Needs Help: Happily Married

What's the relationship between your first point and They Do?

I dont know if its PSOC, but since Rule of Drama is pretty much law a happily married couple inside the story is pretty trope worthy.

x4 Being introduced to a happily married couple nixes any Romance Arc because the couple is already confirmed as being together.

This is my feeling on the trope as well. While I can see this trope being PSOC in Real Life, this isn't PSOC in fiction by any stretch of the imagination.

People Sit On Chairs is"Tropes are conventions used in storytelling to convey some sort of information to the audience. People Sit On Chairs don't convey any meaning — they aren't storytelling conventions at all, they're just things that happen normally or incidentally during the storytelling. So if somebody is calling your YKTTW "Chairs" or "PSOC", this means they think your idea is about as meaningful as the discovery that various different shows portray people sitting on chairs: It doesn't matter how commonly it occurs, this is something that never carried any meaning to begin with, making it Not a Trope. " First, say that something is People Sit On Chairs in real life is misuse of the term. Second, as noted in the description, the important to People Sit On Chairs is not if something is common or not.

From what I can tell, it's the first step into bringing forth what I said. However, They Do only covers the end of the Romance Arc which led to the marriage. The marriage continuing happily is only one possible conclusion.

The marriage continuing happily is this trope.

There is a big difference between 'Happily Married' inside the plot and Married 'Happily Ever After' though.

Extending clock.

So I am all for defining this as 'Happily Married Plot' with the possibility of a sister trope 'Happily Married Ever After' if there is enough confirmed examples such as Flash Forward, Timeskip Finale or direct statements that such a thing happens and such.

edited 16th Mar '15 2:23:14 AM by Memers

How is this a plot trope though? It seems to be more of a relationship trope to me.

Happily Married is a relationship however the big difference between it and Happily Married Ever After is that the former is an element to the story not some post plot element. If being Happily Married isn't a plot element I don't know if it would really be the trope as you really gotta see it or else it's just 'Married'.

Take How I Met Your Mother up till s8, Lily and Marshal are Happily Married inside the plot, it's brought up as a plot point in so many episodes it's not even funny.

edited 16th Mar '15 9:03:40 AM by Memers

Maybe Healthy Stable Marriage would be a better name for this.

This is a married couple whose marriage is the stable point of all the chaos. There may be a coupe in Iraq, the FBI may be chasing a renowned forger, dragons may have eaten the president and are now roosting in the White House, but no matter what happens, these two characters have each other. They might fight occasionally, but in the end, they have each other's backs, and they often act as support and sounding boards for one another.

Things might not always be happy and perfect, but they are family and they deal with their problems like adults. In the end, they love each other, and they can get through anything together.

edited 16th Mar '15 8:48:58 PM by shimaspawn

I can get behind that name/definition.

That's what I've been calling Always Happily Married.

I have just skimmed through this discussion. I'd support some redefinition or even split.

My biggest pet peeve about this trope is that people keep listing people that are no longer together, mostly because one or both of the couple died. Say, Harry Potter's parents, usually with nice zero-context write-up like "they were this before the story starts". This would fall to someting like Past Memories Of Happy Life or Unatainable Ideal Of Happily Married or something like that.

I'm ok with examples from long runners that are posthumous. If a show runs for 8 seasons, and in the 7th, grampa died, but he and grandma had this relationship up until then, list it. If it is just something reminisced on, then it doesn't count. It needs to be shown, not just remembered.

^ well, that's missing the point of "posthumous examples"—- if something is actually shown, its not a posthumous example, even if they die at the end of the story.

This trope should surely be restricted to couples who are at least at times the focus of the story. If they are posthumous, that's a sister trope to Deceased Parents Are the Best. If they are minor characters, that's because any drama with them would distract from the main story. (So cut Yui's parents, who have about a minute of screentime.)

I think two other criteria should define the couples: they may have arguments, but never consider splitting up. (Being separated by outside factors still count.) And they are shown to be a source of mutual support; the relationship itself is part of the story, you cannot remove it without changing their characterisation.

I think that "focus of the story" is too restrictive. It certainly has to be relevant but "focus of the story" sounds like it can only apply to a pair of leads. For instance, if there's a Beta Couple whose characterization is in part their successful marriage, then that should definitely count.

We say 'Focus in story' as in the characterization happens in the timeframe and appears in the story itself. Not say 'they were happily married before the story and now they are a bitter divorced couple or one is a widow(er)' or 'they were married happily ever after the story'

There are key differences between those and happily married in the story.

edited 6th May '15 12:49:27 PM by Memers

Oh sure, it has to be IN the story; definitely. Otherwise it's just speculation. Before or after it is too fringe and likely some other trope.

What if there's a Tell Me About My Father situation, and the Honorary Uncle says that he was happily married. That would be part of the characterization. Do you say it would count?

My inclination is to say no if the happily married characters aren't actually characters in the story. I mean, whose "characterization" are we talking about?

The person in the story that one character is telling another. The characerization belongs to the Posthumous Character.

Definitely not, it's not within the timeframe of the story itself and the character in question doesn't actually appear. The characterization has to be relevant to the story.

Because it doesn't happen onscreen/onpage it's not relevant to the story? That's hair splitting.