Misused: The Southpaw

This trope is apparently about left-handedness being an advantage, but many of the examples are simply "Character Y is lefthanded". The title also implies that it's simply about someone being left-handed, which is just People Sit On Chairs.

Mind giving some examples of misuse?

First of all, the entire first line of the description is "A lefthander." It then goes into a discussion of the origin of the trope name, with a brief side trip into how sometimes being left handed is an advantage. Then it talks about situational ambidextry, and then a paragraph on real life.

It seems to me that this trope is "this character is left-handed." If that's bad, then that should be changed.

Anyway, on the assumption that it's supposed to have some greater relevance then just being present, here's some misuse or ZC Es:

"Although this never really becomes terribly relevant to the gameplay or plot, Link in most The Legend of Zelda games is left-handed..."

"Rorschach of Watchmen." (Entire entry.)

"Calvin and Susie in Calvin and Hobbes are both left-handed."

"Phineas and Vanessa are left-handed. Dan Povenmire, the creator of the show himself, is left-handed."

"In South Park, Stan Marsh might be an example of this. While continuity tends to be inconsistent, episodes such as "My Future Self n' Me" and "W.T.F." show him writing with his left hand. Adding on to this, he's the Author Avatar of Trey Parker, who is a left-handed person in real life."

I also interpret the trope description as "a character is left-handed". This by itself is People Sit On Chairs. The trope description does go into why southpaws have an advantage in some situations, but it doesn't seem to make that the point of the trope. It also mentions another trope, A Sinister Clue, which is about left-handed people being evil.

Since the term "southpaw" is used in sports to denote a person whose handedness is an advantage, I'd suggest changing this trope to be about that (and not left-handedness in general), making it a sister trope of A Sinister Clue.

Left-handedness as an advantage is a trope. Being left-handed is not. I'm all for correcting according to that.

"A person being left-handed" isn't quite chairs. It's an active decision being made about a character in fiction.

I agree that it can be unintentional (most of the "the actor is left-handed, so the character is too" would be), but for the most part, creators use left-handedness as a character trait. I think the important part is "In fiction left-handedness is used as a defining characteristic." It usually makes the character stand out. Zelda and FLCL are excellent examples of this, I believe. It's not shown to be an advantage, but it's sure as hell not incidental their protagonists are left-handed.

edited 25th Nov '14 5:32:43 AM by Larkmarn

Granted that, if the defining trait is *just* "Sara is left-handed", then it's like "Sara has brown hair" — not quite Chairs, but still not tropeworthy.

The left-handedness must be shown to have consequences, such as an advantage in sports or fighting, or at least connotations, such as an air of evilness, for this to be tropeworthy. Otherwise it's just a trait that, while serving to define a character, doesn't serve any storytelling purpose.

edited 25th Nov '14 5:52:45 AM by GnomeTitan

I feel like "defining trait" would be a storytelling purpose. It's not like "Sara has brown hair" because it's inherently exotic. It's like if Sara had green hair, which would merit a mention.

I suppose you could say the "storytelling purpose" is basically making the character stand out. No generic background character (other than Stormtroopers) is going to be left-handed for no reason.

That depends, in Live Action works characters just have whatever handed ness the actor has generally so handedness is generally not even a creative choice unless purposely called out in the narrative.

Sometimes it's just fleshing out the characters, adding more detail to them for the sake of adding more detail.

I maintain that being left-handed isn't a trope unless there's a pattern of it showing a specific character type. Like being evil.

I think this needs to be treated like an appearance trope. Going back to our friend Sara and her hair, brown, blonde, or green hair are all equally untropeworthy if it's not being used for a spesific narrative purpose- she's just a character with green hair. If the left-handedness isn't being used to communicate something or cause conflict, it's not a trope, just a detail.

I always interpreted The Southpaw as the direct counterpart to A Sinister Clue. A Sinister Clue is about the running trend of devious villains being left-handed (a left-handed prejudice, if you will), while The Southpaw is about good left-handed characters.

This needs to be In-Universe. There seems to be a legit trope here, and there are legit examples of this being used in-universe with left-handedness as an advantage—Rocky had an edge on Apollo because he was left-handed, McCartney being left-handed allowed for The Beatles to have that stagecraft where he'd share a mike with another guitarist with both their guitars pointing the same way. Those are legit examples. But then it also lists Bruce Willis being left-handed in the Die Hard movies, which has nothing to do with anything.

As long as this trope is called The Southpaw, how can it be defined or used as anything besides "this person is left handed"?

This has to be better defined then. Just being a lefty as character trait is too shallow.

Fixed the tag, and noticed that Tricky Troper has removed a large amount of examples. Haven't analyzed them yet, though.

Many of the removed entries are ZCE, but I don't know if the examples that do have context are actually legit, since they say nothing about the left-handedness givin the character an advantage

edited 30th Nov '14 8:49:46 PM by theAdeptRogue

The description used to be substantially different.

Basically, it used to speak specifically about it as a positive and major character trait. Which sounds better to me.

At probably a tenth of the current examples.

If we go back to that definition, this thing needs a rename, or we'll be back here with the same issue sooner or later.

Clock is set.

Considering that the trope name comes from a pre-existing term that is far more broad than what the (current) definition tells us, I believe a rename is necessary — especially with people's habit of not reading trope descriptions before adding examples. I also checked around 20 wicks or so, and none of them have any relevant context.

Perhaps this trope could be used for both when a character is a lefty for differentiation to others or a character quirk (Type I) and when a character left-handedness is helpful to them (Type II)? The "Situational Southpaw" could be Type III.

Like for example:

Type I: Nero's left-handed because he can't use his right hand due to the demon-claw thing.

Type II: Rocky's left-handedness allows him to defeat the world champion by switching from a right-handed stance to his left-handed stance.

Type III: Barret's left-handedness is from a gunshot wound that made his right arm unusable.

edited 11th Jan '15 1:38:00 AM by BlackSunNocturne

Oh dear God, not another 'Type 1' and 'Type 2' style split, especially when one might in practice be a sub-not-quite-separate-trope to the other.

Extending clock.