Wick cleanup: Reptiles Are Abhorrent

...

Looks good.

Since fangs and crocodiles are mentioned up there, Fangs Are Evil and Never Smile at a Crocodile can prolly be potholed in the earlier paragraph and left off of the "related" section.

Anyway, is it fair to say we're done here? Looking pretty much wrapped up, right?

I think the discussion is good now. The only things left to do are revise PlayingWith.Reptiles Are Abhorrent, then go through the examples and wicks for misuse.

Please note, I am not volunteering to do all 1000+ wicks myself, despite being the OP.

edited 6th Apr '12 7:56:07 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Ho alright, so I read all the Playing With guidelines, then went through the current PlayingWith.Reptiles Are Abhorrent and combined the correct entries with my earlier ones. This is my current draft:

Basic Trope: Reptiles are usually associated with evil.

• Straight:
  • The supervillain Lisa Lizard is trying to take over the world. She's the only reptile-themed character in the show.
  • King Blackstone's evil Snake People and Lizard Folk army are trying to take over the world. They're the only reptile races in the story.
  • The heroes have stop the evil Snake People army from taking over the world. They are aided by the virtuous Lizard Folk Brigade.
  • The characters constantly distrust entirely innocent Snake People and Lizard Folk peasants, assuming they're evil, out of Fantastic Racism.
• Exaggerated:
  • EVERY reptile in the world is an Always Chaotic Evil Card-Carrying Villain that wants to take over the world, and has no redeeming qualities.
  • EVERY villain in the world uses a reptile motif and has reptile pets.
• Justified: Lizard Folk are the Always Chaotic Evil spawn of humans mating with Infernal demons, and therefore nobody trusts them.
• Inverted: Reptiles are the only good guys in the story and everyone else is a Jerkass.
• Subverted: The heroes have to stop the evil Snake People terrorists from taking over the world. But when the heroes' army invades Snakeland, they discover that King Slither and his virtuous Snake People army have been trying the whole time to stamp out terrorism in Snakeland. Most Snake People are decent.
• Double Subverted: The heroes have to stop the evil Snake People terrorists from taking over the world. When the heroes invade Snakeland, they discover that King Slither and his Snake People army have been trying to stop terrorism. Then later it turns out that Slither and his army secretly want to mutate everybody in the world into mindless slaves by selling them drugged food products. Terrorism just isn't subtle enough.
• Parodied: Lisa Lizard and her kin perform acts such as jaywalking and kicking old ladies in the shin.
• Zig Zagged: Slither joins the good guys, but then turns out to be The Mole... only for the team to be saved by Pythus, a heroic snake-man. Pythus later turns on them... until they manage to break him free of King Blackstone's mind control.
• Averted:
  • Pythus is a reptile on the side of good.
  • Reptile-themed characters are no more likely than non-reptilians to be villains.
  • The heroes have to stop the evil Snake People terrorists from taking over the world. They are aided by King Slither and his virtuous Snake People army, who want to stamp out terrorism in Snakeland.
  • There are no reptile-themed characters in the series.
• Lampshaded: "Why is it that reptiles are the only evil animals? Is it something in the water in Snakeland?"
• Invoked: Evil King Blackstone tricks the heroes into attacking his arch-enemy Lisa Lizard by framing her for a crime. The evidence is shoddy, but they assume Lisa is evil because she's a lizard. Blackstone correctly predicts the heroes will fall for it because Reptiles Are Abhorrent.
• Discussed: "Well, of course Lisa Lizard is Obviously Evil. It's her nature as a reptile."
• Conversed: "So a six-foot tall tool-using reptile is an acceptable character, but a six-foot tall tool-using reptile with empathy is Beyond the Impossible?"
• Deconstructed: Due to their Always Chaotic Evil nature, a genocide against all reptilians is started across the world, even the ones who turn to be not so bad.

edited 11th Apr '12 10:59:34 AM by ArcadesSabboth

I would suggest always including related tropes in the compare and contrast, even if they are potholed earlier. People don't always check potholes.

Looks cool to me.

I switched in the new Playing With page. Any more thoughts on it?

Please help check the wicks for misuse.

edited 11th Apr '12 4:41:41 PM by ArcadesSabboth

I'll look at wicks in between migrating MIB to The Men in Black, but its going to be really hard telling what work pages are using this correctly. Personally I'm going to err on the side "When in doubt, assume it is correct" for this one, unlike some of the other cleanup jobs I've done where I knew the bulk was wrong.

Yeah, that makes sense.

EDIT: I'll see if I can help, once the World Of Darkness disambiguation is finished.

edited 14th Apr '12 11:11:12 AM by ArcadesSabboth

Catbert, if you've done any yet can you please post which wicks you have looked at so far? I plan to work on some now.

Sorry, I got distracted by a bunch of other things.

I know, lots of stuff comes up.

I will try to get started on it.

EDIT: No, I changed my mind. I need to just lurk and avoid participating until this whole horrid thing in Wiki Talk dies down.

EDIT 2: I haven't really been lurking, despite my attempts to do so. TV Tropes is ruining my life!!! So I went through and cleaned up the remaining examples on the page.

edited 25th Apr '12 2:34:42 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Alright, I made a start at the wicks: I removed those whose examples had already been removed from the trope page as misuse, excepting a few examples within smaller parts of larger works that overall averted the trope.

Next step: As the new description says it isn't a character trope (and everyone else seemed OK with my proposing that wording) I plan to remove it from all Characters/ pages as misuse, moving legit examples to the main work page.

EDIT: Judging from the rate new wicks are getting added and/or reverted back, the cleaning needs to start over from scratch.

edited 10th Jun '12 2:53:51 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Anything else that needs to be done here?

Yes, there are hundreds of wicks filled with misuse. I tried, but I have given up entirely on fixing them by myself — I can't do it without some help, and so far nobody has been willing to help me. Lately I've even had at least one of my misuse-fixing edits reverted with no explanation.

I could really use some help, people. I can't do this alone. I've been having some serious personal problems this year, and I cannot handle doing hundreds of wicks without any help at all. I am willing to get back to work on this if some tropers would help for the love of God why is nobody willing to help?

Please.

edited 10th Jun '12 2:54:40 PM by ArcadesSabboth

Can't do anything tonight, but I'm willing to help starting in a day or so.

I would be so grateful.

Please keep a running tally of which wicks you have checked, so I know which ones to work on.

I can try to start again on purging the Characters/ page wicks, since they're basically 98% misuse.

edited 10th Jun '12 6:15:23 PM by ArcadesSabboth

I'll from Z now, going backwards.

Edit: And hit an interesting case on the first page already. In the Yu-Gi-Oh character sheets, some antagonists are said to have reptile-themed card decks, and the *card decks* are described with Reptiles Are Abhorrent. This is correct use, isn't it?

edited 11th Jun '12 12:34:14 PM by jkbeta

Nope, the trope has been defined to apply only to a work/setting as a whole, never to any single part within that work. So it can never describe a character, monster, group, species/race, or story element in isolation.

It could describe an actual deck of cards in the game (not in the show) as you could regard a deck as a sub-work. Maybe. But that's seems iffy to me.

We've also said "don't list aversions" so those all have to go.

edited 11th Jun '12 12:44:10 PM by ArcadesSabboth

One could make a case for "show within a show" here, and the page for the corresponding card game states that Reptiles Are Abhorrent is in effect (as far as I can tell, it's not misused there). I'll think about how to re-write the examples so that it's clear that it's a Show Within a Show thing.

PS: Should we move this to Special Efforts?

PPS: I seem to be unable to find a good trope for "a snake motif describes a villaineous character". What should I be looking for?

PPPS: Cleaned up W-Z, except for the Yu Gi Oh stuff - I'll have to think about how to fix that. I'll do some more tomorrow.

edited 11th Jun '12 2:30:42 PM by jkbeta

Isn't that "a snake motif describes a villaineous character" just the snake-specific part of this trope? Or am I not reading your meaning right? Well, other than when snakes represent healing or eternal life, but that's another thing.

I'm talking about single characters here. Say, Voldemort in Literature.HarryPotter - he has a snake motive that is certainly presenting him as evil, he has a (possible evil, possibly non-sentinent) pet snake, but there are also snakes (e.g., the one in book 1) that are not evil. Other reptiles don't really come up. Since there is no clear "all snakes are evil" association here, Reptiles Are Abhorrent does not fit.

Harry Potter overall uses snakes as a marker for evil. Or general less-pleasantness, as in the case of the Slytherins. All snakes aren't evil, but it's still an overall sign of evil. See also the bottom of post 36 for a longer explanation.

I'm not sure about a trope for a single character, specifically. However, if there are good (important) snakes or snake-themed characters, the fact that the villain is snake-themed is not an indication of him being evil. If he is the only example, then the work does fall under this trope.

In other words, I don't think there is a single-character trope for Snakes Are Evil. As in, not at all, and not just not listed on this site.

edited 11th Jun '12 3:12:55 PM by Feather7603

There I go, bringing up an example that undermines my own point... Next time I dig up a problematic example, I'll just list it here.