Really a Useful Note: Hollywood Personality Disorders

So third attempt at this thread. This trope is supposed to be about how personality disorders are portrayed in fiction, but most of the on-page examples are making armchair diagnoses of characters. From my wick check, there do seem to be a few examples of discussed or diagnosed personality disorders, so this page could at least be rewritten as a useful note. Note that there's some more coverage at UsefulNotes.Lack Of Empathy.

We've been discussing on The Sociopath cleanup thread about making a useful note for antisocial personality disorder, so why not discuss this first?

Edited by ccorb on Oct 15th 2020 at 3:31:10 PM

Third time's the charm, as they say. Wick check's good, so opening.

Seconding making a useful note.

There's potential for a trope like this on the style of Super OCD, Hollywood Autism, Hollywood Tourette's, etc. but it's a little too broad and unclear at the moment.

If there are enough proper examples, a rename and a tightening of the description could work (as well as the obvious example/wick cleanup).

Creating a Useful Note for personality disorders is a good idea, but that's a separate course of action.

I agree with the Useful Notes idea.

As for the page itself, hmm...

This part of the description is probably why this is being used for armchair diagnoses (bolded part not bolded by me; it was already like that):

Informed speculation is still speculation. Speculation doesn't belong on objective tropes.

Are there enough non-speculative wicks to remove the speculation part of the definition and clean up the wicks?

If this is mostly being used for armchair diagnoses, I vote to turn the description (minus the end) into a Useful Note and Salvage Yard the non-speculative trope meaning. Otherwise, remove the speculation part and clean it up.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2020 at 3:57:11 AM

...So.

When the TLP was drafting an index about creators on the autism spectrum, we had a debate over if self-diagnosed creators were legitimate. Many people weren't comfortable with including them, but in the end we settled on including them and just stating that some of the creators were self-diagnosed.

Now I see that example coming in to say that only professional diagnosis can be considered non-speculative, but if anything what I learned from the Autism debate is that a diagnosis for something like this is inherently speculative no matter who is doing it, and anybody can get it right or wrong.

So, yeah. Just make it NRLEP so we don't have another debate over what's a legit diagnosis and what isn't.

...Also, this is about Hollywood disorders. As in, fictionalized portrayals. So there can't be any real life examples anyway, as it's inherently meant to be unrealistic.

Retracted.

I might have misread the above post... I need to come back when I'm more awake.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2020 at 4:02:04 AM

I mean, even then, it shouldn't have any real life examples for the reason I stated.

But yeah, I misunderstood what you meant by "informed speculation" and thought you were talking about the professionally-diagnosed real-life examples. I wasn't talking about in-universe examples though, because I mean, that's just not even really related. I was talking about real life and why this trope shouldn't have any real-life examples whatsoever.

It just turns out that the paragraph is problematic for all sorts of reasons, and it should probably not exist.

Edit: Ahaha, oh well. I'll keep this up because it's still relevant anyway. But yeah, get some sleep and come back, sounds good mate.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 16th 2020 at 5:04:05 AM

I retracted my previous post because I feel like I might have misread your previous post. I haven't been awake very long and need to come back later when my head is more clear.

Edit: I think I'm a bit more awake now, but anyway, what I think I was trying to say before I retracted my previous post is that it looks like this is for speculation about fictional characters who may not have even been diagnosed in-universe. I was asking if most wicks lined up with the speculative part of the description instead of being purely objective, and whether there are enough non-speculative wicks to retool this is a proper, speculation-free trope.

Another edit: I guess I already said what was previously here in my first post, and in a less wordy way to boot. Retracted it not for the sake of retracting what I said, but because it was redundant with what I already said.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2020 at 4:47:49 AM

There are 5 (6)? examples from my check where a personality disorder is objectively mentioned. I can also think of Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend who's diagnosed with borderline, and also Pete Davidson, who was diagnosed with borderline.

Edited by ccorb on Oct 16th 2020 at 7:24:58 AM

Maybe we could rewrite the description to remove the speculation aspect, move the information about real personality disorders to a new Useful Notes page, and clean up examples to match the revised definition. We could also make this NRLEP if it isn't already.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2020 at 7:21:52 AM

The borderline personality disorder folder has a few examples of characters diagnosed with the disorder (e.g. Girl, Interrupted and a few others). That would merit a BPD in Fiction section of the useful notes page.

It apparently has had an NRLEP notice since at least 2014. I'll assume there is consensus to list on NoRealLife.Gossip And Stereotypes, at least until it's cut. This is about a stereotype, not speculation. Maybe cut the Personality Disorders redirect (which has no wicks).

Can someone check the remaining wicks? (There are 49 pages in the OP, so 56 wicks remain unchecked.) Any reference to speculation should be cut and valid on-page examples should be crosswicked. The only valid examples in the wick check are Characters.Maniac 2018, Podcast.Serial, FanFic.Stress Relief, Fanfic.Vales Underground, DysfunctionJunction.Webcomics, and possibly Characters.Survival Of The Fittest V 7001 To 050 and Quotes.Voluntary Shapeshifting. The Shy Blue-Haired Girl wick is from the same work (Superego) as DysfunctionJunction.Webcomics.

Edited by LaundryPizza03 on Oct 17th 2020 at 2:20:47 PM

What's odd is that this page was launched from YKTTW in 2011 and the original description intended it to be a Useful Notes page where speculation isn't allowed, but maybe then it decayed into speculation?

Edited by ccorb on Oct 17th 2020 at 8:26:03 AM

There's an Ambiguously Borderline draft on TLP. Pinging ~iceofhell to come over here and discuss.

I got the message

What would you like to discuss? I can make Useful Notes/Borderline Personality Disorder

We're thinking about turning these pages into a Useful Note for personality disorders in general.

Borderline Personality Disorder is one of those disorders that Hollywood uses to explain whatever it wants, and I think deserves a trope. But the page as-is does read like a useful note with a lot of armchair diagnosis.

Going to make a Sandbox.Useful Notes Personality Disorders.

Made it. How does it look?

Edited by ccorb on Oct 26th 2020 at 5:14:50 AM

I feel the same way about this as I felt about the LGBT color-coding draft: ie. kill all speculation with a flaming chainsaw and restrict to diagnosed fictional characters.

I think a trope can be made from the ashes of this but it doesn't look like we have much to go on, so I won't oppose a UN. I am afraid that without a lot of usable examples that pin down common portrayals any new trope would just be "this character has BPD" or "Alice has schizophrenia".

Also, OP, and like, everyone in general: please put your wick check's stats in the opening post.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 26th 2020 at 9:19:11 AM

I think a Supertrope could be made out of this for Super OCD, Insane Equals Violent, Hollywood Autism, Ambiguous Disorder etc, but as it's written right now it's more like a Useful Note. Also, why are real life examples allowed? This definitely seems like a NRLEP qualifier.

EDIT: Apparently a supertrope called Hollywood Psych already exists. Nevermind, though I think we could have a trope on BPD and/or other cluster B portrayals.

Edited by PhiSat on Oct 26th 2020 at 4:14:06 AM

Squashing speculation and restricting it to canon characters seems like the obvious first step. There may be a distinct trope for "misrepresented personality disorder," similar to Hollywood Autism, but right now the structure does seem to hint more at a useful note. Maybe if we narrow it down to specific disorders that get thrown around willy-nilly in canon, namely BPD. It seems almost all of the media examples listed in the sandbox are depictions of BPD, so that seems like the most popular and thus most misrepresented disorder.

I do find it ironic that the trope name suggests "Hollywood represents a personality disorder in canon, but in an inaccurate way" but is being misused for "this character doesn't have a personality disorder in canon, but it would be accurate if they did." (Even when it's not - seriously, the Alter-Ego Acting of Tamara Chambers was listed solely because she enjoys seeing men in pain? The hell do you think the diagnostic criteria for personality disorders is?)

I'll add a bit of context to the Rebecca Bunch example in the sandbox, BTW.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 27th 2020 at 3:38:49 PM

Does this need a crowner? Single prop to legitimize the sandbox effort?

Here's the crowner.