Needs Help: Cats Are Mean

The page Cats Are Mean is fairly straightforward except for this huge section near the bottom: "Subversions, Inversions, and other Exceptions".

It contains such examples as:

• Naruto learns the first step of the Rasengan by watching a friendly cat play with a water balloon. Said cat eagerly lets him pick him up and play with him afterwards. - That's just a nice cat.
• Mayaa from Azumanga Daioh - ZCE
• Jiji, Kiki's familiar, can be snarky but he's definitely Kiki's friend. Two other cats (an older teen witch's familiar and a cat in Kiki's town) look snooty but aren't antagonistic. - Cats Are Snarkers
  • Generally averted in all the Studio Ghibli movies; the lovable and helpful cat-bus in My Neighbor Totoro, although at first indiferent in Whisper of the Heart the cat Muta ends been friendly toward Shizuku, of course Haru and 99% of the cats that appear in The Cat Returns and even Niya although at first appears to be the straight playing of this trope in Arrietty as he tries to eat the protagonist he learns to be friendly at the end. - Nice cats.
• Sailor Moon averts this with Luna and Artemis who are kind and help the heroes, though they still aren't above being incredibly blunt. Diana, on the other hand, is just plain kind to everyone. - Nice cats
• Chi's Sweet Home is all about averting this trope. A curious little kitten shares her take on day to day events. - Cute Kitten
• Danny and Sawyer from Cats Don't Dance are the protagonists of the film. - ZCE
• Rajah the nice tiger from Aladdin (no relation to the similarly-named tiger from the first act of ''Goliath II''). - Nice cat
• Averted with all the lions of The Lion King and the two sequels, except Scar and Zira. - ZCE
• Averted with Bagheera from The Jungle Book, though this is hardly Disney's invention. - ZCE
• The Adventures of Milo and Otis was extensively reworked from its original Japanese release...but the protagonist cat, Milo, is portrayed as good-natured and curious, and even his occasional mischievous moments are generally endearing rather than offputting. Also somewhat unusually in fiction, he's close friends with a pug named Otis, hence the title. - Cute Kitten
• Mostly averted in Tad Williams' Tail Chasers Song. Cats are described as being catlike, but not in a mean or selfish way; they're just cats. The bad guy's a cat, of course, but mostly an Eldritch Abomination. - Cats of varying personalities.
• Inverted with the Purr-Tenders, who are all bright and friendly and just want to be special. By contrast, the nasty bulldog Ed-grr hated them all just because they were cats and wanted to see them miserable. - Nice cats
• Pound Puppies (2010) most of the cats are good and heroic (a radical change from the 1980s version) albeit some episodes show mean cats, these are not the majority. - Cats with varying personalities

Most examples are just "This character is a cat and they're nice" or "This character is a cat and they're sarcastic/blunt/sassy/a jerk, but aren't exactly mean". They likely fit under other tropes or could be incorporated into the main section. Cats are very popular, so listing a bunch of cat characters who aren't jerks seems useless.

edited 16th Jun '18 5:48:21 PM by Pichu-kun

I agree, the inversion is just "Cats Are Nice", and does not neccesarily involve a subversion at all.

Optimism is a duty.

Much is the usual misuse of subversion. For a subversion to be in play, the work needs to imply that the trope is in play, or nudge the audience into believing that. If it's obvious from the start how it is, or there's nothing that speaks for why the trope would be in play, it's simply not an example. And for this trope, I don't think aversions or inversions are of note (an aversion could be notable, but that would mean it's a notable distinction from how it's portrayed in the rest of the work). Cats are usually seen as cute pets in real life. Cats being portayed as mean is primarily a fictional thing, which is what makes it a trope.

edited 17th Jun '18 9:15:02 PM by AnotherDuck

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I agree that aversions, "subversions" and the like need to go. They remind me of the Kind Red Eyes trope which was axed a long time ago since the -versions weren't a trope at all.

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

I dont know. The stereotype is cats are fickle and moody, quick to just use you when they need something then go aloof when they don't.

A cat who is just flat out nice and possibly selfless is quite unique, probably worthy of a trope in of itself.

I think that's more a case of cats only being nice to a small group of well known humans, while dogs are generally nice to anyone they meet. Dogs just seem nicer because they are less discriminatory in who they are nice to.

Optimism is a duty.

Not using a stereotype does not mean that this is a trope by itself. There existed a trope named Heroically Aligned Reptile that was cut because despite the Reptiles Are Abhorrent stereotype , a heroic reptile does not mean anything by itself. This sounds like a similar case - a non-omnipresent stereotype where the aversion does not really mean anything.

Edited by MagBas on Aug 25th 2018 at 6:47:10 AM

But this trope IS using the stereotype, namely that cats are aloof and mean.

Optimism is a duty.

But what is being discussed in this discussion are the aversions to the trope that are listed in the page.

Pull examples that are just "good cat" like with Reptiles Are Abhorrent. Especially considering that cats are probably among the most popular animals in fiction, so listing all of them would be pointless.

Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!

Same here.

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4:0 in favour? (Perhaps I miscounted)

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Cut "Subversions, Inversions, and other Exceptions".

Why does the trope description have to be that long?

Any more opinions?

Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!

It's been over a month and five unanimous opinions, so should we enact the change?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I cut the section and added back the most-likely-legitimate examples.

Seems like we are done, so closing.

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