Misused: Affably Evil and Faux Affably Evil

The objective part about each trope is a villain who acts nice. The subjective part is the motivational analysis. Calling it "cognitive dissonance" or "creepy" is a subjective view, not something that can be easily codified.

That is also a subjective determination. If we're going to be judging people like Character Alignment, I'm going to point out that most people mean "neutral" when they say "good". Politeness and camaraderie aren't affected by how "evil" a person is. The existence of these tropes (Including Good Is Not Nice) should indicate that.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I feel like I'm talking at a perpendicular angle or something. I'm sorry if I'm so bad at explaining this. You're not supposed to get into that and my point was more that you shouldn't try to break down the character motivation to look for "sincerity" like that. But having the tropes as mutually exclusive "real" and "fake" versions of each other invites people to do exactly that, to say villains they like are affable and villains they don't like are faux. Affable never had to do with "sincere". It is ultimately kind of superficial. "Faux" says "insincere". It simply seems absurd to me, then, that the trope as it stands comes down to being defined as "superficial but genuine in that superficiality". How the heck could you possibly measure that objectively?

Even if you don't think my version of "Faux Affably Evil" flies as a trope of its own (it has been obnoxiously difficult to define), I just wish we'd drop the implication that there is a "sincere" and an "insincere" way in which to be Affably Evil. If you have a deliberately fake affable persona that only exists to trick people within the story (but not outside it), I don't think you have anything to do with the Affably Evil trope. You're a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing or whatever.

edited 23rd Nov '14 3:43:23 PM by Tyoria

My understanding of the difference, which is the same as Tyoria (I think), is that in Faux Affably Evil they do seemingly friendly things while being obviously evil in a way that emphasizes their evilness. Like a serial killer chasing someone with a knife while inviting them to tea. It's just... creepy. That's all there is to it. A simple narrative trick. No use overthinking this, or even caring about the audience reaction. It's easy to see what the writer is trying to do when it happens.

By contrast, Affably Evil is someone who is genuinely friendly and genuinely evil, although maybe not at the same time. Like, they don't seem to realize that there's any contradiction. The most straightforward example would perhaps be someone who's incredibly racist: they believe certain people are subhuman and don't deserve any rights or respect, while at the same time they're genuinely nice to everyone else. They don't see a contradiction, since from their perspective there is no contradiction. While obviously the audience would see them as evil. That's just one example though. Another simple one could be "as long as you're not standing in my way I have no reason to be rude". There's no dissonance in the character at all, really, it's just the viewpoint of someone so embedded in evil that they can't see it as wrong. They also might say something like "no hard feelings, this isn't personal", which is sort of an evil twist on the "we could have been friends in different circumstances" trope.

edited 24th Nov '14 4:04:29 AM by Clarste

Expecting editors to make a subjective decision as to the sincerity of a character's niceness is a recipe for confusion. Expecting them to make a subjective decision as to whether the character's polite behavior is "creepy" or not even more so. Both would leave the difference more or less up to personal opinion.

I'd support merging the tropes.

Another option would be to change Affably Evil to acknowledge the possibility that its just an act, put the ambiguous examples there, and reserve Faux Affably Evil for those cases where the character clearly admits its just an act.

edited 24th Nov '14 7:12:57 AM by DiamondWeapon

Should we start a crowner on whether or not a merge happens?

Except the behavior in question is completely different. If you can't tell the difference, then you simply don't understand the trope and have no business adding examples either way. This is not an audience reaction trope, any more "flickering lights make things creepy" is. It doesn't matter whether or not the audience buys into what the writer is attempting or not, they're still using a trope.

"They're still using a trope."

And that is Affably Evil which can be played with.

MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWW

• An author could attempt to use that racism in a way to be "obviously evil in a way that emphasizes their evilness." Without changing anything you've said. Fantastic Racism is an excellent tool.
• It is also a trope called Values Dissonance. Which is a known Audience Reaction.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

A crowner would seem appropriate.

That was just one example. The trope is of course not mutually exclusive with other existing tropes. Knight Templar also often overlaps with Fantastic Racism. Clearly we should cut Fantastic Racism because it's so redundant. Or maybe it's a motivation that has nothing whatsoever to do with the way an individual character acts. Fantastic Racism can and probably has overlapped with literally every other villain trope on this website. Thank you for quoting only one example and completely ignoring the other examples.

edited 25th Nov '14 11:58:55 PM by Clarste

Got the crowner. Messaging the mods now.

Seems like we've seen most arguments in both directions already, so I've accepted the crowner hooking request.

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

I didn't ignore other examples. Thank you for only including one example of your version of Affably Evil in that post. Your version, which is mutually exclusive with a subjective view.

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Your version is also not the current accepted meaning of the pages.

edited 26th Nov '14 11:01:49 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I really hate it when there's a "Do Nothing" option on a crowner, and none of the options are in the positive.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

This crowner is essentially worthless right now. I'm going to give it a couple more days, and if there's nothing at consensus level, the thread's going away.

I believe moar people needs to participate here...

MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWW

But we have consensus to not do that! ;)

The way this place decides things like this has always struck me as pretty odd. Who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people will visit and edit a trope page over the years, but when it comes time to make decisions about pages, 10-20 people, those who take the time to find this forum and then to open threads like these, make the decisions. I'll bet 95% at least of the users who come here every day have no idea that there's a thread open about what to do with Faux Affably Evil. The new ownership might want to consider ways to get more participation in threads like these, maybe with a message that will pop up whenever a new crowner is started.

Anyway, Faux Affably Evil is not a thing, and the page should be cut with Faux Affably Evil being made a redirect to Affably Evil. But the crowner shows no consensus among the 20 people who actually voted, so, might as well lock this one.

so... shall we cut down Faux Affably Evil?

MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWW

Any page that has a discussion thread about it gets a link to the thread added to the header... I don't know how much more notice you can give to a thread about a trope.

It shouldn't just be users. It should also be casual readers who don't have accounts. They are the ones whom we are making the site for, so they should get a say too.

And we all know how not needing accounts ended...

Actually, I don't. I only joined half a year ago, so I'm not sure what incident happened.

The Situation.

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

Are we maybe missing a Nice Is Not Good/Evil Is Not Mean supertrope that doesn't care whether the affability is genuine?

Rhymes with "Protracted."