Questions about TLP idea - separating audience reaction from objective definition

I believe the Komaeda Archetype is tropable.

First of all, I would like to clarify that despite the memes surrounding the character, I am 100% serious about this. I've read and participated in several discussions about what makes a "Komaeda" character, and I believe there's enough of a consensus about the definition that there is something to this. However, because of the memes surrounding the character and the potential for audience reactions bleeding into examples, I want to have a discussion about how to minimize these problems before moving onto the TLP.

For anyone unfamiliar, Nagito Komaeda is a character from Super Danganronpa 2 whose particular personality and behavior - and ensuing popularity - led to a lot of memes and jokes about how other, similar characters are also "a Komaeda". More recently, however, there have been attempts to identify exactly what traits cause people to draw the Komaeda comparisons, and some surprisingly insightful observations have been made. Such discussions and lists of definitions can be found here: [1], [2]

To qualify for the trope, a character should hit a majority of these key points:

• Almost always male
• Young and effeminate
• Is a major character, often either an antagonist or the Deuteragonist, but almost never the main protagonist. In fact, their relationship with the protagonist is a key part of their character.
• When introduced, their past/motives/allegiances are unclear, but these are discovered over the course of the story.
• Morally grey, and often portrayed as sympathetic to some degree. They may have a Dark and Troubled Past or other Freudian Excuse explaining their actions.
• White Hair, Black Heart, or a similarly pale hair color that invokes this trope
• Is not of sound mind: they may have an Ambiguous Disorder or suffer from Black-and-White Insanity
• If they are not the Big Bad, they often have some sort of relationship with that character
• A lot of these characters originate from anime, manga, and other Japanese media, suggesting there's some cultural origin for this archetype. I'd be interested in hearing further analysis of this point from people who might have more insight than I do.

However, "Komaeda" characters also commonly fall victim to some specific audience reactions, such as being a Base-Breaking Character or the subject of Foe Yay Shipping, and I worry that these reactions, as well as fandoms often jokingly calling a character a Komaeda despite not really fitting the definition, could result in confusion and shoehorned examples. I'd like to talk about how to handle this possibility, and if possible I'd like to figure out a better name for the trope as well, both because of these concerns as well as the wiki's policy on naming tropes after characters.

Edited by AE3803 on Dec 24th 2019 at 3:48:25 AM

You’re not supposed to name tropes after characters, so we’d need a different name for this archetype. Not sure how to sum up this in a short name though. “Mysterious weirdo stalker” is the best I can do

Having a list of traits that all of these characters should have some of is a bit too vague imo, and that might cause misuse. I think the core of the archetype is something like this:

This character has a unique view of the world due to their past, mental issues or both. These views make them morally gray at best and they clash with the protagonist about them, but they are also sympathetic and respect the protagonist.

Other traits seem secondary; physical traits are less important than characterization and a mysterious past kinda comes with the territory of having unique views shaped by said past.

I've usually seen characters like that described as "Kaworu clones". There was a chain-of-expies chart somewhere that showed it forking from Rei Ayanami Expy, and with a list of traits that included "voiced by Akira Ishida". The only other examples I remember off the top of my head are the Machinery Children and Fate Averruncus. Colonel Mirror maybe?

Edited by Prime32 on Dec 30th 2019 at 1:53:30 PM

Please don't make more tropes that are "copy of X character". They aren't helpful. Expy is the parent and that should be used.

Eh, I don't agree. When it comes to "X is based off Y" tropes, having subtropes with very specific Y is probably better than the general expy trope with its "Correlation does not imply causation" problems.