Unclear Description: Keet

Yeah, Keet has a problem of serious overuse that merging with Genki Girl wouldn't solve.

I checked the real life section of this and...

Justin Bieber? Quentin Tarantino? Doug Walker? Who is writing these examples?

More proof that people were completely misunderstanding the definition.

Yeah, I thought about bringing up the real life section myself, as it's terrible. Not sure if this should be No Real Life Examples, Please!, though. The only real life examples I'm pretty sure count are Courtland Mead and Kid President, and I think the latter belongs under Web Original. Neither Darren Criss nor Oscar Isaac are particularly short; they're 5'8 and 5'9 respectively when the average height of an American white man is 5'10.

Edited by rjd1922 on Nov 17th 2018 at 11:42:44 AM

For a real life person I would say height and such are flexable on tropes like this, however I cant say I have ever seen anyone in real life be a Keet aside from my 5 year old nephew.

Oh, so Keet characters are also supposed to be small? Ah, interesting. I never realized that before, although I see now that it says so on the Keet page.

I looked at the thread from seven years ago that Pichu-kun linked to, and it went on for 15 months and the overuse of Keet from that time has gotten worse if anything. There was talk of renaming or splitting Keet, but the only significant changes it made were moving the Genki Guy and Genki Boy redirects to Genki Girl and editing the description of Genki Girl to describe the male equivalent. I removed them from the Distaff Counterpart page and moved Kid President to Web Original, and I think changing Laconic.Keet is a good next step.

Do you mean "I'm NOT really sure what that means"?

Edited by rjd1922 on Feb 25th 2019 at 5:42:59 AM

I agree. However, there are still a couple parts of the Keet definition I'm unclear on.

The Keet page states that he's "often a male surrogate for female audiences." Honestly, I'm really sure what that means. I'm going to quote troper Konoka from the older thread, because they summed it up for me perfectly: Can a series with a female main character have a Keet? And when there are just male characters, what is it about the character that makes him an Audience Surrogate? Is it because he needs things explained to him by the older characters?

My second question is, is it possible to have a Keet character who isn't hyperactive? Because it's noted on the trope pages that, despite the frequent overlap, Genki and Keet can be separate from each other. But Genki characters are hyperactive by default, and hyperactive is also part of the Keet description as well. This makes it sound like Keet is a case of The Same, but More Specific when compared to Genki (which was also brought up on the older thread). Unless it's possible to have a non-hyperactive Keet? Because otherwise, I don't see how a character could be a Keet but not a Genki.

They need to be the kind, hyper, inquisitive, talkative 'little brother type' of character with a girly streak hence the name 'Keet' ala Parakeet. Usually too old to actually be at the age where that is normal, those get painted as a Bratty Halfpint.

They are almost always paired with a far larger Tall, Dark, and Handsome brooding type in a genderflipped Tomboy and Girly Girl type pairing. (shocking we don't have that trope) Rarely the Keet might be paired with a Tall, Dark and Bishoujo such as Tales Of Berseria's Velvet Crowe and Laphicet.

A Keet is almost always a female surrogate in Yaoi and works with entirely male casts that pander to said crowd without actually adding an icky girl to the mix. If girls do appear in those works they are always on the outside looking in as like Cute Sports Club Manager.

Not sure it can be female, it would be hard to not land on the Bratty Half-Pint like Lost Order in A Certain Magical Index who hits most boxes till she starts with the Crocodile Tears and is a genuine brat.

Edited by Memers on Nov 18th 2018 at 8:57:42 AM

Yeah, I would agree that the Keet needs to be in an all-male or nearly all male cast to work. It's sort of a Spear Counterpart to the Otaku Surrogate for a Shoujo audience, though the personality traits that this leads to are different.

Specifically, the character's girliness allows female viewers to relate to them, and their immaturity separates them from whatever serious business is going on, allowing them to ask questions and have a different viewpoint from other characters that makes them somewhat of an Audience Surrogate.

Yup yup yup. Merge. Tropes should be distinguishable from each other. If they aren't, they aren't separate tropes.

The Spear Counterpart of Tomboy and Girly Girl is Sensitive Guy and Manly Man. We also have Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple, which can apply to either gender.

For series where they want a Peripheral Demographic in on the action you will typically see a ShortTank in there as a surrogate for girls in non-guys only series.

Even if you flip it to Yuri works you don't see this. A counterpart would probably be the more boyish characters who gets to be the Tsukkomi like Youko in Kiniro Mosaic and others in Manga Time Kirara works.

That doesn't really fit the Tall, Dark, and Handsome / Tall, Dark and Bishōjo (Seme) + LOUD energetic Keet or Bratty Half-Pint (Uke) combo. Platonic or non-platonic and guy or girl on each.

Edited by Memers on Nov 18th 2018 at 9:28:47 AM

Okay, that makes sense regarding the audience surrogate thing. But is it possible to have a non-hyperactive Keet?

IMO Yeah, they need to be hyper in some fashion, if not physically mile a minute hyper they need to have an inquisitive Motor Mouth and such.

The characters are related to Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype and really do need to have that energy as a counterpart to their other half of the pairing.

With that being the case, is it possible to have a Keet who isn't also a Genki?

By how Genki is should/is defined, sure, there would be lots that are not that hyper all the time.

Edited by Memers on Nov 19th 2018 at 5:48:41 AM

Bumping this thread because I don't want it to stall again. I think we should start by fixing the Laconic page and description.

I think we need consensus first on whether these should stay separate tropes- crowner?

I'm not sure how to make a crowner, but most people here seem to believe Keet is not just a male Genki Girl and was never meant to be.

Edited by rjd1922 on Dec 8th 2018 at 9:56:17 AM

Weird, so I tried to make a crowner, but when I went to do so I found this resolved crowner that seems to be dealing with the exact same problem and proposed solution as we are now. I couldn't find the accompanying Repair Shop Thread (it wasn't in the first 12 pages of the Morgue and forum search is borked), but it seems like there was a similar effort in the past that either stalled out or didn't work?

The winner there only talked about moving the redirects, which has been done.

Crowner

Pichu-kun linked to that thread earlier in this one.

Voting on the crowner doesn't work for me, but I say "Don't merge and don't make gender-exclusive. Keep the tropes separate using Memers's definitions."

Edited by rjd1922 on Dec 9th 2018 at 6:04:46 AM

I can vote fine. It looks like you voted.

Edited by Lymantria on Dec 9th 2018 at 9:41:53 AM