NaNo 4328 / 50,000
OK, so I need to clarify that the "Transplant" options are dependant upon the "Expand" option, because if there is no agreement to change the definition, then there's no reason to change the name.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Bump. Didn't we have a crowner ready here?
Lakija
Does anyone know which examples are evidence of misuse so we can actually see what people are using this for?
I thought it was, by name, any victim who is an asshole, and therefore you really don't care about what's happening/happened to him or her. Or you even root against them during a bad ordeal.
We need a crowner, at any rate.
edited 24th May '14 7:28:50 PM by Lakija
It is what it is.
Hi
Crowner's hooked.
Mummy Woomy
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
There are instances where the trope is used in a setting that's definitely not a mystery. For example, in Assassin's Creed a lot of the protagonists' assassination targets are shown as assholes before they are killed, and the video game section alone has a lot of examples like that.
There's also another thing to consider in that sometimes the "asshole" part only becomes clear later on, so instead of having a victim that immediately creates complications, you have one that gives further motives for their death later on.
"Yeah, it's a shame. Here we are in an underground cave with all these lasers, and instead of having a rave we're using it for evil."
But then it really isn't the same trope, is it?
Jerks getting killed is not a trope. The fact that the person getting killed is an jerk has X impact on storytelling is a trope. If it has Y impact, it is not the same trope.
Having the person that is getting killed be an jerk to increase the number of suspects that the protagonist has to investigate, having the person killed being a jerk to make the protagonist assassins more sympathetic, having a jerk be killed because he is the villain of the story and having him die is a part of having the good guys win and the bad guys loose, etc., are all separate tropes.
edited 29th May '14 1:01:04 PM by Catbert
I don't know. In how many cases are all these elements used?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Well for one thing it is rare for the protagonist investigator to also be the protagonist criminal. Although the "The Detective Did It" comes up often enough to be its own trope, usually it is mutually exclusive.
Sorry, I should have asked "In how many cases are multiple elements at work?".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Completely agree with @57. Jerkass crime victim on its own is Not A Trope. That's why I voted down expansion as outlined in the crowned option.
Karmic Thief already covers protagonists stealing from jerks.
We could perhaps make a trope where the hero is an assassin or otherwise commits murder, but we cheer for him anyway because he is only killing people that 'deserve it' like blackmailers, drug dealers, even worse terrorists and assassins, etc.
However I would think it would still have to be a separate trope from the hero detective whose job is complicated by the fact that everyone hated the victim and had a motive to kill him.
edited 29th May '14 1:13:50 PM by Catbert
Yeah, I agree. There really isn't much overlap at all between the mystery trope and the trope assassin's creed uses.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Mummy Woomy
Separating Asshole Victim's entries between the mystery setting based ones and the ones that are about setting up a character as an asshole before being done in by a main character sounds like a good idea to me.
"Yeah, it's a shame. Here we are in an underground cave with all these lasers, and instead of having a rave we're using it for evil."
How many examples are there from the latter, though.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
The Music folder examples are either Jerkass or Asshole Victim.
edited 30th May '14 3:16:16 AM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
- 11 (yeas:15 nays:4) for Expand
- 6 (yeas:9 nays:3) for Transplant (rename)
edited 9th Jun '14 3:26:38 AM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
For the record, the reason why I stick with expanding only is because a) we don't have manpower do do the other solution and b) tropes can exist for more than one reason and trying to split by reason here seems like it's going to create duplicate examples problems.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Voting up on transplant, down on expand. "Bad things happening to jerks" is not a trope, and the current general usage of "having the victim be a jerk so that the audience feels better about what happens to them" is already mostly covered by Pay Evil unto Evil and Kick The Son Of A Bitch.
The expand option is not "Bad things happening to jerks" and Pay Evil unto Evil and Kick The Son Of A Bitch have fairly different storytelling purposes and definitions.
Kick The Son Of A Bitch is basically an act that is both a Kick the Dog moment (—> hammering home that the villain is evil) but involves an Asshole Victim (—> the victim is bad, too, with all the storytelling implications). It can't be an "expanded" version of Asshole Victim.
Pay Evil unto Evil is focused on the person who does the victimzing. Also, that description is not overly clear.
edited 12th Jun '14 1:56:46 PM by SeptimusHeap
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
- 12 (yeas:17 nays:5) for Expand
- 6 (yeas:10 nays:4) for Transplant (rename)
I consider the expand option to be "bad things happen to jerks" because that is what it will be used as. *shrug*
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
"Bad things happening to jerks" is just Jerkass. "Bad things not happening to jerk" is Karma Houdini. The proposed definition is "Crimes against Jerkass characters".
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Asshole Victim is (mis)used for bad things happening to jerks now, even though the definition has almost nothing to do with that. I'd be willing to bet that that's a majority of its use on this site.
Unscientifical data point: Most of the usage I encounter on wiki pages is about victims not being sympathetic due to past misdeeds.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Crown Description:
Asshole Victim is supposed to be for murder mystery victims that are so unlikeable, any of the suspects has a strong motive to kill them. The useage, however, tends to be of a Jerk Ass victim of any crime. Murder is the most common crime, but there is also usage for targets of Karmic Thief characters.- The Transplant and Expand options are not mutually exclusive.
- The two Transplant options are mutually exclusive (if both have consensus, only the higher-rated option will be used)
- Transplant (YKTTW) will only happen if Expand wins. Transplant (rename) can happen without Expand winning.
No, the problem is that that crowner does give an option that is essentially "change the description from X to Y" (since a transplant means that the current definition X is moved off page A to page B and definition Y is put in page A instead), but it doesn't describe what Y is.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman