Ambiguous Name: Vicious Cycle

Hoo boy, this one is a mess:

First, the description seems to me to be just "heroes discover that the impending End of the World is just the latest incarnation of an Eternal Recurrence" — The Same But More Specific.

But the bigger fish however is that the name is already well established as a synonym for "vicious circle": A self-reinforcing cycle ("feedback loop") typically along a downward spiral — Cycle of Revenge is a valid Sub-Trope for this definition. The term is also used as a synonym for a catch-22, as figuring out how to break such a cycle may (but not always) resemble one. (As an example, consider Final Fantasy X — an Eternal Recurrence due to You Kill It, You Bought It; there is no catch-22.)

In other words, the trope was named after something that has little (if anything) to do with its actual definition.

The usage of this trope is all over the place. The following is an excerpt from all 187 wikilinks:

Suspect misuse (22)

(Not involving an apocalyptic cycle as required by the current definition, but with such a murky definition it's hard to tell for sure)

• AgonyOfTheFeet.Western Animation ^note ...In the ensuing fight with Perry The Platypus, he injured the other foot, causing him to hop up and down holding his foot, only to have to switch which foot he was holding because the act of hopping caused his already injured foot to hurt again. Once he started doing this, his newly injured foot started to hurt because he was hopping on it, and so on and so forth."
• DracoInLeatherPants.Web Original ^note "The Demon Lord who is responsible for the current setup is a Well-Intentioned Extremist that wants to end a Vicious Cycle of humans and monsters constantly killing each other at the whims of the Chief God, but the only way she could think of to override the monster's instincts to kill humans was to turn them all into lustful women that could only reproduce with human men."
• Vampire The Requiem ^note "Generally, the Kindred who focus on developing the physical Disciplines get outclassed really badly by Kindred who develop the psychic ones, which they then use to recruit Kindred who focused on the physical Disciplines."
• PlayingWith.TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life ^note "You find yourself devoting too much time to TV Tropes, and do something to prevent that. Then you slowly begin to circumvent/forget/ignore that, until you're back to your old ways. So you put down another countermeasure..."
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica ^note "Played straight. Kyubey needs Magical Girls to fight Witches; he also needs Magical Girls to become Witches."
• The Wall ^note "Pink's old math teacher. Somewhat sympathetic in that his hatred of his students is part of the Vicious Cycle theme of the movie/album."
• The Giving Tree ^note image caption: "Don't do it, Giving Tree!"
• Characters.The Conversion Bureau A New Age: ^note "What leads to Kyoko's (incorrect) beleief that she is not a natural born Human before her conversion. A highly traumatic incident in the Tokyo Domes (not to be confused with THE Tokyo Dome), and her parents absolute refusal to speak of it in any detail with her about it, led her to believe that she was at the very least some sort of experiment."
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man ^note "A gender-flipped example is Tohru herself, who breaks the Vicious Cycle of abuse that isolates everyone in the Sohma family by just being nice to them and listening to their troubles."
• Shopaholic ^note "Becky winds up in massive debt because she uses spending to cope with negative emotions, and the debt leads to more negative emotions and more spending."
• Sex with the Ex ^note They had a Vicious Cycle of being an Official Couple, breaking up, sleeping together, being friends with benefits, deciding to start dating again, ad nauseum...
• WMG.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Setting Ponies ^note "Unicorns can cast spells not related to their talent, but the effort is difficult and often reinforces the idea that it can't be done causing the unicorn to give up."
• Merchandise-Driven ^note "The Pirates of the Caribbean movies were created to promote the already popular Pirates of the Caribbean ride, then the subsequent merchandise. Which led to the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride being refurbished to feature umpteen Jack Sparrows, to hype the movies' DVD sales and box-office receipts." (Recursive Adaptation at best)
• Immortal Procreation Clause ^note "[Dwarf Fortress Elves] are poorly armed and they are cannibalistic maniacs who start wars over the way other species treat plants, resulting in them warring with pretty much all of their neighbors.
• Glengarry Glen Ross ^note "The salesmen complain that they're stuck in one. They can't make sales without good leads, but they can't get good leads without sales. Blake counters that a real salesman could make sales with bad leads."
• For Doom the Bell Tolls ^note "The introduction for Final Fantasy VI, which talks about an ancient war that devastated civilization and the threat of history repeating itself in this regard, is accompanied by ominous background music featuring bells."
• Characters.Dissidia Final Fantasy Warriors Of Chaos ^note The eternal darkness will transcend time to face its rival once more. — Wheel of Darkness"
• Death by Irony ^note "Fisher Tiger from One Piece hated humans for enslaving him and treating Mermen badly in general. Despite this, he fought to free all slaves, Mermen and human alike, and tried to avert the Vicious Cycle by not killing his pursuers."
• WMG.Conspiracy Theorist ^note "But let's assume for a moment that The Man already found it? Is that why he keeps us locked in the Trope Overdosed Vicious Cycle?"
• YMMV.Chrono Cross ^note "If you play the DS remake [of Chrono Trigger] and then this game back to back, the arching message is that living beings should stop being bastards to each other."
• Chernobyl Curs ^note "The tournament as a whole, leading may to question if it is even worth continuing."
• PlayingWith.Big Screwed Up Family ^note "The same way they always have. It's a Vicious Cycle living in a family like that."

Misuse specifically for "self-perpetuating feedback loop" (27)

• DisproportionateRetribution.Video Games ^note "Saint's Row 2's Brotherhood missions, full stop. From peace talks where Maero, the Brotherhood leader, offers Boss a 20/80 split out of respect for his accomplishments (as well as a realistic appraisal of the situation in light of Boss' fall from grace,) Boss spits in his face and declares war over the implied insult. Boss opens by injecting Maero's tattoo ink with radioactive waste, Maero escalates by dragging Boss' second-in-command to death behind his gang's trucks, Boss then ruins Maero's rocker friend's career by burning his hand with a pyrotechnics display and locking Maero's girl in the trunk of her own car then putting it last in a line of cars Maero would later crush with his monster truck. He even stays to gloat, tossing Maero the keys to the car just as the ganglord recognizes it. And all of this only comprises about half of the Brotherhood missions."
• Characters.Trigun ^note "Vash's dedication to preserving human life over all else has left him horribly mutilated and caused a huge bounty to be placed on his head as a result of the property damage that results whenever he gets into a fight (and in a Vicious Cycle, this just makes things worse; more people come to kill Vash for his bounty/terrible reputation, Vash escapes after causing yet more horrific property damage, reputation gets worse & bounty gets bigger attracting more gunmen)."
• UsefulNotes.Transgender ^note "This can even sometimes result in a Vicious Cycle of instability based in the reality that when people are treated badly and disrespected, they tend to expect more of the same from those doing it... the mental instabilty of trans people ... is pretty much solely the result of their being treated and marginalized as if they are creepy/weird/dangerous/fragile"
• Tarzan Of The Apes ^note "Tarzan declares a vendetta on the black villagers after Kala is killed. It's pointed out that by so doing, he actually creates a Vicious Cycle that makes things worse for himself and his tribe."
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality ^note "Unfortunately, this is often a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy—she doesn't know how to be social with her peers, so they take her awkward silences to mean that she has no emotions or humanity at all, so they isolate her from the group and call her a 'monster', so she never learns how to relate to other people, so she never learns how to let go of her depression, so she doesn't know how to be social with her peers..."
• Silent Scapegoat ^note "The main Aesop is that murdering people to solve a problem causes a Vicious Cycle, and that if one tries hard enough, a better solution can be found."
• Shadow Ops ^note "Uncontrolled Latents cause widespread destruction through their wild and violent powers. Laws are passed to strictly and harshly regulate them to protect society. Selfers oppressed by these laws and terrified of what might be done to them run or fight back, necessitating harsher laws and more heavy-handed military policing to control them..."
• Requiem For A Dream ^note They use drugs to escape from the issues of reality ... trapped by their dependence and the degradation they endure to sustain that dependence. The Vicious Cycle destroys them.
• AndIMustScream.Real Life ^note "Some people experience sleep paralysis mostly as a result of sleep deprivation. That means that whenever you try to go to sleep, you get paralyzed, and once you escape, you're exhausted and have to try to go asleep again, which leads to more sleep paralysis..."
• YMMV.Pokemon ^note "Despite being the most fanboyed-over Pokémon in the franchise, Charizard's in NU (the lowest tier) and is very easy to play around. This infuriates its fanboys, who insist on using it in high tiers (including Ubers). Which, in turn, infuriates serious metagamers who are sick of seeing Charizard on every Uber team, which infuriates the Charizard fanboys..."
• PlayingWith.Paparazzi ^note "Heather started out as an Intrepid Reporter, but crossed the line so many times while Going for the Big Scoop that people became less willing to deal with her, triggering a Vicious Cycle as she's had to stoop lower and lower in order to keep her job."
• Quotes.Not So Different ^note "...[[Vicious Cycle That violence breeds violence"
• Never My Fault ^note "Whenever a PC port of a game doesn't sell well due to being buggy, missing important features, or just burdened by unmanageable Copy Protection, the publisher always puts the blame on piracy. Which usually leads to the copy protection on future games being even more unmanageable."
• WMG.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Future Plots ^note "There should be an episode about the dangers of holding a grudge and/or the Vicious Cycle of Revenge."
• Metal Gear Rising Revengeance ^note "...violence begets violence..." (repeated on the Quotes subpage, too)
• WMG.Marvel Vs Capcom 3: ^note "In the words of Noel Brown: The loop!"
• FatBastard.Live-Action Films ^note "I eat because I'm unhappy! I'm unhappy because I eat!"
• Lack of Empathy ^note "Each of his deeds grew progressively worse, hoping that by increasing the monstrousness of his deeds he would finally feel an inkling of remorse."
• Characters.Iron Kingdoms ^note "Some time before she became a warlock, her tribe killed a human, causing the humans to retaliate by massacring some Nyss hunters from her tribe, including her father, causing her to kill more humans, causing the humans to kill more of her tribe...."
• Give A Boy A Gun ^note "Outcasts are treated as freaks by their classmates, which causes them to lash out violently, which causes people to view them as killers-in-waiting who should be kept separate from "normal" people, which only increases their isolation and causes them to lash out again. Wash, rinse, repeat."
• WMG.Berserk ^note "Unable to accept that sometimes @#!*% just happens, they believed there had to be some kind of cosmic justice behind it, so much so that that it actually happened. But since most suffering is decidedly undeserved, said cosmic justice was completely utterly evil and only worked to perpetuate human suffering even more so that its existence can be maintained."
• PlayingWith.Awful Wedded Life ^note "Plus, it puts a lot of stress on Alice and Bob themselves, leading to more bickering and more stress. Rinse and repeat."
• Ascended Glitch ^note "during the dark ages of early CPU designs, some CPUs either wouldn't do what they were supposed to do when fed certain instructions, or yielded completely unexpected results. This in turn forced OS programmers to anticipate those glitches to make their side of things work as designed. This phenomenon came full circle when the CPU designers were later forced to incorporate the bugs of the early CPUs just so those dubious OSs would work properly. And so on and so forth."
• Literature.Arcia Chronicles ^note "The Church originally had little to no magic but since the Elven magic during the War of the Deer was intentionally attributed to clerics to uphold The Masquerade, the people started believing in miracles, allowing them to perform even more miracles..."
• Analysis.Alpha Bitch ^note "One of the starkest common ways to drive that point home is to revisit the Alpha Bitch twenty years down the road where she is a frumpy, failed housewife unhappily married to the former Jerk Jock who is equally a victim of bad karma, while the people she so cruelly bullied in high school will have become more successful and attractive than she is. In that scenario, she will likely repeat the nasty little cycle her mother had inflicted on her by living her life through her own daughter's."
• Headscratchers.Accel World ^note "The plot would then end faster because it would only then deal about defeating the Six Kings with very predictable signs of personal growth (not power growth) on the MC's part. AND THEN, people would keep asking for more of the MC kicking ass. That sounds like a sick Vicious Cycle to me. Hey, I know a lot of MC's who grew in power and personality despite being thin and lanky, but that's a different story. "

Zero Context Example

• TropeNamers.Real Life (!)
• Hana Ki Sou
• Co Dominium
• Series.Carnivale

Other

• Archive.Lost And Found ([1])

It also has a few bad in-page examples, like the "cycle of isolation" cited under its Real Life section.

edited 8th Jul '13 3:06:06 PM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

To me, the trope looks like a cycle which involves bad things at certain points, and the heroes happen to be in these points...

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Yes, that's exactly what the current definition is. An example of correct use would be the Reapers harvesting organic life to replicate themselves every 50,000 years in Mass Effect.

For background, this was discovered when Madrugada went to create a YKTTW for the phrase's idiomatic meaning (currently Catch-22 Dilemma, which the fox is planning to launch soon) and initially called it Vicious Circle because Cycle was taken.

edited 8th Jul '13 8:19:04 AM by StarSword

I am not sure if that YKTTW would be served with this name. To me "vicous cycle" is more of "feedback loop" than "catch-22".

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Looking at a few of the wicks above, I see most of them being about an actual cycle that perpetuates or feeds into itself. Which is what the phrase means in common language to my knowledge. That the trope page says "Not to be confused with Cycle of Revenge (though such a cycle is often called this, and with good reason)," is a bad sign to me, since that's one of the most common vicious cycles.

It needs at least a rename.

I don't think Vicious Cycle is a good name for the above YKTTW either. Catch-22 is about bouncing between two or more impossibilities (due to each other), and not really a cycle. It's more about being locked out of the loop than the loop itself. But why not call it what it's currently called?

edited 8th Jul '13 8:34:44 AM by AnotherDuck

Check out my fanfiction!

I agree that this needs a rename, but the YKTTW should still remain "Catch 22 Dilemma." A catch 22 is just not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a vicious cycle.

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

@3: Septimus and Duck pretty much nail it on the head — trope is misusing the very phrase it's based on. And over half of the articles I noted use it in precisely this context.

To be fair, all of these account for perhaps a 25% total misuse ratio. But that's still 1 in every 4....

edited 8th Jul '13 9:14:16 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Agree with rename. Cyclical Event, perhaps?

edited 8th Jul '13 10:11:05 AM by StarSword

I disagree. It seems to me that the trope as it is should be merged into Eternal Recurrence, and the name sent to YKTTW as the basis for what it actually means idiomatically (a supertrope for Cycle of Revenge).

If we determine it should be kept separate, however, something like Doomsday Cycle should work.

edited 8th Jul '13 10:21:55 AM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

How many examples of Eternal Recurrence should be here, anyway?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Looking at the two tropes, that seems reasonable. The difference between the two seems to be... minute at best.

edited 8th Jul '13 10:23:31 AM by Larkmarn

Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

The YKTTW is going to be Catch-22 Dilemma. Just clarifying that.

For this one, Cyclic Event Pattern, perhaps?

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

That is a good name for Eternal Recurrence and not so good for this.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I think the current definition should be merged into Eternal Recurrence, and the current page should be used for what it's mostly used for anyway, i.e. what "vicuous cycle / circle" means.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Proposal: Once Madrugada gets Catch-22 Dilemma launched, redirect Vicious Cycle to it (or possibly disambiguate) and split the use between Catch-22 Dilemma, Eternal Recurrence, Cycle of Revenge, and any other tropes that we may find it to have been mistaken for.

edited 8th Jul '13 11:20:29 AM by StarSword

A "vicious cycle" is something completely different from a "catch-22". One is a situation that keeps getting worse, one is a choice where both options are bad.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

...not exactly. A choice where both options are bad is a Morton's Fork (of which a catch-22 is merely a subset).

A vicious cycle is a problem with an obvious solution, the consequences of which include restoring the problem and sometimes making it worse.

A catch-22 is a purported solution which is not logically possible, because any attempt to use it creates a situation which prevents it. E.g. "To be judged insane, you have to ask for a psychiatric evaluation; anyone who asks for an evaluation must be capable of rational thought and therefore sane".

The two can be and often are related, in that a catch-22 dilemma may lock characters into a vicious cycle, but this is not necessary. For instance, a catch-22 may force characters to pursue a course of action which is detrimental but not cyclic, or the cycle may be forced by conscious decision, emotional reaction, or information deficit, rather than an endemic trait of the situation itself.

In other words, vicious cycles are invariably escaped by Taking a Third Option, and a catch-22 is one way to eliminate the third option.

edited 8th Jul '13 12:30:01 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

^ This. I'd say, go with the idea of

1. trope transplanting Vicious Cycle to what it's used to mean outside the wiki,
2. merge the examples that are simply "A cycle of events repeat continuously" into Eternal Recurrence, and then
3. decide if the current definition of Vicious Cycle ("the heroes are up against a hard deadline to solve the problem because a recurring event is due to happen soon") is even a trope.

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

Sorry, I got confused somehow. Let's try that again:

Merge existing definition of Vicious Cycle into Eternal Recurrence, make a new YKTTW for Vicious Cycle's idiomatic meaning (which I believe would make it the supertrope of Cycle of Revenge), and split the wicks between appropriate tropes.

edited 8th Jul '13 12:27:01 PM by StarSword

No, we're pretty much on the same page. I'm just suggesting that there might be a third trope in play as well where the heroes have a deadline because an Eternal Recurrence reset is due and they're the only ones who can stop it.

That's what the current Vicious Cycle seems to be trying to be — at least it's the only thing in the description section that differentiates it from Eternal Recurrence ("The bad news is, last time this happened was exactly 999 years and 360 days ago, and our heroes become involved, usually against their will, in the next iteration. Two outcomes can possibly occur: either they accept (or are forced to accept) their destiny and continue the cycle, or they reject it.")

edited 8th Jul '13 12:30:39 PM by Madrugada

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

So the Vicious Cycle trope is about the deadline, then? I would've thought that would be a required part if the plot is built around the Eternal Recurrence.

edited 8th Jul '13 12:34:49 PM by StarSword

Don't we have Cosmic Deadline Celestial Deadline?

edited 8th Jul '13 1:14:39 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

No, that seems to be a spell duration thing ("At the stroke of twelve the spell will be broken", yadda yadda). This is more like (to borrow an example from SG-1: "A Hundred Days"), "We have to get off this planet before it clips the edge of that asteroid field like it does every 150 years." In other words, Eternal Recurrence dictating the actions of the characters.

edited 8th Jul '13 1:53:50 PM by StarSword

Huh. You're right. But I could have sworn... oh, maybe I was thinking of Regularly Scheduled Evil.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Bump. Anyone up for a vote on Madrugada's proposal?

edited 14th Jul '13 3:49:44 PM by StarSword