Needs Cleaning Up: Humans Are Bastards

I don't have a problem with the name, but I think you should seriously consider yanking the Troper Tales page for this one. It's one big wanky mess of misery poker.

I'm almost wondering why we still have it. Complete Monster's troper tales page is supposedly limited to FICTIONAL CM's the tropers wrote, rather than opening the door to real-life CM's the tropers knew (or said they themselves were) but Humans Are Bastards has arguably MORE potential for controversy yet still has troper tales.

edited 31st Oct '10 1:46:28 PM by neoYTPism

Part of the problem is the misleading title. The other part of the problem is that many tropers lean cynical and like to pothole humans are bastards, which they seem to honestly believe, at every conceivable instance. The inappropriate potholing is probably the source of most people's confusion.

For the time being, I can, at least, replace the current description with the much more accurate and descriptive writeup I proposed on the previous page and begin a general cleanup.

A rename could be worth discussing. On one hand, it's a REALLY popular page and a high number of outside referrals. On the other... it's abused and misused immensely.

The best alternate I can think of at the moment is Aliens Good Humans Bad or ...Humans Bastards.

edited 2nd Nov '10 12:56:30 AM by SeanMurrayI

Another part of the problem are many examples (e.g. The Dark Knight). The page needs a good culling.

I like Aliens Good Humans Bad. It's very clear about what the trope is, without being dull.

I suppose a question worth asking is; what sort of interpretation of the trope do most of the examples apply to?

If most of them happen to be of almost the same interpretation as each other, perhaps we could rename the trope to accomodate that interpretation, and make a new, separate trope for the concept of humans being the antagonists...

edited 2nd Nov '10 5:41:35 AM by neoYTPism

^Examples aren't supposed to define a trope though. But anyway, for the most part, the trope is being used to describe humans being cruel to another species, as it's supposed to, only the trope's scope of that is supposed to be limited to covering cruelty towards other sentient, civilized species who aren't human (i.e. aliens and fantasy races).

Human cruelty towards talking animals who are the main focus in a story has its own trope, as does the "Humans Are Misguided" concept that's been shoehorned into the trope description when it shouldn't even be a directly related concept, and others. The whole Humans Are Dicks To Each Other concept which is a real source of misuse is something that sounds like some variant of Crapsack World.

If no one has any further objections though, I'll replace the description and begin cleaning up examples and wicks.

edited 2nd Nov '10 11:22:35 AM by SeanMurrayI

My sense is that most examples use the title to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin, without reference to another intelligent species. I think it would be counterproductive to move them to a new title. Rewriting Humans Are Bastards to drop the second intelligent species requirement would be much less disruptive. The existing article terxt would move to new title under that scheme.

Not that I'm that keen on Humans Are Bastards as the de-facto trope it has grown to be. Rather general, subjective and open to being tacked on everywhere, like Drolyt said.

edited 2nd Nov '10 5:51:31 PM by Camacan

^Meanwhile, something like what a name like Aliens Good Humans Bad would suggest is both an extremely tropeable concept as well as this page's original focus.

Tweaking the description to fit the current examples would be both be against our usual site policies on these issues and only encourage the Trope Decay.

edited 2nd Nov '10 6:15:13 PM by SeanMurrayI

Not so much a tweak as a new version and a split. I understand that the suggestion is not to policy but there is a substantial body of examples to consider. If you move everything over Aliens Good Humans Bad what are you going to do during that week (maybe two weeks) when you are spending every day fixing the (rough guess) 1000 wicks that don't fit the new title or the exisiting definition?

If a large body of examples agree with a common definition which also agrees with the name, it becomes harder to classify as run-of-the-mill Trope Decay.

edited 2nd Nov '10 6:22:48 PM by Camacan

I understand that the suggestion is not to policy but there is a substantial body of examples to consider.

There's also a substantial number of already existing tropes that can fit any number of any misattributed examples, including—arguably—the Humans Are Dicks To Each Other catalog.

I'd be against a split. The resulting trope would pretty much be "there are bad humans and I don't like that.". Stick with renaming and fixing the potholes.

I've started cleaning up some of the obviously bad examples, since it's clear that the example list needs quite a bit of help. Anyone willing to join me?

I'll help you out for sure. Might as well switch the descriptions with my own write-up (the current one is just all over the place) while I'm at it and make a few notes about what's going on in the page discussion.

edited 14th Nov '10 11:29:05 AM by SeanMurrayI

Also, I'll be making my edits based on type of misuse to better organize what examples need to be moved to what related page (i.e. humans hurting humans, humans hurting nature from a talking animal perspective, humans doing bad things without showing INTENT to be purposely evil, etc.)

A LOT of examples are describing negative human actions without providing purposeful intent to do them for the sake of being evil.

Can we begin the process of renaming the trope?

Should we start a crowner on whether or not tropers want to go through with a rename or do we already have a solid agreement?

I agree that the title should more specific to eliminate room for error.

Go with a crowner.

Crowner...?

Crowner made.

Honestly, I think we should split Humans Are Bastards. We can have one trope for the current definition. And one trope for what people think the definition is, i.e. that people outside our own monkey sphere are ass holes.

To me though, that sounds like People Sitting On Chairs.

"People being dicks to each other" isn't so much a trope as Most Actors Are Human and "humans do all sorts of stuff to each other."

A lot of it just degrades to Complaing About Things You Dont Like, anyway.

edited 8th Dec '10 8:55:42 PM by SeanMurrayI

Not if you limit it to in media and even there it's basically "Big faceless groups are dicks" if you want a more plain speak definition.