Satellite Character/Playing With

Basic Trope: Someone whose personality and motivations all revolve around another character.

Straight: Stella is Lucy's friend... and that's about all the audience really knows about her.
Exaggerated: Stella is Lucy's friend... and that's it. She exists merely to hang out with Lucy and act as her sounding board.
Downplayed: Stella is Lucy's friend... and that's the only explanation for her motivations.
Justified: Stella is a Robot Girl created by Lucy's genius inventor parents to serve as her best friend and bodyguard. As such, her programs all focus on keeping Lucy as the center of her world.
Inverted: Stella can perceive and interact with the entire world... Except Lucy.
Subverted: Stella appears to have no personality beyond her interaction with Lucy, but it turns out that she has Hidden Depths that most people miss.
- She tells Lucy everything about her.
Double Subverted: Which all relate to Lucy.
- But the audience hears nothing of it.
Parodied: Stella literally revolves around Lucy.
Deconstructed: Stella has no friends besides Lucy, and thus allows her entire life to revolve around her.
- Stella is extremely dependent on Lucy, whether she knows this or not. Either Lucy moves, or dies, or just goes on to make more friends, and Stella suffers an identity crisis as she realizes she doesn't have much of a personality besides being Lucy's friend.
Reconstructed: Stella's steadfast loyalty to Lucy becomes her defining virtue and is admired by the other characters for it.
- Stella finds a new friend to be extremely dependent on.
Zig Zagged: Stella appears to have no personality beyond her interactions with Lucy, but then it is revealed that she has Hidden Depths, then it turns out these Hidden Depths were only brought about by Lucy, but Stella finally tells Lucy that she's tired of living in her shadow and starts having her own life.
Averted: Stella is a well-rounded, if minor, character.
Enforced: Lucy is the franchise lead, and the writers don't want a secondary character eclipsing her in popularity, so Stella is reduced to near-accessory status.
Lampshaded: One of Lucy's other friends notes she doesn't know anything about Stella other than her being Lucy's friend.
Invoked: Stella is a secret agent, and it helps her masquerade if she appears to have no identity other than as Lucy's friend.
- Alternatively: Lucy is very popular, and Stella wants to be popular as well, but lacks self-esteem, and believes that if the popular crowd knew her personally, they wouldn't like her; so, she only ever defines herself by her friendship with Stella.
Defied: Stella considers letting her friendship with Lucy be her sole identifying characteristic but then rejects this in favor of having a life of her own.
Discussed: "Stella, what do you do when you're not with Lucy?" "I don't understand the question."
Conversed: "Hey, it's Lucy. And... um.. that girl who's always with Lucy."
Played For Laughs: Stella doesn't even have a name. Everyone calls her "Lucy's friend," including her mother.
- Alternatively: Stella is very clearly very infatuated with Lucy, and seems to have no other thought than agreeing with her beloved.
Played For Drama: Stella is co-dependent and trying to lose her identity in Lucy. When Lucy insists she become her own person, Stella is hurt and offended and decides to kill Lucy and take her place.
Plotted A Good Waste: Stella turns out to be a spy from a rival company, sent to earn Lucy's trust and integrate herself into her life so she could steal intelligence from her family's corporation. She was portrayed as a Satellite Character so that the audience would be aware she existed, yet dismiss her as unimportant before The Reveal.

Back to Satellite Character.