Is this really subjective?: Alas Poor Villain

First I'm sorry if this is the wrong place, I'm still finding it difficult to get to grips with the forum, so apologies if I've put this in the wrong place.

The trope description seems reasonably straight-forward and clear. An antagonistic character whose death scene is written or presented in a way more suited to a heroic character. A scene like that isn't really subjective as it's pretty clear what is going on. I don't think it really deserves the subjective label, I'm assuming it got the subjective tag because of the name similarity to Alas, Poor Scrappy which is definitely subjective because it requires a character to be a Scrappy first, but a villain is a non-subjective character.

edited 3rd Feb '11 6:55:26 AM by CrypticMirror

My guess would be that the trope is considered subjective because mileage tends to vary in regards to whether one pities a villain or not.

I agree that the trope kind of is on line between subjective and objective, but I think that the way some of the examples read makes the trope seem like a bit like an audience reaction trope which I believe are  ^*

always subjective.

I am not really sure about this at all though so I would defer to someone who actually has expertise here.

edited 3rd Feb '11 8:48:16 AM by LouieW

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

See the way I read the description, it seems to be about how the scene is staged. Having a villain show some humanity and feeling right at the end is a story telling building block. The audience reaction (whether it be "awwwww redeeming", or "sod off and die") to that staging would be a different trope.

edited 3rd Feb '11 9:08:12 AM by CrypticMirror

I think this is not subjective, as the trope seems to refer to the scene more than to the character eyself. The fact that the scene was set to add a touching element to the villain in their last hour is objective (for that matter, that the villain did show such touching element is objective as well, in case we want to go with character trope). The reaction to this may be subjective, which would fall into any of a series of Audience Reaction Tropes, but the fact that people did find the moment touching is also objective.

edited 3rd Feb '11 9:19:12 AM by SilentReverence

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

Agreed. The use of this as a storytelling device is clearly objective. Whether anyone actually pities the villain is definitely subjective, but is an audience reaction and is not the same as this trope.

I agree. To give one example, I noted (perhaps incorrectly) YMMV by some Fullmetal Alchemist villains who had such deaths. Not because I don't think the author was attempting an Alas, Poor Villain (she clearly was), but only that the reader/viewer might or might not share this sympathy.

Whether the audience agrees is subjective, but the trope itself is generally objective/reflecting authoral intent.

Hodor

The trope itself does seem pretty objective, but I see it miused all the time, basically as anything remotely sympathetic about any villain at any point.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Native Jovian,

This is pretty much my stance on the trope. Even if it can be objective, I think it leads to subjective audience reaction examples to such a degree that listing it as a subjective trope may be a better idea than policing the examples enough to take out subjective uses of the trope whenever they may appear.

edited 8th Feb '11 10:25:47 AM by LouieW

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

But then we're just conceding to trope decay. If this is an objective trope, which the consensus seems to be that it is, then we should fight subjective uses of it rather then just making it subjective.

nrjxll, I think you have a legitimate point. I guess the question is whether it is possible to completely isolate audience reaction from this trope though. I feel like one would need to have a pretty good idea of the author's intent in every instance of the use of this trope and I do not know if that is really that easy to do. Then again, I could definitely be wrong.

"irhgT nm0w tehre might b ea lotof th1nmgs i dont udarstannd, ubt oim ujst goinjg to keepfollowing this pazth i belieove iN !!!!!1 d

On another note, there seems to be a disagreement on what the trope actually means, as expounded on its Image Picking topic. The description and name makes it pretty clear that it's about pitiful villain deaths, but a bunch of entries assume the trope is actually Monster Sob Story—any moment when you feel sorry for the villain whether he dies or not—and both the laconic entry ("The villain is painted in a sympathetic light.") and redirect (Villainous Woobie Moment) reflect this interpretation. Until that's settled out, any clean-up effort is likely to be reversed.

edited 11th Feb '11 4:14:39 AM by DoKnowButchie

Avatar art by Lorna-Ka.

Was just thinking about this trope earlier, and my thoughts were why not make this trope explicitly in-universe and take "Audience Reaction" element to trope tales. I believe there's enough examples in the different mediums of the protagonist "Mourning the Villain", showing sympathy to their motivations, etc.

All that needs to be done is have it and nice bold letters "This is not for when the viewer feels sorry for the villain."

That's my proposal anyway.

edited 29th Mar '11 11:21:51 AM by Lionheart0