Not Thriving: Gender Neutral Narrator

This is ~Tonwen's OP:

Gender Neutral Narrator is currently sitting at 21 Wicks (not counting sandbox wicks), which puts it into starving range as per Wick.

On top of that, the trope is little more than "The narrator's gender is unspecified and irrelevant to the story", which seems to put it into People Sit on Chairs Territory, especially considering it isn't story relevant in any way.

Opened. I'm in favor of cutting because it's defined in the negative, meaning it's a lack of a trope and thus not a trope.

Plus, the description explicitly says it's irrelevant to the story, meaning there's no meaningful difference from Narrator.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 21st 2022 at 6:38:11 AM

Cutting might be best, unless examples can be found where it's actually meaningful.

Edited by Walkinshadows on Feb 21st 2022 at 7:38:55 AM

Pinging ~crazysamaritan as they mentioned wanting to participate in this thread on the TRS meta thread.

I tentatively agree on a cut for now.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Feb 21st 2022 at 7:45:15 AM

Cut. A couple of examples sound like they could fit into Narrator All Along, Lemony Narrator or somewhere in Narrator Tropes, but the rest are useless.

I thought I'd add that due to the whole "irrelevant to the story" aspect, I don't see this as any more tropeworthy than if a narrator's nationality or ethnicity isn't stated.

The only example I can think of where it would be relevant is a work we don't even have a page for (Tlooth, by Harry Mathews - an experimental novel narrated by the Featureless Protagonist, who manages to stay that way the entire story despite situations you'd think it would be impossible).

Agreed.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Feb 21st 2022 at 2:46:42 PM

If that work got a page, we could list that character under both Featureless Protagonist and Narrator and call it a day.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 21st 2022 at 8:41:56 AM

Looking at the page again, I guess the point is that these are all theatre productions, where the narrator has to be played by different physical actors on stage in different shows, possibly comparable to Cross-Cast Role? Except that that still doesn't seem terribly noteworthy (even if actors were required to have genders in the first place), and if that was the intent it's terribly explained. :P

Then that would make the trope "Cross-Cast Role, but with a narrator", which is redundant with listing Cross-Cast Role and Narrator separately.

Cross-Cast Role appears to be mainly for roles that previously had a set gender?

Expanding this to allow any role, so that it's Genderless Role instead of Gender Neutral Narrator?

A possibility. I agree that Cross-Cast Role doesn't really cover that, but I don't know if there are any other tropes that might.

This seems to be covered by The All-Concealing "I", when the first-person narration leaves the narrator's gender unclear.

I didn't know about that trope, but I suppose we could redirect Gender Neutral Narrator to it if it's covered there.

Edit: Alternatively, disambiguate between Gender Neutral Writing and Narrator Tropes (The All-Concealing "I" is indexed under the latter). Maybe Featureless Protagonist could be thrown into the mix as well.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 21st 2022 at 9:43:36 AM

Featureless Protagonist is a Video Game trope (with some leeway for invoked) while all examples seem to be in the Theatre/ space. And also I don't know if any of the listed narrators are also protagonists. The All-Concealing "I" and Cross-Cast Role seem to cover this well enough, as the trope basically means "the voice in the show" can be done by any actor.

I'm good with just putting The All-Concealing "I", Cross-Cast Role, and Gender Neutral Writing on the disambiguation page since I misremembered Featureless Protagonist's definition.

Edit: I should probably explain that I'm advocating for disambiguating or redirecting instead of cutting for the sake of preserving inbounds.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 21st 2022 at 10:07:21 AM

Disambiguate between Narrator Tropes, The All-Concealing "I", ...

I'm looking for a sister trope of Colourblind Casting where the production favors an actor's ability to act a part and cares less about their gender. Not Ability over Appearance.

I'm good with just disambiging, and maybe throwing Malady's broader idea in the yard.

Thanks for getting the OP up.

Agree with Disambig, the trope description itself is way too short and vague (not to mention it outright says that it is irrelevant to the story), and the examples are inconsistent (is it about the narrator being gender neutral or the narrator being playable by actors of different genders?).

The fact that this is restricted to theatre/play works means that we're dealing with a very narrow trope idea (potentially too narrow). At least in English-speaking culture, we used to mandate that men were the only ones involved in theatre productions, especially onstage. Any female characters were always a Cross-Cast Role and men were the default gender of all characters. Starting from that place, deliberately choosing the narrator to have no gender is a step towards inclusiveness. The English language doesn't have gender built into the way you write/speak nouns or verbs, the way some other languages have it baked in, but there are still plenty of gendered concepts associated with the culture. Forms of address, such as "Miss" or "Missus", are one such way we've baked gender into the language.

A trope like this mandates the narrator is not male or female. I don't think that you can "cross cast" an actor when the role isn't gender-specific. Characters are rarely specified to be genderless, so I think that simply making it clear that "this character can be played by either gender" is a significant stage direction.

Problems that I see with this idea is that I'm not sure if this "character has no gender" needs to be narrator-specific, or if it was a result of "the narrator's gender matters least because they don't have a potential love interest", and I don't know if it matters or just made it easier to designate these roles as "either gender". Another problem is that the examples aren't clear enough to say these weren't just an Adaptational Gender Flip. The final problem I already mentioned; it might be too narrow of a concept to have a sufficient number of examples.

The broader "this character's gender doesn't matter" sort-of sibling of Ability over Appearance could be yarded as a Trivia item that must be backed by Word of God. (One non-narrator example: all the characters from Alien.) It'd be doable but challenging. on expanding Cross-Cast Role to fit this use.