Rework or Cleanup:: Evilly Affable

FROM THE DEAD. Was any resolution for a total rename?

I think it should be cut, but if we're just renaming...Fake Polite Villain? False Friendly Foe?

Here's the only crowner I could find. I guess we should do a rename crowner. Should we start with a single-prop rename or not, or just go straight to alt titles?

At what point do we draw the line betweend "fake" politeness and "genuine" politeness? Even the latter is pretty hollow when you think about the moral implications of, well, being evil in the first place...

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

The winning option on the crowner summarizes it:

"Characters whose "affable" gestures (being nice, funny, etc.) are obviously insincere. For example, a villain who sells a lonely little girl a pet cat... but it turns out that the cat used to be the hero's wife. Affably Evil villains are sincere while Evilly Affable villains are just trolling."

An Affably Evil villain is a good guy who just so happens to want to become a snake demon. Evilly Affable villains think it's funny to pretend to be Affably Evil.

Also, there is now a single prop rename crowner here.

This thread is still alive? And we still haven't gotten clear on the definition?

An Evilly Affable character is one who is polite and charming, but in a way that makes them seem worse than if they were Obviously Evil. Instead of humanizing them, their friendly demeanor emphasizes just how evil they actually are by using Mood Dissonance to draw contrast between their attitude (friendly, polite) and their actions (unrepentantly evil).

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

We're voting for rename.

Uh, that's not the definition that won the crowner.

That's the definition I voted for too, but it lost by a looong shot. This wasn't close by any means.

And again, the line between that and Affably Evil seems awfully blurry.

edited 17th Aug '11 4:35:37 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

I suppose "faking nice in order to compliment his/her villainy" is a trope considering the examples, but then again I was in favor of cutting.

Oh, damn, I missed the redefine crowner. Well, whatever. It's a complete redefine of the original trope, so I guess I'll just YKTTW the original definition again.

Not really. Affably Evil = genuinely nice guy who does evil things. Evilly Affable = evil person with a pleasant demeanor. An Affably Evil person's affability makes them more sympathetic to the audience, while an Evilly Affable person's affability makes them less sympathetic to the audience.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

We don't need Affably Evil Done Well as its own separate trope. Don't bother with the YKTTW.

edited 20th Aug '11 12:21:44 AM by troacctid

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Wait - there was an original definition? What the heck was it?

IIRC, it was more of a Audience Reaction trope about liking villain because they were funny.

The original definition of Evilly Affable was the one I said in post 305. (That's why I said it — I didn't realize that there had been a redefinition crowner.) It was meant to be a counterpart to Affably Evil. They're both about people who act nicely (polite, cheerful, friendly) while doing evil things (World Domination, Genocide, Kicking Dogs); the difference is that Affably Evil villains are genuinely likable, while Evilly Affable villains are creepy as hell.

Put another way; Affably Evil is the opposite of Good Is Not Nice (hell, one of its redirects is Evil Is Not Mean), but Evilly Affable is the opposite of Noble Demon (instead of being evil on the surface but good inside, they're good on the surface but evil inside).

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

An Affably Evil/ Laughably Evil character is one who is polite/funny while also being evil. These qualities are unrelated: their politeness/good humor have nothing to do with their evil. An Evilly Affable character is one whose evil deeds serve to make them funny or endearing by having an Affably Evil or Laughably Evil demeanour; the character is neither of these things, and the dissonance between the demeanour and the action can either be Played for Laughs or Played for Drama, though for most of the story, it's usually the former. It is an Audience Reaction trope, obviously, since in a dramatic work, Evilly Affable characters are usually treated as if they are Complete Monsters by other characters in-story; meeting one in Real Life would be very creepy, and in-universe, characters tend to have the same reaction. Most fictional examples, on the other hand, do not provoke this reaction in the audience unless they are played completely seriously by the author, which doesn't usually happen unless a Villainous Breakdown of some sort occurs. In a comedy, nothing is treated seriously anyway, so comedic examples are usually also Laughably Evil. Evilly Affable characters can be genuine, they just aren't nice, though they act like they are; they aren't necessarily trying to deceive anyone, they might actually have a polite/comedic demeanour, but it does not match their action. Affably Evil characters are actually polite and charming; they just happen to be doing evil things as well. Neither of them are actually kind or good, it's just that Affably Evil characters separate their evil from their polite demeanour, while Evilly Affable characters do not.

Obviously we DO need another redefine crowner, since nobody agrees with what the old one said. A mix of the second and seventh definitions seem to be what most of us are agreeing on right now, and it doesn't make sense to go with an obviously misleading definition. I also see that some people want to cut it; the conclusion I'm drawing from all this is that either very few of us posting actually voted on the result, or that the first crowner was somehow misleading.

Also, this crowner only has one option, so it should be restarted in the interest of fairness; even if another option were to be proposed, the fact that this one already has 11 votes might influence some people's decision. I'm personally in favor of renaming the trope myself, but I don't think that this crowner is a fair representation of other tropers' opinions.

edited 21st Aug '11 11:20:27 PM by tropetown

The rename crowner should probably be redone. The redefine crowner should not.

Why should we be redoing anything?

A few posts agreeing on something contrary to a crowner result do not make the result go away. That's not how things work around here, as far as I know. "Nobody agrees with what the old crowner said" - except, you know, the upvotes?

This thread has been up since forever. It does not need more deliberation; it needs more action.

edited 22nd Aug '11 1:41:28 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

If THAT'S what it's supposed to mean, then the former is sure as hell misused a lot.

But really, what do you mean, "genuinely" nice guy? At the very least, that's subject to Alternate Character Interpretation, if not made meaningless by the "evil" part.

And "more sympathetic" or "less sympathetic"? Even fake niceness has been known to make evil characters endearing to the audience...

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to derail the conversation. The new definition of Evilly Affable as per the crowner is

The issue at hand is whether or not to rename it.

I would suggest renaming it to Villainous Trolling. In this definition, the villains are trolling the heroes by pretending to be nice in an obviously insincere way.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Considering the rename crowner is 7:1, I added an alt titles crowner here. Feel free to add more options.

Crowner hooked.

Bump for more votes.

Bump again. Faux Affably Evil is the only green at the moment.

Looks like there are at most ten people who still remember what this discussion is about, or why. At this rate, there will eventually be no such people at all, and the rotting carcass of this thread will stay here for ye mighty to look upon and despair among the lone and level sands stretching far away.

I suggest we call the thread this Thursday, which will be its one-year anniversary. Maybe we should bake a Jafar-shaped cake.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to