Unclear Description: Emotionless Girl

And Duplicate Trope

Half of the description seems to imply, but never outright say, the trope is about female characters who are next to emotionless. The other half (the first half) of the description describes something much more specific: essentially, the female version of Nerves of Steel: a female character who keeps her cool in crisis situations instead of panicking like the female stereotype says they should. Most of the examples one reads when scrolling down the page (all of the ones I've read, but I haven't read all of them), however, fit with the "stoic, near-emotionless female" part of the description, as does the Playing With, the Laconic, and most, if not all, the quotes (one of them could go either direction).

To begin with, the article needs to decide what it's describing: one, or the other. Even after that, both parts of the description appear to simply be female duplicates of tropes that already apply to both genders, making this a duplicate trope of a sort. I'm not saying it's impossible that the female angle can be used to make a distinct trope, and indeed, the "Nerves of Steel" part of the description does manage to be a separate(ish) trope from Nerves of Steel because it contrasts Nerves of Steel with a(n admittedly sexist) female stereotype, with the point being the dichotomy between how women are "expected" to act and how this character does act. However, as I said before, none of the examples fit that trope. All we have are a bunch of examples of female stoics, which makes this trope in practice a duplicate of The Stoic.

So, uh, what do we do? I'd personally be in favour of wiping the entire thing out as it's a duplicate of The Stoic: the vast majority of the examples on the page could easily go under The Stoic, and the wicks that I've checked are either ZCEs or the same as the examples on the trope page. Problem is that there are more than 1800 wicks, which would make cutting this a big chore. Plus I'm not quite sure if there's some policy against cutting such widely used tropes or not. Either way, the description needs some cleaning up. At the moment, it's like an essay without a thesis: meandering and somewhat confusing.

edited 3rd Mar '14 9:20:30 AM by Erivale

In my understanding, Emotionless Girl is a character archetype where the (usually female) character's emotionless-ness is played to invoke an air of creepiness/eerieness while The Stoic is used to show that a character is cool or Badass. Basically, similar phenomenon, different usage.

Bingo.

Fair enough. There we go. That's a valid trope, which is what I was looking for anyway. Now we just need to write up a better description that follows that. I mean, maybe it's just me, but as I said before, the description reads like an essay written entirely the night before it was due: disjointed and going in several directions at once. And it barely, barely fits the trope that Adeptrogue just described. It describes female stoicness, and how that catches people's attention, but really doesn't say anything about why or how it's weird other than it breaks from a stereotype. It isn't just me, is it?

Also, that does not get rid of the problem of there being a lot of ZCEs. Not so much on the trope page (though there are some there), but on works and character pages.

edited 4th Mar '14 8:42:42 AM by Erivale

The part of the description goes on how "this is an exception to 'women = hysterical' stereotype" should probably be axed, since that's not the point of this trope (not the main one anyway), and there are many other female character archetypes in which the woman is not portrayed as hysterical and panicky (e.g. Yamato Nadeshiko, Proper Lady, Kuudere, etc.)

Agreed.

This trope is about "emotionlessness" not nerves of steel or being stoic.

What specifically are the problems with the description?

Basically, it's all over the place, describing many phenomenon related to the trope (e.g. Portrayal of female characters as "not-hysterical", having Nerves of Steel), but not the trope itself (i.e. Character is emotionless, and that is why she is enigmatic/creepy, mysterious and possibly not human).

As a subtrope of The Stoic, I've always thought of it as lacking emotional reactions to stuff (or having heavily subdued reactions), rather than suppressing them but definitely feeling them. Which can quite often be hard to determine if we don't know how the character actually thinks. However, other characters (or, by proxy, the audience) interpreting the character as having no emotions, whether it's true or not, would also play on the same idea.

I don't think just acting calm and collected would count by itself. It's about not having the emotional range to go past calm and collected at all, or the perception of such.

While probably not important to the trope itself, it's quite often a plot point that the character grows from it and develops a stronger emotional range.

I think the key point is that these character feel "not human", either in a creepy way, or in an otherworldly way. But in some way they just feel like they are not a part of humanity the way the other characters are. Applying this kind of characteristic to a girl or young woman is particularly disturbing, as girls are associated with emotions.

Anyway, I didn't realize the current description had drifted so far from the original trope description. Here is my attempt to refocus it: Sandbox.Emotionless Girl

I just took a quick look at it. I could see a few grammar problems, but the description itself looks pretty kickass. What does everyone else think?

EDIT: I like what you've done with the description, but I personally don't think it's quite ready yet. It's got the right idea, but I find that it's still a bit awkward to read in places and it could flow better. But then again, I'm an English Major, so what's unbearably awkward for me can be, and often is, perfectly fine to everybody I know, so this could just be the perfectionist in me talking.

edited 9th Mar '14 6:18:05 PM by Erivale

No problem. I mean it's just a rough draft I banged out in 20 minutes or so. I figure we can polish it up and then move it over.

It's a good start, nice writeup.

I think it's a bit long. Overall it's good, though.

I went over it again and made a few minor changes.

Does anyone have some specific changes they would like to make?

Also, it would probably be good to get another grammar review to make sure I didn't jack it up again. (English was never my strong subject).

I'm not sure I'd say Emotionless Girl is absolutely always played for creepy points. I don't think it's uncommon for the character to merely be inexpressive but secretly just shy, awkward, bookish etc. It might make people a little uncomfortable or whatever, but it's not like Creepy Child.

Wouldn't that fall under Sugar-and-Ice Personality rather than this trope?

Being cold is a little different from being emotionless. There could still be some overlap, but that isn't a problem.

edited 13th Mar '14 3:04:28 PM by AnotherDuck

Ahra, I think that's more trope creep then actually part of this trope. That's more cold than emotionless. I don't think it really fits here. It's is more the Rei archetype from Eva than the shy bookworm. The Emotionless Girl is at the very least, a little off and a little unsettling.

edited 13th Mar '14 6:00:37 PM by shimaspawn

I don't see any changes being made by people. Shall I move it over to the main page?

edited 15th Mar '14 10:01:16 AM by Sackett

Okay, moved the description over. Shall we prune the examples quickly?

That would be the next step.

Wow... the examples are pretty bad.

Seems like people were trying to jam any stoic like character in there.

I think this is going to need quite a bit of effort to clear out as I don't know several characters.

I mean, I'm not that familiar with Nanoha but is Fate really an Emotionless Girl? I'd never heard her described that way before.

Yeah, the big issue with this one is shoehorning.

Shimaspawn: Eh, they overlap fairly frequently in my experience.