Split: Crazy Awesome

OK, Laconic defines this This character is awesome because they're crazy.

So far so good, right? Then, why do we even need Trope 2 in the first place? At least that's just Rule of Cool.

Crazy Awesome are characters like, say, Spider Jerusalem, who's clearly off his rockersand talks to wood objects druing interrogation.

edited 17th Mar '11 8:44:00 AM by juancarlos11

Part of the problem is that we've got massive misuse going on here.

As for the example, would you say that Spider's weirdness helps him get stuff done? Because if it doesn't, he's more of a Bunny-Ears Lawyer.

I'd say yeah. That scene I mentioned helped him get the info he needed in that interrogation.

Roger that. And I've read enough of Transmetropolitan myself to know that he's legitimately nuts.

Precisely.

What's more, those that are this trope don't need to assess whether what they do is Crazy Enough to Work—to them, it may make perfect sense, even if rationality (or physics, for that matter) say otherwise. Crazy Enough to Work is, after all, a trope that lampshades how unreasonable characters' chosen course of action is, then relying on that unreasonability for their success. If anything, it's more like having a Weirdness Coupon from God.

And that's why I motion that before anything else is done, we need to decide what the page is going to be renamed, because that's the main reason for the misuse.

We shouldn't rename the trope. The trope is about a character who manages to use is awesome through his craziness. The problem here, is that this somehow got to be put together with "being the Rule of Cool incarnated".

I think that including 'awesome' in the name ties it too closely with subjective tropes like Crowning Moment Of Awesome. It feels more like a value judgment, which we don't really want. That's why I prefer more neutral titles like Insanity Has Advantages.

edited 17th Mar '11 9:46:04 PM by Iaculus

Oh, well, as long as the name is as laconic and clear as the old one, I don't mind it. Of course, we should keep the redirect.

The name crazy awesome would be perfect if people really read trope descriptions more thoroughly.

Regrettably, surgically enhancing the intelligence of the average troper is somewhat outside the remit of this subforum.

Perhaps Special Efforts should look into it?

I laughed. Yeah, I know we can't make people actually read the articles. Anyway, I don't like the leading option Insanity Has Advantages. It seems a little awkward to use in a sentence if you want to go for anything apart from 'Jeff proves that Insanity Has Advantages by not only being immune to mind control due to having no mind, but actually works as a mind flayer when people try!' variants.

A fair point, though I might note that quite a few tropes with similar name-structures have been rather successful, like the 'Evil Is...' snowclone family.

I say keep the name, and put in a caveat "This is not the same thing as Crazily Awesome. This is for characters that are awesome because they are crazy, not so awesome it's crazy.

But it's been proven time and again that the one thing tropers can be guaranteed to read is the name. Just editing the description won't help things.

At any rate, it may be time to call for a crowner.

Yes. I'm quasi-curating a trope that has multiple large print/bold admonitions not to do something, and people do it anyway.

Yeah, the main problem with Crazy Awesome is that people use "crazy" to mean "awesome".

Crazy Awesome is supposed to be about characters who are awesome in a crazy way. By crazy, I mean, literally insane, or close to it.

Which is why I don't like the name. 'Awesome' is a subjective judgment call. 'Useful' or 'effective' isn't so much.

edited 23rd Mar '11 3:47:23 PM by Iaculus

We should probably lay out our options instead of just treading over the same ground.

1. Leave Crazy Awesome subjective and as it is
2. Rename Crazy Awesome and rework it to be about characters who are reliant on being insane to some degree for their abilities
3. Split Crazy Awesome and make one of the splits the above proposal. The current Crazy Awesome can just stay subjective and be about rule of cool weird stuff taken up to eleven or whatever it's being used as now.

Am I missing anything?

Nah, that's good. Now, we need a crowner.

Bump.

edited 28th Mar '11 9:55:00 PM by SpellBlade

Assuming we do the change, we'll need a new picture for the trope.

I'd say Deadpool doing something nuts would work.

Nah, I think that if anything we gotta go with the doctor pointing a banana at the Empty Child or bluffing the Daleks with a cookie.

I would agree that the trope is a terrible mess. Four out of four wiks I've seen lately are of the "So Crazy It's Awesome" kind, which doesn't seem what the trope itself is primarily about. And of course, the picture seems to be like that as well.

I also feel that there are two distinctly different concepts being shoehorned into the same trope. I support a split.

edited 1st Apr '11 9:03:08 AM by Nathaniel

Here is a crowner. No one suggested a fourth option to put on the crowner, so we're going with this.

Slightly tweaked the crowner. The revised trope wouldn't just be about using insanity to fight. That's a bit too narrow, I think.

edited 1st Apr '11 12:15:13 PM by Iaculus