Ambiguous Disorder/Diagnosed by the Audience Cleanup

If it's on YMMV it does need to be made clear that it's an Audience Reaction held by a number of people and not just one troper using the page to Fan Wank their own personal interpretation.

That's why I said I could reword a couple of them to make clear it's not just one troper saying so. (there's a ton of youtube videos on brbabcs characters' psychology if you need citations or anything.)

Yeah, a majority isn't necessary, just some indication that it's held by a group of people and not a single troper using the page to proselytize their Opinion Myopia.

Regarding Chuck, he would probably belong under that yet-to-be-created trope we have for characters who are clearly indicated to be mentally ill in the canon but don't have an official name for their diagnosis. I can't remember how much progress we've made on it, but if we're still in need of examples, he's a prime candidate.

Everything else comes off as WMG armchair diagnosing as opposed to consensus opinions held by a visible portion of the audience.

Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 4th 2022 at 6:02:29 AM

I've encountered a bunch of fanfic examples that are located on character pages. I don't know any of the works, so I don't know whether they should be kept, moved to YMMV pages or removed. I have mentioned my thoughts in bold.

Characters.AZRE Team AZRE

• Ambiguous Disorder: While her ADHD is confirmed, Eirian also shows symptoms of PTSD, especially after she was rescued from the gorge in Chapter 39, where the next chapter shows her struggling with it emotionally and having flashbacks of the traumatic event when facing off against the Stitched again. Low context and potential misunderstanding of what PTSD is (which isn't about the immediate aftermath of a trauma, it's about something that's sustained and more long-term). The entry doesn't tell us if it's sustained. I lean towards remove, but I don't know.

Characters.AZRE Team RWBY

• Ambiguous Disorder: Although nothing is confirmed, Ruby is heavily implied to be neurodivergent by both Yang and Adam, specifically on the autism spectrum. Work hints that she does, so keep.

Characters.AZRE White Fang

• Ambiguous Disorder: Iya is very clearly deranged, but what she specifically has is unconfirmed given the wide range of symptoms she exhibits.
  • Her instability, mood swings, emotional dependency on Banesaw and impulsive behaviour makes it seem like borderline personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder.
  • Similar to Kaanchana, Iya displays some sociopathic tendencies, though actually lacks the sense of self-importance since she doesn't really give insight on her self-esteem, only ever doing so when it's her wanting to be "free" to do whatever she wants.
• The sub-bullets seem gratuitous and enable word cruft. This might be a keeper if it's rewritten as a single-bullet Diagnosed by the Audience entry.

Characters.RWBY Scars (Neo):

• Ambiguous Disorder: She's been violent since childhood but it isn't clear if it's a reaction to anti-Faunus racism, a disorder, or just how she is. "Violence must be a disorder" entry. I lean towards removing this as it comes across like shoehorning.

One final note about these Fanfic.AZRE entries: every single one was added by the same troper, who is also responsible for having created almost all of the content on all of this work's page and sub-pages, and a quick glance at these pages suggest that they're going to need a lot of clean up for a range of issues. Other tropers have either edited the pages to fix formatting or spelling, or while carrying out clean-up projects or TRS work. It's therefore very possible that the YMMV entries are a single-troper, rather than audience consensus, situation.

Characters.RWBY The Abridged Series

• Ambiguous Disorder: Ruby is absent minded, has difficulty socializing with and expressing empathy for other people, an apparent fetish for weapons of all kinds, and has a habit of stealing items she likes. I'm not sure what kind of "disorder(s)" this entry is describing. It's more like list of potentially disparate character flaws. I lean towards removing.

Characters.The RWBY Loops

• Ambiguous Disorder: For the longest time, Weiss seemed hell bent on focusing on others well being more than herself, oft referring to it as her duty as Remnant's Second Looper. Most of the loopers simply thought it was Weiss being a workaholic to the detriment of her own mental health, but there was more to it at times. It took Alucard coming in and being her therapist to finally understand her issues: not only has she tied her sense of self worth into being "Remnant's Second", she has extreme cases of Responsibility OCD, PTSD, and overall anxiety. Add on that her Jedi training just reinforces her Emotion Suppression, that she is a severe case of Armored Closet Gay, she's carrying a massive guilt complex, and is heavily affected by Baseline despite her attempts to reject it due to placing it on a pedestal, it left her on the verge of a perpetual mental breakdown. I'm a bit confused by this entry. It seems like her issues have been diagnosed in-universe, in which case she's neither Diagnosed by the Audience nor ambiguous. It feels like it's been put here because her issues (like many in real life) can't be packaged under a neat little "This specific disorder" label. Can this be salvaged by splitting it between other tropes, perhaps?

Characters.Weight Of The World Teams RWBY And JNPR (Ruby):

• Ambiguous Disorder: She may be suffering from PTSD caused by Penny's death and the fall of Beacon. ZCE. It doesn't tell us what symptoms or behaviours has led to this conclusion or even whether this is an audience reaction or a narrative ambiguity. Remove with an edit reason to say that if this is an audience reaction, to add it to the YMMV page under Diagnosed by the Audience or if this is a narrative pattern, to write a proper context entry showcasing that under Ambiguous Disorder.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 6th 2022 at 6:47:51 AM

Ambiguous Disorder is currently a redirect to Diagnosed by the Audience, so I'd say cut them all out and store the potentially viable ones in a sandbox pending further updates on the suggestion to remake Ambiguous Disorder as an IUEO trope.

Edited by bowserbros on Oct 6th 2022 at 12:21:11 PM

What said. Tbh, I'm kind of skeptical of any fan work examples in general considering how much more niche they are in comparison to the actual work. Any examples that specifically talk about the character actually having some diagnosed disorder can be moved to Disabled in the Adaptation, examples that talk about other characters thinking a character has a disorder can be moved to the Ambiguous Disorder sandbox, and anything else can be cut.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Oct 6th 2022 at 6:17:36 AM

The only valid fanwork example I can think of for Diagnosed by the Audience is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way from My Immortal, because she's commonly considered to be a sociopath of some sort (someone even diagnosed her in detail on the WMG page iirc). Of course My Immortal is unique among fanworks, and I agree that most of them are too niche to count.

Okay, thanks for the feedback. I've rewritten and moved the following as suggested:

To DisabledInTheAdaptation.Fan Works (along with changing the trope name on Characters.The RWBY Loops)

• The RWBY Loops: Weiss initially seemed focus on the well-being of others before her own, so other characters assumed she was a workaholic until Alucard becomes her therapist. Her self-worth is based on being Remnant's Second Looper, she has OCD, PTSD and overall anxiety. Her Jedi training has reinforced her flaws, she's struggling with suppressing her sexuality and she suffers from Guilt Complex.

To Sandbox.Ambiguous Disorder

• AZRE: Yang and Adam both heavily imply that Ruby is neurodivergent, specifically on the autism spectrum. However, this is never confirmed outright.

I have cut all the others. If you do decide to cut the sandbox one in the future, that's fair enough.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Oct 8th 2022 at 9:50:18 AM

added osaka from azumanga daioh to Sandbox.Ambiguous Disorder using a paraphrase of her current Diagnosed by the Audience example, if it needs additional clarification let me know

Edited by NoUsername on Oct 8th 2022 at 10:30:02 AM

Yeah I also suggested adding Osaka to the Ambiguous Disorder sandbox in the TRS thread. The writeup I had in mind reads differently from the one in the sandbox, but the one you used looks good too.

Edited by bowserbros on Oct 8th 2022 at 11:38:59 AM

ah sorry i didn't see that! it's fine if you want to replace it

I decided to merge the two together, since your writeup gets at some important elements that mine overlooked (i.e. quickly summing up Osaka's unusual elements and noting that Osaka doesn't outright deny the speculation that she has a neurological condition, only taking issue with the implication of being unintelligent).

So I'm trudging through examples again, and came across this example on YMMV.Fifty Shades Of Grey:

• Diagnosed by the Audience: Some readers have diagnosed Christian with certain personality disorders, but Narcissistic Personality Disorder is by far the most common. Symptoms of NPD that Christian displays include:
  • Disregarding the feelings and wants of others
  • A willingness to manipulate or coerce others to get what they want
  • A sense of entitlement and strong desire for attention and admiration
  • Expecting special favors or complete compliance with their demands
  • Belittling or avoiding people they see as beneath them
  • Insisting on having the best of everything
  • Displaying an arrogant, aloof and haughty attitude

It's formatted super weird (reminds me of how people used to put the subtropes of Five-Man Band as subbullets before that was banned), and "some readers" feels like Weasel Words to me, and the example also being one of those "technically not general" examples isn't doing any favors to me, either.

Considering how... contentious this series is, how should this example be handled?

Based on a cursory Google search, the NPD interpretation seems common enough to count. At the very least, remove the "checklist" format, separate each trait with commas instead, and replace "some readers" with something along the lines of "a sizable chunk of readers" or "a noticeable camp of readers."

Edited by bowserbros on Oct 13th 2022 at 4:02:02 AM

So something like this, then?

• Diagnosed by the Audience: A large chunk of readers speculate that Christian has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as he displays many of its symptoms, including but not limited to: being arrogant, aloof, and entitled, disregarding the feelings and wants of others, manipulating people to get what he wants, and a having deep-seated desire for attention and admiration from those around him.

And while I'm here, pinging ~Aqua Eclipse — while I'm super grateful that you edited the examples on YMMV.Dream SMP to separate the characters from the people playing them and shortened them, the examples, aside from the one for c!Wilbur, are all still missing the key part of an Audience Reaction, that being that this is an actual common thought among the fandom and not just one person armchair diagnosing a bunch of characters.

In addition, since c!Quackity has an actual confirmed mental disorder, I'm unsure if he counts anyway.

~Crossover-Enthusiast: This is why I listed c!Quackity's case as "weirdly zig-zagged", as while the PTSD is alleged canon, the BPD is not canonically confirmed in any sense, and the post's emphasis is on the latter. For c!Wilbur's case, I can comment it out until I find fan analysis citations if needed.

Edited by AquaEclipse on Oct 14th 2022 at 8:16:31 PM

That rewrite looks good.

YMMV tropes can't be played with, it either counts or it doesn't.

Cool, I'll go request a swap on the locked pages thread.

~Crossover-Enthusiast: Changed the wording. Is the current entry on YMMV.Dream SMP better?

~Aqua Eclipse the c!Quackity and c!Tommy examples look much better, yes! Although I do wanna bring up a few other points:

I think you misunderstood when I brought up c!Wilbur; before your edits to c!Quackity and c!Tommy, he was the only one who had context, since it mentioned the fan interpretation. That would leave c!BBH as the one with no context, so that example should be the one commented out, not c!Wilbur.

Also, the first two examples here:

• Since There Are No Therapists, or at least none that are qualified for the job, many of the people on the SMP can show undiagnosed signs and symptoms of various disorders. Most notably, at least six members of the server show signs of PTSD or C-PTSD from the trauma they have endured.
• While very few of the characters have canonically confirmed neurodivergent conditions and/or psychiatric disorders, content creators with diagnosed disorders often play their characters in ways that are impacted by those disorders, hence rousing fan speculation that their characters may also have these disorders and inverting Disabled Character, Disabled Actor. Examples of these include c!Dream and c!Technoblade, as both of their content creator counterparts have been open about having ADHD in real life.

Are general examples, as they talk about the series as a whole rather than a specific instance. If c!Dream and c!Technoblade qualify for the trope, they should be written as two separate examples, not tacked onto the end.

What are these "c!"? If those are Characterization Tags, I don't think that's allowed.

I have no idea, honestly? I'm not familiar with the Dream SMP, so I was assuming those are official ways to refer to the characters or something (which if I recall character tags are allowed if they're officially used). If not, uh...

Indeed it is. Its presence also means a violation of Real Life Troping probably follows. You're only supposed to trope the character, so there should be no distinction to make.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Oct 15th 2022 at 3:23:52 AM

I originally removed the Diagnosed by the Audience examples because I thought they were troping real life. AquaEclipse added them back saying they weren't, so I've been discussing the examples in lieu of edit warring.

I'm not in the fandom but I'm pretty sure the DSMP relies on Kayfabe.