Misused: A Boy And His X

This trope is supposed to be about something a bond between a human and something else "that changes them forever, usually starting them down the path to adulthood". Many of the examples don't really fit. For example:

• The Rescuers: An orphaned girl (Penny) and her pair of mice (Miss Bianca and Bernard).

Bianca and Bernard aren't Penny's pets or companions. They rescue her and she lives a new life after that.

• The Jungle Book: An orphaned boy (Mowgli) and his wolf pack, black panther (Bagheera), and sloth bear (Baloo).

The examples here are more like parental figures, which don't fit with most examples of this trope.

• Inside Out:
  • A Girl (Riley) and Her Emotions.
  • A girl and her imaginary friend, Bing Bong. Or at least until she outgrows him.

Riley never interacts with either her emotions or with Bing Bong, nor is she aware that they are even sentient beings.

A lot of the examples also seem to be just "character has pets", which isn't a trope. This trope is more about a long-lasting, close companionship, where the "X" usually follows them wherever they go. For example:

• Frozen:
  • Kristoff and Sven (A Boy and his Reindeer).
  • Anna, Elsa, and Olaf (2 Girls and their Snowman).
• The Simpsons:
  • A boy (Bart) and his greyhound (Santa's Little Helper).
  • A girl (Lisa) and her cat (Snowball II).
• Gravity Falls: A Girl (Mabel) and Her Pig (Waddles).
• Looney Tunes:
  • An old lady (Granny) and her cat (Sylvester), bird (Tweety), and dog (Hector).
  • Taz-Mania has a Tasmanian devil (Taz) and his turtle (Dog).
  • The Looney Tunes Show has a rabbit (Bugs) and his Tasmanian devil (Taz).

Kristoff and Sven is the only one that I think counts. The others don't have the same kind of relationship.

Yeah, "character has a pet" is PSOC.

Old Trope Talk thread that might be relevant.

Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!

Looking at that thread it appears that the OP was trying to get across that they felt the X needed to be supernatural or powerful in some way. I don't think that thread will be of the most help here.

I do think that this trope can use some work. A lot of the examples seem like ZCEs when read. This makes it hard to determine valid examples since we cannot tell the relationship that is had between boy and X.

In the description perhaps we could emphasize the aspect that the X changes the life of the boy in some way. At the very least we could say at the end that examples must be in a specific format.

I feel like a good format for examples would be:

• Work: A Y and their X, where X helps Y learn Z, or where X changes the worldview of Y.

The literature section has some good examples of this format like the following:

• The Temeraire series: A Boy and His Dragon. Or, possibly, A Dragon and His British Naval Officer. While not guiding Laurence into manhood, Temeraire does mark a significant shift both in his life and understanding of the world. The series also has several other variants on the trope, such as An Action Girl and Her Dragon, An Action Mom and Her Dragon, A Dragon and Her Conqueror of Continental Europe, A Dragon and His Overweight Middle-Aged Captain; etc.

Edited by Rymyll_the_Wanderer on Sep 18th 2018 at 5:03:26 AM

Now that's a good example.

Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!

Just to figure out the state of the examples I went through and counted them up. I also noted how many were more than just "a Y and their X". In the lists a close example is more than "a Y and their X" but does not fully flesh out the relationship. A full example is, at least what I think, what we should be looking for. This is just a rough surface scan without taking into consideration whether an example is valid.

Number of examples: 439

Number of close good examples: 21 5%

Number of good examples: 16 4%

I think a proper wick check would be helpful... The example check supports a call for a wick check...

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

Are we looking at validity, or just inbound outbound? If it is the former, at least from my glancing through I cannot say I am terribly familiar with a number of the works to say whether they are completely valid.

So here is a wick check I did. I was not entirely sure on some of these but I took a best guess after looking at the works pages of those I did not know.

Yes 15 30% No 30 60% Maybe 5 10%

So as it stands well over 50% is misuse. I do believe there is a trope here but there needs to be some serious work to clean it up and to make sure that further misuse is curbed. As a note I originally stated 439 examples however I realized that that was a bit of a miscount and the actual total is lower. However there are 1503 inbound wicks.

I get the sense that you're not doing the check correctly. With 1503 inbound wicks, that means a square root of 38 (so you check at least 50 random wicks). Random wicks means you have the chance of selecting non-medium pages, such as Main/, AdaptationalBadass/, AdventureTime/, and AffectionateParody/.

I feel like you're only checking examples on the article page. Am I correct?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Okay, yes, you would be correct. I read through the page and saw the square root or 50 but did not really see where I was supposed to be drawing the the wicks from. I can do another using the related tab.

Each bullet on the page is an "example" (and in theory is more likely to be correct than wicks). The practice of calling for a "wick check" is to establish how the rest of the wiki (pages other than the main article) are using the term. Links from other parts of the wiki are called "wicks" in honour of Morgan Wick, for their role in creating this practice.

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The high misuse on-page is pretty significant information in its own right.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Honestly, I think that a big problem with the examples is the lack of context. Most of them seem to play off of the trope title by simply listing "The Character and Their Thing", without any explanation or detail. Fix that and we'll have solved most of the issues with the trope.

Edit: I expanded the Humanx Commonwealth example and fixed the Heralds of Valdemar and Dragonriders of Pern ones, as they had very little context. I deleted some others from that set that don't establish the "bonding initiates maturity" criterion.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 22nd 2018 at 11:10:01 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

So finally a real wick check.

quick results has it as 90% misuse 6% maybe and 4% good usage

This check was not looking at whether the the trope really existed in the work, only with how the entry was written. Many misuse entries were ZC Es.

My previous sorta wick check was looking to see if the trope was present even if the example was not the greatest.

I think a lot of misuse comes from this being a stock phrase, but I imagine this was grandfathered in being from 2007. Along with stricter example rules it might also help to rename the trope.

Edited by Rymyll_the_Wanderer on Oct 22nd 2018 at 1:35:19 PM

I don't believe we want that as the definitive criteria. Neither the page quote nor the image match this definition, and I'm not certain they should be disqualified.

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I'd like to propose a change to A Boy and His X, but I'm not exactly certain what narrative role they must perform, instead I notice several different roles they may perform. These roles range from "pet" (Dorothy and Toto probably isn't a trope) to "deuterantagonist" (Calvin's tiger is a Talking Animals), and hitting many concepts between those two. The one common element is the (non-magical) bond between them. Their relationship is usually more important/prioritized than familial or romantic love.

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Because of this, I'm not certain what sort of context will be appropriate to mandate from the examples.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Well, the "boy" part indicates that it should be a child or someone of childlike demeanor on the one side of the relationship. The "X" would then act as a guardian, companion, friend, and/or guide on the character's journey to maturity or rite of passage. That seems to me to be the intent of the trope, regardless of how it may be used (or misused).

Whether the "X" suffers a Death by Newbery Medal, leaves once its role in the story and/or the character's need for it is completed, or goes on to become a lifelong companion is up to the individual work. For example, in Pete's Dragon (2016), the dragon in question leaves to return to its kind after Pete finds a happy home with a human family.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 22nd 2018 at 3:51:45 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Hmm I'd argue that the 'boy' does not necessarily have to be young or inexperienced. As long as there is some potential of character growth in the 'boy' I would consider the example fine since Tropes Are Flexible. An old man finding a dog and through the course of a story becomes kinder or relearns friendship would fit in my opinion.

I would even be okay with examples where there is not a lot of growth caused by the X. But instead a meaningful relationship is had between 'boy and X which at points might drive the plot.

Edit: As an example which is already on the page, the Temeraire series has Lawrence a naval captain and Temeraire his dragon. While most of the growth is on Temeraire, Lawrence does grow as a person reevaluating some of the values he has after the many adventures he goes through. Lawrence is by no means young or inexperienced but I would still say he fits in this trope.

Edited by Rymyll_the_Wanderer on Oct 22nd 2018 at 3:10:45 AM

The current description of the trope would disagree with you: "A heartwarming story told through the ages: Something unique enters a young man's (or woman's) life, and they form a bond that changes them forever, usually starting them down the path to adulthood."

I don't see how to fit an adult character into this unless they are childlike or inexperienced, or in some way become so during the story. There is also nothing about the "X" experiencing character growth, although this is of course not ruled out.

To reiterate, the current definition of the trope requires that:

• The character is young, immature, naive, and/or inexperienced (the "boy").
• Something special or unique enters their life to form a bond (the "X").
• This bond catalyzes some form of long-term character development or growth ("changes them forever").

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 22nd 2018 at 4:49:09 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Which is why I'm challenging that definition. I don't think it encompasses what people mean when they use the term. Evidence: https://www.rotoscopers.com/2014/11/06/the-boy-and-his-x-why-this-formula-works/

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The examples given in that article don't all match with the current definition, so restricting examples to a subset would seem an inaccurate description of what people in general mean by the trope.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The article you linked supports the existing definition just fine — or rather, it doesn't contradict it to any meaningful degree. The main point of divergence is that it says it "doesn't have to be a child", but all the examples given are straight uses of the trope as we define it.

The main question on the table is whether we:

1. Delete examples not matching the trope's definition, or not containing enough context to determine if they match the definition.
2. Expand the definition to include all variations of "character A has companion B", regardless of the relative age/experience level of A and regardless of whether B catalyzes any plot or character growth.

With 1, we may discover that the title leads inevitably to misuse because colloquial usage gives it a broader definition. With 2, we have the problem that many of the examples lack context and/or meaning and the trope will merely become a list of characters that have pets.

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Under #1, Calvin and Hobbes wouldn't be an example, since Hobbes does not help Calvin mature or protect him on an adventure — he's more like an Imaginary Friend even though Watterson was always somewhat vague on whether Hobbes is really alive. Dorothy and Toto most certainly wouldn't, since Toto is a pet, not a companion.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 23rd 2018 at 12:36:40 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I think your option 2 unfairly combines the two questions of

1. What effect on the plot does this relationship need to have?
2. Does the boy have to be young/unexperienced?

Question 1 is the one we need to answer to clean up this trope. Question 2 is just a matter of how big of a scope the trope will have.

For the cleanup purposes, answering question 1, here is my opinion. For this trope to apply there must be character growth on the part of the 'boy'. Growth on the part of the 'X' is not required but does not render the example invalid if present. This relation needs to form one of the core parts of a single entry work (stand alone movie, novel, game). For works with multiple entries, or a series of episodes this relation needs to show up in most entries/episodes and have some impact. So an example will have: 'boy', 'X', and growth that is caused.

As an aside for cases where a work got a sequel that is not initially planned. I would say it is still fair to say it falls under this trope as long as a bond is still there. This might also apply to a series where the 'boy' and 'X' make up a sub arc and whose relation continues on well after.

Regarding question 2, again appealing to Tropes Are Flexible, aside from what the trope description currently says is there any reason the character absolutely must be young? Is it impossible for adult characters to be able to grow and for that growth to come from some pet?

Edit:

For my personal opinion on 2 though I imagine it is obvious by now, I don't think age at the very least should be a limit. To not allow older characters I feel limits the trope unnecessarily. I don't think I've seen many works at all where even older characters have not had some room for character growth.

Edited by Rymyll_the_Wanderer on Oct 23rd 2018 at 11:45:28 AM

I never said that youth is required, but since the "boy" must experience growth of some sort, it makes no sense to apply the trope to someone who is already mature and capable (such as Master Chief and Cortana).

Adults could count if they are immature, stunted, or repressed and the "X" catalyzes them growing out of those traits and becoming fully functional. For example, in Hook, Peter is physically an adult but still a child in many ways — this isn't an actual example of the trope, just illustrating how it could be.

One must be careful to distinguish it from Manic Pixie Dream Girl, however. The tropes are mutually exclusive: A Boy and His X requires a non-human companion — something that would not normally be considered a full character in its own right, or that is wildly different in appearance, nature, or capabilities; whereas MPDG is about someone who is more or less a peer.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 23rd 2018 at 12:43:45 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

So does the growth need to relate to maturity then? I feel like that might be a bit too limiting.

On a different note related to the fact that X needs to be non-human. I can agree with that though we need to figure out a line here. When I was looking through examples some of the Xs were humanoid robots, humanoid demons, and Humanoid monsters like zombies or vampires. Alongside this are cases where the X is of human level intelligence even if they are definitely humanoid as is often the case with dragons.

You contradict yourself; the article includes Calvin & Hobbes as an example. That's why I say the meaning of "a boy and his X" outside of this wiki does not refer to a story of character growth. I think it refers to a specific Ensemble.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I guess C&H could be seen as a meta-example, but it does sort of open the door for lots of misuse and spillage into other tropes. After all, Calvin experiences no character growth over the course of the comic.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 23rd 2018 at 4:22:30 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

So, just to have a summary of where we are at.

• We know through a wick check and other checks this trope is suffering from heavy misuse both in terms in invalid examples and zces.
• There seems to be consensus that a more explicit set of requirements for examples needs to be had.
• The current discussion is around two points
  • Who can fill in the roles of the 'boy' and the 'x'. What attributes they must have or lack.
  • How much focus on their relationship their needs to be within a work.