KnightOfCerebus and related tropes cleanup

There have been a number of posts on the Is this an example? thread with confusion about Knight of Cerebus. Specifically, we've had to repeatedly affirm that Cerebus Syndrome is a requirement for Knight of Cerebus, and that both cannot take place within a single installment of anything (a single movie, single book, etc). Adding to the confusion, there are actually a number of examples on the page that are not from serial works.

An increase in drama near the end of a story is called The Climax and is almost omnipresent in storytelling. Cerebus Syndrome is about changes in tone that occur over the course of multiple arcs/episodes/installments, and is often driven by the writers changing their mind as they write on the fly.

We'll start with the subpages first- KnightOfCerebus.Literature and KnightOfCerebus.Film need particular attention. Here, only multiple installments (e.g. things happening in the 2nd or 3rd book/movie in a series) should count, although if there are any edge cases you want to argue, post them here.

Edited by naturalironist on Aug 2nd 2018 at 3:47:06 PM

Cerebus Syndrome is a requirement for Knight of Cerebus, and one of the main criteria for Cerebus Syndrome is that the escalation be unplanned or at least not foreshadowed at the start of a serial work. For a film series, I'd say that it would have to be a pretty long runner to be able to count, and one that wasn't planned out to start with.

For example, in the Star Wars franchise, we know about Darth Vader and the Emperor and the blowing up planets thing right from the start, so there's not an unexpected escalation of tone. In the case of Harry Potter, we similarly know about Voldemort and the threat he represents from the beginning, and the escalation is organic and related to Harry's growth as a character, not Rowling pulling conflict out of her arse.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 2nd 2018 at 10:39:38 AM

Cleared out Literature page. A few I'm not sure about:

• While the newly-revealed backstory for the Ring made it obvious that The Lord of the Rings was going to have a darker tone than The Hobbit, this doesn't really hit home for either the reader or the characters until the introduction of the Nazgul, and especially of their true nature. Especially noteworthy in that their appearance was completely unplanned: at first, Tolkien wrote about a man in a gray cloak on a white horse (namely, Gandalf finally catching up)... then changed both to black, and took the story into whole new not-The Hobbit directions.

Took an axe to the Film subpage as well, though I think there are still some bad examples left. Hot damn do people love making Disney movies seem edgy.

Can I get some feedback on the Marvel Cinematic Universe examples? A lot of them seem to be troping single-installment villains and don't really explain how things get Darker and Edgier, but I haven't seen any of those movies and don't want to offend the fans.

Edited by naturalironist on Aug 2nd 2018 at 5:28:59 AM

I do not agree about Cerebus Syndrome with respect to LOTR, and here's why. The Hobbit was not written as a prequel, but was more of a side story that Tolkien didn't originally intend to fit into the main narrative, to the point of having to retcon it slightly. The War of the Ring and the story of the Third Age was already well under development and was planned from the beginning (granted that Tolkien revised his work many, many times, so claiming "original intent" gets a bit tricky).

If you read The Hobbit first and then immediately dive into The Lord of the Rings, sure, you'll get a jarring shift in tone, but those works aren't really comparable in that way.

I don't have detailed knowledge of the Percy Jackson series to use in evaluating those examples. It would depend largely on whether the escalation is planned and/or foreshadowed.

All of the MCU examples can be axed. Even Winter Soldier isn't that much of an escalation when you consider Red Skull. While campy, he's not exactly light-hearted and comedic.

I could see an arguement for Thanos, but the rest should definitely be cut.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Aug 3rd 2018 at 11:59:55 AM

I am inclined to agree with Fighteer on Tolkien's Legendarium. I feel that The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are tied together mainly through their common setting, not so much through a common story. They feel like two mostly separate events in the same setting.

Cut the LoTR and MCU examples except for Thanos.

Related question- do Cerebus Syndrome and related tropes apply to adaptations? Like reboots of a franchise or different-media adaptations such as The Movie, where the reboot is Darker and Edgier than the original work?

Edited by naturalironist on Aug 3rd 2018 at 3:00:25 PM

No, not unless The Movie is in explicit continuity with the parent series. Darker and Edgier is the more appropriate trope for when an adaptation, reboot, etc., shifts the tone.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 3rd 2018 at 4:04:40 AM

The "episodic works only" rule confuses me a bit. I saw OP deleted Manfred von Karma, but since most Ace Attorney cases are more-or-less self-contained stories, it seems arbitrary to exclude Manfred just because he's from the first game. Or was it because he doesn't cause a long-term shift in tone? And what about serial works adapted into non-serial works? A character can be a Knight of Cerebus in a TV/comic/novel series, but not in the movie it's adapted into? Since when do tropes only apply to certain mediums like that?

Edited by rjd1922 on Aug 3rd 2018 at 9:26:11 AM

Cerebus Syndrome marks a long-term shift in tone by definition. So if you're arguing that a one-off character should qualify for Knight of Cerebus, then that's not how the trope is meant to be used. Tropes Are Tools: there's no glory or shame in having one apply or not apply.

For The Movie situations, it only counts if the movie is in continuity with the serial work. An example of this would be Transformers: The Movie, which was explicitly in continuity, massively darkened the tone, and completely changed the status quo of the ongoing television series.

Most film adaptations of serial works aren't like that: they exist in a different, albeit similar continuity and have no impact on the original work. As such, they cannot have Cerebus Syndrome, but can be Darker and Edgier.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 3rd 2018 at 11:03:56 AM

I'd still argue that Ace Attorney cases should be treated as separate "episodes", since the stories are usually self-contained with each having its own Arc Villain. And what about Episodic Games?

Fair enough. That wasn't clear from the examples at the time, but if you want to re-write the example to show how the overall tone in the series changes go ahead.

Episodic Games are probably the main type of game that could qualify for Cerebus Syndrome honestly.

I have been having trouble with the video game examples, and have been removing them sequentially, with the most obvious non-examples first. The ones that are left may not be correct but at least try to justify how the tone changes in a longer-term way.

Reposting this from the Trope Finder since it may be helpful:

Quoted phrases are from Laconic.Knight Of Cerebus and the first paragraph of Cerebus Syndrome, neither of which have been modified in the course of this cleanup.

Restored the other Ace Attorney example, although I would like it clarified whether the game series does in fact get consistently darker, and when that happens.

Cut this one but not sure if I should have:

• Spookys Jumpscare Mansion delivers what it promises: jumpscares. In the form of cardboard cutouts of cute monsters and objects... for about 50 rooms or so. Soon the player comes across Specimen 2, who is not only a lot more terrifying, but a genuine threat. Things only get worse from that point.

Single-installment work, but does seem like there's a real tone shift from goofy and episodic to serious and threatening.

A single-installment work cannot be "episodic" by definition. Cut.

Do the following apply to RWBY?

To the best of my knowledge, the shift in mood as the story develops has been planned from the beginning. They've confirmed things like certain character deaths that have happened were planned before the story even hit the airwaves, and the below character was designed from the outset to have Domestic Abuse aspects.

Should I make the second example Tone Shift instead of Cerebus Syndrome?

Character: Adam Taurus

• Knight of Cerebus: Until his confrontation with Blake at the end of Volume 3, the White Fang has been a somewhat ineffectual organisation in terms of their confrontations with the protagonists, coming off worst each time. That changes during the battle of Beacon when Adam leads a lethal, successful assault on Beacon Academy. He makes it clear to Blake that his goal was never Faunus equality, it's about painting the world red with the blood of humans. He stabs her in the stomach just to incite Yang to rage, then cuts off Yang's arm. He tries to decapitate Blake as well, but only catches her clone. Angry with Blake's abandonment of him in the Black Trailer, he makes it absolutely clear he's going to destroy everything she cares about just for walking out on him; as a result, she abandons her team, friends and Vale to go on the run.

Cerebus Syndrome: The show begins as a light-hearted exploration of a group of teenagers starting their new school as a way of introducing the audience to the setting and main characters. As the kids - and audience with them - learn more about the world they live in, what's required for the Huntsmen careers they're training for, and begin investigating the long-term plan the villains are working towards, the show gradually begins to get darker and more dangerous. While Volume 3 begins as a tournament festival designed to honour eighty years of global peace and show off the skills of the future generation of Huntsmen, it ends with the full realisation of the villains' plans. What begins as fun and light-hearted slice-of-life transforms into a desperate fight for survival as the kingdom is overrun by monsters unleashed on the unsuspecting public by villains who will stop at nothing to destroy humanity for mysterious reasons. From that point on, childhood has ended as a result of the teenage heroes being thrust into the centre of a Secret War over the fate of humanity that has been waged for thousands of years. Rooster Teeth had to post a viewer-discretion warning on their website shortly before the airing of Volume 3, Chapter 7, advising adult fans who let their children watch the show to start previewing episodes before letting younger children watch them.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 19th 2018 at 2:41:52 PM

Was the whole thing written at once and released later, or was it written gradually, with a few key events planned from the beginning? To my knowledge, Cerebus Syndrome implies the authors changing their mind about what they want the work to be about as they go on making installments. I'm not sure about the second entry; I'd like other to weigh in.

The first entry doesn't make clear that there's a shift in tone in the series that coincides with the villain. Also, is Adam a new villain? From the entry it seems like he's just part of a long-standing antagonist group that Took a Level in Badass, not a new villain heralding a new turn for the series. Reads more like Not-So-Harmless Villain than Knight of Cerebus to me.

From what the creators have said in interviews, they have extensive notes on the plotting of it. They know the start and end of the story, and they had plenty of events planned to occur. However, as they've written and animated the story, they do change things — some things planned for the early parts of the story were pushed back and now happen later on down the road. Some things planned for later were brought forward to happen in the early stages. There's at least one case of them inventing some new part of the storyline between the second and third series — but they also said they didn't need to change much of the original storyline to incorporate the new plot development.

It was the third series where the darkness started coming through and the creators released a letter to their website, stating the storyline was always intended to become darker and they didn't expect to have such a following of much younger viewers. As a result, because the storyline was about to get darker, they were asking their adult viewers to pre-watch episodes before allowing younger children to view them.

So, yes, while the they knew where they were going with the story even before it started being aired, they've also been developing new things as the story has progressed. The darker direction over time was planned from the beginning, however, even if the details have been changed or developed as they went along.

Regarding Adam:

The show was advertised a lot before it ever started airing and they published four trailers, introducing each of the four main characters before the show started. The third trailer, which is called the Black Trailer, introduces main character Blake Belladonna. In the trailer, she is taking part in a train robbery with her mentor, Adam Taurus. When they identify what they're after, Adam wants to set charges to blow the rest of the train. Blake reminds him there are people on the train, but he doesn't care about them. As a result, she cuts free the train from the cargo carriage and abandons him. What she was doing in the Black Trailer gets clarified during the finale of the first series (they worked for a terrorist organisation).

He doesn't appear in the main show until the finale of the second series. Just after a lot of mooks from the aforementioned terrorist organisation are killed when the four heroines try to stop the villains, the villains are concerned that the terrorist organisation won't continue to support them. Adam appears and tells them not to worry about that — as he's in charge of the organisation, they'll stay on board with the plan.

He's not seen again until the big battle at the end of the third series when the villains' big plan is revealed and everything goes pear-shaped for the heroes (this is in the episodes that follow the creators writing the advisory letter to the fandom that I mentioned above). At that point, it becomes clear that his past relationship with Blake was a Domestic Abuse situation (and the Adam entry is a summary of this confrontation).

He doesn't reappear again until Volume 5, which is seen as something of a Character Derailment for him by the fandom because they feel all the threat was taken out of his characterisation. The creators have just released a trailer for the sixth series which centres on Adam and the fandom is talking about Character Rerailment being in effect as a result of the trailer.

The content of the two entries are representative summaries of both Adam and the show's direction — the issue is whether or not they're attached to the right tropes. For example, it's not that the characterisation of Adam goes in a different direction than it started in, it's just that more information comes to light over time that makes him look increasingly nasty. By the same token, the storyline gets darker with every new piece of information the heroes learn about the Secret War.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 20th 2018 at 9:15:07 AM

It definitely doesn't sound like a valid Cerebus Syndrome case then, which removes Knight of Cerebus as a possibility.

Is it okay if I go ahead and remove them?

I agree that RWBY doesn't qualify for the tropes. The setting always had dark undertones. The first trailer (or really, character introduction short) introduced the Grim (which are black nightmarish creatures); the second had the protagonist getting a permanent scar from a duel, and as mentioned, the third had someone wanting to blow up people in a train. Sure, the earlier episodes were generally lighter, but the darkness was always there. And the series still has lighter moments.

I can also mention that it wasn't something foreign to the fanbase either. There were lots of discussions about how the tone seemed lighter than it should and it was only a matter for the show to find its ground to delve a little deeper. Not to mention serious discussions about which character would be the first to die, as if it was a given that someone would.

Edited by AnotherDuck on Jan 17th 2019 at 11:08:46 AM

I've removed those two tropes. I just noticed the show has this one, does it apply?

• Cerebus Call-Back: From the time she is introduced, Pyrrha has a habit of apologising for every little thing she does until the phrase "I'm sorry!" quickly becomes her catch-phrase. Examples of her using it include when she, Weiss and Jaune first meet and an annoyed Weiss asks her to spear Jaune to a locker, and when she saves Jaune from falling on the first day of lessons by spearing him again, this time to a tree. Almost all examples of her apologising are during minor events that are light-hearted or provoke comedy. In the Volume 3 finale, she confronts Cinder in a battle that ends her life; to stop Jaune from following her and losing his own life in the process, she traps him in a locker — her very last words to any of her friends before she dies is her heartbroken "I'm sorry!" to the devastated Jaune.

Questioning Mephiles the Dark's removal from the KnightOfCerebus.Video Games page due to him being the first straight-up hero-killer in the Sonic franchise.

From the Knight of Cerebus main page:

Mephiles was only used in a single game, and his appearance didn't mark any noticeable shift in tone in the games. If anything, he actually marks the end of a Darker and Edgier tone, since the very next game, Sonic Unleashed, adopted a Lighter and Softer tone.