Depraved Bisexual: Defining the trope's boundaries

Does the non-Ax-Crazy version of this trope also include bisexuals whose "depravity" is sexual rather than moral? For example, a bisexual character who is also highly promiscuous and/or interested various paraphiliac/fetishistic sexual practices.

edited 6th Aug '11 4:26:15 PM by MarqFJA

For reasons of flamebait, changing sexual mores, and generally not being an effective method to convince a complete audience that this is bad, I'd guess paraphilia mostly doesn't count.

It's not a YMMV trope after all, so unless your paraphilia means you're a rapist or lust murderer...

But this seems to be about the author's intentions - it's quite possible that Values Dissonance may apply between what the author considers "depraved" and what the audience does.

One could also take the "depravity" of the character in the context of the standards used by the time period in which the work was published, by the time period that the story itself is set in, or by in-universe reactions to the character's behavior.

And I don't know about you guys, but...

1. While some paraphilias are seen as "normal" (The Other Wiki lists "mammaphilia" as a paraphilia, and notes it was considered a clinical disorder back when it was mentioned in academic discourse the 19th century), others are considered "extreme" at best and "immoral" at worst by mainstream societies; the more conservative the society, the more negative the view of a given paraphilia (if not all of them) can be.
2. I don't think someone having several paraphilias set at high is normal; whether or not is (un)healthy or bad is either subjective or should be determined on a case-by-case basis.

edited 6th Aug '11 4:25:40 PM by MarqFJA

Additional question: Does Depraved Bisexual also cover self-identified pansexuals who otherwise hit all the requisite elements of the trope?

Probably, since I don't imagine many writers would have thought beyond "seduces women and men". Why do you ask?

Well, other than Anything That Moves, I noticed that we have zero tropes that explicitly cover pansexuals.

Same reason, I suspect. The ideas that gender isn't binary (which I assume the term pansexuality relies on; my apologies if that's incorrect), and doesn't have to be grounds for who you're attracted to, and that your attraction pattern doesn't follow your own gender, aren't all that widespread.

Not to mention that being bisexual doesn't mean you're necessarily only attracted to people with stereotypical female and male genders, to begin with. (Unless you're being unnecessarily/pedantically literal about the word "bisexual".)

I personally find most people tend to either treat pansexual as being synonymous with bisexual, or treat pansexual as a literal "anything that moves".

edited 18th Aug '11 7:56:07 AM by Jeysie

I've got a question on this trope: if I have a bisexual character who kills as a soldier, not because he's crazy, does that make this trope fit? And if not, what if later he does have a mental break, and commits what we would call a war crime, but there is no malice so much as sheer lack of mental capacity?

I'm rather confused on this trope...

I'm pretty sure its only when their bisexuality is depraved. So a bisexual Axe-Crazy murderer who is also a very kind and romantic lover wouldn't count, while an Affably Evil bisexual rapist would. Well, they could probably be listed under subversions. But the example you give isn't this trope at all.

No to both. The "depravity" has to have a strong connection with the character's bisexuality.

EDIT: Ninja'd!

edited 18th Aug '11 8:59:05 AM by MarqFJA

Ah, ok. I figured, since the violence isn't particularly connected to the sexuality, per se, although the mental break is because the guy he fell in love with dies on the battlefield during a battle they're both in. I figured it had to be because he was bisexual, but I just wanted to make sure...

So, is anyone opposed to me tweaking the description to conform to the alternative forms of "Depraved Bisexual" that I mentioned here and here?

edited 23rd Jan '12 12:11:54 PM by MarqFJA