Not Tropeworthy: Dynamic Character And Static Character

To-do list:

• Remove examples for Dynamic Character and Static Character, which are now Definition-Only Pages. References to the terms can stay. Progress is being kept track of with Sandbox.Dynamic And Static Wick Cleaning.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 21st 2022 at 9:43:27 AM

Opening

for Dynamic Character and Static Character to No On-Page Examples.

I'd hold on for making them Definition-Only Pages for now until further discussion, as, using your own argument, Rounded Character and Flat Character aren't Def-Only.

Dynamic Character examples could be moved to Character Development, or vice versa, Character Development is also pretty much an omnipresent trope.

No idea what to do with Static Character examples.

Ever think Dynamic Character, Static Character, Rounded Character, Flat Character together could make a SlidingScale/ page or that's something to be left for another thread?

Edited by Amonimus on May 9th 2022 at 5:00:55 PM

I didn't wind up being able to finish the wick check, but even my abortive one didn't find any use of Dynamic Character that wasn't redundant with character development, excluding ZCEs and gushing about how "complex" a given character is.

I'd personally just inspect what Static Character has to offer and see if any of it really fits somewhere nice, I can sort of see maybe keeping Static Character No Onpage rather than def only, but but that could take further discussion.

to Sliding scale. Some of the existing Sliding Scale pages are already trying to shoehorn a two- or three- or more dimensional space into a single scale, but I'm not a fan of the practice.

Yeah, I can't see any point in a sliding scale. Def-only is fine, there's not much to say in examples that isn't redundant.

I'd also be in favor of making Round Character and Flat Character def-only if we need consistency.

That would be my choice too, I'd rather make them all def only than make them all no onpage examples.

Def-only.

Definition-only

Definition-only has my vote.

Wouldn't mind Def-only, but are people voting for the stated two or all four mentioned?

If all 4 is on the table, that's what I'm voting for.

The scope of this thread is for Dynamic Character and Static Character, but if we could toss in making the other two def only too, that would be good in my eyes.

to adding Dynamic Character to Omnipresent Tropes and Definition-Only Pages.

to adding Static Character to Omnipresent Tropes.

A tentative to adding Static Character to No On-Page Examples. I'd prefer DO, but I don't see enough justification here to remove example wicks yet.

def only for all 4, would be ok if just the two this thread is for are def only

Edited by amathieu13 on May 9th 2022 at 12:13:43 PM

to Flat Character being def-only because I think a character being defined by only a couple traits is considered noteworthy as it deviates from the norm. I might have similar feelings about Static Character as not undergoing development feels noteworthy, but I'm less inclined to keep it as it feels even more likely to attract complaining. Flat Character can too, but I think it's easier to describe objectively.

However, I do think Rounded Character and Dynamic Character are both too omnipresent to be worth listing (as they're essentially the norm for most long-form stories), so I'll at least support them being def-only.

The thing with Flat Character is that it actually is a norm. It's the norm for a majority of characters across works, in fact, as typically only main characters and supporting characters have fleshed out personalities. But flat characters? They're the boss at work, or the waitress they keep meeting at the diner, or the various girls/guys of the week. They're everywhere. People just never think about them.

Hmmm... that's a fair point. I suppose it would only be noteworthy if the flat character was in a leading role but that's too much of a complaint magnet to bother splitting off.

I agree with crazysamaritan on this one.

That’s Vanilla Protagonist more than anything, though they could still undergo development.

I’m in favor of making all four of these def-only.

Edited by prettycoolguy on May 10th 2022 at 6:58:46 AM

I'll agree that Dynamic Character is probably redundant with Character Development.

However, I am hesitant about making anything definition only just because it is common. What does that imply about minor character tropes like Spear Carrier, Bit Character, Recurring Extra, and Living Prop? At a certain point, yes, something can be so omnipresent that there's not much to gain by pointing it out, but I'm not convinced that all four of these tropes meet that criterion.

For that matter — to argue against my own concession^note "At a certain point, yes, something can be so omnipresent that there's not much to gain by pointing it out" — I'm not sure common-ness is the only factor at play in something being so omnipresent that it becomes definition only. Take tropes like Character Development or The Hero, which are both very common and are not definition-only.

I think it also comes down to being able to write something unique to an example. For Character Development, you can describe the development. Whereas for something like One-Steve Limit or Fourth Wall, there's not really any way to describe straight examples that would distinguish them from each other. It's the same reason why examples for things like Stock Femur Bone tend to be very same-y and/or devolve into ZCEs, even though it is definitely a trope, and not even anywhere near omnipresent, whereas "Our X Are Different" is a successful snowclone, because it encourages people to describe the differences between various examples.

For Plots and Conflict you could theoretically describe the plot or conflict in question. We can get away with keeping these pages definition-only because of the many subtropes that cover them, but I'm not convinced that say, allowing off-page examples for Conflict would actually hurt.

TL;DR I don't think commonality alone is enough to make a page definition-only.

It's not necessarily the commonality of it, but the fact that they're omnipresent concepts. More like The Protagonist than The Hero; more like Characters than Character Development.

Yeah, my main point has been there is a distinct difference between common tropes (Character Development) and "Tropes present in pretty much any given work without any notable deviations".

Character Development is tropeworthy because how the development goes is highly variable, Dynamic Character is not only redundant with that, but stripped of describing what the development is, all that's left is "this character changes".

It's the same reason we can have onpage examples of The Hero but not The Protagonist, any given work is almost assuredly going to have a protagonist, but whether it has a Hero, and how that hero is presented, can strongly vary.

Edited by Tonwen on May 10th 2022 at 8:23:46 AM

I agree with crazysamaritan as well.

I think characters lacking Character Development can be noteworthy especially of it's intentional by the creator.

Flat Character can move to No On-page Examples. I have seen it get lampshaded and parodied in media before so it's tropeworthy imo.

Much like Flat Character above, Static Character is also the norm for every non-major or non-supporting character in most works ever made. You don't expect the love interest who shows up once to have development, do you? It's not notable. It's just the Law of Conservation of Detail.