Needs a YMMV banner or fix definition: Lovable Coward

Since the description explicity states: "...we somehow still find ourselves rooting for him.", I think we need a YMMV banner. Or, we could just change the definition around so that it's not YMMV.

It should be in terms of sympathetic portrayal.

Are youu saying that the sympathy must only be from the Lovable Coward's POV?

Just because this trope is intended to evoke a certain reaction in the audience, it's not neccessarily YMMV, see also all the other tropes with "scary", "hot", "funny", or "boring" in their title.

While theoretically, there could be alternate interpretations from the audience, in practice, it tends to be clear, that the author intentionally used a trope to evoke these reactions.

This trope's description even points out some of the tools used for that: "His cowardice is sometimes played for comedy, sometimes portrayed as simply the most sensible course of action; it seldom if ever endangers innocents."

For example there is an objective in-universe difference between the portrayals of Wormtongue and C-3PO.

edited 20th Apr '11 10:15:40 AM by EternalSeptember

Still, there's the phrase: "... we somehow find ourselves rooting for him." (taken directly from the description). That phrase describes an audience reaction, not the writer's intention.

EDIT: Removed a sentence because I didn't read the above post completely.

edited 20th Apr '11 2:04:44 PM by WaxingName

So what? Why shouldn't we describe what reactions the audiences have for a trope?

The bannered pages that we call "Audience Reactions", are things that are "not present in the work at all". They aren't even directly related to the actual content of the work, they normally aren't used by the writers at all.

But this trope is used by the writer, and only after it is used the audiences react to it, in a specific way, directly related to how the trope was used. And we describe how the audiences react to it, because it's an important part of how the trope is used.

This is how all tropes are used. In fact, the definition of Trope is " a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the audience will recognize and understand"

Audience reaction is a fundamental part of all tropes, the Audience Reaction tag is only used when there is no author intention behind the reaction at all.

If that's the case, may you explain why Complete Monster, Magnificent Bastard, and Smug Snake are intentional portrayals of characters and they are YMMV anyway, please?

There are two different indexes.

Audience Reactions is for non-tropes: phenomena that are not in the work at all, like And The Fandom Rejoiced, or Shipping.

The YMMV index is for tropes, that are heavily arguable. They can be written into the works, but tropers tend to disagree about them, add justifying edits, start edit wars, etc, so we can't objectively state when they are used without starting a mess.

Complete Monster, Magnificent Bastard are the latter. (BTW Smug Snake isn't, it's an objective trope).

You only argued about Audience Reaction problems, so I assumed that you misspoke when you said "YMMV index" and meant the other one.

If I was wrong, you should prove not that Lovable Coward contains audiance reaction, (like any other trope), but that it causes arguments based on it's subjectivity.

edited 21st Apr '11 10:31:19 AM by EternalSeptember

Well, thanks for pointing out the difference between YMMV and Audience Reaction. I didn't really see much difference between the two until it was explained. (Sorry about Smug Snake; the last time I read it, it was still subjective).

I'm still going to argue that Lovable Coward is subjective, though. The examples list contains many posts that contain subjective phrases such as "According to the American polls" and "...may be this or a Dirty Coward" (both paraphrased).

edited 22nd Apr '11 10:14:19 AM by WaxingName

So, are we going to need a YMMV banner or not?

That could make a good argument to give it the banner, and if this thread gets more exposure, I think some people would agree with you that this is what we should do. (and some others wouldn't. It's roughly on the borderline).

Though I personally still think that the problem is not big enough for such a drastic solution:

Last week, I had a disagreement about a character's Tsundere status with another troper, and eventually we moved that particular work page's entry of the otherwise objective trope to the YMMV namespace: It doesn't mean that Tsundere is subjective, just that at least one author used an arguable example.

I don't think that Lovable Coward's arguability reaches the extent of Complete Monster, or Magnificent Bastard, where looking at past experiences, we are forced to assume that every entry is likely to cause a flamewar, so it's better to remove them all, indiscriminately.

I'm also worried about the precedent it would create: We have lots of other tropes like Lovable Sex Maniac, Lovable Libby, Lovable Traitor, and Lovable Rogue.

Not to mention all the other tropes related to characters' sympathetic or unsympathetic status. If we are to say that sympathetic portrayal is subjective, it could lead to bannering a whole lot of tropes that are otherwise working good enough.

edited 23rd Apr '11 8:40:34 AM by EternalSeptember

Well, I've never found any entries on any of those pages with "lovable" in them that are arguable to the degree of Lovable Coward. As I said earlier, there are many entries that incorporate words like "arguably" or "may be a Dirty Coward".