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Author: LordGro

Aug 5th 2017 at 1:13:16 PM

Not yet ready for launch, but I will try to get this back on track.

I discovered this as a fairy tale / folklore trope. The "Good Stepmother" as a folklore trope is pretty unmistakable, precisely because fairy tale stepmothers are expected to be {{Wicked Stepmother}}s by default. A conscious inversion of a genre convention is definitely tropable.

The reason I've made no progress is that I don't know how far this trope extends into media where fairy tale genre conventions do not apply, for example in {{Dom Com}}s. But I don't think it is limited to fairy tales either.

@crazysamaritan: after careful consideration, I do not agree with your assessment that "step-parenthood" is irrelevant in ''all'' the examples you listed.

* In ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill2008'', Helen's love for her 8-year-old stepson Jacob convinces the alien Klatuu that humanity is redeemable after all, which is why he desists from destroying humanity.

Unfortunately I have never watched this movie, but it seems to me the fact that Helen is a stepmother is relevant. We would expect a mother to love her child. Some will say a mother's love for her child is the strongest natural bond there is between two individuals. Why would aliens change their opinion about humanity based on something so unexceptional? Plus the writers could have made Jacob Helen's 'real' son, but they didn't. I think the relevant point here is that Helen is able to love a child that is "not her own" as if it were, and ''that'' is what persuades Klatuu.

The main problem with most of the examples you listed is that they are ZeroContext examples:
* In ''The Babysitters Club'' books, this trope was used pretty abundantly; Elizabeth was a good stepmother to Karen and Andrew, Sharon was a good stepmother to Mary Anne, and Carol was, eventually, a good stepmother to Dawn and Jeff.
This is just a list of character names, without actually telling us what makes them good stepmothers.

* In Doris Gates' ''Blue Willow'', the stepmother is a good woman with an excellent relationship with the protagonist, Janey.
This is just a paraphrase of the trope definition.

This, on the other hand, I consider a valid example because it 1) says what the stepmother actually does for her stepchildren, and 2) in the world of heroic legends, when a king has sons by two different wives, the default for them is to be rivals. This is a conscious subversion of a genre trope.
* When her stepsons Erik and Agnar are killed by king Eystein Beli, Aslaug of ''Literature/TheSagaOfRagnarLodbrok'' weeps a single tear of blood for them (which is a lot, as she never cries), and afterwards persuades her biological sons to avenge their stepbrothers. She even personally leads an army against Eystein, which eventually defeats and kills the latter.

Bottom line: I think if we throw out all the ZeroContext examples, and maybe do some tweaks to the description, we have a pretty launchable trope.