Misused: Only Child Syndrome

Only-Child Syndrome is a Trope in Aggregate about how fiction tends to not create siblings for their characters; in other words, it's an overarching trend, and one character not having siblings isn't the trope.

Well, in my Only Child Syndrome Wick Check, I came across a lot of examples who thought the trope was just that- "Character X is an only child", regardless of if it mattered to the plot, or if the character even brought it up, or if we even know anything about their family. Of 50 wicks, 27 were misuse, and even the decent examples were just "a lot of characters in this work don't have siblings", which I'm not even 100% sure does count as the trope, and even if it does, the trope itself rarely ever has any meaning for the story. Much like Nobody Over 50 Is Gay, this is trying to trope the absence of something.

It also doesn't have a lot of wicks; with only 289 of them (subtracting the sandbox itself), and with 54% misuse, we can expect 156 of these wicks to be using the trope wrong.

Interestingly, some of the examples were about characters wanting siblings, so there may be a missing trope in our midsts.

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Sorry for the wait, ~War Jay 77. Opened for discussion.

I could see "only child wants a sibling" being a trope...

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There's already Siblings Wanted. Which is linked to and from Only-Child Syndrome.

Edited by Vehek on May 11th 2020 at 3:04:35 AM

Welp, that takes care of one issue then.

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I don't see how Only-Child Syndrome is a Trope in Aggregate to begin with when there as many if more works that have the protag have siblings so there is no pattern when you compare the works with only children to the ones with two or more siblings. It just reads "this character is an only child".

And since Siblings Wanted covers most of the tropiness, I guess we can either cut it or redirect somewhere else.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 11th 2020 at 7:27:06 AM

Macron's notes

I guess the idea is that it's a trend for characters to not have large families if it's unnecessary for the plot, so siblings are often excluded unless they're plot-relevant.

But that just means that the actual trope boils down to "this work doesn't have siblings in it".

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Such a concept would be covered by the Law of Conservation of Detail.

Cut Only-Child Syndrome as chairs. It remains to be seen whether Syndrome from The Incredibles has any family.

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It took me way longer than it should've for me to get your joke.

But yeah, I agree. It really has no meaning.

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What even is the current definition? I thought it was "work has an unnaturally large amount of only children", but the trope description goes off on a bunch of tangents.

If that is the definition, it's most certainly not chairs, and we can clean it up and move any Siblings Wanted examples to that page.

Edit: Also, this trope should obviously not allow aversions.

Edited by RallyBot2 on May 11th 2020 at 1:59:23 PM

This seems like a valid sister trope to Conveniently an Orphan, World of No Grandparents, etc, where the cast is artificially limited and characters inexplicably don't have families. Yes, this is a subtrope of Law of Conservation of Detail but that has many subtropes. Perhaps this could be retooled to be limited to cases where the:

• Protagonist is an only child in a world (pre-1950's or a fantasy equivalent) where this is unusual and we would expect siblings to be relevant (i.e. Kid Hero)
• OR Everyone or a large number of characters are only children.

In either case this should not be explained by the work.

Siblings Wanted, Last of His Kind, or any other in-universe explanation wouldn't count.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

This line really got me:

"Most fictional characters do not have canonical relatives at all, and far fewer have siblings unless they are required by the plot."

I feel like I ran into some stories recently that really got me thinking of some Fridge Logic over conveniently nonexistent (or at least, as said here, not canonical by never being mentioned) family members, but I can't remember what they were.

Only-Child Syndrome seems like a legitimate concept to me, because it's always easier to write less characters, and not having siblings is one of the easiest ways to have less characters. Multiple children may be more common in real life, but no one has to have siblings the way they must have parents. When one or more parents are missing it's going to stand out more and the audience is more likely to expect an explanation (whether or not they get it).

Maybe Tropes in Aggregate don't always need examples? The narrative meaning to no siblings would be that it makes a simpler narrative, I guess, but that doesn't necessarily make any particular work with an only child an example of something.

I was going to suggest that we replace the trope with a more general one about fictional characters managing to go without canonical family members, even close family that you'd expect to come up in the story (like how a lot of Slice of Life anime somehow never show their parents, which I thought was already a trope but I couldn't find it), but then I realized there is a difference, like I mentioned earlier.

Missing or unmentioned parents or grandparents can lead to Fridge Logic because you know they have to exist (even if they're dead). Siblings don't have to exist though, so there is a different context, but I think it still can be notable. I don't seem to be able to articulate my thoughts very well at the moment though, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Edited by Jokubas on May 12th 2020 at 12:20:06 PM

I think a lot of the examples can be chalked up to Law of Conservation of Detail. Some works simply don't show the characters' families because they aren't relevant to the plot, plain and simple.

This is especially true if the story is set in a school or workplace or a wild adventure where the characters don't actually live with their parents. I mean, I have a lot of friends whose parents I never meet, and conversations about family never really came about, so from my POV, they might as well not exist. That doesn't mean they don't.

Edited by Adept on May 13th 2020 at 3:50:34 AM

If it's "work features an unusually large amount of only children", that sounds valid, and I don't think that's a trope in aggregate.

If it's "[character] doesn't have any siblings", that sounds like Chairs.

To be honest, I think Unclear Description would have been as valid of a thread reason as Misused.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 12th 2020 at 3:21:50 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I think I'm going to vote "cut" here.

I'd like to apologize for all this.

Yeah, good point.

Tbh, finding a misused example was what made me curious enough to do the wick check, so it was misuse I was curious about; the fact that the description makes no sense was a secondary issue to me.

Both problems gotta be fixed, tho.

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I vote to keep; I think "for some reason no one in the work has plot-irrelevant siblings" is a valid subtrope of Law of Conservation of Detail.

That definition doesn't sound like a trope—that's pretty much the same as saying that "every single character in this work is plot-relevant", which is kind of a given?

There is Conveniently an Orphan, but that has a second purpose beyond "characters inexplicably don't have parents"; it's about how the lack of parental figures allows the plot to occur.

Only-Child Syndrome doesn't have something like that; it's purely about the conservation of detail and thus it's defined in the negative.

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But the description actually mentions several ways this affects the plot: in a romance, the character has no familiarity with the opposite sex. There's also frequent overlap with Conveniently an Orphan meaning that the character has to be raised by a stranger or orphanage rather than their older siblings. And the fact that the character has no siblings means they look for a replacement in a harem, or build a sibling-like bond in other characters.

As I said before, this is much more likely to be important in a story with a Kid Hero or Coming of Age Story, works set in the time of one's life where you spend a lot of time with your family, but the family members you'd expect to be important at least as side characters are jettisoned in favor of the plot.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Those are ways it can affect the plot, but they're not a fundamental part of the trope. They're just things that this trope can cause, the trope itself is still defined in the negative as "siblings don't exist", regardless of if it causes any of those things or not.

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If this is reworked into being explicitly about works in which there are no siblings whatsoever in a setting where at least a handful would be expected, or there are a large number of characters who explicitly within the work are only children I think it could stay. The current description is vague enough that is explains the rampant misuse.

Some of the missuse seems to be people using the trope to refer to only children being spoiled and having trouble being as compassionate compared to kids with siblings, or having trouble relating to others which could be a trope but is certainly not this trope.

Edited by darkemyst on May 20th 2020 at 3:15:55 AM

Good point about the name; the fact that we have Middle Child Syndrome probably contributes to that.

Yeah, exactly. I was confused myself when I learned OCS wasn't the opposite of MCS.

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I'm thinking that a new trope should be made, or the examples should be cleaned up, since a character angsting about being an only child is a trope, like how a middle child angsts about being one, which is already covered in MCS.

Also, this is my first time helping out in TRS, so constructive criticism is appreciated.

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First off, glad you're joining us ~

And I agree, a new trope sounds like a good idea, even if we don't end up axing this one.

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