Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
They Plotted A Perfectly Good Waste
|
Some tropes get unexpected reactions; but sometimes the reaction is what the author or creators were going for. For example, the Uncanny Valley can be intentionally invoked.
When the trope is usually considered bad or otherwise undesirable, we can say They Plotted A Perfectly Good Waste.
Tropes that get this treatment include:
- Boring Failure Hero
- Boring Invincible Hero
- Broken Aesop (commonly in parody and satire)
- Ensemble Darkhorse (although this usually results in The Wesley)
- Any of the Fuels:
- God Mode Sue (For the Catharsis Factor, as well as Rule Of Fun for videogame player characters)
- Narm (Setting up a situation that makes you laugh, even though you know you shouldn't. Preferably with some form of Take That at your heartless, insensitive self.)
- So Bad Its Good
- Special Effect Failure
- Squick
- The Scrappy (Frequently in action or horror movies, an annoying character is introduced, then eventually killed in a satisfying way.)
- Strawman Has A Point (commonly in parodies, deconstructions, and satires)
- They Wasted A Perfectly Good Plot
- Truffaut Was Right
- Unfortunate Implications (commonly in parodies, deconstructions, and satires)
- Uncanny Valley
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?
Sometimes, this is the result of Stylistic Suck. Direct opposite of Unexpected Reactions To This Index. Good art achieves Emotional Torque, but the emotions only have to be strong, not good.
Examples: (sorted by trope(s) being invoked)
Boring Invincible Hero
Dork Age
- Back during the Dark Age, Batman writers intentionally invoked a Dork Age with Azrael, as a Take That to the fans asking for a Punisher-as-Bats. Not that they wouldn't have kept writing the character as such, had it sold well.
- Also "Reign of the Supermen" (and by extension the whole Death and Return of Superman), and Artemis as Wonder Woman. All were intended to revalidate characters sometimes derided as old-fashioned. Reign of the Supermen takes the cake, though, featuring as its replacements a badass-looking cyborg, a Superman who's willing to kill and has bitchin' sunglasses, a teenager with a leather jacket, and a power-armor using badass. Yes, DC, we get it, popular trends at the time are no replacement for the single most iconic hero of all time. Thank you. Bit of subtlety wouldn't have killed you.
- Of course, Superboy and Steel ended up being beloved additions to the franchise and Cyborg Superman is an enduring villain, so that worked out. As for the killer with the bitchin' sunglasses, well... yeah.
- There's a reason for the fan reaction, by the bye: Neither Steel nor Superboy claimed to actually be Superman (thus making it possible for them to be Heroes), unlike Cyborg Superman and Sunglasses Dude; Cyborg Superman, when revealed to be a villain had logical reasons for pretending to be Superman (ruin his reputation). Sunglasses Dude was just a plain ol' Scrappy.
- So naturally, when they made the Animated Adaptation of that arc, the villain was based primarily on Eradicator/Sunglasses Dude.
God Mode Sue
The Scrappy and related
- An intentional Scrappy: Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Wesley was supposed to be an annoying would-be Replacement Scrappy when he first showed up. I mean c'mon, he's named Wesley!
- Final Fantasy Tactics provides another intentional Scrappy. Argath/Algus is a arrogant, bigoted Jerk Ass whose every statement just causes the player to hate him more. This makes the ensuing Boss Battle after he crosses the Moral Event Horizon all the more satisfying. (Nothing says Shut Up Hannibal like a sword to the face.)
- In fact, it was so satisfying, they added another boss battle in the PSP remake where he comes back from the dead just so you can kill him again.
- Thomas Covenant, title character of the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant series, is a rather deliberate Wesley - the author spends the entire first book making him as thoroughly unlikeable as possible, and nearly the entire series is told from his perspective.
- Dale Stuckley is so much of a Scrappy that everyone in universe treats him as one.
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles introduced a very deliberate Scrappy in the form of Riley, and then spent the rest of the second season systematically making her work and turn her into a sympathetic character, which culminated in her rather brutal, shocking, and heartrending murder.
Sliding Scale Of Silliness Versus Seriousness
So Bad Its Good
Special Effect Failure
- One of the favorite things about the old Doctor Who was the corny special effects, so the new series keeps the corn flowing. Of course it's modern corn, so it doesn't look as hilariously out of place as the truly old-style special effects would.
Strawman Has A Point
Uncanny Valley
Unfortunate Implications
Multiple tropes
- Maus uses Character Derailment and Not As You Know Them for tragic effect, twisting the knife on Vladvek Spiegelman's characters to show what a tragedy the Holocaust was.
- Note that the Character Derailment of the brave, determined, generous mouse didn't come during the holocaust; it came many years after he had survived the war, re-united his with imprisoned wife, and moved to the United States... which only makes the situation more baffling. The story goes into some detail trying to examine the cause.
|
|
