Ambiguous Name: White Haired Pretty Boy

Kyle Murchison Booth.

edited 24th Feb '13 7:51:25 AM by Noaqiyeum

Names alone are of no help here or any proof that they fit the trope. Especially not someone so obscure. Considering he's the protagonist though and this is a villain trope, it's a fair bet he doesn't fit the trope.

edited 24th Feb '13 8:43:26 AM by shimaspawn

Point of order: not a villain trope. I thought that was already agreed-upon? Also, he's just the first character to come to mind for me, as I've been reading his series lately.

Anyhow:

• White or silvery hair, usually long. (Everyone in his family goes grey by 25. It's revealed that there's a family curse tied to it, but the white hair came first.)
• Shady morality. (He's a museum researcher with a personal interest in tomes of eldritch lore and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of occult literature. He drew on this once in college to help a friend with a single act of necromancy that went horribly right, which has left him as an unwilling Magnetic Medium with recurring temptations to try to put his knowledge to use again.)
• Quiet, aloof, detached. (One of his defining character traits, to the point that when he abruptly stopped he recognised it as a sign that he was under the sway of supernatural forces.)
• Otherworldly, unnatural. (See before.)
• Sinister, creepy. (Again, see before.)
• Will likely struggle with a Heel–Face Turn / Face–Heel Turn or the Moral Event Horizon (Also see before.)
• Mentally dysfunctional. (Insomniac, moody, depressive, incapable of prolonged social interactions, disconcerted by people trying to befriend him, prone to fits of anxiety.)

Under the current description, it's villains and antiheroes only.

He doesn't sound like a pretty boy and mentally dysfunctional is not really what the trope is going for so much as potentially axe crazy.

Yeah, he doesn't sound at all like what this trope is trying to describe. This is what I mean about people picking out words from a definition and shoehorning things in completely against the intention.

I'm not trying to shoehorn; I was proceeding directly from Lu's list of characteristics on the previous page, excepting only Bishonen (since it's a work of literature and the details of his appearance are consequently up to the reader's imagination) and 'if evil, sadistic/vicious/axe-crazy' (since (a) not evil and (b) it's only really come up once in the thread so far).

So... if that's not what you're looking for, I guess I just don't get that from the description.

He's an adult male, so why would he look like a pretty teenaged male? Also, his mental problems seem to be pretty tame normal things and not the crazy viciousness the trope is going for.

Anyway, using the word bishonen in the title is fine with me.

...which just leads to the question: why is the trope going for crazy viciousness? It hasn't really been discussed in this thread, and it doesn't seem to be borne out by the examples.

(Since when is every bishonen a teenager? o_O )

Bishonen means 'pretty boy/teen.' It's used somewhat more widely than that, but it's definitely still limited to young, pretty guys. Sephiroth, Griffith, Mao, Enishi (I think), Bakura, Marik, Kuja and Accelerator are all violent, sadistic or crazy. Not just kind of poorly adjusted. I guess Mao and Accelerator also have some social issues, but those aren't the point of the trope.

edited 24th Feb '13 10:14:47 AM by Arha

Sinister Silver Hair and Sinister White Hair both lose the aspect of being young. The good thing about the current name is that it has 'white hair' next to 'boy' to be able to tell that he's not old. The only way to make it clear that he's not old it to call it Sinister White Haired Pretty Boy.

Hmm. Okay, but there also seem to be plenty of examples that have been discussed that do not include that element. Maybe this would end up being another subtrope of Fountain of Expies?

I guess this is just reinforcing for me that even if we do clean up this page we're still going to need at least one new page or more for the symbolic use of white hair (Otherworldly White Hair for sure, and Sinister White Hair, Shy White Haired Pretty Boy, White Hair Of Unholy Power, and I guess White Hair Of Psychosis have been mentioned), and it may very well turn out that what seems to be a distinct trope right now just turns out to be a confluence of these other forms of symbolism.

(And, just to be pedantic: white hair before 25 is quite sufficiently young enough to be bishie, to my mind. :P )

...that's a good point that will need to be taken into consideration.

edited 24th Feb '13 10:32:18 AM by Noaqiyeum

Do we need to keep this distinct from White-Haired Pretty Girl?

Depends. There are some aspects of White-Haired Pretty Boy that allegedly do not cross sexes, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of argument against White-Haired Pretty Girl being broadened to include both male and female examples.

The girl one needs to go away and be made into a general supertrope about white hair = magic/ethereal/otherwordly. As it stands now, I'm not convinced it's a trope and not an arbitrary assortment of characteristics. At least the male one is a stock character related to Evil Albino.

The Girl one was supposed to be a western counterpart to the Boy one.

I don't think the girl one is a trope. It should be merged into something else.

The girl one is gender neutral and is much broader. It isn't villain or antihero only. It does require the character not be old enough to be naturally white or grey haired, but it doesn't need to be too young. Actual abilities can range all over the place, but they tend towards the mystical or psychic ability. They're special and a little otherworldly. This would be the trope the western example given earlier would fit into.

The boy one really both almost always male, and very much a villain/antihero thing. It's not a fountain of Expys because it's not just one character ported everywhere. But it is a very specific set of appearance traits combined with personality. Typical age here is late childhood to early twenties. The personality is cold, but not just I'm not good with people. It's a sociopathic cold. They're not aloof because they're shy. They're aloof because they have no empathy, no compassion, to care what happens to others.

edited 24th Feb '13 11:03:04 AM by shimaspawn

Yes, and the examples that have been discussed that do not have that element belong in the 'girl' trope. They don't have the personality from the other one.

Not if these are all supposed to be examples.

Oh? Which one of those is not a sociopath lacking empathy?

It fits all the examples that I know on that list.

Half of them do not sound like they are aloof.

Ah, you're not familiar with the characters are you? There's a uniting thread of arrogant aloofness in them if you do know them. I admit those descriptions are a bit lacking.