Ambiguous Name: The Punishment

It is indeed about a punishment, but it is specific to "punishing someone with immortality." Then why is it simply "THE Punishment"? Punishment is broad. We have Cool and Unusual Punishment, The Not-So-Harmless Punishment or The Punishment Is the Crime; they're all clear that they're being specific. But not this.

Call it Punished With Immortality? Or, since the point of that trope is that said punishment often backfires, it should be Immortality Punishment Backfire.

A secondary issue is that the "superpowers" is part of the punishment. I don't think it is; it's more likely that they're super powerful before the punishment, or getting superpowered is a side effect depending on the case.

edited 12th Dec '14 7:00:45 PM by DAN004

Wow. Yeah. Bad name. Opening for discussion.

But Dan, when you bring something to the TRS, please bring supporting facts along with it: in this case, you need to do a wick check to see if or how badly the name is being misused across the wiki.

Support rename to Punished With Immortality or something similar.

edited 12th Dec '14 8:41:03 PM by gallium

This is worded like it's a characterization trope. So I can kinda see where the name is coming from, except that the name is way too vague. Although, I really don't think it's a characterization trope at all, so not only should the name be fixed, but the description should be too.

Punished With Immortality is nice. It could be later customized into "Punished" With Immortality, so that it would be clear it's not Who Wants to Live Forever?. But trope description needs a fix: right now, it looks as if The Punishment is type of character, like The Lancer.

The trope description is very strange indeed. It is written as if it describes a character called "The Punishment". It sounds like a really cheesy 1990's superhero. Is that was the trope is about?

According to the current description, it doesn't necessarily have to be immortality (it says and/or). So I'd rather go with Punished With Superpowers than Punished With Immortality unless that's changed.

I don't think it's a problem that the description is written as a character, if the name is changed to use the word "punished" rather than "punishment".

Punished With Superpowers would end up creating confusion with Cursed with Awesome, I think.

Is this trope redundant with Who Wants to Live Forever?

No. The Punishment depends on Who Wants to Live Forever? being true, or at least, the person handing out the punishment has to think this. Other tropes that are probably identified with The Punishment are Immortality Hurts and Immunity Disability. Otherwise immortality will not be viewed as a punishment and it wouldn't be this trope. It's probably a sub-trope at best.

The description of The Punishment notes that oftentimes, the person being punished will end up veiwing the punishment as Unishment, Living Forever Is Awesome or just plain old Cursed with Awesome. So this trope seems to be an inversion/subversion of Who Wants to Live Forever? as often as it plays it straight.

edited 14th Dec '14 6:20:25 PM by ObsidianFire

I agree with Diamond Weapon in that it would feel much more natural to have the trope being about a character called The Punished. Of course, there is still the question of whether the trope is about the punishment per se or the character who's subjected to it.

The reason the current trope description feels really wrong to me is that if you have a character called The Punishment, then the character is the punishment, and has presumably been sent to punish somebody else. The whole thing also feels a bit ironic or exaggerated, such as when frustrated parent thinks of their child as their "punishment". All this is very different from what the trope actually seems to be about.

Trope's got 121 wicks. What do they look like?

What about when the immortality is not viewed as the punishment itself, but as a Necessary Drawback to the punishment? As in The Mummy, where the point of the curse was for Imhotep to be tortured in the afterlife and the whole coming back as an unkillable monster part was an unfortunate side-effect.

Variously, really. I've noticed some of them use it improperly (Buffy the Vampire Slayer page, for example, describes The Punishment as if it really was a punishment - although I didn't watch Buffy, so maybe it wasn't).

Diamond Weapon, as far as I understand the trope, you've just about summed up what it's about, at least from the perspective of the punished.

I guess the major fixes The Punishment needs are:

• name change, of course. I'd vote for Punished With Superpowers
• in description, it has to stop calling the cursed character "The Punishment", 'cause it's about the action, not person
• it also has to make clear that it's not just about immortality, but other superpowers as well (I guess name change would solve that handily)

what make this different the Cursed with Awesome then?

Cursed with Awesome is when a character has awesome powers and hates it. This is when a character gets awesome powers as a result of some kind of punishment. The former does not have to be literally cursed, and the latter does not have to hate their condition.

Nah, Punished With Superpowers is already In Voked Cursed with Awesome

Again, I'd vote for Punished With Immortality

Or misuse of Cursed with Awesome. Cursed with Awesome is not when you're cursed and think its awesome, it's when you're awesome and think its a curse.

So the person giving the powers meant it to be a punishment—and it is—but you also got powers out of the deal. Definitely related to Cursed with Awesome, but I can see the distinction.

This isn't going to go anywhere without a wick check to see where the misuse is.

Wick Check:

Of the 120 current wicks, I selected 50 scattered evenly throughout the list.

Correct (24)

• Big Trouble in Little China
• Curse
• Devil Survivor
• DRAGONAGE
• Gankutsuou
• Mortal Kombat 1
• Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures
• Psychopathic Manchild (potholed in example)
• Ravenloft
• Super Robot Wars Z
• The Goon
• The Polity
• Tortured Monster
• Touhou Subterranean Animism
• Vampire: The Masquerade
• Angel
• Corum
• Dota 2 Dire Intelligence
• M to R
• The Black Cauldron
• The Mummy Trilogy
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Mega Man Zero Antagonists
• Omniscient Morality License

Incorrect (19)

• Atlantis: used as general punishment
• Everlost: different punishment
• Generation X: another random punishment
• Judas It might apply to the work, but is potholed to an irrelevant statement.
• Otherland: A form of immortality, but the victim doesn't gain any advantages from it, just suffering
• Ride Alone Complex: no mention of immortality
• Spawn Broodling: General punishment again
• The Bible Genesis: Cain definitely gets no advantages from the endeavor and is certainly not immortal.
• The Ring of the Nibelung: Doesn't mention immortality, just giving up love.
• Warrior Cats RPG: Just a punishment, no immortality.
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: From here on down it's just general punishments more or less
• Kid Icarus
• Tabletop Games
• Literature/Tasakeru
• The City Hunter
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin
• Warcraft: Illidan and Followers
• Marquis de Sade
• Mortal Wills, Mortal Hearts

Insufficent Context (7)

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent: Zero context pothole
• Classic Villian: Another low-context pothole, but looks incorrect
• Mask of the Betrayer: ZCE
• The War of the Ancients: ZCE
• War Gods: ZCE
• Trickster Online: ZCE
• Love Makes You Evil: ZCE

So we're looking at at least 40% misuse here, potentially 50%. Most of the misuse is definitely name-caused.

edited 18th Dec '14 9:42:04 AM by Darksilverhawk

thank you.

In light of the wick check (thank you, Darksilverhawk), I absolutely support a rename.

The Illidan one kinda fits the spirit of the trope, all Night Elves are immortal unless killed and Illidan was imprisoned for eternity for his crimes by his brother instead of just killed which would have been nicer really. It was more his Immortality Used As A Punishment, IMO that would be an acceptable variant on the trope.

The spirit of the trope is the punished gains something from the punishment (power, immortality, etc) that makes them a bigger threat. If he was already immortal to begin with, that doesn't count.

That does tie into the secondary issue, though. Do we want to open it up to be "a character becomes more powerful as a result of the punishment," or limit it to immortality and leave the extra powers as a "sometimes this also happens" thing?

Punished With Immortality? Punished With Power? The name definitely needs to note what the punishment is, otherwise I think we'll see similar misuse, though less of it. The misuse isn't so much people using it as a character trope, it's people taking the name at face value.