Needs Help: Hidden Heart Of Gold

An ATT thread pointed out that Jerkass Façade and Hidden Heart of Gold are very similar tropes. Both of them have to do with someone hiding their inner heart of gold by pretending that they're actually a jerk.

As far as we can tell, the differences between the tropes are:

However, the description for Jerkass Facade doesn't necessarily support this distinction, as this quote from the page:

...Seems to be describing Hidden Heart of Gold instead.

So, at the very least, we should probably refine the descriptions of these two tropes to make it more clear what the distinction is. Alternatively, these tropes are similar enough that I wouldn't be against merging them. Tropes Are Flexible after all.

Well, I'll weigh in.

Most of what I have to say was already quoted in the opening post, but I should admit I really am just sort of making up my own interpretation of the tropes there.

Honestly, I don't have a really strong opinion on these tropes one way or the other. I think there's enough distinction that keeping them both would be fine, but if people want to merge I'd be fine with that too.

I've always seen the difference as being a Jerkass Façade is an act — the person isn't "naturally" a jerk, they're deliberately acting that way for some reason — while Hidden Heart of Gold is the person really is legitimately a jerk for the most part, but they're fundamentally a decent person when it really comes down to it.

So how is Hidden Heart of Gold different from Jerk with a Heart of Gold?

A normal Jerk with a Heart of Gold doesn't really hide it. They act gruff, but everyone knows they have a softer side. Hidden Heart of Gold seems to have been named after this—only one or a few other people know the character isn't just a Jerkass.

That's my understanding of the differences between the three tropes, but I had to really think about it to come up with my original post in ATT, which I'll copy here for the sake of keeping everything together. Like wrm5, this is only my interpretation of the three tropes:

But, as I've mentioned, I had to really think about this to figure out the differences. I think the trope descriptions do effectively say this, but they need to be much clearer. They also need to be much clearer on how they relate and differ to each other; hey are all related, they are all very similar, but there do seem to be legitimate differences - it just depends on whether the differences are large enough to justify them being separate tropes, which I think is the point of Unknownlight's concern (feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood that point).

There's also scope for confusion between Jerkass Façade and Hidden Heart of Gold in attempting to identify which characters are genuinely jerks, or faking it so well (and for some characters, for so long) that the audience is confused as to whether they're fake jerks or genuine jerks (in other words, some characters will blur the line between the two tropes and I can see fans arguing about which trope they'd therefore fall into).

edited 6th Mar '16 9:34:44 AM by Wyldchyld

I agree with pretty much everything in . We probably need to make some edits to all three trope descriptions to make the differences between them more clear.

How do the current usage in examples comport to ?

Well, I know in at least one case, there is a character that is currently troped under all three (Ryuken Ishida, Bleach). He's mostly likely to be Jerkass Façade, but would probably be an example of how blurry the line becomes between Jerkass Façade and Hidden Heart of Gold. I'm sure he's not the only example of characters appearing on all the trope pages, but I'll definitely have to sit down and check.

I'm happy to do a wick check, but I've never done one before. Do I just randomly select examples from the two tropes and list a summary on how those examples are being used (ie, misuse, correct, zero context, etc.)?

edited 9th Mar '16 4:37:59 PM by Wyldchyld

I've never done one either, so I tried looking it up, and it turns out we have an entire page for it.

That's excellent. Thanks for that link. I've started doing a wick check now. I'll check all three tropes just for completeness sake, but I'm starting with Hidden Heart of Gold and following with Jerkass Façade, as they're the two being discussed most, and they coincidentally have the smallest number of wicks, so I can get it done faster.

edited 10th Mar '16 2:50:14 PM by Wyldchyld

I started with Hidden Heart of Gold, purely because I was short on time and it had the least amount of wicks. I've followed the Administrivia page on how to do a wick, so we have the following (I do hope this is right, apologies if I've done this wrong):

811 articles, with 835 in-bounds. Square-rooting came to 28.5, so I've searched 50 wicks in a randomly generated order. I've found the following:

• Correct Use: 4 examples (1 of which is the HHOG laconic - which could use rewriting, as it makes no mention of the jerkass part of the trope).
• Zero Context Examples: 41 examples (a couple are very wordy but ultimately don't really explain how the trope is being used)
  • 13 of these are conflated with Jerkass Façade and/or Jerk with a Heart of Gold. These are all usually Zero Context Examples in their own right. It's therefore hard to tell which trope is correct, if any of them are.
  • Given the context in which potholing occurs (there's a lot of potholing), at least 15 of these ZCEs could be misuse.
• Misuse: 6 examples that are independent of the 15 I've listed under ZCEs. (These are either sinkholes or there are contradictions elsewhere on the same page regarding whether the character is genuinely a jerkass, or whether the gold is hidden or on display - in other words, there's potential trope confusion here between the three tropes).
  • 2 are openly conflated with Jerkass Façade and/or Jerk with a Heart of Gold tropes.
• Trope Confusion: In total, from the above that I checked, 15 of these are openly using two or more jerk or gold tropes alongside the Hidden Heart of Gold trope, despite the contradiction, and in the following way:
  • Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold (Zero Context Example potholing within the MLWAHOG entry and possible Examples Are Not Arguable issue).
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold (One entry is ZCE, and one entry has a detailed example that suggests character development from a jerk to JWAHG. This page has Hidden Heart of Gold potholed in the description text, but the later JWAHOG entry suggests this is wrong).
  • Jerkass Façade (Three ZCEs. The trend with this one is to suggest someone who is somehow "rough" or "gruff" having a soft spot underneath - no indication of whether they're genuinely jerks or trying to hide the gold).
  • Jerkass (Two ZCEs, one Misuse: The ZCEs tend to not describe if someone is genuinely a jerk or just has a rough persona. One does suggest there's character development from jerkass to Hidden Heart of Gold, but doesn't explain any further).
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Jerkass Façade (Two cases, where the issue seems to be potholing and zero context, with contradictions over whether there's genuine jerkassery or hidden/visible gold. As a result, both tropes end up on the page along with Hidden Heart of Gold - usually all potholed or badly worded examples).
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Jerkass (3 cases: Potholing and zero context, with all three tropes listed on the page, makes it hard to know if the characters are genuinely jerks or genuinely hiding the gold)
  • Jerkass Façade and Jerkass: (no examples of these crop up)
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Jerkass Façade and Jerkass (One page lists all three of these tropes plus Hidden Heart of Gold for a mess of contradiction, potholing and zero context. I get the impression the character is actually supposed to be Jerkass Façade, but it's hard to be certain).

Anyway, my summary is:

• Hidden Heart of Gold is mostly being used in a potholing way, and suffers a lot of Zero Context Examples (partly because of the potholing).
• Where an explanation is attempted, either the jerkassery isn't explored well enough or the gold isn't explored well enough (sometimes both).
• It's easy to spot where people are confused over trope meanings, however, because that's where you'll get multiple jerk and gold tropes on the same page, often with all of them being zero context or poorly worded. If they do have context or better wording, they seem to miss whether the gold is hidden or the jerkassery is genuine or fake and so contradict each other's entries.

edited 10th Mar '16 5:44:12 PM by Wyldchyld

Apologies for the delay, I didn't have time to do this.

Jerkass Façade wick check: 1652 articles, 1205 in-bounds (square root came to 40.6, so I checked 50 wicks - this ended up being 52 because two wicks had two different characters troped on the same page, so checked both).

• Correct Use: 4 examples
• Zero Context Examples: 22 examples (a couple were extremely wordy ZCE)
• Misuse: 22 examples
  • 2 troper speculation (basically, they're Alternative Character Interpretation, masquerading as trope entries)
  • 10 examples about characters hiding personality traits that have nothing to do with "gold" (forced to fight since childhood, or trying to be aloof, or hiding sadness/guilt/self-loathing/fragile egos, cultural beliefs that showing weakness is wrong, etc)
  • 10 sinkholes:
    • 5 were linked to a character doing something openly nice
    • 2 were about facades that had nothing to do with hiding "gold" (one was really a Stepford Smiler example)
    • 1 showed severe trope confusion, linking to Jerkass, Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Jerkass Façade in the same entry.
    • 2 misuse (sinkholing a character who is "vain" and sinkholing a character who is in "denial").
• Lack of clarity so not sure if correct or misuse: 4 examples (all muddle multiple tropes, except one which is on the Playing With page of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and that's just ZCE)

To show how the trope seems to be used, I've listed below the examples in the above wick check, where Jerkass Façade appears with other Jerkass-based tropes:

• Trope Confusion:
  • Mixed with Jerkass alone
    • this character seems to be a genuine jerk, should probably be a Hidden Heart of Gold example, but it's hard to be sure if there's any hidden gold.
    • A villain protagonist who cares for a couple of people who are close to him. He sounds like he should be Even Evil Has Standards or Even Evil Has Loved Ones, not Jerkass Façade
    • Character cares for classmates but has anger issues. No idea if the caring is hidden, but anger issues does clarify any Jerkass trope.
  • Mixed with Jerk with a Heart of Gold alone
    • 2 ZCE on both Jerkass Façade and JWAHOG
    • Hiding loneliness, no gold mentioned, definitely shouldn't be Jerkass Façade, probably shouldn't be JWAHOG either
    • The character is described as scared of himself, and is also listed as Took a Level in Kindness. Seems to be Jerkass Façade misuse, the jerk is genuine, and there's a question mark as to whether what he's hiding is "gold" enough for JWAHOG.
  • Mixed with Hidden Heart of Gold alone (the character is described as having No Social Skills, so it's probably a misuse of both Jerkass Façade and Hidden Heart of Gold).
  • Mixed with Jerkass and TookALevelInJerkass (the character appears to be a genuine jerk, with no hidden gold, meaning these two tropes are probably correct with Jerkass Façade as the misuse)
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Jerkass, Took a Level in Jerkass (the character seems to be a genuine jerk, not sure if there's any hidden gold, looks like Jerkass Façade is the misuse here)
  • Hidden Heart of Gold (character described as No Social Skills, Papa Wolf and openly effusive towards people they care about in life-or-death situation, therefore seems to be Hidden Heart of Gold misuse as well as Jerkass Façade misuse).
  • Jerkass Has a Point, Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Hidden Heart of Gold: the character apparently has No Social Skills, so it looks like Jerkass Façade probably doesn't apply, and Jerk with a Heart of Gold may not apply, too if the gold isn't hidden
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold (the character is scared of himself, so JWAHOG is probably more correct than Jerkass Façade)
  • Jerkass, Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
    • The character is apparently a Knight in Sour Armour, genuine jerk and with no hidden gold. Probably JWAHOG misuse as well as Jerkass Façade misuse
    • ZCE on all three tropes, hard to know which one's correct.
    • Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Knight in Sour Armour (the character is probably a jerk judging by all the tropes listed)
    • Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Jerkass, French Jerk (the character appears to be a genuine jerk, he's hiding a fragile ego, which is not hiding "gold". Both Jerkass Façade and Jerk with a Heart of Gold are being misused.

In short, the misuse of Jerkass Façade seems focussed on sinkholing and whenever a character is hiding a side to their personality that makes them seem vulnerable in some way, although this is rarely gold, and is often associated with genuine jerks.

edited 23rd Mar '16 11:16:48 AM by Wyldchyld

Jeez. And I wonder just how many of those ZCEs are also on Jerk with a Heart of Gold.

My gut feeling is that, while Jerkass Façade and Hidden Heart of Gold are slightly different tropes, they're also so similar to each other that they'll invite inevitable misuse. Let's say these tropes were simplified to:

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Someone who generally acts like a jerk, but deep down is a good person.

Jerkass Façade: A good person who's pretending to be a jerk for some specific purpose.

That would probably help clear up confusion. Current Hidden Heart of Gold examples can fit in either depending on the context, as per Tropes Are Flexible.

What are other people's thoughts?

Well, the Hidden Heart of Gold entries that cropped up on my Jerkass Façade check were not overlaps with my previous Hidden Heart of Gold wick check, so, they're actually new examples of Hidden Heart of Gold (possible) misuse.

It could end up being the same for Jerk with a Heart of Gold as well.

On the subject of simplifying the trope descriptions, they probably could use simplifying. I think my summaries above are pretty to the point as well. I did have a bit of trouble when reading the trope descriptions. They do mask the trope a bit.

It might help, but given the sinkholes I was seeing, I think there's also an aspect of lazy troping going on as well. Even as currently written, Jerkass Façade shouldn't be sinkholed to someone who is openly displaying positive personality traits.

edited 23rd Mar '16 11:23:06 AM by Wyldchyld

By the way, thank you for all this work. I forgot to mention that in my previous post.

No, I'm actually thinking that a lot of the current examples of Hidden Heart of Gold would be new examples of Jerk with a Heart of Gold. The fact that the Jerk wants to hide his Heart of Gold would just be a small variant of the normal trope. Again, Tropes Are Flexible.

Jerkass Façade would be good people acting like a jerk for a specific purpose.

edited 23rd Mar '16 11:24:50 AM by Unknownlight

In terms of definitions, Jerkass Façade, I think, is clear enough— someone who actively cultivates a Jerkass image for some agenda; it might be as simple as reputation, or it might run much deeper. Often times it's simply to distance them emotionally from others because they were betrayed before, and seek to avoid that pain. It's not in their nature to be a Jerkass, but they have something to gain from it.

As for Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Hidden Heart of Gold, both cases include characters who genuinely have an obnoxious, insensitive, spiteful, and/or cruel streak, but the former will openly demonstrate affection or compassion or other redeeming qualities, while the latter will attempt to cover it up, essentially being a middle ground between the two.

The biggest problem, I think, is determining whether a character is a genuine Jerkass or is just obfuscating it. This is especially ambiguous in cases where a character has been traumatized by loss or betrayal; are they warped by cynicism, or simply utilizing psychological defense mechanisms to avoid the pain?

Personally, I think that Hidden Heart of Gold should be merged— but into which trope is up in the air. If it's merged with Jerkass Façade, then we have the distinct tropes of "concealing kindness behind Jerkass demeanor (possibly genuine, possibly obfuscated)" and "part genuine Jerkass, part genuine Nice Guy." If it's merged with Jerk with a Heart of Gold, then we have the distinct tropes of "concealing kindness behind an obfuscated Jerkass demeanor" and " "part genuine Jerkass, part genuine Nice Guy (may or may not conceal the latter)."

Hidden Heart of Gold and Jerkass Façade being merged would make more sense to me, solely because it's sometimes impossible to know beyond reasonable doubt whether the character's 'jerkass facade' is just a facade or genuine jerkassery - the only certainty is that they're definitely hiding genuine compassion.

As it stands, whether or not a character ends up in one or the other trope can be down to audience interpretation, and if there's a dispute or uncertainty, the character often ends up being listed as an example of both tropes. The only way a character could be both tropes is if they overcame genuine jerkassery but decided to retain the facade of their old persona to hide their growing compassion, or if they were originally hiding their compassion behind fake jerkassery for so long, the fake mask sticks too well and crosses the line into true jerkassery.

Again, it's not common for a work to clarify the distinction to the audience, so it often ends up as viewer interpretation, and even if the work does make it clear, listing the character on two tropes would simply be an issue of stating the character developed in a certain direction.

If the two tropes were merged, retaining the Hidden Heart of Gold name and discarding the Jerkass Façade name would probably make more sense because the former name doesn't comment on whether or not the jerkassery is genuine or fake and just focusses on the primary difference to the Jerk with a Heart of Gold trope - which is that the gold is supposed to be hidden instead of obvious.

I can get behind that. Perhaps we should take a poll to ascertain a consensus?

A crowner is needed.

I feel like we can agree that the difference between Jerkass Façade and Hidden Heart of Gold would be splitting hairs, and be ambiguous due to audience interpretation. They both convey the sense of "outwardly Jerkass, closet Nice Guy", while Jerk with a Heart of Gold shows both aspects openly.

I suppose the crowner ought to be for which name to keep— Jerkass Façade or Hidden Heart of Gold, while merging the two.

If we're agreeing on merging JF and HHOG, then I guess HHOG should be the name for the merge. Both tropes are about hiding hearts of gold, but one does by acting like a jerk while the other by actually being a jerk. So for soft-splits for the merged trope we can keep that in mind.

I agree with merging Hidden Heart of Gold and Jerkass Façade, since they're the same thing, the difference solely being on whether the Jerkass personality is fake or genuine - often something the audience will never be told and therefore choose to interpret.

The naming issue...

Hidden Heart of Gold obviously pairs with Jerk with a Heart of Gold (where the nice personality is openly detectable rather than hidden).

Jerkass Façade does suffer from people interpreting a gruff or rough exterior as 'jerkass', but I think Jerk tropes generally do have that problem. A jerk can gruff or rough, but someone who is gruff or rough isn't necessarily a jerk. It's also ambiguous in name regarding whether or not the nice personality is hidden or can be exposed, and many characters who are Even Evil Has Loved Ones get put under Jerkass Façade solely because they happen to a soft spot for at least one person. The name also doesn't tell you what type of personality is being hidden - it could be a non-nice personality for all we know.

I lean towards Hidden Heart of Gold as the name, but Jerkass Façade does have the most page entries... both trope pages didn't have good quality entries on them, however. I agree with the need for a crowner to choose which name to keep, but don't we have to first agree whether or not the two tropes should be merged? Or does that not need a crowner?

edited 20th Aug '16 3:38:01 PM by Wyldchyld

^ crowner for merging/not those two tropes would be okay, although I'll vote "merge".

I guess we ask for a crowner to see if people want to merge Hidden Heart of Gold and Jerkass Façade then. How do we do crowners? I've voted in them before, but never been involved in setting one up.

I think the initial crowner would be for whether or not to merge them and, if merging is decided, there should be a crowner for which name to keep (Hidden Heart of Gold or Jerkass Façade). Is that about right?

edited 28th Aug '16 1:54:00 PM by Wyldchyld