Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive: Difference between revisions

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Particularly [[The Chessmaster|devious]] and [[Magnificent Bastard|magnificent]] villains have a habit of putting their hands together at around chest or mouth level, with fingers either interlocked or tip-to-tip (in which case it shouldn't be confused with [[Shy Finger-Twiddling]]).

One possible reason behind this gesture is that when a person lies, they often unconsciously cover their mouth with their hand (as if to prevent the lie from escaping their lips). Thus, putting both hands in front of your mouth means that you're lying big time. Another reason is that in [[Real Life]] body language, people tend to automatically steeple the hands when feeling overly confident, or superior to whoever they happen to be speaking to. Someone who does this too often will quickly come across as arrogant. But this pose has the advantage of completely blocking arms and chest, making their body language impossible to read anymore.

One possible reason behind this gesture is that when a person lies, they often unconsciously cover their mouth with their hand (as if to prevent the lie from escaping their lips). Thus, putting both hands in front of your mouth means that you're lying big time. Another reason is that in [[Real Life]] body language, people tend to automatically steeple the hands when feeling overly confident, or superior to whoever they happen to be speaking to. Someone who does this too often will quickly come across as arrogant. But this pose has the advantage of completely blocking arms and chest, making their body language impossible to read anymore.<ref>Since this pose does hide the character's mouth, it's also useful in animated works on a low budget - the animators only need to draw one picture of the character, not a collection of pictures that differ only in where the lips are at any given time.</ref>

The word usually used for this action in novels is "[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/steeple steepling]".

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See [[Hand Rubbing]] for the poor man's version of this trope.

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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ~~[[media:GendoGlasses.jpg|~~Gendo Ikari]] of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''. His trademark covering-the-mouth variant is often called "[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-gendo-pose the Gendo pose]". For a while adding the "Gendo Hands" to existing works were a meme. (As a bonus, using the pose repeatedly helped cut down on animation costs.)

* Gendo Ikari of ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', as shown in the page image. His trademark covering-the-mouth variant is often called "[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-gendo-pose the Gendo pose]". For a while adding the "Gendo Hands" to existing works were a meme. (As a bonus, using the pose repeatedly helped cut down on animation costs.)

** [[Subverted Trope|Oddly enough, scans from the original designs for Shinji show him doing a]] ''[http://wiki.evageeks.org/Image:Proposal_17_shinji.jpg happy version] [[Subverted Trope|of the pose]]''. [[In the Blood|It must be a tradition in the Ikari family.]]

* Roy Mustang from [[Fullmetal Alchemist]] does this, too, whenever he isn't out on a date.