Repair, turn subjective or rename: Kick The Dog

Well, i noted it is used regularly to "any character realizing anything mean..." including cases where the character clearly is not supposed to be viewed as scum, (as more Tsunderes).

Some evidence would be useful.

My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.

Well, here are some examples:

• In Girls Bravo Kirie is supposed to be Yukinari's best friend, and she knows about his fear and allergy of women. One would question why she keeps beating the crap out of him and berating him especially after she also learns how his supposed perverted actions are accidental (due to his clumsiness and unluckiness which she is also aware of) and not intentional.
• Love Hina: Naru does this regularly by hitting poor Keitarou constantly. It would be a little more understandable if the guy was a Jerkass, but he's actually a Nice Guy who does what he can to make Naru happy, and yet she still abuses him 24/7 and keeps getting away with it. No wonder many people cite Naru as a Tsundere Sue and say her bitchiness is the reason they stopped reading Love Hina, so turned off they were by her horrifying treatment of him.
• Sakura gets accused of this by her Hate Dumb. However, an actual example occurs in the third movie. When Naruto refuses to be Hikaru's servant, he hit Naruto with a toy arrow. So, Naruto, justifiably, hits the little brat. However, the brat starts crying, making Naruto look like HE's the one Dog Kicking. So, Sakura uppercuts Naruto into the water. You'd think that'd be punishment enough, right? Nope. She not only ties Naruto up and starves him until he appologizes. And just to add insult to injury, when Naruto refuses, she waves the food in front of Naruto's face, taunting him.

edited 26th Jul '11 11:58:33 AM by MagBas

That's not how you prove misuse. Grab fifty random wicks, check them all, and publish it here.

This sounds like a case where we just need to go nuke all the bitching examples.

Fight smart, not fair.

I agree with deboss sounds like an example and wick cleanup needs to be the first order of business, keeping an eye out for any repeated patterns of misuse.

edited 26th Jul '11 4:02:01 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Well...

• Yukari Is Free: Refers to Ai's treatment of Rei near the end of Season III.

• ptitle643yzv8u: Refers to a act established a character as bad.

• Equilibrium: The Sweepers are shown gunning down fleeing and captured Resistance members, and dogs. Co

• The Devil To Pay In The Backlands: Mentioned in the Pet the Dog example, about the jagunços.

• Characters/WCW: Mentions his claiming to have been robbed by one of the masked wrestlers and forcing them all to unmask. uhn?

• Transformation Comic: The Billy The Cat example, referring to a boy cruel to animals.

• Fun With Dick And Jane: ": In the remake, a bank head pretends to call Dick in for a job interview. It turns out that he's just there so that the guy and the other higher-ups in the bank can mock him."

• Game of Thrones S1E2: "The Kingsroad": Cut the throat of a direwolf

• PToS: root the dog

• Manipulative Bastard: Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds example, referring to Divine's crimes

• Characters/Naruto-Akatsuki : referring to Kakashi and Sasuke mental torture in Itachi's hand

• Maid Marian and Her Merry Men: King Johnn example: "All the time, especially if the "dog" is the Sferiff, though sometimes, if he's in a good mood or if it's funnier, he'll just Poke the Poodle."

• Discworld/Hogfather : Potholed in Nail The Dog To The Ceiling

• Don The Chase Begins Again : A criminal killing Jasjit's wife.

• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Potholed in the first line.

• Going for the Big Scoop: Drop The Dead Donkey example- Damien slapping the kid

• Lion Maru G: "just like the Operative in Serenity, Gousan lures our heroes out of hiding by killing off the supporting cast.

"

• Zombie Powder: "A lot of the bad guys do this before they fight just to made sure the reader doesn't care when they die a horrible death at the hands of Gamma or Smith."

• Spyro the Dragon : The Sorceress stealing dragon eggs.

• Private Prince: "In the backstory: Tsuzuki pretty much seduces Miyako for his benefit, then dumps her and steals a good part of her research. And later he tries to manipulate Miyako to try getting funds for his research from Will. But he'll have nothing of it.
  • Pet the Dog: When he reappears almost at the end, Tsuzuki apologizes to Miyako for his attitude and tells her he's much more dedicated to studies and investigation because of them. "

• LastVoyagesRPG: "Arthas torturing Edward Nigma"

• WITCH: "Phobos does this VERY frequently. He tortures Will in the second episode among other things."

• The Wedding Bride: : Jed Mosely does nothing but this.

• Ratchet & Clank : The Valkyries example.

• TheImperiumOfManComesToGensokyo: "Bickerstaff reduces her to a sobbing mess when he sterilizing her by burning her ovaries all the while sounding like a rapist and telling her that Arcturus never loved her, and that he found a new woman to raise some kids with merely a month after she was captured. Charming fellow isn't he? ]]"

• MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagical: "The closest Pinkie has to a spotlight episode right now is "Griffon the Brush-Off", and that's arguably more focused on introducing Gilda and her relationship with Dash. To be fair, Pinkie does seem to seriously consider Twilight's suggestion that she's just jealous — but then Gilda kicks so many ponies in front of her that she's justified in giving her a Humiliation Conga. Still, maybe that not-quite-learned lesson will come back in a later ep..."

• MirrorMirror: "The Borgias wrote the book."

• Kurohime: Barahime's repeated possession of Yuuka.

• WorldOfTanks: potholed in "During beta, you could hear a whimper while driving over a doghouse."

• Once Upon A Time In The West : Within the first couple scenes, Frank and his gang kill a family of four including a young child. He gets another one in the "keep your lovin' brother happy" flashback near the end of the film.
  • Harmonica pushing Jill around and tearing at her clothes. He doesn't actually hurt her, but still.
  • Frank kicking Morton's crutches out from under him.

• Shoot the Hostage: Naruto example: when Danzo takes Karin hostage, Sasuke shoots a Chidori blade through both of them, hitting Danzo in the heart. Sasuke then tells her if she's getting taken hostage, that makes her nothing but a burden.

• OnePiece-MajorVillains: Virtually everything Morgan does.

• Monster Mash: The Mercy Thompson series has both friendly and unfriendly fae, werewolves, vampires, witches, sorcerors and walkers (Native American shapeshifters) so far. Wizards, druids and angels are mentioned, and Charles' mother gave him Native American magic similiar to shamanism. The various species don't like each other — we are talking The Fair Folk and Always Chaotic Evil vamps whose best defector gleefully shoots and kicks the dog — but there are nastier things out in the night. Like demons or politicians.

• A Time To Kill: The attack on Tonya Hailey and just about every stunt the Klan pulls.

• SpeedGrapher: That poor little girl whose arm Kazuya broke...

• Unfamiliar: Potholed in "kick puppies".

• Justin Bieber: In the Screw the Rules, I Have Money! example, "On his Twitter page he posted another user's phone number, for his 4 million followers, and encouraged his followers to call it. And yet, despite this being a violation of numerous sites' TOS, his account remains active.

• Persona4: Tohru:"I was just trying to punish the stupid bitch a little for betraying me."

• Tom And Jerry: In the William Telling example: "Among one of the Kick the Dog opening scenes in which Tom is shown tormenting Jerry."

• The Seventh Cavarly: "Kick the Dog and Shoot the Dog is standard procedure for the Seventh Calvary."

• Heavyweights: " obvious Tony was an ass already, ending the dance just as it gets going cements it."

• Hellhound: "Classical hellhounds are immune to Kick the Dog"

• YuYuHakusho: Potholed in the Kick The Son Of The Bitch example

• Hercules: "During a confrontation with his brother, Eteocles orders the execution of a pair of innocent, helpless maidservants, purely as a show of power."

• WellExcuseMePrincess: Potholed in "And all the while, Jason is watching and plotting to steal her away — not out of love, but 'cause she's hot and it would cause Lenny even more pain."

• Operation Dumbo Drop: potholed as "shoot the elephant"

• The Shield: "In the finale; Vic's betrayal of Ronnie certainly qualifies as a moment designed to remind people what a monster Vic has become.
  • Also the shooting of Terry Crowley in the very first episode, which was done mainly to establish Vic as not just another corrupt cop but one that was a Captain Sensible-type villain.
  • Not to mention Dutch killing a stray cat for no real reason." Sound correct examples.

• IronMan: " Justin Hammer, twice. Once when he tries to pass off some random cockatoo as Vanko's burd, and again when he has his thug stuff it in a sack due to Vanko's apparent lack of progress.
  • Also, Ivan Vanko. Having a personal vendetta against Tony Stark is one thing. Killing race car pilots and bystanders at the EXPO who did him nothing wrong is another.
  • Averted at least once by Vanko too: He demands to be brought his pet burd, but Hammer, of course, brings in a different burd and tells him it's just as good, at which point every experienced movie viewer knows Vanko will throw a fit and kill the replacement burd. Instead he adopts it as his new pet.

• OrderedToCheat: potholed in "his opponent's dog"

...Well, exists less misuse i guessed. I concur with you, Madrugada.

edited 26th Jul '11 4:30:00 PM by MagBas

Is that permission granted?

Anyway, from the examples you've listed, if you see the word "Hatedom", you can probably nuke the example.

Fight smart, not fair.

This just feels like one of those T Vtropes internal memes that keep growing in scope until the trope decays into meaninglessness, like Crowning Moment Of Awesome and Magnificent Bastard.

That said, I don't see how either renaming or marking subjective is going to help here, so I'd say repair any wrong examples as we find them.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

^^ You don't need permission to cut bad examples.

Kick the Dog has a very clear definition with three factors:

• an act of cruelty or evil
• performed by a "bad guy"
• which is pointless, except to demonstrate that he's cruel or evil.

If it doesn't meet all three factors, it's not Kick the Dog. Cut it.

edited 26th Jul '11 4:49:07 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

If someone would take a wack at the description, I'll work on the examples.

Fight smart, not fair.

Worked on the main page a bit. I couldn't decipher the Pro Wrestling component as I'm not sure how their plots work.

Fight smart, not fair.

Nibbled at the main description. Is it just me or was each paragraph saying the same thing two or three times?

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

That's pretty much guaranteed to happen if you let everybody talk about it. One of the weaknesses of crowd sourcing.

Fight smart, not fair.

I looked at the Pro Wrestling Examples and I'm not sure they meet Madrugada's third criteria: "which is pointless, except to demonstrate that he's cruel or evil." In an on-going story line, the Heel being evil really isn't ever "pointless", because it adds to the story that's being built. Certain acts may be Disproportionate Retribution or just plain evil, but they all serve a purpose: furthering the story.

Any other fans of Pro Wrestling want to weigh in on that? I fell bad pulling the examples, but I don't think they fit.

"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." Niels Bohr

Hmmm. That's sticky. How important is the "Plot" in wrestling?

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Wrestling is like a Soap Opera for men. The plot is actually followed closely by the big fans.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Remember that "pointless" and "needlessly cruel" both count. Say the bad guy throws the hero in jail to keep him from interfering with his plans. That's not Kick the Dog. But if he refuses to feed him enough and laughs at his discomfort, then it is.

I don't know any of the pro wrestling examples, but look at it like that.

That's very true. I suspect that Pro Wrestling has lots of Kick the Dog moments, but they aren't the things that the fans think are worth mentioning. What little I've seen and read here on the wiki, Heels regularly go that extra mile in nastiness, just because they're a heel.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

If heels act nasty for the sole purpose of establishing themselves as heels, then that's exactly what Kick the Dog is all about. "Which is pointless, except to demonstrate that he's cruel or evil. Latter half emphasized. Demonstrating that the villain is evil or cruel is a point, and it's a point that all correct examples will share. Yes, this can have an effect on the "storyline", insofar as the character being evil is necessary for the storyline, but that doesn't mean it's not otherwise pointless.

You mean that he demonstrates it to other characters, or that the writer demonstrates this about the character to the audience? And how "pointless" do you mean?

I thought it was just for actions that show that an evil character is evil, but are not extreme enough to be a Moral Event Horizon.

edited 27th Jul '11 5:56:09 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

"Kicking the dog" is actually a pretty good description of the act. It's something that doesn't benefit the villain at all. Even if the dog is in the way, it's just as simple to step over it. Why kick the dog? Because you're the bad guy. There's no other reason.

It has nothing to at all do with the scale of the evil act. Kicking the dog can be as harmless as, well, kicking the dog, or it could be committing mass genocide. The point is that it doesn't actually further any goal that the villain might have. It's just being cruel for the sake of being cruel. I suppose you could argue that they fulfill some kind of emotional desire to hurt people, but that's sort of the point: it's just extremely petty.

Edit: Historically, Moral Event Horizon used to be called Rape The Dog but we changed it to emphasize that it's not The Same But More of Kick the Dog. So Kick the Dog is explicitly and emphatically not just a lesser version of Moral Event Horizon.

edited 27th Jul '11 6:07:34 AM by Clarste

Pro Wrestling examples should be okay. From the way I understand it, if the wrestler is undergoing a Face–Heel Turn, then the actions that they use to become Heels should be considered Kickthe Dog, because they are being used to show that this wrestler is now "EEEVVVIIILLL". The fact that those actions also advance the storyline or give the Heel a (Kayfabe) advantage of some sort should be ignored because of the nature of the Pro Wrestling beast.

"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." Niels Bohr

So, Kick the Dog is basically an opposite to Pragmatic Villainy? Even then, the line between them can be a bit blurry if you ask what the point of said goals is in the long run. Where would the line be drawn?

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

My concern with the Pro Wrestling angle is that it gives room to list basically every out of the ring action by any heel ever. Because of the nature of the "sport", most heels are literally in the business of kicking dogs. It's kind of their defining attribute.

The way I see it is that most villains have an Evil Plan of some sort. Kick the Dog is an evil or cruel act that does not further the plan in any way, but simply demonstrates the villain's evil. An example from my personal favorite villains list come to mind:

In Memory Sorrow And Thorn, Evil Sorcerer Pryrates does this in an Establishing Character Moment. He's at a feast where the main character, Simon, is working as a serving boy. During the meal, Simon throws a bone to a hungry dog. Later said dog is rooting around near Pryrates for table scraps, and he intentionally and maliciously crushes the dog to death under his boot. When he catches Simon staring at him in horror, he raises his eyebrow in amusement, as if daring him to say or do something about it.

That's Kick the Dog — a gratuitous act of cruelty designed specifically to show off how Eeeeeeevil the villain is.

edited 27th Jul '11 9:42:23 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"