Incoherent mess: Designated Evil

All right, to enumerate the many things wrong here:

• The title is all but indistinguishable from Designated Villain.
• The examples all overlap with Designated Villain as well.
• The "description" is a long, confusing, Example As Thesis.
• And the parts of the description that actually try to describe the trope are an angry rant about Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Basically, this looks like little more then an excuse to whine, and I'm only surprised that there's less whining on the page. Even with a cleaned up description, it sounds like it's just a mixture of Values Dissonance and Designated Villain. I'm inclined to say cut it.

Opinions?

Bump. Am I the only person who sees a problem here?

If you were, a dozen people would have layeth the smacketh down right away and made you feel stupid for asking. More likely, people don't want to have to confront the issue because they know the tropes are probably really close and they don't want to have to rely on their own sense of the difference (when they're probably not that familiar with the tropes in question) and wind up screwing it up.

Going through the examples, very few actually overlap. Although there are a few shows that show up on both pages, but there is very little overlapping characters, so I don't think there's any problem in that department.

The description is a mess. I would really love to hack that thing to pieces and do away with that example. It just seems to be trying too hard to justify cold-blooded murder, and fails.

I think that's another problem with the trope. A lot of examples sound like "He killed somebody. What's the big deal?" It goes far beyond Values Dissonance. As a trope, it seems like it could work if the definition was "An action is treated as terrible, when it really isn't". But right now, the trope seems to be "Murder is treated as terrible, when there was really no other choice." I can see the latter as a trope of it's own, but to lump it with other examples of acts that clearly aren't so morally questionable, such as Voldemort's decision to do away with the house system at Hogwarts, or the "evil" character from Wizards Of Waverly Place who only wanted to ensure that nobody has to lose their powers, just doesn't seem right.

I think we could split the trope into Designated Evil, "Acts that are treated as evil, but aren't" and Forced Evil, "Acts that are clearly perceived as evil and treated as evil, although it was the only option available at the time and actually caused more good than harm."

But again, I see no real difference between this and Designated Villain. The examples don't particularly overlap, but I'd say that's not because they're fundamentally different tropes. Your proposal of Designated Evil's new meaning is pretty much the same as Designated Villain, except applying to actions instead of individuals. And as far as "Forced Evil" goes, I'm fairly certain we already have that under a different name or something very similar. Not to mention the general overlap between this page and the old definition of Moral Dissonance - which was a Wretched Hive of Complaining.

Also, I think some of the examples really fit more under Evil Is Petty, like the Harry Potter one you cited.

I tend to agree with nrjxll on this one, the idea isn't sufficiently different from other, similar tropes and the trope description is one of the worst I've ever seen on this site, it's just a failed attempt at creating a thesis so as to justify one person's opinion on murder, as Wacky put quite eloquently. I shoot the whole trope down, it's pointless as it's redundant and, with the current trope description, Flame Bait to boot.

This is now part of a larger trope cleanup on Special Efforts: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1302389563081324600&page=2#30

edited 19th Apr '11 4:01:00 PM by nrjxll

I do notice a difference: Designated Evil is more about good or morally ambiguous characters who perform Shoot the Dog actions that are considered unambiguously evil or at the very least, crossing the Moral Event Horizon, with the characters brushing aside the mitigating factors that make their actions justifiable; contrast that with Informed Wrongness which is when the villain does something that is assumed to be evil without any evidence of it.

If we could cut all the examples that involve villains and bad guys, and stick to characters like The Punisher, that would make the trope distinguishable.

edited 26th Apr '11 8:25:19 PM by DarkNemesis

Also, Informed Wrongness should be for actions that aren't wrong at all, whereas Designated Evil is for morally grey actions seen as unambiguously wrong instead of morally grey.

Going to go ahead and post the current drafts for the new definitions of Designated Villain and Offstage Villainy here.

• Designated Villain
• Offstage Villainy

Take these into consideration when working on this, please.

edited 1st May '11 1:41:20 PM by TotemicHero

Sandbox page made for Designated Evil

Ok guys, it's September.

Looking at this, I see that a sandbox for the page has been added. Let's try to wrap this up.

In my opinion, there's still a little too much focus on the Thou Shalt Not Kill stuff, but overall the sandbox is a huge improvement and should definitely be switched with what's there right now.

I moved the sandbox to the trope, with some minor edits. There isn't much of a way to unfocus it from Thou Shalt Not Kill because its really the only "universal" example that a lot of works and genres have drawn on. However most of the editors seem to get that the idea isn't limited to Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Okay, then. Any reason not to lock 'er up?

Not that I see.

The new description still seems unnecessarily long to me, and I think it could use a rename. "Designated Evil" sounds very similar to "Designated Villain". Even something like "Designated Evil Action" would be a big improvement.

Revamped the sandbox page with a trimmed down version, since the sandbox version is already on the main trope page: Sandbox.Designated Evil

...I thought we did rename it.

Whoops.

I don't know if the description is too long, although yours does look better, but I agree wholeheartedly about the name.

Altered the description to be a little more general and focus more on the use of the trope; I hope it's okay.

For a new name, maybe we could name it after an example?

Why the hell would we do that? The name is fine.

Not as long as Designated Villain exists, it's not.

Can I recommend "The Truth You Can't Handle"?

Referencing the Motive Rant in A Few Good Men: "I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom! You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines! You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know! That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives! And my existence, while grotesque, and incomprehensible to you, saves lives! You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall! You need me on that wall!"

I think it sums up Designated Evil pretty well: it's a dirty job that someone has to do, but they want to condemn the people responsible for doing it.

There's a story about sheep, wolves, and dogs. The wolves are out to kill the sheep. The sheep can't defend themselves, so they ask the dogs to defend them. The dogs protect the sheep, but now the sheep are scared of the dogs, too. both dogs and wolves have Sharp teeth, and make loud noises.

You're saying the dogs are Designated Evil, correct?

Not quite. If the dogs attack the wolves to defend the sheep and the sheep freak out on the dogs for it, then that would be this trope. The trope isn't about the character (that'd be Designated Villain), it's about the action they take being labeled as evil. The confusion between Designated Villain and Designated Evil is why we're proposing a rename.

edited 25th Oct '11 6:29:23 AM by NativeJovian

Hmmmm, so it would be if someone finally put a bullet in The Joker's head and they were charged for murder?