of those misused examples it would still be over 30%, which is bad enough.

8:0 for rename, 5:2 for trope transplant. Need more votes.

Thumbed down the transplant since a) we don't have a description for the new trope and b) "dead sibling" alone is very chairsy.

It's not just dead sibling, Septimus, it's death of a sibling as character motivation. That's not chairsy by definition as it's talking about it's impact on the plot.

That is a trope, but Dead Little Sister is a poor name for it. And most examples I see aren't written like that.

Or rather, most of the examples aren't really written at all.

Edit: Oh, crowner looks good to go, though I guess it'll be left open a little while longer. Cynicism Catalyst was the most popular alternate name suggested, but do we have any others to suggest?

edited 12th Feb '13 8:45:06 AM by Arha

Calling for a rename.

Alt names crowner.

Add more names if you think of any.

SWAP

Immorality Inducer?

what

Cynicism Catalist sounds best. Immorality Inducer sounds more like an Artifact of Doom.

Yeah, I added that one and then realized it was terrible second later, but that's a few seconds too late. Go ahead and downvote it.

edited 18th Feb '13 9:10:22 AM by Arha

Calling for Cynicism Catalyst. We need to:

• Do the rename.
• Remove any ZCE or just dead siblings with no meaning from the page.
• Change the wicks while nuking the ZCE.