Foil: requires interaction or in-work comparison?

Hi everyone. I'm the creator of the Foil cleanup thread.

So I talked about this in a PM with ~Ferot Dreadnaught, but yeah, I'm agreeing with the "must interact" criteria.

Considering if we take away the interaction requirement, it encourages a lot of misuse and addition of incidental, non-meaningful examples. Fairly certain most every work has at least a few instances of a character saying "X is bad, Y is good" or something similar. Characters can have opposing traits that are discussed, especially common between a hero and a villain, but that doesn't mean they're foils and the creator is using the contrast to highlight the characterization of either.

If we allowed those examples, the trope would get broad to the point of being meaningless.

Edit: And I think the writeup there looks good.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Aug 2nd 2020 at 9:53:35 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

I'm not clear on why you say you approve of a write-up that includes "interaction or juxtaposition" when you insist that interaction is the only way.

For the most part, I agree that foils need to interact, but there are a few cases where the interaction is impossible but the contrast is intentional even without Word of God.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The interaction is how the juxtaposition happens. Juxtaposition is putting two things side by side.

And even if we're talking Word of God, just saying "I made this character opposite of this other character" doesn't mean they're a foil. It has to be "I made the villain cruel to highlight how kind the hero is" or something similar.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Aug 2nd 2020 at 10:15:23 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

Question though. If two characters who never meet are compared and contrasted in-universe by other characters, then what trope would it fall under if not Foil? Earlier in the thread someone said that it could be Foil as a Discussed Trope, but I'm not sure. I'm asking because on one of the fanwork pages I work on, I labeled two characters who don't interact but are contrasted in-universe as Foil characters. If they aren't Foils, then what would they be?

There are other ways of "juxtaposition" than just "putting them side by side". That method is simply the most literal way.

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Correct. Saying that juxtaposition occurs from interaction ignores the fact that juxtaposition occurs without interaction as well. It doesn't address my question.

Juxtaposition can be a character in rags stepping outside of a hut to stare at the nighttime city and smiling, then showing another character, in fancy clothes on the balcony of a tall building, who stares out at the nighttime city and frowns. No interaction, but the characters, due to juxtaposition, are shown to be opposites.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

EDIT: Not sure it's the best explanation of how I feel about this, after all

I'm thinking of this analogy...

We have Black-and-White Morality, Grey-and-Black Morality, Grey And White Morality. But to set those tropes up, you have to understand the morality not just of one side, but both, and how they contrast against each other. They're seen against each other; the methods a goody-two-shoes protagonist might use against a horrible antagonist would probably make them seem different if the same methods were used against a Punch-Clock Villain, and the actions of a villain might be seen differently if it's shown that the 'heroes' are Not So Different . But you don't have to do it by just having them go against 'each other'; you can have them, say, faced with very similar decisions and make different choices.

The same can go for other attributes other than morality, and obviously for other relationships than hero/villain.

Edited by PointMaid on Aug 3rd 2020 at 10:36:23 AM

A foil should be contrasting characters or exaggerated versions (one has a temper they try to keep under control, another makes no effort and explodes at everything). I don't think they have to interact but there should be a point of reference to latch onto more than just "they exist in the same universe." The point of a foil is the use of these characters as commentary on other characters, they are in opposition to the morals and behaviors of the other and thus force the other to defend themselves intrinsically. That becomes extremely difficult if one character has no presence in the story and there isn't any overt dialogue or editing comparing the two.

I agree that they shouldn't need to literally interact, they just need a point of comparison, but that "point of comparison" can be pretty broad and subtle. Take Contrasting Sequel Main Character (a subtrope of Foil) for example; the only required point of comparison is that they're both main characters in the same franchise.

I just don't want to turn this into one of those example witch-hunts where editors are deleting entries because it was never explicitly brought up in-universe. Foil is a thematic trope, which means it can be subtle.

The problem is, it being subtle means people could just add any "these characters are different" example, even if the characters aren't foils.

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Would it help if interaction-based foils were made a subtrope? That would mean examples would need the interaction mentioned to give context for the trope, which would both help with judging whether those examples are valid and cut down on the supertrope examples by having a more specific subtrope that interaction-based ones could go into. Of course, that assumes people would use the new trope.

I'd prefer if the non-interacting foils were the subtrope because that would be easier to maintain. Interaction is still broad enough that it can still collect misuse on its own, but non-interaction is begging for people to rationalize shoehorns.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Honestly, Contrasting Sequel Main Character is already straining the definition of foil to begin with because they are usually not a part of the same story nor do they typically interact. Two people who contrast each other by their interactions is the base standard of the trope, being part of the same story but not interacting is stretching the definition but can still work. Going beyond that is reaching "I can justify a broad connection between these two random characters" that dilutes the examples.

Good non-interacting examples would be like The Smart Guy on both the hero and villains side, the two characters may never meet but their identical job is contrasted with the differences in their personalities. Another example would be Winchester from M*A*S*H who was designed to be more intelligent and competent than his predecessor Burns, but if anything that made him even more a nuisance to Hawkeye and BJ because they couldn't fault him on his skills.

I would definitely support a section of potential ways a narrative can explicitly contrast characters to make them foils (they could hold an equivalent position on different teams, have their similarities and differences discussed by a third party, etc), and have explaining specifically how they are contrasted (not just that they are contrasts) be a requirement.

Edited by PointMaid on Aug 6th 2020 at 3:09:55 PM

That should be part of Foil already. Examples that fail to explain the contrast need cleaning up.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I should clarify. I meant how they're contrasted by the medium/narrative.

I didn't mean, 'Alice is X, while Bob is the opposite of X'; I meant 'Alice and Bob are both engineers on their respective teams' (which highlights the fact that while Alice is X, Bob is the opposite of X)

Or is that what you already meant?

Edited by PointMaid on Aug 7th 2020 at 7:15:56 AM

In my experience, what makes a foil a foil is that there's enough contrast between one character and another for the audience to be able to see it. It's not like Barney and Baby Bop discuss this about their relationship with one another or anything. In other words, what matters is that the characters in question coexist and the audience notices the contrast, regardless of the degree of interaction between said characters.

Edited by tyrekecorrea on Aug 10th 2020 at 7:19:33 AM

I'm going to guess "no", and I'll show by illustration;

• (Trope/Work): Barney is older but Baby Bop is younger.

This one-sentence example isn't enough to establish context for Foil because it doesn't show how their characters are highlighted.

• (Trope/Work): Both Barney and Baby Bop are played by adult actors in dinosaur suits, and are supposed to be members of the same family (despite being different species). Barney interacts with the kids by being a wiser, older character who Mentors them. Baby Bop, however, is a younger character who needs the children to mentor her. The difference in their age affects their relationship with the ordinary school kids.

One or two sentences are rarely enough to show how two characters work as Foils to one another.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Where'd you get that from? when it was posted on at least one of the show's pages, it came down to differences in Barney and Baby Bop's ages, colors, and personalities.

I was making it up based on what I remember from a television series I would occasionally see over twenty years ago. I didn't go to the trope/work page to copy information. It was an illustration of my point about using details from how the work creates compare/contrast instead of flatly claiming "X are opposites" in the text of an example. I would rewatch a couple of episodes before editing/adding but I'm not planning on watching any Barney and Friends right now.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

How's this for a Square Peg, Round Trope entry?

• Foil is often misused for any contesting character, even one fro completely unrelated series. Foils must exist in the same story and be intentionally juxtaposed by the narrative, almost aways through them interacting with each other, to emphasized their contrasting traits.

We can figure out non-interaction ways to establish Foils later, or maybe such is something rare enough it should be case by case. For now this seems to address the misuse.

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*ones *always *emphasize

Edited by RallyBot2 on Aug 19th 2020 at 5:30:33 AM

@Added to Square Peg, Round Trope with your edits. Thanks. I was cleaning up Foil misuse when I found this under Cozy Glow in Friendship Is Magic: Major Villains.

• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Diamond Tiara... and if you count the fact that DT was once a villain herself, eviler counterpart. Both are fillies with bright pink color schemes who are far from nice to the Cutie Mark Crusaders and seek friendship, but while Diamond Tiara acted mean out of hidden insecurities and made a Heel–Face Turn, Cozy Glow acted all nice and innocent at first, but turned out to be a False Friend not only to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, but to everypony around her, and more of an evil sociopath than Diamond Tiara ever was. Both of them also have a cutie mark special talent that involves "getting other ponies to do what they want".
  • Spike is an even better example. Both are the youngest members of their respective groups and are of a different species than the other members, as well as being the Wise Beyond Their Years Only Sane Man, though their teammates often fail to take them seriously. Additionally, both served as Twilight's assistant, albeit in different aspects.
  • She becomes one to Sandbar after joining Grogar's Legion of Doom. Both are the only non-magic using ponies of their respective groups, but while Sandbar is laid-back, agreeable, and keeps his friends together when they disagree, Cozy Glow is a sociopath putting on the facade of a Nice Girl and actively exploits it to manipulate and dominate her co-conspirators to her own benefit and is as much a source of bickering in her group as Tirek and Chrysalis, at least initially.
  • To Stygian, with both being the "normal" and powerless one out of their respective groups, and can be disrespected by the other members. Unlike Stygian, however, Cozy Glow truly did try to betray her teammates.

Several of these seem arbitrary (Dimond Tiara and Stygian never get juxtaposed with Cozy). I worry that Evil/Good Counterpart is subject to the same misuse as Foil. And how are they discount tropes from Foil? Thoughts?

I haven't seen those episodes, but the DT one at least sounds like a shoehorn.

Evil/Good Counterpart would be a subtrope of Foil.