Misused: Arc Villain

I've been meaning to bring this one up. Namely, I think that now that we have Arc Villain it needs to be defined to be a narrower trope and have a lot of its examples purged. The way I understand it, the Big Bad is the villain. He's the one that's generally at the end of the story and responsible for the majority of the plot. While that doesn't always hold true, when you go from villain to villain by season or arc the character can't really have been the Big Bad after all. They were just an Arc Villain.

Thus, I suggest we prune the definition here of statements that indicate you can have one in every arc. Most of the time, you can't have more than one Big Bad unless there's something like a Big Bad Duumvirate/Big Bad Ensemble going on.

edited 1st May '13 7:10:39 PM by Arha

Ooo boy, challenging a trope of legend are we?

I understand the argument, but this will not end well.

If you do this, you'll end up taking out the Trope Namer itself. The term originates from Buffy, which had a serial Big Bad format where each season would have its own arc and Big Bad who would be defeated and would usually be unrelated to whoever came next. The show had no overarching villain for its entire run.

I'm not sure if that's an effective argument for keeping things the way they are, but the irony is rather unmistakable.

Well, the OP does bring up legit questions of where some of the sub-tropes like Arc Villain fit in. I'm just not sure it's possible to untangle the whole rat's nest without doing something serious to Big Bad that no one really wants to do. It may just be one of those tropes everyone accepts there'll be a huge amount of misuse for.

(Hell, one option may be to just cut the tropes that Big Bad is misused for, to reduce confusion and dilution.)

^^ Sounds like an Arc Villain to me. Unfortunate that the trope namer is not actually an example.

The spirit of a Big Bad is that they are a dominate force in the story and whose influence is felt even if they are not directly a part of the action. An Arc Villain is exactly that, they are someone who takes the role of the bad guy for a particular arc. Sometimes the two tropes do meet and are not mutually exclusive. Some shows have multiple stories going on simultaneously but are otherwise distinct from each other in the overall narrative, you could have a Big Bad for each one overlapping each other.

On occasion I see a Big Bad being mistaken for a Dragon-in-Chief (most powerful enemy) or otherwise are not the driving enemy to confront in the third act. But overall I don't see any misuse.

Saying they're a dominant force in the story isn't really the right way of looking at it. The description says they're supposed to be the dominant force in the story. Is it possible to have both an Arc Villain and a Big Bad in the same story? Sure, but I don't think it's nearly as common as you're suggesting. Once you have your overarching villain, any other bad guys will be minions, the dragon, an unrelated minor villain or the story has a Big Bad Ensemble. In three out of four cases the other guy isn't a Big Bad at all.

For example, the Order Of The Stick has at least four villainous groups off the top of my head (Nale with the Linear Guild, Xykon leading Team Evil, Tarquin and the Archfiends) but the Big Bad has always been Xykon.

edited 1st May '13 10:10:36 PM by Arha

I think I didn't write that well enough, I meant that an Arc Villain is exactly what an "Arc Villain" sounds like, not that an Arc Villain has the same role as a Big Bad.

But at the moment this is just a trope talk discussion, to tackle a trope this monumental you're going to have to produce evidence of RAMPANT misuse for anything regarding what you're saying to carry any weight.

Well, I'm arguing that the description is wrong, so that's what needs to be settled before we can check for misuse, really. If we don't have agreement on what the trope is then how can I say what is right or wrong?

So, what you're saying is essentially because a new trope as appeared, an older one needs redefining from what it's always been?

I have honestly never encountered the OP's distinction.

Near as I can tell, this trope has long been used as "the villain" as the counterpoint to The Hero, and there was long something that felt like misuse about it, but since it wasn't being used to describe the likes of The Joker maybe that's just a reflection of how to port the concept to non-serial media. But if anything, I'd say the OP has this trope the wrong way around: Arc Villain is this trope's primary definition distilled and given more focus, while the broader one is at least partly covered by tropes like Bigger Bad and The Man Behind the Man.

In any case, you're going to need to think long and hard before saying that the description is wrong.

edited 2nd May '13 12:26:26 AM by MorganWick

What I get from this is that Arc Villain is the same thing as Big Bad, and ought to be merged into Big Bad. Big Bad is huge and all over the wiki, and Arc Villain is a relatively new page with only a few examples (several of which are wrong anyway).

Arc Villain has only 33 inbounds, FTR.

From Arc Villain: "The Arc Villain serves as the Big Bad for one Story Arc". It's a temporary Big Bad. If the heroes don't "go on to unrelated adventures and the next arc", then you weren't dealing with an Arc Villain.

And of course, there's no problem with Big Bad.

And from the definition of Big Bad, "the Big Bad can (and often does) exert effect across a number of episodes, and even an entire season."

So "Big Bad for one story arc" is redundant: if somebody is the major enemy for one story arc, that makes them the Big Bad; they don't need to stick around for the entire multi-season plot. Whoever wrote Arc Villain was not clear on what Big Bad means.

Arc Villain even lists Buffy as the "trope codifier," further suggesting it doesn't agree with our more common use of Big Bad.

Wasn't the trope-namer already not an example of Big Bad? If I recall correctly, Spike was the Trope Namer (or did it get used before him) and he really... wasn't the Big Bad even of the season, let alone the show.

22,438 wicks.

Once more for emphasis: Twenty thousand four hundred and thirty eight freaking wicks!

I for one am not willing to go through that many wicks trying to split hairs between Big Bad and Arc Villain based on the typically vague example descriptions of shows that I will have for the most part never seen.

I simply don't think such a project is a wise use of our limited supply of volunteer man-hours.

Especially not without a demonstration that there is real harm being done to the wiki by the current state of affairs.

edited 2nd May '13 7:32:28 AM by Catbert

What? It's not like there aren't tropes with more wicks... Oh, wait...

Here's an analogue that should clear things up.

Arc Villain is a one-off antagonist. It's as inconsequential to the main story) as a Monster of the Week. Take Muramasa from Bleach, Brother Blood from Teen Titans, Enel and Arlong from One Piece.

A Big Bad is the thing driving the conflict of a story. The entire story. Not just some random two, three episode miniarc, or a 25 episode arc that the main characters can't even remember.

edited 2nd May '13 7:59:05 AM by Sledgesaul

No, that's not right. The description of Arc Villain, and its examples, define it as the main villain of an arc (you know, the Big Bad of that arc).

Define "the main story." The main story of the entire series? Or just the season?

Here's a better example.

Arlong, Enel, Spandam and Magellan from One Piece all fall under the Arc Villain example. They only ever appear in their respective story arcs, and they're the prime antagonists only for those arcs.

Meanwhile, from the same show, Blackbeard and Crocodile both hold the distinction of being the masterminds behind a series of arcs interconnected by whatever machinations that appeared in their heads. Crocodile is the classic case of being the boss of all these seemingly unconnected villains, while Blackbeard uses For Want Of A Nail to kickstart a War Arc.

edited 2nd May '13 8:06:16 AM by Sledgesaul

Brother Blood was a Big Bad for an entire season. So was Trigon and so was The Brain.