Ambiguous Name: Morally Ambiguous Ducktorate

Well, Everythings Worse With Snowclones. Morally Ambiguous Ducktorate is cloned off Morally Ambiguous Doctorate - which itself is not ambiguous at all, but simply about how "characters with a doctor title are evil". Morally Ambiguous Ducktorate is about... well, it's about ducks, really. The description meanders between calling ducks cute, or funny, or sinister, or an Anti-Hero, or The Trickster, and then proclaims Donald Duck the trope maker even though he clearly doesn't meet most of these characteristics.

It's not clear what the trope is trying to be, and as a result, it's all over the place. The trope page itself is basically "list of ducks, geese and swans in fiction" regardless of whether there's something ambiguous about them.

In particular: "Any duck in fiction" is Not A Trope. "Duck who is evil" is already covered by Feathered Fiend (for which this trope has quite a lot of misuse). "Duck who is an Anti-Hero" is most likely what this trope is trying to be (and Donald Duck is clearly an example); based on that, it needs cleanup and a rename, because there is substantial misuse (see wick check next post) and the name is unrelated to what it's snowcloned after.

edited 29th Jul '13 9:00:54 AM by Spark9

Wick check (taking every 4th wick from the relatedsearch page).

Correct (a character who is an Anti-Hero and a duck): Donald Duck, Bucky O Hare And The Toad Wars, Duck Dodgers In The Twenty Fourth And A Half Century, I Am the Noun, Link To Life, Tiny Toon Adventures, The Chew Toy

Misuse for the trope "Feathered Fiend": Clucking Funny, Darkwing Duck (the villain is the named example, not the main character), Everything Trying to Kill You, Happy Tree Friends, Shin Megami Tensei, Tetrapod Zoology, The Twisted Tales Of Felix The Cat, Villains

Unclear / no context: Adylheim

Incorrect (not morally ambiguous, basically "there is a duck in this work"): Animorphs Animorphs, Funny Animal, MUGEN, Our Monsters Are Weird, Pirate, Right-Hand Cat, Courage The Cowardly Dog

Index / direct trope link: Avian Tropes, Cartoon Characters, Just For Pun, Made Of Win Archive Late 2008, Morally Ambiguous Doctorate, Wicked Waterbirds

...Total: 7 correct, 8 misuse for Feathered Fiend, 7 misuse for "there is a duck in this work", 1 no context, meaning 65% to 69% misuse.

edited 29th Jul '13 8:49:34 AM by Spark9

This was meant as Sinister Duck, but as-is it's just Duck!.

Actually Duck! is a stock joke, but yeah: This is another one of those Everythings Better With Yadda tropes.

You'll get no argument against renaming from me

Another option: create a new trope under this title about evil ducks. Not sure there'd be enough examples, but it could be a subtrope of Cute Is Evil or something.

Quack?

I read it as basically Morally Ambiguous Duck. Someone not plainly The Hero or The Villain, and not a Neutral Bystander either. Anti-Hero, Antivillain, Face–Heel Revolving Door, and other such tropes would fit. Maybe an antagonist who's not a villain.

Morally Ambiguous Doctorate is about "doctors" being of bad or questionable morality. Noting this, since we are talking about a snowclone.

Evil ducks are covered by Feathered Fiend.

The doctorate one is basically about them being evil, rather than morally ambiguous. That's possibly a job for another thread.

edited 29th Jul '13 10:26:01 AM by Spark9

Um... in this actually a trope? It seems kind of like Donald Duck Expy except all the correct examples are spinoffs of Donald Duck in the same universe. Well, plus a few Daffy Duck examples.

Original YKTTW

Morally Ambiguous Doctorate is about villains with Dr. as a title. I think that one might need a rename too over confusion with Mad Doctor. Let's save that for later.

It's because of this trope title that made me confuse Doctorate with Mad Doctor. for renaming Ducktorate as well.

And now there's Deadly Doctor, which is about doctors who use medical techniques to fight but is instead the first result in a Google search for [evil doctor tropes].

edited 30th Jul '13 1:09:44 AM by MikuruFan

This should never have been launched. Redirect to Feathered Fiend.

I'm not sure if this is tropeworthy. Let's the "bad duck" examples to the trope mentioned above.

It strikes me as pretty obvious that "Duck who is evil" doesn't need to be a separate trope from "Bird who is evil" (i.e. Feathered Fiend) especially as the duck page already has swans and geese on it anyway.

I think the main question then is whether "Anti-Hero who is a duck" is meaningfully distinct from the existing trope "Anti-Hero". I'm actually leaning towards no, which means that merging this page would be a good idea.

I personally am not aware of any difference between "Anti-Hero duck" and "Anti-Hero". The only thing I could see salvageable here would be Donald Duck Expy.

Lump 'em!

Proposal:

• Move examples of Anti-Hero from this page onto that trope
• Merge and redirect this page to Feathered Fiend
• YKTTW a new page for Donald Duck Expy

Thoughts please?

I think the page should be a disambiguation of the pages listed.

I am fine with either a redirect or a disambig.

Personally I would like to give it the "split into distinct tropes" treatment we gave to the rabbit and dolphin pages, except that I really can't think of any distinct tropes that apply to ducks. I'm not even convinced that "ducks are sinister" is really a trope.

Any ideas for actual duck tropes? I would hate to loose all the inbounds.

Honestly, I've not really heard much of it myself. Ducks are cute and awesome, after all.

You probably shouldn't post in this thread. It's a conflict of interest. :P

All joking aside, I'm really not seeing anything usable here.

Duck do have a tendency to morally ambiguous, went do the pond with my niece to feed them some bread...

Seriusly, ducks being ambiguous on the good/bad scale or somewhere in the middle (Anti-Hero, Anti-Villain, Chaotic Neutral, Stupid Neutral etc) could be a trope.

I'd still stick with putting that under Feathered Fiend.

edited 3rd Aug '13 9:24:54 AM by MikuruFan