Zzzzzzzzzz
I agree. I'm not seeing a great deal of difference...
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Raven Wilder
The current descriptions are essentially the same, yes. However, the titles carry different implications that could very easily make for distinct tropes.
While any deeply unpleasant world/society is technically a dystopia, in common parlance the word usually refers to worlds ruled by oppressive and tyrannical social orders; it's rarely used to refer to cases like a Zombie Apocalypse, where the problem is a breakdown of social order.
As such, the names Dystopia Justifies the Means and To Create a Playground for Evil suggest different things. Dystopia Justifies the Means sounds like the villain plans to create (and then run) a tyrannical society, personally managing people's lives to make them miserable. To Create a Playground for Evil, by contrast, sounds much more anarchic, like the villain wants to create a world where evil people/beings are free to follow their cruelest impulses, but the villain won't necessarily be controlling any of the evil that happens themself.
Again, as currently written, the trope descriptions don't convey that and are very much duplicates of each other, but I think changing them to what I outlined above would be the best way to resolve the problem.
edited 12th Dec '14 8:16:01 PM by RavenWilder
"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That makes sense to me.
Hi
I like that clarification.
Zzzzzzzzzz
That's an excellent clarification, and it does make them into two very different tropes. ![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Thumbs_up_emoticon_3268.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil? I like that.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Chair Man
That does explain it well.
I like that distinction. I do wonder whether there would be room for overlap, particularely with some of the more cruel Social Darwinist dystopias (like Red Skull and Apocalypse's dreamworlds) where oppressive empires exist side by side with lawless regions.
Also, should Hell on Earth be considered a subtrope, or a sister trope?
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"
Clock is set.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Clock is up with no progress; closing.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
This and Dystopia Justifies the Means are two tropes which seem to cover exactly the same concept, where a villain tries to create a Crapsack World out of malice. I'm not sure what the distinction, if any, is supposed to be since the examples also show quite a bit of overlap and even the laconics (arguably an unreliable way to check the definition, though) are identical. According to the YKTTW archive they were both launched in early 2011, but Dystopia Justifies the Means has seen more use since then (219 wicks versus 59).
edited 12th Dec '14 10:26:37 AM by Morgenthaler
You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"