The Ditherer: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Sandurz, Sandurz. You got to help me. I don't know what to do. I can't make decisions. I'm a president!"''|'''[[Mel Brooks|President Skroob]]''', ''[[Spaceballs]]''}}

 

 

But there are also people who struggle with ''all'' decisions. Don't ask them what they want for dinner unless you have an entire day free in your calendar. Don't make them pick which film you and your group are going to see, because by the time they've decided (reluctantly) which one to pick, the cinema will have moved on to different movies.

 

 

The Ditherer comes in a variety of types:

* '''The [[Cloudcuckoolander]]''': Decisions are a bit too reality based and permanent for them, and usually a warning signal of [[Growing Up Sucks]]. Thus, they consciously avoid them.

* '''The Empathic Fence-Sitter''': Decisions might offend or damage someone, and that's not something they want to deal with, so they dodge decisions where possible.

* '''I Can't See The Forest, There Are Too Many Trees''': They see all sides of the issue, and can't stop weighing up pros and cons. Likely to overlap with the Empathic type.

 

 

Ditherers who are men [[Double Standard|don't get half the sympathy that women do]], particularly when female indecision is played for [[Moe]] points. The [[Hot-Blooded|character who plunges headlong into a situation without any thought]] is more likely to succeed than the [[The Philosopher|character who prepares a dissertation on the issue,]] unless a "look before you leap" [[Aesop]] is being enforced.

 

 

Note: One highly stressful decision that causes dithering does not make this trope. However, a pattern of indecision, even if they are all arguably important issues (i.e. a character who "coasts" because they can't decide what they want out of life) does.

== Anime and Manga ==

* The male lead in pretty much any [[Harem Anime]] in general will be a ditherer of some type (usually a wishy-washy variant) to justify why he never makes a choice.

* In early ''[[Gantz]]'', the main characters are forced to make weighty moral decisions. In the anime version, this leads to entire minutes of dithering.

* In ''[[From Eroica with Love]]'', penny-pinching James is a ditherer of the wishy-washy "I want it all!" type, usually when it comes to money.

* The second Mrs. de Winter in ''[[Rebecca]]'' is extremely indecisive - one short scene shows her unable to decide on a menu for that night's meal, after becoming ''mistress of the whole household.'' She's an insecure type (or a wishy-washy one, if you're feeling less generous) who generally bows to the wishes of her husband...or, more dangerously, her malevolent housekeeper.

* This is one interpretation of Shakespeare's ''[[Hamlet]]''. "Now might I do it pat," he says, but never does until it's too late. [[Laurence Olivier]] even prefaces his film version by saying "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind."

* Interesting variation in ''[[Watership Down]]'': Fiver ''looks'' like a ditherer: he's twitchy, he's [[Cassandra Truth|an oracle who has trouble getting people to believe him,]] and he knows everything, making him a prime candidate for the too-many-trees version. However, Fiver always knows ''exactly'' what they should be doing - it's the ''other'' rabbits who dither, until either Hazel or Bigwig bites the bullet and makes the call.

* Archie Jones from ''[[White Teeth]]'' is so indecisive the he often resorts to flipping a coin.

* There's an [[Isaac Asimov]] short story (whose title escapes me) of a General who had to make the best use of "sub-par" individuals. One example is of a chronically indecisive character who is tasked with making the decision on a peace negotiations. He pairs him up with a paranoic who is tasked with pointing out all the possible flaws in the options in front of him. The idea was that only the optimal solution would have ''no'' flaws for the paranoic to pick at and so there would be nothing else to choose (apparently the idea that negotiations would never end was ruled out).

* In ''[[Lady in the Dark]]'', Liza finds herself unable to Make Up Her Mind between the Easter cover and the circus cover, and also between [[Betty and Veronica|Kendall Nesbitt and Randy Curtis]]. She is forced to defend her fence-sitting before a circus court in the third [[Dream Sequence]], which she does by means of a song called "The Saga of Jenny."

* ''[[Hamlet]]'' is famously a ditherer who is told right at the start of the play that his uncle had killed his father and Hamlet should avenge him. He spends the rest of the play deciding what to do (and gets everyone killed in the process).

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* In one episode of ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]'', the Thinker turns out to be one of these.

* Believe it or not, Tummi Gummi actually fell into this trope in the ''[[Gummi Bears]]'' episode, "The Fence Sitter."

* Gadget of ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (animation)|Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' has trouble settling on one decision in "Gadget Goes Hawaiian".

* [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Aang]] spends a lot of time deliberately avoiding how he's going to deal with both the fact that he needs to learn firebending to deal with Ozai, and how he's going to deal with Ozai when his personal philosophy rules out the only apparent option. The firebending thing gets resolved in due time, but the issue of dealing with Ozai without killing him requires a [[Deus Ex Machina]] to come along at the last minute to bail him out.

 

 

[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]

[[Category:Character Flaw Index]]