But in literary works, there's often not a clear distinction between what we're "shown" and what a character in the story is told, especially when a framing device is used.
The distinction is who it's relevant to. If it's just a character not in the relationship being told or reflecting upon it, having it inform his own mindset, it doesn't count. If the character in the relationship, and the relationship itself, is relevant in his own right, rather than just as a means to inform the backstory or flesh out another character, then it becomes relevant. Does that make sense?
I think a better solution would just be to say that we have to be shown enough of the marriage to conclude that it's reliably happy. Any two people can get along okay for a few minutes at a time; to qualify for the trope, we should be told or shown that this happiness is the normal state of affairs for them.
Making a distinction between "relevant" characters and "irrelevant" ones is just begging for loads and loads of quibbling over who qualifies as relevant.
edited 7th Jul '15 7:41:58 PM by RavenWilder
I'm doing a really poor job of explaining this. We're trying to avoid situations where the happily married couple is just sort of there, we don't actually get to see them, they're just part of the backstory. We want to see it actually portrayed as part of the story itself. Does that make sense?
...I'm really trying to explain a viewpoint I think was explained better on previous pages...
But that disincion is stupid.
While I don't think it has any happy marriages in it, what would you do with something like Interview with the Vampire, where the only characters we're "shown" are Louis and the interviewer, and all other character are part of the backstory Louis is relating to the interviewer?
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
You have "back story" and "flashback" confused. Characters like Louise's father are in his backstory. Characters like his mother are shown in flashbacks.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
I say that the distinction between "back story" and "flashback" is insignificant. The only difference is whether or not the past event is shown on-screen or not. If Bob talks about his happilly married parents for half an hour, is that different from him saying "my parents were happily married" and then going on a full episode flashback? No, it's not. If you want to go the Unreliable Narrator route, then because it is his flashback, it's still unreliable.
I don't like zero context examples either but insisting on "relevance" is begging for quibbiling like Raven Wilder said. If we can "conclude that it's reliably happy" it doesn't matter how "relevant" it is to the story.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Unless the debate is settled, I think we need a crowner to decide if post 33 & 37
is the way we want to go.
Locking as part of New Years Purge
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
It could be a Discussed Trope, but not an example on its own.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.