Basic Trope: A slave owner who treats their slaves with a level of kindness.
- Straight: Carl the Planter is fairly nice towards his slaves. He feeds them well, doesn't overwork them and only applies physical punishments when they commit some serious offence. Carl might even eventually (usually at the end of the story) free some, if not all of them.
- Exaggerated: Carl basically treats his slaves like his children, always viewing their well-being as his top priority.
- Downplayed:
- Carl doesn't have a problem with owning slaves or beating them into submission, but he always make sure that those who obey him are treated kindly and do not get abused for no reason.
- Carl underpays his employees but makes up for it with kind treatment.
- Justified:
- Carl fears that if he were to treat his slaves cruelly, they would attempt to escape or rise up against him. Extending a level of kindness towards them is more a show of pragmatism than anything else.
- Carl only owns slaves because freeing them would put them in an equally bad spot, or because he's not even allowed to free them. He doesn't feel a need to abuse or exploit them.
- Carl is a business owner in a society where everyone employs slave labor, including his competitors. He doesn't like it, but if he only used paid workers, he'd be unable to compete with businesses that get labor without having to pay wages.
- The slaves themselves have a mindset that promotes Happiness in Slavery. Carl goes along with it simply because it's what they want.
- Carl knows that abusing and starving his slaves would make them less productive and resentful, so he cares for them out of pragmatism. After all, they are his property.
- Carl only just inherited them from his grandfather, give him some time to figure out what to do with them.
- Inverted:
- Slavery is portrayed as so bad it overrides all sympathetic character traits.
- Carl is even worse than a typical slave owner, as he often tortures his slaves for no reason and drives them to starvation, even though it hinders their work and has them constantly planning escapes and uprisings.
- Carl is a Bad Boss who abuses his paid employees horribly.
- Subverted:
- Carl's slaves keep saying how good their master is, but only because they fear that Carl will torture them if they say anything bad about him.
- Carl isn't actually a slave owner. All his "slaves" are actually paid employees.
- Carl acts nice, but the keyword is "acts": he only treats the slaves well because they'll be more productive that way.
- Double Subverted:
- ...which is an unfounded fear, because Carl would never hurt his slaves like that. He just has an undeserved bad reputation in this regard.
- Eventually, Carl buys himself several slaves and proceeds to treat them kindly.
- Parodied: Carl is commonly known as a "good master" because he always gives his slaves something to bite on as he whips them to the brink of their lives.
- Zig-Zagged: Carl is shown being polite to his servants, who in turn seem happy to serve him. When one of his slaves spills soup on him, however, Carl orders them publicly flogged and branded with hot irons. Moments later, it is revealed that he is simply joking and forgives the slave for their clumsiness. He then takes a trip to his cotton plantation, when slaves work in scourging sun under a threat of beatings and lashings. But then it is revealed that all Carl's slaves are masochists who enjoy this kind of treatment...
- Averted:
- Carl does whatever he has to to force obedience out of his slaves, be it treating them kindly or beating them into submission.
- Carl has no slaves whatsoever (even if there is slavery in the setting). All of his employees are strictly hired and paid contracted volunteers.
- Enforced: The story involves a historical figure who owned slaves. The writers want to remain as faithful to the truth as possible, but also don't want the character to appear too unsympathetic either, hence this trope.
- Lampshaded: "Carl isn't too bad of a guy for a slave owner, won't you agree?"
- Invoked: A human rights advocate, knowing that Carl won't give up on slaveowning, instead makes Carl promise to treat his slaves with human dignity.
- Exploited: One of Carl's slaves, Bob, takes advantage of his master's leniency and escapes, knowing that even if he gets caught the punishment probably won't be too harsh.
- Defied:
- "I don't care! He treats us as property!"
- The government of the country where Carl lives outlaws slavery and orders all slaves unconditionally liberated, regardless of whether they were treated well or not.
- Discussed: "It's not great being a slave, but at least Carl will treat us well."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Carl's notion that his slaves are "family" leads him to unjustifiably demand unconditional love from them and get angry and abusive when they don't give him any. He's basically a Yandere for the people he treats as property.
- Carl may not be the worst human being in the world, but he only sees his slaves as pets. Being a nice person in an inhuman system doesn't change the fact that he helps perpetuate it.
- Benevolent Boss he may be, the fact remains that they're still Carl's slaves and he's not above using them for his own needs and benefits while they, being slaves and all, don't get paid for it, since slaves earning wages is nearly unheard of.
- Reconstructed: As his Establishing Character Moment, Carl either explicitly offers to free his slaves and is turned down by the slaves for pragmatic reasons, or confides that he wishes he legally could do so and abolish the whole system. Given the opportunity, he helps and works with abolitionists, even knowing what it will cost him.
- Implied:
- Carl is a kind, friendly gentleman in Ancient Grome or the Antebellum South. It seems like a man of his stature in this area must be a slaveowner, but it's not brought up.
- Carl is not characterized, but when a group of revolting slaves get revenge on their oppressors, they decide to spare Carl for some reason.
- Carl is barely characterized, but in one scene, he thanks one of his slaves for something.
You can go back to Sympathetic Slave Owner now. Do you see how kind I'm being, you worthless slave?
