Tone Presence refers to the way a character affects the tone of their work.
A character’s seriousness and comedy are often influenced by their work. A dangerous villain is more likely to be taken seriously in a more straightforward story than in a parodical work, since characters in very comedic stories often take nothing seriously.
On the other hand, a character can change the tone of the work. A character can be so terrifying that when they appear every comedic element is removed, or a character can have several comedic moments that temporarily makes more light-hearted an usually dark story.
Tone Presences
Darkening
A character who has a Darkening tone presence will make the tone more gloomy and serious. These characters rarely have comedic moments, and when they do they’re brief and often non-detracting.
Game Changer
A character who mostly if not always darkness the mood. This can be applied to characters from an already dark work if they either introduced the dark tone or are particularly dark even when compared to other characters.
Partial Game Changer
A character who is taken seriously and is dark most of the time, but still has some comedic moments that prevent them from being a full-on Game Changer. Said comedic moments aren’t enough to completely downplay how they alter the story’s tone.
Neutral
Characters with a Neutral tone presence don’t affect the tone particularly, or at least doesn’t lighten or darken the story.
Adequately Dark
A character who is taken extremely seriously but cannot be a full Game Changer because the work is already extremely dark. This means they don’t actually darken the tone, since said tone was already dark to begin.
A very dark work where disturbing and horrifying things constantly happens is bound to have many characters falling under this.
Decently Serious
Characters who are serious threats and don’t have many comedic moments, but aren’t dark enough to be a Game Changer.
Works with many dark villains can still have Game Changers if the story is very light-hearted most of the time, but when the story’s tone is more towards the neutral, it becomes difficult for a villain to be dark enough.
Unpleasant
Characters who aren’t nice to be around but do not exactly darken the tone. They can be mostly serious, but aren’t exactly terrifying.
Neutral
A character who is neither comedic or serious. Wild animals, specific robots, and background characters with a name but minimal characterization fall under this.
Pleasant
A character who is nice to be around but isn’t usually treated comedically. They can have comedic moments but they don’t happen to frequently. This doesn’t mean that the characters are necessarily serious, just that they aren’t portrayed as exaggeratedly funny or quirky.
A sub-type of Pleasant for heroic characters is Seriously Good. This is for heroes who have little to no comedy to them and may make the story more serious but don’t make the tone darker.
Decently Comedic
Characters who have many comedic moments, but come from a work which can often be comedic.
The work isn’t exclusively comedic and can have serious moments and characters, but characters having funny moments is not uncommon.
Adequately Comedic
Characters who are comedic enough to be Comic Reliefs but can’t be one since the story is already very comedic. This means they don’t make the lighter, since the work already has a very light tone.
These characters appear in works where almost nothing is taken seriously. Everyone is portrayed as silly and unserious since the story isn’t meant to be taken seriously in the first place.
Lightening
Partial Comic Relief
A character who has many comedic moments but can still be portrayed seriously at times.
A villain for example can be comedic most of their screen-time, but have a couple of roles where they get treated seriously, showing they don’t always make the tone more light-hearted.
Comic Relief
A character who completely or almost completely comedic and lightens the tone. It’s not unusual for serious works to have a character or a couple of characters who aren’t taken seriously, since the story could otherwise become too dark.
To be a Comic Relief, a character doesn’t necessarily have to be in a work with few to no comedy. As long as the work isn’t predominantly comedic, any character who is portrayed in a completely comedic way can be considered a Comic Relief.
Relation with Morality Ranking
Pure Evils can’t be too comedic in a detracting way, since they need to be taken completely seriously even if they a Laughably Evil aspect. PEs thus can never be Lightening, nor they can come close to it in any way.
Near Pure Evils can also be Partial Game Changers, having detracting comedic moments but being still treated as a serious threat by the narrative.
Pure Goods and Near Pure Goods can be any level from Comic Relief to Pleasant, since they don’t need to be mostly serious or mostly comedic. PGs can’t be Unpleasant, since they need to be nice people, or any type of Darkening, since darkening the tone means that the character has severe corrupting qualities.
All the other ranks can have any level of Tone Presence since they’re allowed to be inconsistent in their heroism or villainy.