About: Dead Herring   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

There are movers and shakers in stories, they're called Heroes and villains. Everyone else is more or less an Innocent Bystander to these two people or factions. They are characters whose sole plot-critical function is to have stuff happen to them; the plot would be no different had they never existed, except that the Hero's heroism, the Villain's villainy and the dangers facing the main character just wouldn't be as powerful without someone to use as a punching bag. Essentially, they are a Red Herring used to prove a point, by dying if necessary.

AttributesValues
rdfs:label
  • Dead Herring
rdfs:comment
  • There are movers and shakers in stories, they're called Heroes and villains. Everyone else is more or less an Innocent Bystander to these two people or factions. They are characters whose sole plot-critical function is to have stuff happen to them; the plot would be no different had they never existed, except that the Hero's heroism, the Villain's villainy and the dangers facing the main character just wouldn't be as powerful without someone to use as a punching bag. Essentially, they are a Red Herring used to prove a point, by dying if necessary.
dcterms:subject
dbkwik:all-the-tro...iPageUsesTemplate
dbkwik:allthetrope...iPageUsesTemplate
abstract
  • There are movers and shakers in stories, they're called Heroes and villains. Everyone else is more or less an Innocent Bystander to these two people or factions. They are characters whose sole plot-critical function is to have stuff happen to them; the plot would be no different had they never existed, except that the Hero's heroism, the Villain's villainy and the dangers facing the main character just wouldn't be as powerful without someone to use as a punching bag. Essentially, they are a Red Herring used to prove a point, by dying if necessary. As such they are storytelling tools, and this Super-Trope categorizes their use based on type: demonstrating danger; causing an emotional reaction in the hero, the viewer or both, and even as a source of humor.
Alternative Linked Data Views: ODE     Raw Data in: CXML | CSV | RDF ( N-Triples N3/Turtle JSON XML ) | OData ( Atom JSON ) | Microdata ( JSON HTML) | JSON-LD    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3217, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Standard Edition
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2012 OpenLink Software