Needs Help: Protagonist Centered Morality

That's not what I meant, I meant that the audience is calling them assholes, not that they're meant to be. Hence the DH overlap issue.

If the crowner continues to go the way it's currently going, it may have to be closed with no action taken.

If that happens, should this be taken to a Projects thread, or are there any other options? If it's taken to Projects, I was planning to leave the thread open until the thread is made.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 8th 2022 at 4:51:12 AM

Thing is, I'm not sure what normal cleanup can do if the issue is one of overlap and subjectivity, unless we declare that all examples must be intentional and then cut anything that isn't.

Is it worth considering disambiguating between Designated Hero, Designated Villain, Unintentionally Unsympathetic and maybe Values Dissonance, Informed Wrongness, Author Tract, Unfortunate Implications depending on if any use fit?

Also would be personally fine making intentional examples only, alternatively.

Edited by Amonimus on Jun 9th 2022 at 6:26:38 PM

I did consider that, but I wasn't entirely convinced it'd help. It's certainly an option, though.

I would really be opposed to disambiguating this trope. This is one of the last ones we have that covers unintentional cases of protagonist characters being hypocritical and it would remove several good examples that have nowhere left to go.

What if we yard Fridge Hypocrisy / Unintentional Hypocrisy?

Those tropes would never get past Lunch Pad because of the stigma surrounding any tropes involving the slightest bit of negativity. So we need to stick with the ones we have right now.

Thing is, Ordeaux, you have to look at the wick check usage. Most of it isn't even about hypocrisy, just protagonists doing things the work doesn't call out. I'm not even sure if it counts as hypocrisy if it's the narrative calling it okay rather than the heroes anyway, especially if it's the difference between something being Played for Laughs or Played for Drama. The heroes might not be intended to be seen as "good people", but the narrative might not explicitly say it's wrong because it's a gag.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 8th 2022 at 6:51:27 AM

That may be a fair point. As I pointed out elsewhere though I feel we should work on fixing this trope instead of moving straight to disambiguating and leaving tons of good examples with nowhere to go.

Like I said, I'm not even fully convinced a disambig is necessary here, but I can't think of any actual fixes that wouldn't either allow the misuse to continue, create unnecessary overlap with other tropes, or cut 75% of the examples anyway.

The thing is, while there's no real consensus on the intentionality issue, the trope is still being misused for character-bashing and audience reaction, and for things that have nothing to do with hypocrisy, unintentional or otherwise, to the point where calling it a dupe of DH is a valid arguement. And we need a solution that addresses all these problems.

Forgive me for sounding stupid, but if there's enough valid examples to justify a solution but not enough to leave as is wouldn't a TLP drive work?

When I said that part, I was referring to what would happen if we narrowed the trope down and gave it a cleanup effort. I'm not sure how a cleanup effort would work if we didn't alter the definition in some way, given that right now it's unclear how subjective the trope is. So a cleanup effort that follows a redefinition could certainly work, but would toss a lot of examples in the bin.

I imagine a TLP drive would have similar problems.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 8th 2022 at 7:37:06 AM

If one can come up with a defentition for those 75% that is different enough from what's the trope uses currently, that's how TLP works.

I did bring up the potential problem of that kind of trope never getting past TLP due to it being perceived as complaining.

and Ah, got it.

Not sure how to save this trope myself. We may need a disambiguation, but I don't want to do that yet until we've definitively exhausted all other options. IMO cutting/disambiguating in TRS efforts should be a last resort after all other options fail—I think Ordeaux has a point there.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jun 8th 2022 at 7:40:51 AM

Oh, yeah, I'm not disagreeing on that one. With cases like this I don't think we need an extreme fix, but we do need to address the biggest problems.

OK, so I missed a lot of posts until now, but I was thinking we should just let this crowner run its course for now, and if it remains in the same condition at the three-day mark, I'll run a crowner with options related to disambiguating or tweaking the definition (possibly with multiple non-mutually exclusive tweaks to the definition). Disambiguating and modifying the definition would be mutually exclusive, but if the definition is tweaked, moving it to Projects would still be an option.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 8th 2022 at 7:04:37 AM

Another option is to restrict PCM to intentional/self-aware examples.

Is there any unintentional PCM examples that do not overlap with Unintentionally Unsympathetic? (If below the level required for legit UU as opposed to nitpicks/fringe opinion, then maybe it's not a bad enough double standard to count as PCM. If it's audience threshold then that's YMMV, but is it meaningfully different than other YMMV used as complaints?)

The description actually already says it's an in-universe trope, and this is its listing on Square Peg, Round Trope, if it's relevant to that:

• Protagonist-Centered Morality is often used as a catch-all for any protagonist performing and getting away with actions which our modern society perceives as morally wrong when in truth this use is more along the lines of Values Dissonance. This trope is actually more about a Double Standard, wherein the main character and characters they are sympathetic towards are allowed to get away with performing actions that other characters would be condemned for, or alternately characters who are objectively not that bad are presented as irredeemable due to not liking or supporting the protagonist.

One possible way to try and redefine it would be to restrict it to only cases where two characters do the same thing, but the narrative treats one with much more sympathy. That would let us get rid of examples that are just complaining in the form of "heroic character does [bad thing]" (with no mention of how the narrative treats other characters who do [bad thing]).

May work. A secondary character is hit with narrative wrongness, but the protagonist is portrayed as heroic for doing the same thing.

I could get behind that proposal. We could also probably trim the description while we're at it.

Like "Double Standard: PoV Character"?

The trope is already about double standards, so I suppose so.