Misused: Never A Self Made Woman

Never a Self-Made Woman needs a lot of cleanup in the examples. Many of the entries are about playing with/subverting/averting the trope, and the ones that aren't, are often:

• This woman received some help from a man, therefore she has no agency in involving herself with the plot. Which is an overly literal reading of the first line of the trope description when what the full description actually specifies is that the man is responsible for her status/is implied to be more important than they are.
• ''This woman's plot relevance is due to her relationship with a male character. Kind of this trope but it sounds like it belongs to the hypothetical supertrope responsible for Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter or The Chief's Daughter (which may need making).

It's not supposed to for any work that lacks a Self-Made Woman, or whose major female character happens to have a plot-relevant male relative. Especially in works where lineage and pedigree are important aspects of backstories regardless of gender. Otherwise the only works that can truly avoid this trope are ones with all or almost all-female casts.

And on and on and on. Perhaps the trope description needs to be made more specific in the first place? It makes it clear that the trope can manifest in a lot more places than are obvious, but it forgets to draw a line at the other end to make it clear it's also not a repository for any female Satellite Character in general, or for any female character who isn't a complete Self-Made Woman. And a lot of the entries sound like people complaining about works not treating their female characters well enough than documenting examples of a specific phenomenon which is what trope pages are supposed to do.

Alternately it can be revamped so it can be a place to put all examples covering cases where the female character's plot relevance is defined by her relationship with male characters.

edited 29th Jul '17 10:25:50 PM by AlleyOop

Opening.

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

Wrote a first pass on Sandbox.Never A Self Made Woman; needs more work.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I added in a paragraph of clarification near the end; hopefully this makes sense.

Clarification request here: I felt this could be an accurate use of this trope, but was excising it from the sandbox because of your statement. Alley here goes ahead and re-adds a sentence confirming this claim.

Is Never a Self-Made Woman the trope for "only has plot-relevance because they're related to a male character" or not?

edited 30th Jul '17 7:38:21 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It's not just about plot relevance. It's also about In-Universe importance, with some kind of status or power, since the trope is focused on the character's achievements. The characters in those daughter tropes don't need to be particularly important In-Universe.

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Correct. Some of the examples which I found invalid for this reason were the first Yu-Gi-Oh example, Terminator Salvation, Transformers, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Out-of-universe we know their relevance is due to the male characters, but we don't know if the story itself presents them as "lover/daughter/mother of X" in-universe, or if they're important enough that it's something that even comes up.

Never a Self-Made Woman is a trope that's meant to acknowledge issues with the Watsonian presentation of female characters, whether their connections to male characters are explicit or implied. Whereas the general idea of female Satellite Characters whose plot relevance is dependent on male characters represents an aggregate trope with Doylist aspects.

A case of misuse tied to the above would be female characters who may have a story motivation the viewers recognize as connected to a male character, but the work itself does not attribute their position to him in-universe. For example, a female character who is first introduced as a respected detective because of her commitment to justice, and her mission in the story is to rescue her mad scientist father after he's kidnapped. A lot of tropers would list her as a Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter (whether it technically fits is another question), but she would not qualify for Never a Self-Made Woman because her father is not responsible for her in-universe importance, even if he may have supported her in the backstory.

Currently The Italian Job example appears to be playing it straight, but it may end up on the cutlist if it turns out that the story does not emphasize her role as a daughter and love interest in-universe.

On a side note it may say something about the misuse of tropes such as Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter/Son if they require the connection to the Mad Scientist character to be the most important aspect to qualify, since I've seen that trope show up for general instances of character having a plot-relevant mad scientist parent, even if it's not the most important or one of the most important traits of theirs.

So for anyone following or lurking, does Crazy Samaritin and I's rewrite of the main body sound acceptable? We can delete individual page examples and wicks once that's established as I believe it's the trope definition's currently ambiguous and contradictory writing that's responsible for most of the misuse.

Well, it's rather texty.

"non-female" seems awkward to me. Why not just "male", since fiction in general has a very weak grasp on non-binary genders?

The latter half of the second paragraph seems a little too analytical for a trope page. I think it adds more text than understanding of the trope. Knowing about potential motivations to use the trope is tangental at best.

The third paragraph is a wordy "see also" paragraph.

Normally I'd just delete the fourth paragraph, but considering the misuse of the trope, it may be necessary.

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I see your point about the first two paragraphs. I'll change the first, since as the norm cis men would hold sway over anyone else anyway. But I think I'll keep the last sentence of the second paragraph for now. .

And yeah, the fourth paragraph is meant specifically to combat the misuse that brought on this thread in the first place.

I think the "see also" additional tropes are necessary for the same reason as the fourth paragraph about misuse, to help characterize this one better and give people an affirmative indication of what it resembles, in addition to the later tropes it's not like.

edited 5th Oct '17 5:42:55 PM by AlleyOop

If nobody has objections to my changes to the Sandbox entry, I'll replace the main article's body text with it. Is that OK?

Alright, replacing the text for now. Will remove misuses from the main page later, as well as clear out misused wicks. If anyone has any other issues to raise and this thread is closed by then, bring it up in the trope's Discussion page.

That does lead us to an interesting question. I like the Bayformers movies, but I'm fine with Sam's girlfriend being listed as not self made and don't consider it character bashing or shoehorning. Yet there was a technician scientist in that same movie we have no reason to believe wasn't self made(as far as a human being in a professional field can be). She did go to a man for help, but only for conformation of her theory after another man proved too incompetent to help. The girlfriend character by herself is a pretty good case, it's just she's not alone in the work, which hasn't shown every other successful woman is following some man's steps. And really, for all the girlfriend character learned from her father she's less successful than the one who isn't shown learning everything from a man, even if she does show up in more films.

Seems like this is done so closing.

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