I think what you posted in the TT thread could work: redefine this as a subtrope of Token Minority that is unspecified. "Token" here implies that the rest of the cast is not diverse so they are genuinely visually out of place; "Unspecified" could mean both that there are a lot of hints that don't point to any one origin, or that the work never mentions it. That way we don't just have "Alice is brown, but she speaks Spanish and her grandma makes her arepas, is she Latina?" or "Alice is brown, she may just be white/Japanese with a tan though" examples, because those honestly dilute whatever this is trying to be and goes into Viewers Are Goldfish territory.
Edited by Synchronicity on May 9th 2020 at 12:50:13 PM
I was someone who cited Ann from Parks and Rec in the other thread, and that's what I think this trope could be: a character whose ethnic background is 1. completely unknown (and not mistaken or deliberately played to fill a foreigner role) and 2. remarked upon within the work. I think now that the only thing making a vague ethnicity tropeworthy is the work going out of its way to mention it, and so conspicuous unexplained ethnicities shouldn't be catalogued if the work doesn't turn attention to it. There's too slippery a slope for "this character stands out because they're ethnic and the work doesn't talk about it". A black person in a pale-skinned anime stands out, but allowing examples like that will lead to things like the Poe Dameron example I made up. Requiring that the work acknowledges it is a good way to make sure the examples are being used as a trope, and I do think there's a difference between making a character vaguely ethnic and portraying them as a foreigner. That is, if there are enough "Ann Perkins usages" to make a trope.
Edited by 8BrickMario on May 9th 2020 at 4:22:40 AM
Well, we can take a look at the old definition — because there is one, albeit badly misused — and see if we want to keep or change it. Currently, it is "a character in an otherwise majority fair-skinned cast who has no hints about what race/ethnicity they might be." Do we want to retain this? There are an okay number of examples for it, but can it just be put under Token Minority?
Obviously, it's a fairly outdated trope from when media was a lot more homogeneous, and kinda feels double standard-y when the brown person's existence has to be explained or justified in some way, but it doesn't matter that the rest of the cast might be comprised of a Swede, a Spaniard, a Canadian, and a Brit if they're all white.
Besides the various misuse and lacking-context examples I've pointed out in the wick check, here are some limitations I've found with the current definition that we can modify:
- Apparently has to be brown (what about fair-skinned ethnically ambiguous characters?)
- Description's kinda vague about what to do with settings that don't have analogous races to Earth at all
Of the proposed definitions here
- A work makes it an In-Universe issue that a character's ethnicity is unknown. As I've stated, I genuinely think this is a good concrete way to fix the concept.
- In a work where by far most of the characters of note have attention paid to their origins, the few that don't might qualify. There does not have to be a specific reason why they don't get the same narrative investment. It might simply be that the fiction was cancelled before it could be addressed or, on the cynical end of things, specification is avoided to give the character a wider representation range. Not sure about this one
- A void also comes into being in cases where a character's ethnicity was previously defined but then undone and never redefined. This may occur when a character turns out to have been adopted or was existing as The Mole all this time. Sure.
- It is possible for there to be too many leads. Two distinct leads generally isn't subject to question, if only because most people have two parents, but more than that and it becomes a curiosity what the work is going for. Sure.
- In real-life, it's common for Mixed Race siblings to have different ethnic phenotypes. In the world of fiction, however, the expectation is for siblings to be similar in looks. So when siblings show up that look like they're from two different ethnicities, that's intentional, and if nothing is ever done to contextualize the intent, it's ambiguous. Not sure about this one
- It may happen that in a fantasy setting that doesn't utilize Fantasy Counterpart Culture, a character draws attention for their appearance or language or some such and the worldbuilding never addresses that. Draws attention within the work? Or outside of it? What does 'draws attention' mean?
- Sometimes, a character's design changes (halfheartedly). This may happen within the work, this may happen from pre-production to production, and this may happen from the switch of one medium to another. This can leave uncertainty about what the character is supposed to be. I think bringing in What Could Have Been will only muddle it further
- Localization may cause the same issues, not by changing the design but the context of the environment. This mostly applies to anime where it may be left unclear if the Japanese cast is still Japanese or not or which characters were reimagined and which weren't.
Edited by Synchronicity on May 19th 2020 at 7:20:58 AM
I should point out that Token Minority is more specific than just having one non-white character in a cast. When a character is a token, their minority status is their entire purpose. They're added so the work can have someone who's female, or black, or gay, not because they're a character that just so happens to be female, or black, or gay. So, I'm not sure adding those examples to Token Minority would be valid.
Because this feels like the third or so time I had to explain the purpose of a Token character, I'm wondering if I should look at the Tokenism tropes and see if they're suffering...
Edited by WarJay77 on May 19th 2020 at 8:25:21 AM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
I get this, but I guess I was thinking that an Ambiguously Brown person's brownness is so integral to their character that there's a whole trope to point it out. When you put it like that, Token Minority probably isn't the right way to go.
x3 I tried to start a TRS for Twofer Token Minority a few years ago it never went anywhere. From what I remember there was, and presumably still is, a lot of misuse.

Ghilz: Case in point is that I think an example like Tamako Market should be included. I wish I could come up with my own examples to illustrate, but I'm drawing only blanks even though I know I know some.
A writer can communicate a character's roots by what they eat, what language(s) they speak (Big Hero 6's "mi casa" joke comes to mind), how they dress, etc. If that all points in the same (rough) direction, great, no ambiguity. If it doesn't, there's ambiguity, and it's really not the audience's fault. "Compared to the rest of the cast" just means that I think this interpretation of the trope can only exist if it's limited to one single character or family, because otherwise it's a form of In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race. Sort of.
Pretty much how I've been using Ambiguously Brown is here
. I'm okay seeing the definition much more limited than that, but it might be worth judging whether those scenarios are tropeworthy and if so, but not as Ambiguously Ethnic, where they should go.