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Author: LordGro

Jan 23rd 2018 at 3:49:18 PM

Original sponsor here. Sorry I have not kept working on this like I said I would.

If someone wants to launch this, that's fine. However, I don't think the problem which has stopped me from launching this has actually been resolved. The problem is examples like this:

* In ''Phineas And Ferb'' if it weren't for the hyphenated names and mixed accents you wouldn't even be able to tell that this is a blended family. The phrases "stepchildren" and "stepsiblings" are virtually never used. Neither parent shows any preferences between biological and stepchildren, and that extends to even the shown grandparents treating all the kids equally.

If the stepmother is virtually indistinguishable from a mother, then do stepmother tropes apply at all? I was hoping for examples that that tell me something plot-relevant about the stepmother and her relationship to her stepchild(ren). When all there is to say "they have a harmonious and loving relationship, just like a mother and her child, everything fine and dandy, no problems and nothing unusual", then there is ultimately nothing tropable. Or if there is, it is  "HappyBlendedFamily" which is characterized by being indistinguishable from a standard family, not a trope about stepmothers and their relationship to their stepchildren specifically.

In fact, nearly all of the examples that have been offered in the comment section merely make general statements about stepmothers and stepchildren having harmonious relationships: "acts like a mother figure", "loves them as if they are her own children", "essentially becomes surrogate parent",  "is very nice", "is very friendly and supportive", "is a good stepmother", "is a kind and loving stepmother"... in my book, these are all ZeroContext examples. They are just paraphrasing the trope definition, not describing specific actions, events, interactions that happen in the work. Tropers have trouble coming up with examples of this that are not ZeroContext. I wonder why that is.