Tropes where people act uncharacteristically

What's the difference of Not Himself and Out-of-Character Moment?

Laconic for Not Himself: A character isn't acting like their normal personality.

Laconic for Out-of-Character Moment: A character momentarily doesn't act in accordance with her/his personality.

Hmmm.. Sounds like they're both the same, except one is only for a moment or a scene, and the other is more long-term.

What I've read of these two tropes is that Out-of-Character Moment is more like trivia and Not Himself is a plot or episodic narrative trope. I haven't checked the examples yet, but the descriptions give me that impression, what with Out-of-Character Moment focusing so much on the writer and the fact that it's one scene whereas Not Himself is about the type of plot.

This may need a TRS thread for a lumping or fixing, but I'd rather hear what other's understandings of these tropes are before heading down that terrifying path.

edited 5th Feb '17 4:17:10 PM by WaterBlap

Not Himself is when a character acts differently than they usually do as a clue that something isn't quite right.

Out-of-Character Moment is when a character acts out of character for the purpose of moving the plot forward (or stop it from concluding).

So, same kind of action, but with different narrative purposes. Neither is trivia.

edited 5th Feb '17 5:52:38 PM by AnotherDuck

I'd like to step in and ask what's the difference between Out-of-Character Moment and O.O.C. Is Serious Business. When to use each would be good to know.

edited 6th Feb '17 1:56:45 PM by Gosicrystal

Out-of-Character Moment is any moment when a character does something that is inconsistent with their greater characterization for any reason. O.O.C. Is Serious Business is specifically for such cases when the inconsistency is used deliberately to draw attention to the fact that a plot point is unusually significant, typically to other characters as much as the audience.

edited 6th Feb '17 2:08:52 PM by PPPSSC

O.O.C. Is Serious Business isn't necessarily actually ouf of character, but rather unusual, or it's something that just never has come up before that provokes a non-standard reaction. Or perhaps it's better to describe it as something other characters considers to be OOC, rather than the audience.

edited 6th Feb '17 2:29:34 PM by AnotherDuck

This means O.O.C. Is Serious Business and Not Himself are used really similarly...

Not really. Not Himself usually means that something is wrong with the character. For example, Bob is acting oddly affectionate with Alice because he's actually Charlie and has stolen Bob's body, or maybe he's under the effects of an alien mind control device, or maybe he's just drunk.

On the other hand, O.O.C. Is Serious Business is usually used to show that something is wrong with the situation. For example, if the usually mild-mannered Dawn is shown yelling at Ethan, the audience and the other characters should immediately realize that Ethan has done something very wrong. Or maybe Frank, a known teetotaler, is downing shots of whiskey after the most recent battle. That is probably a sign that said battle was particularly intense and hard on the nerves.

Basically, these are all tropes that on the surface and in how they appear are more or less the same (character acts differently from usual), but the purpose or message to the audience differs. A writing crutch, saying something about the character, or saying something about the situation.

• Out-of-Character Moment: Character acts in a way he normally wouldn't to advance the plot. Basically "Out Of Character Ball." There likely isn't an In-Universe explanation.
• Not Himself: Character is behaving weirdly as a sign that something is wrong, either he actually isn't himself or is affected in some way by an outside force.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Character behaves differently in order to make it clear to the other characters (and the audience) that the stakes are high, higher than his desire to act like their normal selves, at least.

The laconics are garbage, and they are all under the umbrella of "Character behaves out of character" but much to my surprise and impressment they really are distinct. If they get used interchangeably, that's the fault of the editor.

edited 7th Feb '17 12:19:56 PM by Larkmarn

Don't forget Out-of-Character Alert.

Worked on the laconics a bit...

Okay, this is weird. The first part of Out-of-Character Alert is a straight up duplicate of Not Himself. Yet every instance of it I've seen is kind of the opposite, where a character intentionally acts out of character to warn his allies when he otherwise can't overtly do so.

So why is that first section there?

Maybe it's too vague on the "alert" part?

The second definition you mentioned also sounds like O.O.C. Is Serious Business, invoked.

Mad, are these differences mentioned on the Subtle Trope Distinctions page or whatever it's called?

edited 7th Feb '17 1:59:14 PM by Karxrida

No, there's nothing in the Canonical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions or the Laconical List of Subtle Trope Distinctions.

I haven't checked those pages yet. Fixing/adding there is somewhat more time-consuming than bodging together a concise laconic. And right now, I'm not entirely sure of the difference between OOC Alert and Not Himself

Looking at the descriptions as they are now, I would guess that at one point they may have been duplicates, but there's been a shift for Out-of-Character Alert to become "character pretending to be Not Himself to get the other characters to investigate". I'll dig around the history of the site for more concrete evidence; this may require a TRS thread.