Ambiguous Name: White Haired Pretty Boy

This needs a name that is not bogged down in the literal appearance of the character. Icy Anti Hero, or something. What is it about this archetype besides hair color and prettiness that is needed to match the character? That is what the name should invoke.

If there isn't anything notable about the character besides hair color and prettiness, cut it and let's move on with our lives.

edited 22nd Feb '13 4:51:31 PM by FastEddie

The trope is "white haired, pretty, male and evil". I was sure there was misuse here in the past.

For reference, this and forward.

Holy crap. 2000+ wicks and nobody has a real idea of what it means.

I'd guess at least 75% of those wicks are probably for attractive characters with white hair that otherwise have little to nothing in common with the trope description.

This Is Gonna Suck.

Since January 1, 2012 this article has brought 2,854 people to the wiki from non-search engine links.

Have fun cutting it.

But in the mean time, can I at least slash the "subversions/exceptions" section?

Anyway, as near as I can tell is is "White/Silver hair equals sinister or morally ambiguous at best". Of course, it is worth noting that this applies mostly to young characters with unnaturally white hair, not those that get white hair through old age.

edited 22nd Feb '13 5:32:03 PM by Catbert

Ah, yeah, this is one that has been problematic for ages. I remember seeing it from time to time and it was always wrong. We were discussing it here recently.

This needs to be confined to villains and maybe anti villains, I think. It also needs a new name that makes that very clear.

edited 22nd Feb '13 5:29:45 PM by Arha

BTW, this needs a No Real Life Examples Please tag, seeing how it is making a connection between appearance and moral character.

White Hair + Bishōnen = mysterious guy that is at least morally ambiguous and at most sinister. That seems to be the core. Of course, it lists pretty much every white-haired character, because yay for Trope Decay. White-Haired Pretty Girl is even worse.

Is there even a distinct trope here? It seems to be a mixture of Blondes Are Evil and Evil Albino on the one hand, and White-Haired Pretty Girl only male! on the other.

I could see them being recombined into Magical White Hair and Evil White Hair or something.

edited 22nd Feb '13 5:48:27 PM by Noaqiyeum

So far as I know the trope, a white haired pretty boy is generally pretty vicious and possibly axe crazy. That seems beyond sinister to me. Then again, I'm having trouble thinking of examples.

edited 22nd Feb '13 5:50:49 PM by Arha

If it's used for villains, it's also been used for antivillains and antiheroes. Kaworu is apparently the Trope Codifier, and his morality ranges all over the place depending on the continuity.

edited 22nd Feb '13 5:57:11 PM by Noaqiyeum

Being evil is more important to the trope than being pretty. White Haired Evil Guy is basically what we're going for.

Well, you have Griffith, where the aesthetic makes him sinister, creepy, but also otherwordly handsome, both concealing and amplifying his rotten nature. Then you have folks like Seda and Oswald, who use dark powers, work on the morally ambiguous/villainous side, but end up as Anti Heroes due to the circumstances.

I have my doubts about Kaworu being the codifier. Admittedly, my knowledge of pre-nineties anime is limited, but he sounds more like the Trope Maker. The trope seems to have evolved since then.

edited 22nd Feb '13 5:59:04 PM by lu127

Hence my suggestion. :P

If we ignored the white hair and emphasized the evil it could be Handsome Villian or even Pretty Villain, since the "boy" part isn't really all that important, either.

Next, we have YMMV on what makes up pretty or handsome, but maybe not too much dispute about that that it droops into YMMV uselessness.

edited 22nd Feb '13 6:05:06 PM by FastEddie

I think we should examine individual examples of this before arbitrarily redefining this with some hasty generalization.

My own opinion, though, is that the trope should not hinge on white-haired characters being evil; a lot of them are the Anti-Hero or at least enigmatic in their villainy.

edited 22nd Feb '13 6:16:20 PM by Prfnoff

If we dropped the white hair and made it into a trope about pretty villains I think we're both edging into non trope territory and dropping a defining feature of the trope we do have.

I'd say the white-hair part is pretty important. Perhaps even more so than the pretty part.

You won't see many white-haired women villains fulfilling the sinister part. The Woman In White tends to be just mysterious and ethereal, not malevolent or evil. White-Haired Pretty Girl (which I'm not convinced is a trope as it stands) is about white hair marking a special woman, probably a magic user. It's not about a morally ambiguous entity. White-Haired Pretty Boy has shady morality attached to it. A woman usually does not.

The pretty part isn't really YMMV either, since it's more a matter of adhering to the Bishōnen aesthetic. Even if someone doesn't personally find it pretty, the aesthetic, (thin, to some degree effeminate face, animesque eyes) is pretty easily distinguishable.

edited 22nd Feb '13 6:11:54 PM by lu127

White-Haired Pretty Girl seems like it should be lumped into Mystical Waif or something.

As far as appearance goes it should be white haired guys that are to an extent bishonen, correct? No muscle guys, no girls, probably no scars unless they're attractive scars. Also, probably fairly young. I'm inclined to think that the hair will also be moderately long, but I don't know about that for sure.

Maybe.

I won't oppose a rename and a big chainsawing. I'm dubious about whether the subversions section is even a thing at all, or just "yeah, these guys don't exactly act like the description says, so let's dump them here".

Okay, to start with we should just cut off the bottom half of the page then?

(Barring examples in which white hair symbolises otherworldliness, as in White-Haired Pretty Girl.)

You want to take away everything but the first two paragraphs?

I think white hair is a non-attribute. That is, an identical character (behavior-wise) could have black or green or purple hair. Or no hair at all.