Intentional Tropes

Moral Event Horizon in particular was debated very strongly in the TRS. I myself also wanted it to become objective, but consensus ended up disagreeing.

In principle, MEH should be objective because it's obvious when in the work a character becomes irredeemable to other characters, but in practice the line is not that easy to draw.

With Angst? What Angst?, I reckon the subjectivity comes down to the appropriate level of angst in response to unpleasant events they suffer. e.g. Bob's good friend dies and he mourns for one episode, but is completely fine in the next. Some people might think that it's too fast for him to recover from the loss, while others might think that it's good enough and any more grieving would be overkill.

When it comes to morality and aesops, I think creator intentionality is usually necessary, because otherwise the trope will just become a ground for tropers to debate about morality. The same issue applies with appearance/attractiveness tropes. However, while the latter could use visual shorthands to indicate that the character is supposed to be good-looking in-universe, it's much harder to communicate moral values without having someone explicitly spell it out, which is usually discouraged in writing 101.

Hence we have problem pages like Broken Aesop where it's unclear if the "aesop" that the work supposedly breaks actually exists in the first place. Designated Hero is also problematic because when the hero does unheroic things, it's not always obvious whether the narrative actually wants to present them as "unambiguously heroic" as opposed to an Anti-Hero.

A while ago I removed this example from the Project X page:

• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite being painted as a Designated Villain, the neighbor Rob is essentially this. He initially has no concerns at all when Costa informs him of the (almost entirely underage and illegal) party, and only tries to intervene when things begin spinning out of control, preventing his wife and child from sleeping, making him come across as more of a Hero Antagonist towards the trio and be considered a Jerkass Has a Point in regards to the party that would eventual destroy the neighborhood and putting his family in danger, giving him every right to be miffed at them for not heeding to his requests to shut it all down.

My justification was that the movie intended for him to be the villain and this is really more a case of Unintentionally Sympathetic. But could someone be a Reasonable Authority Figure even if the work doesn't paint them as such?

That example is a mess. It does the 'this example is an example' thing and spends more than half of its text internally debating whether the character belongs to a bunch of other tropes. The signal to noise ratio is so low that I'd delete it on those grounds alone.

There is a connection between many of those tropes, largely in that it requires greater context between different parts of the story and is not as self contained as something like My Favorite Shirt. A number of examples of Angst? What Angst? either ignore or downplay elements that clearly indicate the character is dealing with the trauma in some way, and thus it becomes more "they don't express enough emotion" rather than there being a lack of any response. Likewise Moral Event Horizon became bogged down with people trying to argue over which action THEY felt was most vile that made them unredeemable rather than what is presented in the story.

The thing is Angst? What Angst? is a YMMV trope, so it's dependent on how the audience perceives the character's angst. If the audience doesn't think a character is expressing an appropriate level of angst I think it's a valid example. The issue is does the audience actually feel that way or is it just one troper's personal opinion.

I do think we should probably split off In-Universe examples of Angst? What Angst? into its own trope like we did with Never Live It Down.

...Probably not the best time to mention that the TRS for Never Live It Down might cut it due to misuse, is it?

I don't see how it's relevant here.

The idea of splitting tropes between YMMV and In-Universe examples I can see gets brought up a few times when it comes to tropes that are not always used intentionally or can be subjective. I would probably be okay with that if the option of not allowing unintentional stuff is not the dominant opinion, that is kind of what I did with Karmic Overkill.

It's not relevant to the actual subject; I just don't feel like Never Live It Down is the best comparison anymore, albeit for different reasons.

The issue with Never Live It Down is independent of the idea of splitting tropes between YMMV and In-Universe.

Speaking of, why is Badass Decay YMMV, when its inverse, Took a Level in Badass, is not? The last section of the paragraph seems to indicate that Badass Decay is not a direct inversion of Took a Level in Badass, but doesn't really explain how

Edited by Adept on Dec 13th 2021 at 9:03:15 PM

I, uh... Hmm. Going into this post I thought an answer would come to me, but, no, it hasn't. Badass Decay is a weird bird.

And, uh, yeah, sorry for the temporary NLID derail. I mostly wanted to plug that thread and then realized I couldn't justify it afterward. So let's just not worry about it.

As for the actual idea of splitting Angst? What Angst?, I'm still not really sure, but that's mostly because I don't like considering splits before we know there's even enough In-Universe examples to justify such a thing.

According to the page, the former isn't the inverse of the latter. Rather, it collects those cases in which the audience feels that a character has become less impressive (and thus is YMMV).

The latter being non-YMMV is arguably more iffy; I suppose that the reasoning is a character becoming more capable is something demonstrable: they later can take on challenges that might have troubled them earlier.

Though, you could say the same about Badass Decay, as there's an objective component (characters fail at things they used to do earlier).

Hmm, reading the page again, the description does ramble a lot about villains pulling a Heel–Face Turn, so I suppose this is an audience perception about a character seemingly becoming less threatening (and therefore less badass) when they're no longer actively opposing the heroes?

I think we can have an objective, separate trope for "an inversion of Took a Level in Badass" though. A lot of examples contain "justified" examples where the character is indeed less badass because they're depowered, etc.

Edited by Adept on Dec 13th 2021 at 9:08:26 PM

Badass Decay originated as "Spikeification" from Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was more about a character popular for their edgy and independent streak becoming less edgy and more defanged once they've been around long enough, partially because they otherwise wouldn't fit into the cast if they stuck with their original characterization (this loner who doesn't like authority seems okay with working in a team and taking orders). It's more related to Flanderization in that sense. It got renamed to Badass Decay because of Trope Namer Syndrome, numerous characters and other items named Spike, but that original definition just sort of stuck with it even if not really accurate to the name. It still probably shouldn't be ymmv, but it is a complaining magnet for arguing Power Levels.

A true inversion of Took a Level in Badass is a bit more difficult to pin down with examples, because Took a Level in Badass is closely tied with Character Development, which means it happens more incidentally as part of a Character Arc. It's simply comparatively much more rare to see someone spiral into irrelevance without any sort of recovery or redemption connected to it, which would again be Took a Level in Badass. Can't Catch Up and Villain Forgot to Level Grind are closer analogs to that idea.

Maybe this is a little off topic, but I was thinking of Intended Audience Reaction, a trope that's dependent entirely on authorial intent. The thing is, there are many audience reactions that are about audience perception not lining up with authorial intent. There's Draco in Leather Pants, Ron the Death Eater, Rooting for the Empire, and Misaimed Fandom to name a few. Say an author was trying to get the audience to think a character was Unintentionally Unsympathetic. Can you really count a character that the author wanted you to see as unsympathetic as Unintentionally Unsympathetic?

Edited by RustBeard on Dec 22nd 2021 at 3:40:22 AM

By definition, no. The intended audience reaction there is for the character to be sympathetic. Intended Audience Reaction is more about emotions and perception than specific trope concepts, at least most of the time. (You can intend a character to be seen as a Complete Monster specifically, or you can just intend for them to be a horrifically evil villain. Either works.) Either way, a creator can't "intend" the audience to react in an "unintentional" way. The Scrappy, Ensemble Dark Horse, and Creator's Pet also fall under this issue.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 22nd 2021 at 6:46:13 AM