Poor Image: Beard Of Sorrow

This image has been changed once, and then back again, as archived here:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1314900978000552300

As the post says, even the reverted image is far from perfect. It features 3 characters that have nothing to do with (distract from) the subject of the article, and the caption has hardly anything to do with it either (and is a bit tacky).

The topic is very succint, so should be the image. It should be an image of a sorrowful looking man with a beard, preferably from some well-known work, so that many people actually know the sorrow that brought about the beard.

Suggestion: Bruce Wayne at the beginning of the The Dark Knight Rises.

The caption could be something clever about how awful that beard would have matched his suit. Maybe someone that actually speaks English as a first language would be better suited to handle that. I've included a placeholder.

edited 29th Jan '15 6:55:16 PM by GewoonDaan

Opening.

I'm not sure the suggestion is better than the current. Bruce doesn't look particularly sorrowful in that image, and the blue flash across his face is very distracting.

And the current does show a sad looking guy with beard, so I don't see what the problem is.

He is tucked away in his shoulders, half turned away from whatever he is glaring that. Being primed by the title, I don't think anyone would be confused about whether he is sorrowful.

The webcomic is no way suggests that the beard is one of sorrow. In fact, it looks groomed. (And it's actually hardly an example in the source). It could be just a man with a beard that happens to be sad. That's why I plead for an image that resonates a bit more.

Any good crop of one of these would be better as well (clickbait garbage warning) Although for some of those, maybe an even better pic could be found, most notably Breaking Bad and Heroes

If you do want to keep using the non-example from a defunct webcomic for no reason that i can think of, I sugges cropping out the unnecessary elements..

edited 31st Jan '15 11:15:16 AM by GewoonDaan

The suggestion is not better than the current at all. It looks very casual.

The current isn't good, but the suggestion is worse.

• It's Just A Face And A Caption — I had no idea it was suppose to be Batman, or that it as supposedly a Beard of Sorrow until I read the caption.
• If the beard in the current is "too groomed", so is the Batman one — it's even more groomed, in fact.
• The fact that the current is from a defunct webcomic is irrelevant. There Is No Such Thing As Notability applies here, too.

edited 30th Jan '15 5:39:49 AM by Madrugada

The beard looks casual, or the character? If you're talking about the beard, then yeah, a Beard of Sorrow is going to look casual most of the time. At least it's better than the groomed-looking beard in the current image, because that makes it a non-example (as seen in the source I gave). I don't see why we would use a non-example to examplify the trope, when there are countless actual examples. Surely it shouldn't be too hard to find one that we can agree on looks sorrowful that does not have all kinds of distracting elements that try to convey a different message than the actual trope does?

Some more suggestions:

edited 30th Jan '15 6:15:54 AM by GewoonDaan

This almost requires a comparison between clean-shaven and bearded, with their moods being clear in the pics.

agreed. I don't really have a suggestion though.

This◊ might work as the "after" pic, but I'm having a hard time looking for a suitable "before" pic for comparison.

That one works on its own, for me.

• The beard is not neatly trimmed and shaped; it's shaggy and unkempt.
• there are other contextual clues (the pills, his posture, the discarded cape, the cobwebs) that he's deeply depressed and that the beard probably isn't a fashion choice, but simply a result of him not caring enough to shave.

edited 30th Jan '15 8:10:17 PM by Madrugada

10 looks really nice even without a "before" shot. (And, of course, it doesn't hurt that so many people probably know what Batman normally looks like.)

10 is great, provided all those details look good at wiki size.

With some close cropping it will work on the wiki, I think.

I cropped off the blank spaces on the image's sides. Here's how it looks at wiki size:

Still excellent.

I don't get you guys. It's a very simple trope, all it needs is a close-up picture of a sorrwoful-looking man with unkempt facial hair. IMO, the more other stuff there is in the image, the worse the image is. The image doesn't need forensic proof that it is indeed a Beard of Sorrow. The fact that it is the picture to the trope Beard of Sorrow is proof of that.

That being said, I think 10/15 is a huge improvement over what we have currently.

edited 31st Jan '15 5:01:49 AM by GewoonDaan

Weeelll, considering how "unkempt facial hair" is apparently commonplace in my campus, I think it does need a couple more indicators than just showing a guy's face. Especially since expressions tend to look very subtle in live-action media, and it's harder to see whether someone is actually looking sorrowful or if it's the character's default expression (or maybe I'm just very clueless in dechipering people's mood).

edited 31st Jan '15 7:22:53 AM by Adept

That would be a good point if you weren't talking about a page that is titled 'Beard of Sorrow', that kinda removes all doubt about the nature of the beard.

Ah, but we want the image to illustrate the trope, not the trope to illustrate the image. It wouldn't be the right thing to just put up a picture of a bearded man without context and the reader has to just assume it's a Beard of Sorrow.

I don't see how what I'm saying amounts to 'the trope illustrating the image'. On the contrary, you guys want not only the trope, but the entire context and backstory of the trope in the image, like it's not just an illustration of the trope. The illustration should support the text, it doesn't need to be self-sufficient. The more needless details you bring in there, the less clear it is.

If you write an article about apples, you add a picture of the fruit, not of the tree (including the fertilization and the tools used to tend to the tree)

edited 31st Jan '15 11:13:19 AM by GewoonDaan

In this case, the context is a vital part of the trope. It's not just "a guy with a beard who is unhappy at the moment."

for 15

15 is good.

The pic on a trope page is, ideally, supposed to convey the trope without any outside information, or as little as possible.

edited 31st Jan '15 5:16:44 PM by Willbyr

15.