Needs Cleaning Up: Humans Are Bastards

I would say go with that.

Frankly, that this is how the trope is used in practice suggests there is at least something tropeable about it... such as which works portray human nature in a "more cynical than average" light, perhaps? (EDIT: Such as Lord Of The Flies, for example.)

Alternatively, it could serve as a supertrope, or at least an index.

edited 4th May '11 8:22:11 PM by neoYTPism

My ideas for a "what to do" crowner: it would say straight out that wicks and potholes will be cleaned up no matter what. It would have one "vote up/down" option for (dis)agreeing with "I think 'humans are bastards in general' is tropeable."

What other options should it have? Or might it depend on whether "humans are bastards" is tropeable? Or, maybe we should just list options regardless of whether it depends on the answer to the above, and just let the popularity of those hash out that basic question?

Doing one question at a time is probably best, or one stage at a time. Once we have the answers to each we can move on to the next.

So what should be first then? Whether the current way Humans Are Bastards is used is actually tropeable? Is that something that can/should be "put up for vote"?

Bump because I'm willing to make a crowner, but I'd like to get my question answered to know what my first question should be.

(Perhaps when I get an answer, this thread can be closed, and another can be started with this "new" crowner, considering how long this thread already is.)

edited 2nd May '11 2:18:57 PM by Leaper

Keep forgetting about this topic...

Ah, hmmm... I'm having trouble with the phrase 'Humans are bastards in general'. That doesn't really seem to capture what I think the trope here is. More... 'Humans are bastards as a theme' or 'characterization counterpart to Crapsack World'.

Nono Nono for example isn't a Crapsack World, but there's not one character with a page's worth of dialogue who hasn't been, or continues to be, a liar, sneerer, bully, blackmailer, cheater, or would be rapist. While I heard Lynn Okamoto didn't intend that*

At best, a new trope could most likely come from the examples on the page that I said are in a GRAY AREA way back in this thread's OP. For those who don't feel like going back to read Page 1 though, here are those examples again:

On that note, the best way to spin a new trope from this would be "A Human Expresses Belief That His Own Species Is Rotten". The whole "Humans Are Bastards In General" spiel is just as flimsy and unwieldy now as it was when it was first ever suggested.

At least "A Human Expresses Belief That His Own Species Is Rotten" is something we can positively point at and observe without having to seriously question its existence.

And, unless someone wants to write up a quick draft of what exactly "Humans Are Bastards In General" is supposed to be, I don't feel that concept would be very concrete or easy to distinguish.

edited 2nd May '11 5:40:02 PM by SeanMurrayI

How about proposing a Trope Transplant, where the name is for a trope about human in general, and the current definition is for a name that makes it clear it's in comparison to non-humans.

I might call that Who Are The Real Monsters, as that's often a phrase used.

edited 2nd May '11 6:46:22 PM by DragonQuestZ

^But, again, what do we mean by "human in general"?

Like I said before, the idea of "Humans Are Bastards In General", so far, as been very broadly and flimsily described and defined that it basically lacks coherent direction.

The suggestion I gave for "human character expressing an opinion about believing his own species to be a bunch of rotten, evil mutants" is, at least, something that's observable. We can easily spot and reference something like that. But how do we spot "humans are bastards in general"?

It still just sounds to me like "any two humans do something to 'harm' each other," which is just too broad to trope. Again, I'd really like to see some kind of draft of what this trope description would look like.

edited 2nd May '11 7:00:53 PM by SeanMurrayI

The examples aren't that broad are they? For the most part, the examples I've seen are that "most people are jerks or evil". That might seem like Black-and-Gray Morality, but this is about people in general, while that trope could just be limited to the protagonists and antagonists.

Only when the protagonists and antagonists are humans all the same, it would still be an example regardless.

I'm still only seeing this as " Presence of Human + Dick Behavior = This Trope."

Less emphasis should be placed on the idea of "humans being evil" in the sense of noting character actions and activity, and more attention should be given to the idea of a work having an actual message along the lines of, "Everyone in our own societies and communities, including ourselves, treats everybody else like garbage." To put it another way, it should be a catalog of characters Hanging A Lampshade on the cruelties and evils of his fellow man—a list of occasions when a particular idea, a view of the world, gets mentioned within works.

edited 2nd May '11 7:41:07 PM by SeanMurrayI

What do you think is a misuse of the current trope that would still fit under the definition, and a misuse that wouldn't? Just so I have a sense of the parameters.

Well, in one of the page examples I've listed in the OP, there's one attributed to "Dr Horrible ending in, "Captain Hammer really only exemplifies this trope." That, is the kind of "Humans Are Bastards To Each Other" viewpoint that should be avoided— noting the dick behavior of only a single character just because he's human... even though he's in a work full of human characters who aren't jerks at all.

On the other hand, like I said before, the three examples I cite in the OP as existing in a GRAY AREA already, I believe, give a clear idea of how the concept of "Humans Are Bastards To Each Other" is presented in fiction and media in a clear, explicit, and observable way (virtually the entire Quotes Page at Humans Are Bastards would count as acceptable use to me).

edited 3rd May '11 1:45:51 PM by SeanMurrayI

Maybe what we should be going at this as is a trope like World Of Bastards. All characters in a given work are bastards to everyone. Ignore race. Everyone is a bastard.

And that's different from Crapsack World how?

Because the world doesn't need to be bad. Just the people in it. In a Crapsack World everyone is miserable and unhappy. There's nothing stopping these people from being happy. They're just not nice.

^ To repeat the language used in the opening of Crapsack World, the people inhabiting it aren't "miserable and unhappy." They are corrupted. And they "perpetuate" that nastiness that defines the Crapsack World "against each other."

I'd definitely be willing to argue that that language defines Crapsack World as already including "the distinguished presence of nasty, unpleasant, bastard inhabitants."

edited 2nd May '11 8:13:09 PM by SeanMurrayI

"Like I said before, the idea of "Humans Are Bastards In General", so far, as been very broadly and flimsily described and defined that it basically lacks coherent direction." - Sean Murray I

Perhaps it would be best demonstrated by example: Lord Of The Flies would be a book of that theme.

^That's closer to Hobbes Was Right, than anything else.

edited 4th May '11 8:27:08 PM by SeanMurrayI

Problem is, users of this wiki seem to be crying out for a trope that discusses the ways in which humans are bastards to each other and others without the comparison baggage. Look at (if I haven't misunderstood it) the way it's used in the Thor page.

There's a desire there, and tropers are just latching onto Humans Are Bastards because the name fits what they want. The question is, do we give in to this desire? Can we? Should we?

edited 5th May '11 6:09:03 PM by Leaper

We may as well, if the alternative is to fight an uphill battle against using a trope to be exactly what it sounds like.

As for Hobbes Was Right, that's a very vague phrase, (I doubt it makes obvious that it's referring to the philosopher, let alone that it makes obvious which subject the trope implies he was right on) and the description seems to imply that it's about governance in particular, rather than human nature in general.

I say keep Humans Are Bastards for the way it is used, (namely, cynical perspectives on human nature) and create a new subtrope of it for humans being bastards in comparison to other species. Should I start one in YKTTW?

edited 5th May '11 6:28:50 PM by neoYTPism

^^ I'm not seeing much on the Thor page to suggest that tropers are "crying out for a trope that discusses the ways in which humans are bastards to each other without the comparison baggage." For starters, Thor and Loki (the only two characters who are said to be involved in some conveyance of this trope are both GODS; their opinions on humanity would allow for comparison—only said comparison is apparently an aversion of the trope in the first place, and probably doesn't have much point in being acknowledge.

Again, as I've said several times already, the best way to go about spinning off a more generalized trope would NOT be to make it about the ways in which humans are bastards to each other (that would just be "Evil Tropes But Only Applied To Humans") but to make it about human characters in works making pessimistic, and cynical observations about the actions of their fellow man being motivated by evil and sin (though while avoiding overlap with Hobbes Was Right, which would be more of a subtrope to this concept, anyway).

And to repeat something else I said earlier, I feel that much of the Humans Are Bastards quotes page would be a good basis for a general trope about man being evil to fellow man.

^ Hobbes Was Right has a very poor description at present time (it can definitely use more clarification and specifying in some key areas), but the general aim of the trope is still basically the entire plot of Lord Of The Flies in a nutshell; if that's the principal work to be held as example for a generalized Humans Are Bastards trope, then I'd still argue that Hobbes Was Right is already supposed to provide more-than-adequate coverage.

edited 5th May '11 6:34:20 PM by SeanMurrayI

So all the tropers who constantly want something to pothole that means "humans are evil - just look at this guy!" should be frustrated? (Not that I disagree; just making sure I understand it right. Because if so, that answer, plus the fact that we aren't renaming Humans Are Bastards, sort of limits our options for defeating misuse...)

edited 5th May '11 6:34:06 PM by Leaper

"All the tropers who constantly want something to pothole that means, 'Humans are evil - just look at this guy!'" should only do that with a trope that covers instances where a fictional character within a given work says something along the lines of "Humans are evil - just look at this guy!"

It would be a positive, definitive, easily observable occurrence that we would be nothing, rather than just any act of evil in a work of fiction that just so happens to have been carried out by a human.

edited 5th May '11 6:38:28 PM by SeanMurrayI

Of course, for such a trope, the sort of people we're talking about would still be misusing it, since it would be for in-universe examples only, and not for commentary on the wiki.