Ambiguous Name: White Haired Pretty Boy

White-Haired Pretty Boy and White-Haired Pretty Girl would just go away.

This post was thumped by the Eldritch Flyswatter of Horror

I'm kind of starting to look at it as two things. Magical White-Hair, where it makes them seem strange and otherworldly, but not necessarily in a bad way, and Eerie White-Hair, where it makes them seem off-putting and sinister. I'd say most Pretty Girls are in the former, whereas a good majority of Pretty Boys are in the latter.

Naturally, these two aren't mutually exclusive.

edited 22nd Feb '13 11:25:14 PM by KuroBaraHime

Well, this topic blew up during the night...

Now, yesterday evening after I saw this topic I did a Google search for the term. Looks like nobody has a clear definition out there either. Also, this page needs a huge pruning of Zero Context Examples. And someone tell me how the subversion/exception section isn't anything but Trope Decay pure.

@17: Since when is Pretty Villain not a trope?

Well, Pretty Hero is not a trope. Now, if we have a trope where a hero being pretty/handsome has some significance to their character or the plot, then that would be another thing.

edited 23rd Feb '13 3:19:35 AM by MarqFJA

I was talking about villains. Are villains supposed to be pretty and villains at the same time? I have some doubts about it.

And I was saying that if simply "a villain being pretty-looking" deserves to be a trope, then simply "a hero being pretty-looking" deserves the same treatment — and I don't think either one is tropable, to be honest.

Villains aren't supposed to be likeable. That is what makes me think. Also, likeable hero is related to Beauty Equals Goodness.

There are villains. Some are pretty. Some are ugly. Some are roughly average-looking. This is not an interesting fact, nor is it any kind tropeable. A correlation between external ugliness and internal ugliness as a noticeable pattern (whether the heroes are all prettier than the average cast member, or the only deformed guy is the bad guy)? That's tropeable. The Big Bad being noticeably prettier than The Hero—particularly if the hero is ruggedly attractive while the villain's fashion sense tends towards the complex and precise—as a way to accentuate the villain's superficiality and vanity? That's tropeable.

Or "the higher a villain is on the (usually power/badassery/influence-based) hierarchy of villaindom, the prettier he is compared to lower-ranking villains", so the Big Bad being noticeable prettier than The Dragon, who in turn is prettier than the Quirky Miniboss Squad, who are in turn prettier than the Elite Mooks, who are in turn prettier than the regular Mooks... Sort of like Authority Equals Beauty for villains. You get the idea.

edited 23rd Feb '13 3:47:48 AM by MarqFJA

@59 first sentence: Ah.

Anything called "Pretty Villain" will suffer even more decay than the current trope and will basically turn into a "List of villains tropers think are hot" which is Bad Idea.

Anyway, we are getting off track.

What we are looking at us "Preternaturally White Hair" + Bishonen Aesthetic = Certain personality traits.

edited 23rd Feb '13 3:52:51 AM by Catbert

I don't really see how this is distinct from Evil Albino except for not requiring the red eyes or possibly being bishie, the first of which seems to add to the trope and the second of which is I think unimportant. I think they can be merged.

edited 23rd Feb '13 3:56:59 AM by Telcontar

Evil Albino requires albino, or at least more than just white hair.

The Evil Albino and Heroic Albino tropes are being considered for a look over in the Appearance tropes thread due to issues with the definitions (including what constitutes an "albino" in fictionland), FYI.

edited 23rd Feb '13 4:06:33 AM by MarqFJA

As it is, I think White-Haired Pretty Boy plays both with Beauty Equals Goodness and Light Is Good. Overall, it presents a villain who by superficial standards should look like a hero, and with the supernatural appearance of the white hair also seems rather powerful (which Blond Guys Are Evil lacks). However, the sum of it really doesn't create someone who looks likeable, but rather someone who looks cold and detached.

Incidentally, I just discovered that there is such a thing as "towheaded" people, who naturally possess whitish-blond hair. Those who purposefully obtain the color, e.g. via bleaching, are called "platinum blond(e)".

In other words, villains with white hair could count for Blond Guys Are Evil (or a subtrope), since real-life "white" hair is considered a shade of blond.

edited 23rd Feb '13 9:43:01 AM by MarqFJA

Not really. Towheaded is still a shade of yellow. The types of characters this talks have a hair color that is not yellow at all.

Think Fate◊.

Yeah, @66 is what my idea of this was about.

I see this as being separate from Evil Albino because that is where we see or hear that he has unnatural pale skin and hair for the setting (or actual albinism) but in this he just has white hair like the Shy Blue-Haired Girl just has blue hair. They just do that in anime.

Anyway Eerie White-Hair sounds like a good name to me. We can mention in the description that he probably has a pretty look to him. The examples probably do need a huge clean up.

I know that. I'm just saying that the fictional version of "white hair" — and that includes characters who I've seen/heard be called "platinum blond" or the like both in supplemental materials and by fans/viewers/readers/critics — takes the white part a lot more literally than the real-life terminology does. And that example you pointed out also demonstrates the fact that many of these "white-headed" characters are technically not white in hair color, though I will give you that it may simply be a case of cosmetic shading for the viewer's benefit alone.

The Fictional Albino archetype isn't always unnaturally pale, though; naturally fair/white skin is often sufficient.

edited 23rd Feb '13 11:04:36 AM by MarqFJA

It is not a character type, people. It is an attribute a character has. You put white hair on a character on for some reason, just like you would put a tan on them. Doesn't mean Tan Sorcerer is character type. Just means your sorcerer has been out in the sun a lot. He is still just a Sorcerer.

I did a very short random wick check, and all the uses were literal or no context.

So is Fiery Redhead also random coincidental combination of characteristics instead of a real trope? Dumb Blonde?

Maybe Tan Sorcerer isn't a trope, but Greenskinned Witch would be. And perhaps this one is too. Clearly there seem to be people in this thread that find something worthwhile in it.

edited 23rd Feb '13 3:21:03 PM by Catbert

This isn't a character trope; it's an attribute given to certain antiheroes/villains, mostly.