Shouldn't PublicDomainCharacter be a Trivia trope?

Like the "trope" literally just means "Character is in the public domain" which is something that is relevant out of universe and the background of a work, it's not a trope used within the work itself, besides some In-Universe examples discussing the trope I guess.

I think the original idea of Public Domain Character was "having a non-copyrighted pre-existing character appear in an original story", which is an alright trope for our purposes.

So yeah, a list of characters that just happen to be in the public domain is beside the point. A character is a Public Domain Character in relation to a work that appropriates the character, without being affiliated with the original work or franchise that introduced the character. Characters aren't created a Public Domain Characters, but they can become one if 1) their copyright expires (or never existed) and 2) they are actually used by creators or franchises other than their original creator or franchise.

Edited by LordGro on Oct 27th 2023 at 5:52:23 PM

^ I think this is bang-on. It’s similar to Historical Domain Character, e.g. rather than come up with our *own* creepy Eastern European nobleman, we just used Dracula/Vlad Tepes because they already have some pop culture footprint and readers have some idea of what to expect.”

The primary reason we have Public Domain Character and Historical Domain Character as tropes is to prevent every single instance of such characters from being written as its own trope example. They aren't Trivia because they are demonstrably part of and affect the work.

Rather than:

• Albert Einstein: He is in the work.

(which is also a ZCE), we use:

• Public Domain Character: Albert Einstein, played by X, is seen giving advice to Y on how to build a nuclear drive.

Valid point.

Still I see the first variation (misuse) pop up a lot of times.

Then it needs to be fixed, natch.

It's cleanup time!