NaNo 4328 / 50,000
- "The Gentlemen" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer count: pale-faced, grinning, silent monstrosities. They have voice-leeching powers, too.
- "The Icon" Sting played with this trope in WCW during the fall of 1996 and most of 1997, effectively creating an enormously popular new wrestling character in the process. After being framed by Hulk Hogan's New World Order, Sting announced that he was going to go into seclusion for a while until he thought of a way to clear his name. As he made this announcement, the audience could see that his "Ultimate Warrior"-style greasepaint had begun to consume his face in a bizarre and unsettling literal example of Becoming the Mask, bleaching everything but his nose, lips, and lower jaw clown-white. The following week, Sting appeared in the rafters above the arena with a completely white face, black lips, and black Gothic "crosses" over his eyes, making him look suspiciously like a mime (although Sting's portrayer, Steve Borden, would eventually admit in an interview that the makeup design was suggested to him by nWo member Scott Hall as a tribute to Brandon Lee's appearance in the movie version of The Crow). Not only that, but Sting did not speak a single word while wearing the whiteface for over a year (finally blurting out an insult to Hogan in anger after he was stripped of the WCW Championship). In the meantime, he kept showing up in the ring (sometimes via the rafters and sometimes via the crowd) with a black baseball bat, attacking the nWo or silently subjecting his former allies to a series of "loyalty tests." The whiteface, black bat, and Badass Longcoat that Sting also wore would go on to become key parts of his wrestling iconography and are still part of his signature look today (although he now speaks quite frequently, and has hardly ever been a heel since). Long story short: While Sting was never supposed to be taken as a mime, his fans took to nicknaming him things like "The Sad Mime" or "The Angry Mime."
- Although the gimmick only appeared on national television once, little-known wrestler Harry Del Rios (no relation to Alberto Del Rio) also played with the trope when he was "Phantasio" on an episode of WWE Wrestling Challenge in 1995 (and also as Spellbinder, the Captain Ersatz for Phantasio, in the Tennessee wrestling territory). Ostensibly a magician in a top hat and Badass Longcoat, Phantasio/Spellbinder also wore a mime mask that he would then remove to reveal that his face was painted exactly the same. While he was not a heel, Phantasio/Spellbinder would cheat a bit by spraying his opponents with "silly string" or slipping up behind them and "magically" removing their underpants from inside their wrestling costumes - but these tricks were to amuse the audience rather than to make them angry.
No, the other one.
I don't think the first is an example. Silent Antagonist fits, though.
The second would fit Elective Mute. Whether it fits Enemy Mime is debatable, since it seems more of an audience reaction. It's also way too long with too many irrelevant details.
The third doesn't say anything about talking at all, but it's clearly about a mime.
Either way, a trope isn't defined by a few examples, and I still think it's a separate discussion.
edited 19th Sep '17 4:18:50 AM by AnotherDuck
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Yeah, Enemy Mime is about any antagonist who is or is related to a mime, so it's out of the scope of this discussion.
Speaking of that, a massive amount of The Voiceless's examples are simply referring to background characters who never speak because of how minor and insignificant they are. Is there consensus to get rid of those examples.
edited 19th Sep '17 2:31:21 PM by DustSnitch
Blapper of Water
The current description of The Voiceless implies (the description doesn't make it into a huge deal, but it is there) that it's specifically a gag character, so if the entry is just a background character or a character who happens not to have any lines but nobody points out something they said off-screen, then I think it's fine to cut.
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I support every suggestion made in post #20 above for tropes to be cut or merged.
No, the other one.
I think The Voiceless needs some kind of indication that it's not just a coincidence that the character doesn't speak. It could either be something like implied speech, which is what Heroic Mime often does, or a mention that they do talk a lot, but they don't despite given ample opportunity.
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NaNo 4328 / 50,000
I'm seeing consensus that Enemy Mime isn't about "voiceless characters", so any examples from that page that are (some variation of) The Voiceless should be duplicated by the tropes we are sorting out here.
I'll go adjust the description.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Oh yeah Enemy Mime is just about Mimes like say Mr Mime in Pokemon which does actually talk in the anime.
No, the other one.
To sum it up, the definition of The Voiceless is:
- The character is not heard speaking by the audience, whether in sound or text.
- The character appears enough that there are scenes where you'd expect her to be talking. (Which can still be a single scene, if there's a joke about it.)
- The character is capable of speaking and making herself understood vocally (not The Speechless or The Unintelligible).
- If the character is heard speaking, it's treated as a subversion in the work.
- Heroic Mime and Silent Antagonist are subtropes. Any examples of those tropes should be on those tropes, and not on The Voiceless.
Anything needs changing, adding/removing?
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An important part of the trope you didn't put up there is not that it is made very clear that the character does talk frequently, maybe to the point of being a chatterbox, but the work just goes out of its way to stop them from doing so on-screen.
No, the other one.
That's implied with being expected to hear them speaking.
I don't think the amount they normally talk is important. The heart of the trope is that the audience expects the character to talk, but she doesn't. You don't need a character who talks frequently for that, but you need a character you expect to hear talking in the scenes the character is in. That they're a chatterbox or known to talk frequently are just methods of setting that expectation up, but there are other ways.
The important part is the expectation, and the lack of delivery.
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When you say the audience expects them to talk, do you mean that simply because they are a significant character? In that case, would sufficiently major examples of The Speechless or characters like the Ghost of Christmas Future whose silence goes unexplained be examples of this by virtue of their large roles?
No, the other one.
If they're The Speechless they're not expected to talk. The ghost could count. Not familiar with the particulars there.
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The Speechless is someone who literally can not talk, like they had their tongue cut out or something.
Blapper of Water
How can the Heroic Mime be a subtrope of The Voiceless if you always see the player character on screen? There's not many opportunities for the character to speak off-screen if they're always on screen, is what I'm saying.
Also, Heroic Mime includes those times when the character is shown speaking when they aren't under the player's control (or when they aren't the leader of the group anymore). I think the heart of that trope is the player character acting as an Audience Surrogate, and by having the player character not speak, the player isn't removed from their immersion.
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Some games will have someone ask the Heroic Mime a question, then that same person will continue talking as if the Heroic Mime said something even though the player didn't hear anything. Link from Twilight Princess and the Kid from Undertale both did this.
edited 21st Sep '17 12:02:50 PM by DustSnitch
No, the other one.
If which character is the Heroic Mime shifts depending on who's the current playable protagonist, that's fine. It's still the same position in the game that's The Voiceless character, even if it's not the same, exact character. It's the same role.
I don't understand the argument, "There's not many opportunities for the character to speak off-screen if they're always on screen, is what I'm saying." First of all, those opportunities aren't necessary for the trope, and second, a ton of those heroes are implied to speak by how other characters react to them, but you never actually hear them, so obviously they don't need any "opportunity to speak off-screen".
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Blapper of Water
To try to clear up what I meant: What I mean is that speaking off-screen and not speaking on-screen is important to The Voiceless. Meanwhile, a Heroic Mime is almost always on-screen and never speaks (or is not given a voice when they are speaking so the audience can't hear/read what they have to say). They're almost never off screen talking.
That's basically what I'm getting at.
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No, the other one.
I don't think the act of talking off-screen is important. All that really does is set up the expectation that the character will speak on-screen. It's the expectation that's the important part, not the actually talking off-screen part.
And as I said, the character doesn't need to be physically off-screen to talk in an off-screen manner. If they're on-screen, but doesn't talk despite being expected to, or if what they say is not rendered to the audience, then that's functionally the same thing. If the other characters react as if the hero has spoken, then she's in effect spoken "off-screen", since she never spoke on-screen, but she's still spoken as far as the work is concerned.
It's still the same trope, just specific to video game player characters.
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Heroic Mime can be the same trope as The Voiceless, but it can be played so that even In-Universe the character is mute or can't talk, like in Portal 2. This seems to bring us to a weird point where Heroic Mime is a sub-trope of The Voiceless AND The Speechless.
Speaking of The Speechless, is it anything more than muteness? Is a real-life disability trope-worthy by itself?
No, the other one.
That's a fair point. Would make it an only mostly overlapping trope rather than a true subtrope.
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It can be both depending on the example and exactly what they do. Most Heroic Mime are implied to actually be able to speak but either you don’t see it or the choices you make are implied to be what they say, it’s just not shown they physically say it.
Also if a person can not communicate verbally using words it is very much a trope. Especially if they only grunt and such to get their point across.
edited 24th Sep '17 4:46:36 AM by Memers
Communicating only through grunts sounds like a case Intelligible Unintelligible, where characters like Groot or Chewbacca speak nonsense other characters can somehow understand.
Meanwhile, The Speechless sounds like it is just "muteness." I am not saying it definitely is not a trope, but I would like to see someone articulate why it is a trope, because I personally don't know how to do that.
"That characters somehow understand" that is one thing that is the difference. The Speechless makes the opposite of that distinction. We the viewer may understand them but people inside the work do not. Or they communicate via other methods like Talking with Signs, Charades, or Voice for the Voiceless.
edited 26th Sep '17 1:05:34 PM by Memers
I'm not sure "We the viewer may understand them but people inside the work do not" describes The Speechless at all. There's nothing about a guy who "had their tongue cut out or something" (the only example of The Speechless we've talked about so far) that indicates he can communicate to the audience but not his fellow characters. The only defining trait of The Speechless is they "Cannot speak at all."
P.S. The Charades trope you're looking for is Miming the Cues.
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