• • Opinion Essay
• June 29, 2024

4 Amazing Character Tropes

So, everyone’s heard of ‘character tropes’ at this point. It’s the situations, archetypes, and plot lines that you see repeatedly with different flavors. After what, the dawn of civilization people have been creating stories based on what they have read or experienced before. There is no escaping tropes, there is only becoming one.

Or you know, you can pick and rank your favorites too because you’re creatively bankrupt. And to that end, I have decided that for at least the next ten to 20 minutes I spend recording footage for this video, my favorite kind of tropes are character tropes. The kinds of characters you see repeatedly are the kinds of tropes we’re talking about if the title of the video didn’t make it obvious… or you’re here because of YouTube autoplay, which is possible.

I was going to do ten character troeps, and then I remembered how long it took me to edit the last video, so I brought it down to five. Then when I was thinking of ones I felt strong enough to write about that definitely fit the flimsy premise of this video… I only came up with four so… 

Four, as weird a number as it is… is still better than three, so I don’t know what to tell you. You’re free to complain, but I’m going to get started.

The Heart

Now, I was tempted to put the whole five-man band on this list but then this section would get really long and I wouldn’t know where to place it. If you like fantasy — you know, because you have taste — you’ll have some idea of what the five-man band is. It’s these classic character archetypes that when paired together into a group — usually around five characters — create the most well-balanced character relationships — on average… in my opinion, there are a lot of good trios too. 

I find that characters can only really be fleshed out by giving them at least three different and persisting relationships that inform the reader of their character. When you have five characters traveling together, this becomes easier. From this consistent writing strategy, five archetypes have emerged and just never left, one of them being the Heart. 

My second favorite.

Yeah, know the Heart is only my second favorite, and honestly, I think it’s the most malleable role. The thing is, the archetypes of the five-man band can be combined, twisted, or forgotten in any scenario. None of them are as malleable though as the Heart. 

The Heart is the emotional center, the character that the whole group loves and wants to protect the most — except for maybe the Lancer. They provide the emotional intelligence that often helps other characters find character development. 

When written well, 9 times out of 10 they’re the only character you would 100% hang out with if they were real. And as for why they’re so malleable, it’s because they don’t have to fit any mold. In the five-man band, they can form a trio and a strong bond with any of the other archetypes almost naturally due to their nature as a character. The Lancer and Hero by default, can’t get along, and both of them can struggle to form character relationships with the Smart Guy and the Tough Guy. The Heart doesn’t have these problems.

Also, of the five character tropes, the Heart is the one that works best when removed from the five-man band. You know how there’s been a flood of media that has this gruff, mean-looking, old Dad protecting a child character? Most of those child characters are just Hearts removed from their natural environment. 

I meant that figuratively. 

Sometimes.

That’s why I love the Heart so much. Where the Smart Guy and Tough Guy spots seem dependent on the structure of the five-man band, the Heart can go anywhere and take many different forms. Many of the characters that I’ve written and read that I would consider Hearts are not carbon copies of each other, and I think that’s delightful.

The Mentor

I find that this archetype is very mixed. Sometimes the mentor is a fan-favorite like Gandalf, Uncle Iroh, or Satoru Gojo, or rather hated in their role as mentor like Dumbledore, Tony Stark, and Satoru Gojo…

Weird that I thought of him twice.

The thing that I find many people don’t like about Mentor characters can also be what others like. They’re incredibly capable, more capable than most other characters, almost… too capable. 

They can make for the greatest spectacles, grant the wisest wisdom, and the best action beatdowns, but they can also make you question why you even need the main character. 

Now… I kind of like it when Gojo beats the shit out of people, but I think why I love the Mentor trope is that they do one of two things. 

If the Mentor truly respects and cares for their mentee, it shows a kind of hope that one generation has in the next. In real life, we don’t get a lot of that. We get a lot more spite and resentment, and put-downs, which we internalize and do the same to people younger than us. It’s really nice to see an old wizen wizard, after besting every Balrog, evil Curse, and firebender in sight, look to their mentees and think, “They’re going to be better than me someday.”

Also, I really love training arcs so My Hero Academia Season 5 was just peak anime to me.

And let’s say that the Mentor doesn’t like the mentee. Not only does the story become immensely relatable, it suddenly becomes a waiting game for when the Mentor is surpassed by their student, and granting me the ultimate catharsis. 

Unless of course, the mentor dies before that happens. Then you wasted your shot.

The Pure Evil Villain

Now, I know that deep, complex, morally compromising villains are all the rage right now. They’re usually pretty hot, sort of redeemable, can become anti-heroes later, and they’re cool. Well, not really anymore, but that’s a different topic.

What I want though, what I need, is some good old classic Disney villains back. I don’t need a surprise villain or someone who’s just misunderstood. I love a villain who knows they’re evil and owns it. They’re just so much more fun.

And I know what you’re thinking, aren’t they just two-dimensional? 

Sometimes that’s true, but if it were true half as often as some people claim, there wouldn’t be so many people ready to hop on the Joker’s dick all the time. 

Pure evil does not have to be two-dimensional. It can be funny, trying, and terrifying. I enjoy it when the characters suffer, and Pure Evil Villains make that happen. Your anti-heroes don’t do that. They only go halfway, they puss out halfway through. The only suffering they do consistently is cause me headaches when they fridge a main character’s girlfriend… and sometimes an underage crime-fighting partner. 

It’s really weird how many sidekicks DC likes killing off. It might be the one universe where being a hero’s girlfriend isn’t the most dangerous thing you can be.

To be honest, my favorite villain is Darkseid. There’s something tension-inducing about a villain who only wants to cause pain and misery. A villain who cannot be reasoned with. If a villain can be beaten with a conversation, sometimes the whole plot falls apart. I know this personally, I’ve tried that and it did not go well.

Not everything has to be high-brow, sometimes endings can be simple, even in morally complex plots. Sometimes, the plot revolves around defeating someone who is objectionably evil, and it only carries weight because the villain’s evilness never comes into question.

So yeah, that’s why Dio Brando is the best anime villain of all time.

The Rival/Lancer

So, I actually struggled with how this character trope should be named and decided that since they crossover so much they can be the same thing. Because, truly, the Lancer and the Rival are basically the same thing. They’re the one who diametrically opposes the hero without being the villain who causes the plot. They challenge their moral fiber, their ability, and their values by usually being near equal to the hero in every category, but differently.

Most people when they hear the term rival know what I’m talking about. This is my favorite trope in the five-man band because they’re always the most abrasive and cause the pettiness problems in any story they’re in. 

If your story lacks a lancer in the friend group, your story’s character dynamics might be pretty boring, or maybe everyone is boning, and sometimes that works.

If you’re still not sure what a Lancer or a Rival is, let me name some examples. Sasuke is the Lancer to Naruto, Vegeta the Lancer to Goku, Mustard the Lancer to Ketchup, Pepsi the Lancer to Coke, and truly the quintessential Lancer… 

Shadow the Hedgehog after Knuckles joins the friend group in time for Sonic Adventure 2.

They’re rarely a full-on villain, but they can be at certain points. For the majority of the time, they are the benchmark against which the story measures the hero. Sometimes the Lancer is a bar to meet or a bar they must stay ahead of. 

The Lancer does so many things to engross you in the story that you don’t even notice. Why question if Joseph Joestar is cool before you meet Caesar Cephelli? Without Caesar, you only have a vacuum to judge the best Jojo against, but by having the best JoBro at his side, you understand what makes Joseph cool, interesting, and the perfect leader for the story.

And honestly, so, so many of them, are just assholes in the most entertaining way possible. I live for a good Lancer in the middle of his brooding time. 

Honestly, I think every protagonist needs a Lancer, and if you don’t have a Lancer in your novel, you’re wasting your time… or not, you do you, I can’t tell you what to do. Who am I? Just a guy on the internet with opinions. I may be right but I’m a dime a dozen. Do what you want. 

Closing Thoughts on Character Tropes

If you can’t wait for more content, well sorry, this is probably going to only be something I do every month and a half. Maybe once a month if I’m lucky, but it will happen. I will get more videos out on this channel, and hopefully, you will not hate them.

If you want to find out if I’m talking out of my ass about this stuff. Right now, The House of Asmodeus: A Trial by Fire can be read in its entirety. It’s a story I wrote originally in high school that I’ve rewritten and modernized. It’s about the Demon Lord of Lust, Asmodeus, and his house dealing with the discovery of angel and demon hybrids, but can this discovery stop a war between Heaven and Hell? You can read the entire first book on my site.

I’m also finishing the first arc of another fantasy story, Raydorn: The War in the Black. I originally made a homebrew D&D campaign with my friends set in the magical world of one of my manuscripts, but as it turns out, it’s hard to run a D&D group and I don’t like DMing. So, I took the plot of a mercenary band trying to survive a world war, with all the characters my friends made, and tell the story of how they basically fuck around and find out. 

I’m also doing my own superhero book. It’s semi-episodic, with different arcs how a group of superheroes just out of high school come into their own and deal with each other. It’s a bit of silly, violent fun, with characters figuring out exactly what they can do with their powers, while a bunch of fucked supervillains make their life hell.

Don’t forget to check out the Youtube Channel either!