Zzzzzzzzzz
Bumping this for discussion
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
The description also mentions that those that fit this trope are misunderstood "simply because their ideas and goals might not mesh or because they mistakenly believe them to be aiming for bad things." The "ideas and goals might not mesh" part is vague and seems to describe a legitimate ideological dispute rather than a clear case where someone thought to be evil is not.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
I'm concerned that there are a number of different ways to interpret the trope, and I'm not sure how many of them are valid. Could someone post a couple of paragraphs for what they think the trope is supposed to be about, given that we're assuming the current definition and examlpes are too broad to be a trope?
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
How would this relate to Non-Malicious Monster?
We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I made my point in OP. Basically I think it should be about "the thing is harmless, but people in-universe think it's out to get them".
That's why I think the "misunderstood" part need more emphasize. "Evil" and "malice" can be hard to identify at times anyway. But my impression is that the trope should be about entity that doesn't deserve all hate from villagers.
Lets say if we have a werewolf guy. - if he tranformed and kill people. He shouldn't be this trope. Even if he justify his action as uncontrolable rage, he still cause actual harm. Tragic, maybe, but nobody misunderstand his threat. - if he can avoid attacking people, but people still fear him as werewolf anyway. Then he's this trope, he's an example.
This isn't audience reaction, so what audience think isn't factor at all.
(I see Misundertsanding Villain as a redirect in "related to" page, probaly where we got example of "psychopath who kill people for fun, but not because of what you may think".)
Clock is ticking.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
It has bad potential to think of the "just misunderstood" part as "easily misunderstood by the reader". Or "the narrative deliberately mislead the reader at first regarding the guy's motives and then reveals their true thoughts much later".
It's supposed to be "misunderstood by other people in universe", right?
We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.
Captain of USS Bajor
I think a good archetypical example for this is the Horta in that one Star Trek episode (name escapes me ATM). It's a Rock Monster that shows up and kills some miners, the Enterprise investigates, and Spock discovers that not only is the Horta an intelligent life form, she's just a Mama Bear trying to protect her eggs.
edited 13th Jan '17 8:41:24 AM by StarSword
Zzzzzzzzzz
This threads was clocked as stalled nearly a month ago. There has been no posts and no progress since then.
Locking as "Inconclusive; no action is to be taken on the basis of this thread."
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I made a thread in ATT yesterday.
I think the trope need better description. The current description put too much emphasis on "Not Evil" part but almost completely ignoring "Just Misundertood" part. From my impression, a character being "Not Evil" isn't as important as (people) "Just Misundertood" the chaarcter. In this trope context, "evil" is likely include "harmful/dangerous". Lets say we have a Classical Movie Vampire, the character may simply feed for sustain himself and not really malice (not evil), but there's no misunderstanding that he kill and feed on humans. So he can't be this trope, else the description of this trope will be narrowed (or widen) to "any villain/antagonist that doesn't use For the Evulz as motivation" (which make it People Sit on Chairs).
I think the opening sentences of the description is what cause problem.
''Villains are bad, right? They have evil plans that involve world domination, planet destruction, and kicked puppies.
Not necessarily.''
The troper who put it there probaly just descripting generic villain as oppose to character in this trope, but looking through examples list make me think people use that as excuse to put anything as long as they can be justified. Few use "this is how the character view himself", despite the trope is clearly about "how people/public/setting view the character".
I've removed some of blatant misuse. Because they're lacking Just Misundertood part, they're really out to kill/harm people. They tried to pull Justified Trope with either Well-Intentioned Extremist or The Woobie, but clearly mis the point that nobody misunderstood their act (Necessarily Evil is still evil after all. A megalomaniac who Takeover The World to bring everlasting peace is still taking over the world with force.) Oh, we there was two gold comedy there...
Yes, look like you can do anything for your own gain from robbery and bringing apocalypse and still count as example, as long as it isn't just For the Evulz. Guess everyone else are just mindless unfeeling mass of flesh without their own need.
Really, I think it need to be fixed. My propose is that the criteria for this trope should be following.
Blue-and-Orange Morality shouldn't be excuse here, else there won't be "Just Misunderstood" part. A robotic army programmed to kill every lives is not evil, and likely not aware that what they're doing is wrong, but there's no misunderstood part - they're really out to kill everything.