Misused: Arch Enemy

A while back someone made a thread in the long-term projects forum noting that Arch-Enemy was so massively misused with Game of Thrones that basically every character who was remotely antagonistic towards another character was listed as someone's "arch-enemy".

This problem appears to be far wider than just that specific work however. In general, it looks like Arch-Enemy is suffering some significant Trope Decay. For clarity, an Arch-Enemy is not only an opponent who ranks as someone's most important enemy, but also one whose animosity with the hero goes to It's Personal levels, primarily from the hero's perspective (since every villain is likely to see themselves as a hero's most important enemy, even when they're really an Unknown Rival). It can overlap with other tropes such as Big Bad, The Dragon, or Evil Counterpart, but doesn't have to.

Take the ArchEnemy.Live Action Films page to illustrate, which is also rife with Zero Context Examples:

Lt. Dan is Forrest's arch-enemy? Forrest doesn't have an arch-enemy, he's too stupidly good-natured to see people that way. Dan is just an embittered man who later becomes his best friend after Bubba filled that position.

Kong is an animal, does he really view people that way? Seems like he's just angry to be captured by humans period.

Pinhead maybe (his characterization is all over the map throughout this series), but this is just a list of every enemy Kirsty has had.

Jigsaw doesn't have a consistent arch-nemesis either, just a rotating list of enemies.

So his arch-enemy is every enemy he encounters including an Unknown Rival?

Wallace is a crime boss who doubtless has had dozens of enemies throughout his career, Butch is just one guy he has a temporary beef with after backstabbing him and they part ways peacefully at the end after an Enemy Mine situation. Vincent and Jules are arch-enemies of Brett and Bonnie? The former is just some random crook they shoot after a four minute conversation, and they don't even meet the latter, who's a friggin nurse who's just about to come home from work.

This examples is only half-correct. Matrix doesn't really give a shit about Arius, but he does see Bennet as his arch-enemy for betraying their team on top of kidnapping his daughter. That's under It's Personal with the Dragon though.

Not really sure about this one, since while Kurtz is built up as this big bad guy, neither Kurtz nor Willard really have an obsession with one another.

Does Harry even have an arch-enemy? While he certainly despises Scorpio, that goes for basically any major villain Harry faces (and being a Cowboy Cop, he blows away all of them before they can show up in any sequels).

Same as above. John McClane doesn't really take the actions of the Big Bad-du-jour personal beyond a general dislike of evil people (i.e. he's simply a hero in an action movie).

Again, this trope is NOT the same thing as Big Bad.

Same as above. Joe and Furiosa looks like a legit example because of their shared history, however.

Sigh... again, not the same thing as Big Bad. Out of anyone, it's probably Stonebanks.

See my point?

Basically, I can just keep going, but the whole page is filled with examples like this, and presumably so do the other subpages, still leaving aside the wicks. What does Arch-Enemy mean as a trope when people are misusing it for any enemy they feel like shoehorning?

edited 16th Oct '16 4:08:43 AM by Morgenthaler

Looks like we'll need to clean up the example list judging by the evidence of misuse there. Opened.

So, what should be done? Just cleaning it up, or clarifying the definition? I don't see a point in changing the definition, as it is a good trope as it is, just one everyone and their Arch-Enemy loves to shoehorn. But if it's just cleaning up, wouldn't it be more appropriate as a Short Term Project?

Anyway, to begin with, should all Zero Context Examples be deleted or just commented out?

Some clarification won't hurt.

As for moving to Short Term Projects, I can go ahead and do that if we have no objections.

I say just delete the Zero Context Examples and the misuse.

Moving this to short-term projects sounds good since there's nothing wrong with the definition per se, it's mostly terribly misused.

Would it help to write, "...and personally most important enemy," at the end of the first sentence of the page? (Probably without italics, though.)

The only objection I have to just deleting Zero Context Examples is that I don't like deleting legitimate examples, even if they're poorly written. On the other hand, I also don't like leaving shoehorns out-commented either, so I'm kind of split on that part.

My general perspective is that an example is a submission of evidence that the work exhibits the trope. Lack of evidence in the example is grounds for declaring it unproven; in trope terms, Not An Example. I'm more inclined to leave unproven tropes on work pages than unproven works on the trope pages.

Removing it from the trope page but leaving it on the work page just encourages someone who is innocently trying to do some crosswicking to re-add it to the trope page. If you're removing it, you should remove it everywhere.

(If you just meant that you're less likely to give examples on a work page the scrutiny they might deserve, though, then I confess to the same flaw.)

I'll be more clear: deletion from trope pages, commented-out on work pages.

In either case, I remove from casual viewing.

Under "The Arch Enemy is more prone to certain tropes than the common villain" one of the tropes listed is Unknown Rival, which really doesn't seem to fit unless the villain in question was only that formerly.