Misused: The Voiceless

I meant do not speak on-screen like how The Voiceless is currently (supposed to be) used.

The Voiceless and The Speechless avoid speaking on-screen. How does the audience tell the difference between a character that cannot and one that will not?

edited 24th Feb '18 11:26:50 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

As mentioned previously, The Voiceless is a character who speaks off screen. There needs to be reference to that or it isn't The Voiceless. The Speechless is a character who cannot speak. It's pretty obvious how one would figure that out... like if they don't have a tongue...

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That is what we call an Informed Attribute.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Or they just do not get any lines onscreen cause of the way things are edited and such.

In animated works they might even have a voice actor cast for them they just never get used. IE Rusty in Gundam Seed Destiny who's VA is Gackt but never actually says a word in the series.

They also could be silent cause if they did speak it would cause death and destruction. IE Meru in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Eu in Is This A Zombie

edited 24th Feb '18 3:11:51 PM by Memers

As previously mentioned, yes. Yes it is. I'm not totally sure what you're point is, tbh.

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The Literature page for A Christmas Carol cites both The Silent Bob and The Speechless as tropes with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come as the example. I honestly do not know which one is the one that should be there.

We have way, way too many tropes for Character Does Not Talk. Merging The Speechless and The Voiceless is a good start, but there needs to be a lot of merging done here.

The Speechless and The Voiceless are totally different...

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Well, not everyone thinks that. At best it is a distinction without a difference, leading to duplication and confusion, often requiring the audience to make inferences or guesses about a character. We don't need five different tropes for "doesn't talk".

Neither of those tropes is merely "doesn't talk." And they are distinct, using Weasel Words to make your point isn't helpful. The two tropes don't require inferences or guesses, either. If you want to argue that there's duplication between those two tropes, please supply evidence. Give us a wick check for both.

Honestly, I think we ought to tackle the smaller tropes before the big ones.

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Yes, one is "doesn't talk because of this reason" and one is "doesn't talk because of this other reason."

Merge.

The Speechless is "cannot talk for an In-Universe reason (such as not having a tongue)," while The Voiceless is "does not talk on screen but has the Informed Ability to speak." One is literally mute whereas the other is not. Do you seriously not see the difference between these two concepts?

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I do! I just don't think that's important enough to have two separate tropes. Even if you ignore the fact that The Voiceless, as it's defined, is often going to force the audience to guess.

I'll ask about the example I just brought up. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Which example is it, and how do we know?

edited 25th Feb '18 11:44:36 AM by jamespolk

Why should "importance" have anything to do with this? That would be a completely arbitrary requirement. The issue is whether or not they are mutually distinct, not exclusively important.

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The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is, obviously, neither. It's He Who Must Not Be Heard — the mutual supertrope. Scrooge understands the spectre despite it not talking, and the audience only understands it through Scrooge's reactions.

I'd argue that it's actually The Silent Bob since another character can understand the spectre while the audience can't, but regardless, it isn't either The Voiceless or The Speechless.

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Four "doesn't talk" tropes in one post, and a character that can't really be definitively assigned to any of them. This whole situation is a mess.

I've argued before that The Silent Bob should be merged into The Quiet One as I don't think the difference is notable enough for two distinct tropes.

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"I've argued before that The Silent Bob should be merged into The Quiet One as I don't think the difference is notable enough for two distinct tropes."

This is a good idea.

The issue (and my point) is that we need to establish how each trope is distinct. Saying "this character can speak" and "this character cannot speak" is not a distinction because the audience cannot directly observe the difference.

Saying "this character is said to speak off-screen" provides a subcategory of "prominent characters who do not speak on-screen". Such a character is a subcategory because the Informed Attribute is in addition to the on-screen behaviour.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

If "cannot be directly observed" is an argument, then Informed Attribute is not a trope.

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You should re-read my post. I clearly and definitively said the character was one of them and you blatantly ignored that in order to support your lumping crusade.

I mean, what is stopping your argument from generalizing to other kinds of tropes? Lethal Lava Land and Hailfire Peaks both are settings in which there's fire and lava. Should we lump those together as well? Or Pimped-Out Dress and Battle Ballgown? Or should we lump every trope together under Trope? Your argument so far has simply been "these are similar tropes" but that doesn't mean we should lump them all together.

These tropes cannot simply be boiled down to "character doesn't talk" and to say otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of the previous discussion or too lazy to care.

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huh?

Why is "character tells the audience about skill/attribute" something that cannot be directly observed? The skill cannot be directly observed, but we can see the shilling, right?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

So you're saying the audience cannot be told the difference between "this character can speak" and "this character cannot speak"?

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Maybe I should make my original comment clearer. The syntax in the names for both The Speechless and The Voiceless seems a bit odd to me. Let me explain how I think it should be like this:

• The Voiceless: "without a voice", someone who is unable to speak.
• The Speechless: "without speech", someone who has no lines on-screen, but has not specifically been noted to be unable to speak.

That is how I think the two tropes should be seen. The idea that The Voiceless still implies that the character still has the ability to talk (and therefore has a voice) doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Whereas someone can be "rendered speechless" by something but can still talk in other moments.

That is what I meant when I say that the two definitions should be switched. They seem like Non-Indicative Names when you really take the time to look at the words and what they mean.

Agreed.

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I'm pretty sure the name "The Voiceless" stems from cartoon characters who have no voice actors; as in, they are not voiced. Hence "voiceless." The character can speak but without a voice actor, which means they never say anything on screen. They can speak, but we never hear their voice because there's nobody in RL to give them a voice.

Plus, they each have too many inbounds to justify switching their names. That would immediately lead to misuse as new tropers (and old) would assume no change occurred.

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