Needs Help: Spoiled Sweet

Agreed there, if they are not pretty then it is a plot point that they are normal, ugly, Gonk etc and that is a whole other trope.

edited 5th Oct '14 9:50:16 AM by Memers

Well, it's just that Alpha Bitches and similar characters have their good looks emphasised.

That trope does care about looks. This one its rare to have them even mentioned.

Bumping.

What should we do next? A crowner?

We don't have anything to vote on. What we need here is clean up. I'll take a crack at it.

edited 14th Oct '14 4:03:41 PM by shimaspawn

OK then. How about the Always Female thing? Remove it from the index?

No. I had to delete dozens of male examples because none of them fit the trope. People keep listing men, but not one of them fits the trope. Keeping it always female will probably help with trope decay.

Now we should organize the clean-up of wicks. It has 1 318 links. Hard work is ahead of us. So far I've deleted about two examples and adjusted one. I hope I'll have some time over the weekend, but it's not work for one person.

How about this for the Laconic.Spoiled Sweet? Rich, sheltered, naive, optimistic and genuinely nice to everyone.

I've done A. That laconic looks good.

I've been working on the clean-up a bit, and I think I've come across the first good male example. For your consideration:

• Spoiled Sweet: Akeem in Coming to America has definitely lead a pampered and privileged life, but he's got a good, kind heart and actually adjusts quite well to the life on a minimum-wage. He doesn't only adjust to it. From his expression and behavior it's clear that getting his hands dirty - both literally and figuratively - is positively liberating to him, since back home in Zamunda he wasn't even allowed to tie his shoelaces or use the bathroom by himself.

I figured this thread is star-worthy (not for "fnal" action, though). Can't speak of ^.

He has the naivety but lacks the nice to everyone. He's more of he sheltered noble. He's not a complete dick, but he he walks over people a lot and he not nice to those he sees as lower in station. Yes, he has reason to be upset with their babying him, but he's still kind of an asshole to the people working for him.

He mellows when he's working minimum wage, and actually gets to know people, but he's never spoiled and sweet at the same time. It's more that he's spoiled and then sweet.

That's why he's a terrible example. He's not sweet despite being spoiled. He becomes sweet when he stops being spoiled.

edited 24th Oct '14 2:02:08 PM by shimaspawn

Are we missing a trope here? All the examples seem to cover The Decent Sheltered Noble / rich type. It's connected to type 2 The Ojou and Princely Young Man and such.

I don't think the decent needs to be in there because a lot of these characters aren't decent until they see more of the world. I think The Sheltered Noble would be a good trope for those who's noble birth or money keeps them from seeing outside their lives. Marie Antoinette fits that trope and I don't think decent is the right word for her.

But I think the argument is that if they're "not decent until they see more of the world," then they aren't this trope.

edited 25th Oct '14 3:18:58 PM by Leaper

Oh, they're certainly not Spoiled Sweet if they aren't decent until they've seen the world. That's why Coming To America isn't an example.

But we're talking about splitting off The Sheltered Noble which is what I'm arguing doesn't have to be decent. They just need to be sheltered from the real world.

Ah, I see; I lost track of which trope was being discussed.

So would Fred from Big Hero 6 and Felix from Wreck-It Ralph still be disqualified on the basis of being male...? Because both of those characters display naive behavior and are likeable. Or was Felix just taken out because the "spoiled" part comes in the form of being the Hero of his game, and not because he's necessarily "rich"?

(I'm asking because this trope was listed under Fred's character tropes, and I came to add him on the trope page.)

edited 11th Nov '14 9:52:03 PM by xPixelxDustx

Felix isn't really Spoiled Sweet. He's nice to people who are his class, but generally an ass to Ralph at least initially. He's not a complete jerk, but that's not the trope. Yes, he gets nicer once he sees more of the world, but he's sweetened by experience, not sweet before it. A common trend with men who get shoehorned in.

I haven't seen Big Hero 6 yet so I can't speak on it.

How is he a "jerk"? He is polite to Ralph (minus that one scene where he snaps at him in the third act). Felix's issue is that he's too much of a doormat around the Nicelanders; he's TOO nice, as demonstrated at the anniversary party scene. This is a glaring flaw of his (as he is meant to be a deconstruction of the Designated Hero), yes, but not typical "jerkass" behavior. idk, Alternate Character Interpretation?

As for Fred, he pretty much matches the criteria. He's very friendly, shows interest in supporting the protagonist emotionally, claims to be a "major science enthusiast" and insists that his friends work on zany projects (to which they reply that those are "not science"), along with other silly, naive mannerisms, and is revealed to belong to a wealthy family. I'd say he most definitely qualifies.

He's polite to Ralph, yes, but polite isn't the same as nice. He's polite as long as Ralph keeps to his place and doesn't bother the people better than him. That's not this trope.

Once again, I haven't seen the film. I can't comment.

A big part of the trope though is reaching out and actually being friendly to those lower in class.

That said on the Always Female tropes, sometimes male children as slotted into them because sadly female and child are often interchangeable in fiction.

edited 12th Nov '14 6:02:50 AM by shimaspawn

Why can't we separate the two tropes between male and female (like with stepford smiler) or make a new trope for the male version, saying spoiled sweet male characters can exist.

No one has come up with more than one maybe example and a bunch of shoehorning. Yes, there are rich men who aren't assholes, but it's rare that they're treated like pampered pets and are still sweet as a button to EVERYONE around them rich and poor, young and old alike. They're normally at most nice to their friends, and they don't tend to get the same pampered spoiling that female characters get.

Maybe we can list of why a male spoiled sweet is different from a female one.

There's not a consistent trope for guys though. Just some rich guys have friends who aren't rich. There's no consistent male archetype there. The portrayals of rich guys who aren't jerks all the time are all over the map. We can't force tropes where none exist or we just end up with messes. The men who fail the female trope don't do it in any single consistent way.