Ambiguous Name: Windows Of The Soul

Spinning this thread off the Appearance Tropes Cleanup Topic so that we can make progress there. Problems noted are the vague name that led to confusion with Windows To The Soul and judging by a look at the Characters/ wicks confusion with Meaningful Appearance and Zero Context Examples.

If the trope is supposed to be about Impossibly Informative Eyes, then I'm suggesting a rename to that.

And Windows of the Soul gets turned into a disambig.

There's also a related concept of eyes literally revealing your soul- either a character's true identity being revealed by their eyes staying the same when they're in some disguise or transformation, or eye contact transferring souls and creating some kind of fusion of souls or some sort of demonic possession. These seem kind of related to Windows of the Soul but maybe should be their own trope or trope?

Windows to The Soul was sometimes misused this way, and I'm betting this trope is as well.

- Eyes not shifting when shapeshifting is Glamour Failure or something?

If renaming is on the table, do consider that that "Windows to/of the Soul" is actually a contraction of a pre-existing phrase that actually refers to the "eyes reveal one's thoughts/emotions" trope (currently denoted by Windows of the Soul), the full form of which is "eyes are the windows to/of the soul" ^note the to variant appears to be much more common than the of one, according to Google Search, practically by a factor of 10. I'd hesitate to completely purge the old name(s) in light of this.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 30th 2018 at 12:08:49 PM

Ignoring TVTropes for a moment, the idea of eyes being 'windows to the soul' is that they are gateway to the inner truth of a person — whether that be thoughts, emotions, demonic possession, shapeshifting, inner beasts, etc. The concept is a genuine catch-all term for anything magical or mundane that is lurking within.

Bringing that back to TVTropes and you're looking at a supertrope that really could cover all the 'Eye Reveal' tropes — not just thoughts and emotions, but demonic possession, spiritual powers, elemental powers, sanity levels, shapeshifter eyes, inner beasts, you name it. It really has been that broad in concept since... well, since forever, really.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Aug 30th 2018 at 11:35:12 AM

So, it seems like we're leaning towards: "Make it a disambig for all those tropes about someone's eyes revealing things."

There might be a trope about eyes revealing mundane things, that are still impossible to get just from the eyes...

Although that might just be using "eyes" as a synecdoche to refer to the whole face??

Edited by Malady on Oct 14th 2018 at 12:39:46 PM

How about we re-write Windows of the Soul to be a very broad supertrope about eyes revealing a character's nature, and spin off something like Emotion Revealing Eye Shot for the current definition?

I would prefer a supertrope rather than a disambig, as most of these subtropes have unrelated names. Some subtropes that come to mind:

• Color-Coded Eyes (broad supertrope, includes a lot of eye tropes)
• Eyes Never Lie
• Family Eye Resemblance
• Mood Ring Eyes
• Quivering Eyes
• Tareme Eyes
• Tsurime Eyes
• "Uh-Oh" Eyes (an index, includes a lot of eye tropes)
• Wingding Eyes

Edited by naturalironist on Nov 14th 2018 at 9:18:13 AM

That seems like a reasonable approach.

I like it.

Looking into Eyes Never Lie, I'm seeing some overlap in usage between the proposed overhaul of Windows of the Soul and that trope, which has a lot of examples of "eyes reveal character's true nature" for almost every interpretation of "reveal true nature". One possibility would be to redefine Eyes Never Lie to a narrower definition of "figuring out if someone's lying by looking into their eyes" which is more consistent with the name, but would that require a different thread?

Yes, having read that trope, Eyes Never Lie is just an analysis page of the Windows of the Soul trope. There's no trope there at all. It's purely analysing, through examples, of how Windows of the Soul might be used in a work.

Now, there should be an Eyes Never Lie trope. How many works are people here familiar with where one character feels like their trust in another character is on the line, and they say something along the lines of "Look me in the eye, and tell me that's really true!". The accused character will then either look them straight in the eye, repeat the controversial claim, and the target (after a moment of maintaining eye contact) is satisfied, and continues having faith in the character's position or claim.

The expectation is that the character will be unable to make eye contact, or maintain it for long, if they're lying — and works often do run with this. The significant silence after the demand where the character can't look the target in the eye and the silence stretches out... cue the target storming out of the room or scene cut.

The subversion would be those instances where there's a later reveal that shows the character is really good at lying and they were able to look the target straight in the eye and lied — usually this leads to the "he/you looked me straight in the eye and lied to my face!" scene.

I have no idea whether what I just described already exists as a trope, but is what I think of when I see the trope name Eyes Never Lie.

We could re-TLP Eyes Never Lie to see if there are existing examples of what you described.

- Well, "Lack of Eye Contact = Liar":

Edited by Malady on Nov 23rd 2018 at 3:04:34 AM

So perform a Trope Transplant from Eyes Never Lie to Windows of the Soul, make the latter an index/supertrope, and send Eyes Never Lie back to the TLP with the definition "Using eye contact to determine whether someone is lying"?

I can definitely think of some examples for the new Eyes Never Lie as well.

Any more opinions for/against proposed course of action?

It's been over a week so I think we can take the next step, be it a crowner or starting the action itself.

Support has been unanimous but with relatively low participation. Is a crowned needed?

Yes, a crowner is needed.

Made a crowner

Man, participation really is in a slump. Should we ping the Appearance Clean-Up thread for more feedback again?

I voted. Perhaps hooking the crowner will attract more attention. I'll holler at the mods.