Ambiguous Name: Hello Nurse

The Hello Nurse trope is named after the Animaniacs character "Hello Nurse" that would get a Wild Take by the other characters over how attractive she is. It has nothing to do with nurses or any hospital staff.

Yet I stumbled on this on some character pages where it was misused as "attractive nurse character" which should be Hospital Hottie. For further confusion, Hello Nurse is also similarly named to Hello, Attorney! which is the "attractive attorney character" trope. Hello Nurse is even on the Doctor Index for some reason. It really needs a better name to better describe the trope and also separate itself from being the "Hot Nurse" trope.

I struggle to make a suggestion because, to be honest, I'm not really sure what the trope is supposed to be. The Laconic page says "A female character whom the male characters lust over" and the Playing With page says "A female character whom the male characters lust over." These descriptions seem better fits for Lust Object or Ms. Fanservice to me. And characters checking out another is covered by Distracted by the Sexy and Eating the Eye Candy.

Tally: 200 wicks out of 1459

40 Hospital Hottie

15 Naughty Nurse Outfit

35 ZCE

The rest of the examples I, personally, found other tropes were better fits, such as Dude Magnet, Ms. Fanservice and Distracted by the Sexy.

I don't particularly think this trope has a niche, but maybe I'm wrong. But I'm fairly sure it needs a better name

Edited by BlackMage43 on Jul 22nd 2019 at 2:44:59 AM

Opening. I think this trope isn't so much a "hot character" trope, so a rename might be appropriate ... although I could also see a case for getting rid of Hello, Attorney!; as established in discussions about Hollywood Beauty Standards we only make "hotness" tropes if the hotness is unusual/inappropriate (such as for nurses, which ought to prioritize hygiene standards) and there is nothing abnormal about "hot" attorneys.

Rename Hello Nurse. Make a separate thread with its own wick check for Hello, Attorney!.

The difference between Lust Object and Hello Nurse is, basically, that the former is lusted by one other character, but the latter is lusted by everyone (of the the straight members of the opposite gender, at least), right?

One option is to rename Hello Nurse to Dude Magnet (which is now a redirect to Chick Magnet, referring to Gender Flipped examples of that trope), and explain that there are different connotations of a man attracting a lot of female attention and a woman attracting a lot of male attention.

Dude Magnet sounds like a good name.

If that's the case, then I'd to see what those connotations are. I'm often skeptical whenever gender is brought up in cases like this where it's arguably irrelevant, not to mention how these tropes apply with respect to non-binary characters.

Based on the descriptions of Chick Magnet and Hello Nurse, a male character that attracts a lot of female attention is more likely to be a sympathetic POV character, whereas a female character is more likely to be a Flat Character and the men's reactions to her are more likely to be Played for Laughs (All Men Are Perverts, after all). However, you are right in that the distinction is not 100% gender-based.

One option is to merge Hello Nurse with Chick Magnet and pick a more gender-neutral name for it. Or keep the "sympathetic character who has a lot of people attracted to them" (the current Chick Magnet / Dude Magnet) and "Flat Character whose most important trait is that everyone lusts for them" (the current Hello Nurse) as separate tropes, but rename the latter to something like Everyones Lust Object.

Edited by Snicka on Sep 10th 2019 at 11:12:03 AM

The second proposal in the second paragraph (keep Chick Magnet and Dude Magnet as-is, and turn Hello Nurse into a gender-neutral counterpart centered around Flat Characters instead of sympathetic ones) sounds like a good idea.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 10th 2019 at 8:40:50 AM

I think this already exists as Fanservice Extra

No, Fanservice Extra is providing fanservice for the audience in a brief appearance, whereas Hello Nurse (or whatever we're going to rename it) is everyone's Lust Object in-universe. Expect a bunch of extras getting Distracted by the Sexy when this character is around.

True, Fanservice Extra does focus more on the briefness of the appearance, but a Flat Character rarely has enough of a role to be anything but an extra. Putting a focus on Flat Characters would also get rid of almost all the example the page, since most of them are about actual characters.

One thing I noticed is that Hello Nurse focuses a lot on the reaction the character gets, normaly when making an entrance into a room full of people or walking by a crowded area. A Headturner I think is the term that best describe that type of person.

Maybe Hello Nurse could be renamed into something like Headturning Beauty or Headturning Effect and focus more on the character getting a big physical or verbal reaction from a group when first seen? I think that's the most unique phenomenon this trope has, and wouldn't overlap much with Chick Magnet since that implies romantic interest while this trope would simple be a moment of lust.

Edited by BlackMage43 on Sep 11th 2019 at 2:25:19 AM

Made a crowner.

Edit: Scratch that. Please hook this crowner instead.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 12th 2019 at 5:53:02 AM

I'm wondering if the page Hello Nurse would be better suited as a disambiguation page between Chick Magnet, Hospital Hottie, and whatever else applies.

Hooked.

Lust Object, Ms. Fanservice.

I added a disambiguation page option.

Hello Nurse is actually a Stock Phrase, which is maybe grounds for a rename. It’s an old-timely expression uttered when one sees a hot woman. As such, the trope is about character reactions more than the character herself or the number of people attracted to her. It’s closer to Distracted by the Sexy (although the characters don’t have to be distracted, just impressed) than Chick Magnet.

Bump

The crowner currently has two options in the positive (Since the "turn into a disambiguation page after" option is an extra).

Rename Hello Nurse: 4 (8 yeas and 4 nays)

Merge with Chick Magnet : 3 (7 yeas and 4 nays)

Edited by BlackMage43 on Nov 8th 2019 at 2:16:14 AM

Changed my vote regarding rename from nay to yay. It's got enough votes to call now, which I'll do in a moment.

Now, do we have some alternate names?

Hot Babe Reaction?

Made a crowner for the suggestions given so far. Feel free to add more.