An honest conversation about Chairs: What is a Trope and how do we judge them?

Okay, thanks.

Also note that Free-Range Children is, indeed, relative to the setting. In the setting for works like Little House on the Prairie, it was probably not unexpected for children to be outside of direct parental supervision for many hours at a time, in ways that would be unthinkable to a modern suburban or urban family. But the children going on unsupervised adventures was not the focus of the story, nor was the children solving adult problems on their own (unless there was a specific justification, such as illness or injury).

edited 27th Mar '17 9:40:57 AM by Fighteer

Can something be a trope if pretty much all the examples are ZCE? Like appearance tropes. They are mostly used to convey certain personality traits visually and sharply (Long Hair Is Feminine, or spiky hair for a rough person), but have so little variation that all examples boil down to the trope name. This makes me wonder if a concept can be very much a trope but not have a list of examples (as though there was a pre-emptive Example Sectionectomy or it was an Omnipresent Trope).

Depends on the specific trope IMO, for that one maybe. Or a aversions only tag for those long haired tomboys that do not wear their hair in a ponytail.

We have a dedicated cleanup topic for Personal Appearance Tropes precisely because they have so many context issues. Fundamentally, a trope must have some meaning or significance to the narrative or presentation of the work, not merely be "a thing that happens". This means that all examples, even for appearance-related tropes, must explain the meaning the trope conveys to the work.

But specifically designing a character to convey the personality traits you want to show the audience is not just a thing that happens; they're very widespread design choices among writers and artists. Is a concept or technique less of a trope because all the examples are the same or extremely similar?

edited 24th Aug '17 7:02:10 AM by Gosicrystal

If the trope is so specific that the title conveys all the context, then it's too narrow and needs to be backed up to a broader scope. Also, again I need to point out that the appearance is not the trope. The trope is the package of characterization and narrative role that is conveyed by the appearance.

To take a basic example, there's a stereotype of the Fiery Redhead: a character who is hot-tempered and/or passionate reflected by having reddish hair. The characterization element is the important part: they are hot-tempered and/or passionate. The hair is a visual shorthand to indicate that fact to the audience. So the appearance is always subordinate to the characterization, and the example must explain how the character is hot-tempered or passionate or it's not valid.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:05:37 AM by Fighteer

It is very much a trope, a character design trope specifically. All the info is specificilly visual and the description covers every single aspect of an example.

The big one that I know of is You Gotta Have Blue Hair, what else are you going to put aside from 'the character has seemingly natural blue/green/pink/cherry red/purple/silver/yellow hair'.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:09:36 AM by Memers

Which is not a trope by our definition. If the hair doesn't mean anything, then it's just filigree and unimportant to the story. Do we need a trope for every time someone wears ripped jeans? Same thing.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:10:09 AM by Fighteer

Narrative Filigree however is a trope, although you can only really tell with statistical analysis or Word of God.

Unnatural hair colors on people where it is made to be their natural hair color is very much a trope, it isn't even an Acceptable Breaks from Reality.

Now if a character in universe specifically dyes it that is a whole other trope that goes to the character's personality that's different.

Edit: after searching that is Dye Hard but it's marked as trivia and the trope is based on real life people... Yeah I might open a repair shop on this when characters like Setsuna from Mahou Sensei Negima dye their hair black and wears black contacts because she is an albino and trying to avoid being ostracized or Kirino from Oreimo cause she is a trendy model that is not trivia in any way.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:21:40 AM by Memers

You've asserted that it's a trope without giving any proof. It's a pattern, to be sure, but to be a trope it must also convey some kind of meaning or act as a cliché or reflect some kind of narrative intent. If you cannot explain that in the example, then it's Not An Example.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:23:00 AM by Fighteer

Things that are impossible in Real Life or even much less probable are always tropes. They can only exist because a writer put them there for a reason.

When one purposefully breaks with reality and makes their characters visually unrealistic that is completely meaningful, has narrative intent that they are not us and a chosen ascetic for the character.

When you break reality like that it is always meaningful and intentional.

That said it better.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:30:10 AM by Memers

One catch however with troping them is that people often use overly specific tropes to catalogue them. Typically tropes that are too much about an object and too little about the reason it was put there, such as the Everything's Better With Indexes tropes. Or that they allow straight examples on these tropes (so called Tropes in Aggregate) where only a statistical analysis yields evidence of tropishness.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:32:58 AM by SeptimusHeap

I don't think that is the case here for that specific one. The subtropes to it are all the personality stereotypes developed over the years for specific colors as well.

There are various possible meta explanations as to why it got started at least in anime such as Black Lined Animation, something 99.9% of all anime is, and the Japanese standard black hair do not mix so they got creative. Also it's possibly an element of Distinctive Appearances. Black Lined Animation is also the reason why blue and to a lesser extent purple is used as a stand in for black.

Edit: errr I could have sworn Blue Is The New Black existed...

Anyway opinions on me opening that repair shop to split Dye Hard?

edited 24th Aug '17 7:44:27 AM by Memers

"examples are all the same" is not the same as "examples have no context"

I don't see You Gotta Have Blue Hair as a character trope. It usually applies more as a setting trope, from the works I've seen.

• Dragon Ball is set in a fantastical world compared to our own, where Saiyans change their hair colour upon transforming, ordinary people like the Brief family have light blue hair as a dominant genetic trait (dark-haired Vegita's children with blue-haired Bulma both have blue/purple hair), and sentient animals.
• Bleach adds bright haircolours to help make the character designs stand out on coloured pages. The main character, Ichigo, spent most of his school years getting picked on for having an unusual haircolour.
• The Twelve Kingdoms starts with Youko having trouble because the black dye that disguised her unnaturally red hair has worn off again. The unusual hair colour is actually a mark that she's from a magical kingdom, and she needs to claim her throne because her kingdom can't function without her. The land of her true heritage sports a broader spectrum of haircolours than ours.

And those all have exceptional context, making them completely valid examples. What is not a valid example is something like this:

• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Alice has orange hair.

Those would be I think a more specific World Of Blue Hair trope, something I have been meaning to Ykttw, the world explains why they exist, sets a specific pattern, or at least calls it out.

You can add

• Ghost In The Shell makes a point that only fully artificial beings have unnatural hair colors.
• Digital Devil Saga makes a point to show that in the Junkyard everyone has an unnatural color and make a point that Sara is abnormal via having black hair. later you find out all the junkyard inhabitants are copies, the real ones had normal hair colors.

In works like Smile Pretty Cure though no explanation is even attempted for the 5 MC, that's their hair color and only they and parts of their families have it. It is not treated at all as abnormal what so ever.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:55:40 AM by Memers

Purple Is the New Black.

With You Gotta Have Blue Hair, I think it only makes sense as a differentiation trope. It's only meant (as is, not counting subtropes) to differentiate characters from each other. Either for a cast, or to make the protagonist stick out from everyone else. It sort of functions like Notice This.

edited 24th Aug '17 7:53:58 AM by AnotherDuck

Ugh that really should be named blue. Hmm maybe a redirect?

Those not in the prototype World Of Blue Hair would mostly be placed in that category yeah, VERY rarely will there be someone with You Gotta Have Blue Hair so minor that they don't even have reason for a character sheet entry, a subtropes to Distinctive Appearances maybe.

from the aforementioned series, pick out the 5 main characters here◊ , you can do it just by their You Gotta Have Blue Hair.

edited 24th Aug '17 8:06:04 AM by Memers

You Gotta Have Blue Hair is a trope about impossible hair colours generally. So "Alice has green hair" is an acceptable example for it. "Alice has orange hair" on the other hand sounds like someone doesn't know that "red hair" is the normal term, and red hair is not a trope.

Orange hair is potentially a fully valid example depending on the shade of orange and the race of the person. As would cherry red hair. Fiery Red Hair is really the big exception there.

In a Japanese work Yellow would be fully valid too provided they are not a PhenotypeStereotype Westerner or dyed to be a Japanese Delinquent or Gyaru Girl.

No, You Gotta Have Blue Hair is about the use of impossible hair colors to visually distinguish a cast, most particularly in drawn or animated works.

edited 24th Aug '17 8:40:57 AM by Fighteer

The trope description of You Gotta Have Blue Hair does mention several different reasons for using the trope. That means it's not just about "distinguishing the cast". The default trope is "impossible hair colour". Everything else is a list of all reasons why they are used.