Questions About Karma Houdini

I have some questions about this trope.

• Should it be a YMMV trope?
• The trope description says it applies to villains. Can it also apply to the darker rungs of the Sliding Scale Of Antiheroes?

This is one of those "not really YMMV, but has YMMV elements" tropes. Someone does horrible things and doesn't receive any sort of retribution is fairly objective, you just run into issues of "How horrible were their actions?" and "Did a minor incident balance it out?"

Well, the only mention to anti-heroes in the description was the 25 feb edit by ading in the laconic version. Considering neither the main page neither the Playing With version neither the old laconic version mentions anti-heroes, i already reversed this.

I feel that the YMMV aspects of Karma Houdini should be spun off into its own YMMV trope keeping the Karma Houdini name, with the non-YMMV aspects forming a new trope.

Well, any sort of trope that invokes punishment for actions does run into YMMV territory, simply because (as the laws of various locations show) just how much a given crime should be punished is highly varied from location to location, and frequently from person to person within said locale.

And, obviously, we don't want to get caught up in any sort of crime and punishment debate.

My only worry is that people get a bit touchy with particular tropes getting designated YMMV for some reason, like the orange dot somehow makes it any less valid simply because not everyone agrees that it applies.

Not so much a worry, but there's also instances where it is a clear-cut case. After all, if a bad guy gets absolutely no comeuppance whatsoever for any of his actions, it doesn't matter how much you think he deserves, the fact that he got none is a pretty cut-and-dried case of this trope.

I suppose there's two ways to handle it. One is that we could split the trope so that the blatant cases (i.e. the ones who get off with no blowback whatsoever) get the standard and the questionable ones (the ones where they did get some penalty, but you could argue whether or not it was enough) into a YMMV trope. The other is, basically, you look at the state of the would-be Karma Houdini at the end. If they're pleased with how things turned out, they qualify. If they're of mixed feelings or they're upset, they don't.

I meant splitting it into two: one named Karma Houdini (YMMV), where people that people feel should get comeuppance don't, and one called Villainy Without Punishment (standard), which is basically what Karma Houdini currently (as of this writing) is.

Unless this idea is "too rare to trope" can there be related Clause to the Karma Houdini called "Mark of Cain"? It's based on the biblical account of Cain and Abel where God protected Cain from those who would want to kill him for his actions (Killing Abel). Basically it's a Karma Houdini pass which negates the user's action when somebody else wrongs them.

A fictional example comes from the old show Rolie Polie Olie in which Olie was reprimanded by his father for mocking (or rather commenting) on the new kid, Screwy's, rusty hands despite the fact that Screwy was antagonizing all of the kids before Olie said anything.

Please pitch new trope concepts to YKTTW.

The problem with using YMMV that way is even apparently obvious objective tropes usually have borderline examples that end up being subjective, and many tropes have at least one more explicit subjective element in them. We can't put all these tropes under YMMV.

It's also true that YMMV is more than an orange dot; it means that the trope cannot be used except in a separate section (all the YMMV entries with orange dots aren't even supposed to still be there). Technically such tropes are still in the wiki, but a small change in the convenience of a user interface—even just one extra click—can make a huge change in when and where the trope gets used.

I think there should be a YMMV page for Karma Houdini, definitely. There is one I want to add that the mods have problems with because it isn't so clear cut.

Wow, necro there.

Also, we don't do YMMV pages for tropes. They are for works.

Crushing the necro!