Unclear Description: Contrasting Sequel Main Character

This came up on a discussion page and I wanted to bring it up here.

Contrasting Sequel Main Character's description is explicitly about contrasting main character. I am the one who YKTTW and launched the trope. It didn't occur to me at the time to make it for supporting character, nor did anyone in YKTTW point this out. So it's more an omission than a strict limit.

Now people are extending it to compare non-main characters (Characters.Mass Effect Andromeda Party Members is an example). And while, on paper, there's no issues, we've begun noticing problems I felt like addressing, and since the trope's launched, it's not stuff one unilaterally decides.

Including supporting characters does make it harder to decide who is who's counterpart. This leads to people cherry picking aspects from various character so that now one character is the "Contrasting Counterpart" to 3 or 4 others. When the trope is limited to main character, it's a lot easier to pick who is the counterpart of who. Supporting characters are tougher. Who is Thorin Oakenshield's counterpart in The Lord of the Rings ? Boromir? Aragorn? Gimli? All of them?

So yeah, that's the question: Should the trope be expanded to add supporting character, and how do you identify who is who's counterpart, especially when they don't fill a niche that's unique (The Big Bad, The Dragon), like party members.

edited 25th Apr '17 1:59:45 PM by Ghilz

Opening, and no we don't need to apply this trope to non-main characters. That renders the comparison too open-ended.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I think secondary characters is something that could work in theory, and is an actual part of the trope, but as far as tropers are concerned, I don't see it being handled well enough to work. I'm basing that on all troubles with the Expy type of tropes (which is similar to this), none of which are free from shoehorning problems.

Check out my fanfiction!

I like that approach; "While in principle both tropes apply to supporting characters as well, examples are limited to the primary protagonists/antagonists only."

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

That's what I was going to propose, so I'm on board with acknowledging that secondary characters can be counterparted too, but limiting examples to Main characters.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

As a note, I would still accept secondary characters if there's a Word of God to back it up with, rather than just some troper who saw some contrast between some characters. However, I don't really like requiring citations.

Check out my fanfiction!

I think, when people use this trope for non-main character Alice of "Show X1" and Alex of "Show X2", people see that they are connected in some levels. Maybe Alice is Alex's mother or they both part of the (different?) hero's friends. In other words, similar "roles", but with contrasts.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

The thing is with "Similar role" is how do we define "Similar role"?

What got me to open this thread was Characters.Mass Effect where characters will be declared this when their only link with one another is A) Being Party Members and B) Sharing a species with the "previous" counterpart. And when there's been multiple party members of said race (Krogan for example, or worst, human), it's a tenuous similarity.

I for one favor the "While it can happen in supporting character, we don't list it unless Word of God specifically brings it up."

Umm IMO its gotta be their role in the team, like The Smart Guy or Number One has a completely different personality but they are still The Smart Guy or Number One.

Going with Mass Effect Liara and Peebee serve the same role, the Adventurer Archaeologist of the team, however their personalities can not be more different with Liara being the calm thinker and speculate and Peebee is a mile a minute hardcore Genki Girl.

Wrex and Dreck fufil the role of the Token Brute however are not very different at all, Dreck just starts out farther along the same character development route that Wrex had.

It might be better as a supertrope though to just M Cs or expand and rename.

edited 7th May '17 9:04:23 PM by Memers

I don't exactly agree with the Word of God loophole. I'm fine with listing Contrasting Sequel Supporting Cast Member in a Word of God example, but I'm opposed to listing it under Contrasting Sequel Antagonist or Contrasting Sequel Protagonist. Even a secondary protagonist isn't, strictly speaking, either one. Otherwise they'd be a Deuteragonist and qualify without a WOG statement.

Opening the lists up to Word of God statements seems a slippery slope to allowing Word of Paul and Word of Dante. From Dante, I'd expect shoehorns from "everybody knows". That's why I'm against any loophole for examples that aren't the primary Antagonist/Protagonist.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Sooo what about a Contrasting Sequel Team Member trope I was talking about?

Five-Man Band is one of the trope that sees the most Misuse and Square Peg Round Trope. So much so it needs a perpetual thread to fight it. I am thus not use using the various role inside a Five-Man Band to determine who is who's counterpart is a good idea. I think the potential new trope is just inviting entries where 3 characters are being shoehorned to being compared to a single one based on the writers whim. Even if we wrote they need to explicitly fill the same role, I don't trust editors to abide to it coz people don't read the page before editing.

edited 8th May '17 5:06:13 AM by Ghilz

It doesn't have to be 5 man band, possibly the job they do too. In shows like Mass Effect, Gundam or Star Trek people have jobs and roles like Ships Pilot, The Captain, Security Chief. Same for animes and a Student Council President and such.

These roles stay the same from sequel to sequel, many shows will make the person filling those roles as different as possible. Often there will be specials and such which let them interact and show how different or same they are.

Like Persona's Mission Control characters Persona 3's is a calm shy introvert and then Persona 4 we get a bubbly and cocky Genki Girl idol. They couldn't be more different but they fulfill the same job. They meet in Persona Q and really show off the differences.

edited 8th May '17 5:37:25 AM by Memers

I'm against it.

For those "specials and such", you can list the characters under foil.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

They are not always a 'foil' though or anything like that.

They are just crafted to be a contrast for the previous. Like the Security Chief in Star Trek The Next Generation Worf then Security Chief in Star Trek Deep Space Nine Odo, when they meet they are not a foil to each other but Worf does comment how different Odo is from him. In fact they have very little interaction past the first episode. Then compare those two to Star Trek Voyager's The Stoic Vulcan Tuvok.

It's usually a big deal with sequels with new casts, people compare and contrast everyone in the same roles.

edited 8th May '17 6:00:59 AM by Memers

Most shows don't operate with strict military rank. While yes, a comparison for Star Trek would work, you're gonna end up with a dozen entries comparing people on non-story-role elements. "Let's compare the two black guys coz they are black"

Heck, your own example shows this despite the ranks: who is Tuvok's TNG counterpart? Is it the emotionless Data, or the security officer Worf? Who is the Doctor's counterpart? Data, who is also an artificial creation seeking to discover his own humanity, or Dr. Crusher, who is the other ship's doctor? You compare Tuvok to Odo and Worf, I'd argue Data is far closer to being Tuvok's counterpart (Emotionless, staunch supporter and very close to their respective captain, both are fairly omni competent)

edited 8th May '17 6:19:29 AM by Ghilz

That isn't their role which is the contrast. Security Chief is their position and their personality is different, it might be comparable to another character but that doesn't really matter to the trope.

Same for Contrasting Sequel Main Character as if it is a group someone else likely takes up the qualities of the old MC. Compare Kirk to Riker to Sisko for example.

A lot of shows do have defined roles in the ship, group or whatever. Even shows that have groups like Love Live have set positions such as the costume designer, song writer, dance coordinator, and leader which are all repeated in the sequel Love Live Sunshine. Some are the same, some are dramatically different.

We are not trying to compare them to other series, just the sequel with a different cast.

edited 8th May '17 7:39:58 AM by Memers

Except that Contrasting Sequel Main Character and Contrasting Sequel Antagonist both do contrast the character's role, not their position. And narratively, a character's role and how it compares to someone in a different role is far more important than contrasting two character who may hold the same position in-universe but have completely different roles in the story. Plus never mind that your earlier post is comparing character based on roles (The Brute, The Smart Guy).

The more I hear the worst the new trope idea sounds. It sounds like a clusterfuck. Strongly Against

edited 8th May '17 6:52:29 AM by Ghilz

In what way is it a clusterfuck? It is very straight forward to me.

X person fulfills Y job in series whatever. In the sequel Z person fulfills the same Y job but is completely and intentionally different in personality than X.

edited 8th May '17 8:13:50 AM by Memers

Then they cannot be a Contrasting Sequel Character; you're shoehorning.

edited 8th May '17 8:41:15 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I'm with memers here and let me reiterate what he's saying.

This trope can count both roles and positions; it doesn't have to be "role in the story as a whole", it could just be "role relative to other characters". Whether something as "abstract" as The Big Guy or as defined as The Captain, they equally count.

A "foil" means that the two characters have to be standing side-by-side. Contrasting Sequel Protagonist or Antagonist are not strictly subtropes of Foil, they only overlap with it if they happen to meet each other. (Talking especially to you, crazysamaritan)

And no, I'm against using Word of God or whatever.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

I get that, my problem is that in practice you will always end up with people comparing one character to a dozen others, because in 99% of cases, there's no direct 1:1 correlation between characters. And the "trope" becomes meaningless when it's just comparing a bunch of barely-to-tangentially-related people. Of course they will contrast in some ways. Characters in fictions are not all the same. And neither of you really came up with a way to make those criteria of who can be compared with who "hard" and definite. Things that are hard "Yes" or "no" qualifiers. Using stuff like which role of the Five-Man Band they fill is POINTLESS coz users keep shoehorning and misusing those tropes. And applying this to in-universe identical ranks is borderline People Sit On Chairs "People who old the rank of captain are different from one another". No shit?

edited 8th May '17 4:56:08 PM by Ghilz

"Characters in fictions are not all the same."

Writers can make same characters whenever they want/need to.

And no, it's not about "different" personality, but "contrasting" personality. I.e not "blue and orange" but " black and white". Examples must follow that.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

Please tell me what the very first line on Contrasting Sequel Protagonist is, because I must be forgetting it.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

That means a foil doesn't need to exist in the same work as the character she's a foil to. Which isn't explicitly denied in the definition of Foil, but nothing suggests it either, since everything written there is about characters within the same work.

Check out my fanfiction!