New crowner 01/06/12: Heroic Sociopath

Continuing from here.

To sum up, Heroic Sociopath is an unclear name. Do we need a new one, and if so, what would it be? Possible names include Comedic Sociopath, Hilariously Psychotic, Insanely Funny, Comedic Anti Hero, Sort Of Heroic Comical Mass Murderer, Sort Of Heroic Comical Sociopath, The Good Guys' Sociopath, and The Heroes' Sociopath.

quoting the post from Tzintzuntzan because it's relevant:

Chiming in late, I'm actually the guilty party who created this, although it's changed a lot since I wrote the initial entry. It actually predates YKTTW — this was in the days when there were so few tropers that it was considered okay to just create a trope and Wiki Magic would either improve (or delete) such entries. And unfortunately, it shows — I'm not sure if it would pass YKTTW by today's standards.

I created it at the same time as Badass, and it was originally intended as "the Badass character who is such a nasty Karma Houdini that they're a villain in all but name, but we're supposed to root for them on the heroes' side, and we're able to do it because they're played for laughs." (If they were played seriously, they'd be a disgusting mix of God Mode Sue and Jerkass Stu, although those trope names didn't exist yet...neither did Token Evil Teammate.)

The original inspirations were cartoon characters like Brock Sampson from The Venture Brothers, Gaz from Invader Zim, and Mandy from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy. Shortly after, someone else added Dogbert, and (when I saw Drake And Josh for the first time) I added Megan from that show.

When I created it, I had never seen a webcomic, but people who had quickly added Bun-Bun, Black Mage, and Belkar Bitterleaf, and these three soon became the "standard" examples used to show what the trope was about (and their style is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote the initial entry).

Of course, once troper mass became big enough that it was no longer possible for tropers to self-police (and YKTTW had to be invented), Trope Decay set in. It went through a period of being "your favorite character here" (Magnificent Bastard had the same decay at the exact same time), until the Troper hive-mind dealt with the problem by ruthlessly pruning the entries and rewriting the intro. (My initial naming choice was probably not the best, and attracted a lot of the bloat; it was kept by reason of Grandfather Clause — people were too used to it.)

Tl;dr: the reason the current entry is so strict about being comic examples only is that when serious examples were allowed, it turned the entry into a bloated, Gushing About Shows You Like mess.

Rename, and it needs to be a title that indicates that it is comedic. So I have to say I can't approve of titles like The Good Guys Sociopath.

Anti-Heroic Comedic Sociopath?

edited 3rd Mar '11 3:49:09 PM by MangaManiac

I remember last time we did this, and my opinion remains the same:

Heroic Sociopath, as it is used now, is a legitimate trope. Comedic Sociopath, as it was originally is also a legit trope, but along the line, mostly thanks to the name, it broadened and evolved in something fairly different.

However, a rename would be ignoring the fact that Heroic Sociopath, as it stands now, is used and maintained as something fairly different, substantial, and widely used as it is - barely anyone who uses it knows it was originally only for comedic examples, and honestly it shouldn't be forced to be shoehorned into something else because that's what it used to be.

As in all cases where Trope Evolution causes a major change from the original intent, my opinion is we should simply split off the original concept as a new trope, or YKTTW it if necessary (moving the name Comedic Sociopath to it), and keep Heroic Sociopath as it is used, tweaking the description as needed. Not only would that be the simplest solution (as in the end we would still need to YKTTW another trope to fill the spot Heroic Sociopath fills), but would allow both to exist.

Trope Evolution and Wiki Magic tend to make tropes different than they were originally all the time, and this is no exception - and here is a prime example of the change being beneficial in the long run, as it resulted in a wider encompassing trope that does, in fact, exist. Just split the more specific original off, as a subtrope.

edited 3rd Mar '11 5:40:35 PM by KnownUnknown

I'm with Known Unknown. We have two tropes here: The Heroes' Pet Sociopath, who we are intended to like because he's on the good guys team, and the Comedic Sociopath, who we're intended to like because he's funny. They often do overlap (Belkar in Order Of The Stick, Richard in Looking For Group), but they don't have to. We might as well make them into two tropes, instead of trying to act as though there's only one.

A major problem I have with Known Unknown's solution is the fact that the previous description was very misunderstood by many tropers who posted examples. Many of the examples I deleted could have fallen under Token Evil Teammate, '90s Anti-Hero or even Designated Hero or Villain Protagonist. Changing this trope back to what people thought it meant would not help, and we'd have just any sociopathic non-villain on this page, regardless of how they are portrayed or how they act. I think the best we can do is clean up the description so it's not so lengthy or rename it to something different.

Besides, Comedic Sociopathy is already a trope, and "Comedic Sociopath" could mean ANY comically-portrayed asshole under the sun, non-villain or not.

Also, I'd like to point out that Belkar and Richard are the sort of characters this trope is about: that exact overlap. The overlap is more common than the separate examples, which have their own tropes anyway.

edited 3rd Mar '11 7:55:40 PM by GentlemanCambrioleur

I'm with Gentleman: The overlap is more common than the separate tropes. We could have Heroic Sociopath as the main trope, and the "heroes' pet sociopath" and "funny sociopath" as separate ones, though. If we do that, actually, those names could work.

But wouldn't the "heroes' pet sociopath" trope fit under Token Evil Teammate? Speaking of, does anyone think that these two tropes are very similar? Maybe we should keep Token Evil Teammate for people like Magus from Chrono Trigger, who are much less over-the-top, and have Heroic Sociopath being the comedic counterpart to it or something, fit for Richard from Looking For Group.

edited 4th Mar '11 5:58:33 PM by GentlemanCambrioleur

As I read Token Evil Teammate, he doesn't have to be particularly evil, just less good than the rest of the party. The Heroes' Pet Sociopath needs to be — well — a sociopath: pretty seriously evil.

Not going into whether they are splittable or not, I acknowledge the idea of Heroes Pet Sociopath but isn't the best name for that Heroes Pet Sociopath. Isn't part of the problem not only that Heroic Sociopath evolved into a different trope due to the name but that it actually got widely misused and then when the worst examples got filter off, it still ended up "changed"? Doesn't that show that Heroic Sociopath is a name that gets all your low grade Anti-Hero characters, the occasional Magnificent Bastard and your Villain Protagonist?

That point we can at least check by looking at the wicks around the wiki. I have my doubts that the trope is getting 2000 wicks honestly.

But Token Evil Teammate has to be the only (or one of the only) bad guys in a team of good guys. I would imagine that there could be an entire team of The Heroes Sociopaths, forced to do good either by some outside force or the Token Good Teammate with the leash. The only example of that that springs to mind is the new show about prisoners hunting down escaped prisoners in return for reduced sentences.

Splitting it in two would solve a problem with the definition, which states that "there is no such thing as a serious Heroic Sociopath". If not, then what's Cool Hand Luke? Luke is the story's hero, and is literally, diagnostically, a sociopath, although his sociopathy tends to express itself in antisocial rather than violent ways. Common sense would say that he belongs here, and splitting off "Comedic Sociopath" could allow the definition to be rewritten to include him, and other serious examples. Or is the trope specifically for violent examples? In which case, change the name, because that's not really what "sociopath" means.

What's Cool Hand Luke? Nothing to do with this trope is what. Exactly the sort of misuse I was thinking of, is what.

I haven't seen that, but it sounds like just Anti-Hero or (if he's dark enough) Villain Protagonist. It's noted on You Keep Using That Word that Heroic Sociopath is not, technically speaking, a sociopath. The opposite is also true—not all sociopaths are Heroic Sociopaths.

edited 9th Mar '11 8:31:50 AM by Discar

I vote for keeping the name. It is straight and to the point. A sociopath who performs heroic actions. He's not a hero who performs sociopathic actions (anti-hero), nor is he someone who performs these actions for comedy (comedic sociopath). Yes, the meanings can get a bit muddled at times, but this is unavoidable in every classification system. Again, I vote we keep the name.

If that was what the trope was about, I'd agree with you. Unfortunately, it's not.

This trope IS about that. Problem is, people keep mistaking for the comedic sociopath. Pretty much the entire playing with page should be on Comedic sociopath, as well as many of the examples. Perhaps modify the trope description so people know for sure what this is about: Any sociopathic person who performs bad/vaillainous/evil/etc. actions that work towards a heroic end, or seen in a heroic light. Dexter is a very good example of this. He kills people for no reason but enjoyment. BUT, he's killing other killers. The only part that doesn't fit is that he won't hurt innocents, somthing a sociopath would likely do, if not for supervision of The Hero, or whatever.

No, the trope is someone on the good guy's side being ridiculously over the top evil, basically. It's a comedy trope.

I think the problem here is that Heroic Sociopath, as it's supposed to be, is basically "Token Evil Teammate, but for the lulz." The problem is, most of the time the Token Evil Teammate is already there FOR the lulz. There are very few works with a villian, who is still a villain, hanging out with the heroes for anything other than humour.

My suggestion would be to scrap both this and token evil teammate, and forge them anew as these tropes; Hero's Pet Psycho, covering when the good guys have a villain on their team they use to fight other villains, and Comedic Psychopathy, which would be Comedic Sociopathy but with actual violence instead of slapstick, or gore rather than morbid-ness (If Comedic Sociopathy is when you fall into an open sewer and die, then Comedic Psychopathy is when I push you in and then have a laugh about it)

So, we'd have Belkar under both Hero's Pet Psycho and Comedic Psychopathy, we'd have Generation Kill's Trombley under Hero's Pet Psycho but not under Comedic Psychopathy, and we'd have Butch from Chopping Block under Comedic Psychopathy but not under Hero's Pet Psycho. How does that work?

edited 11th Mar '11 11:22:24 PM by open_sketch

The token evil teammate isn't always played for laughs. Morrigan comes to mind.

Psycho Sidekick is the "heroes pet psycho"- which perhaps suggests we have several quite similar tropes.

Okay, let's see if we can break this down. We'll figure out if we have a trope for everything after.

• Bad guy, fighting for the bad guys. Not played for laughs. Most villains fall here.

• Bad guy, fighting for the good guys. Not played for laughs. Morrigan, as stated above, is a good example.

• Bad guy, fighting for the bad guys, played for laughs. That's either Evilly Affable or Laughably Evil; there's a bit of trouble distinguishing those two.

• Bad guy, fighting for the good guys, played for laughs. That's this trope, currently named Heroic Sociopath.

• Bad guy, only one on the team, may or may not be played for laughs. Token Evil Teammate.

I think that's everything. Did I miss any?

No, it's not. That's what the trope was originally supposed to be about, but it's not any more. Thanks to Wiki Magic and people using it as it was named, it has long since turned into the definition that's repeatedly been related here - a sociopath who acts, by force or otherwise, heroically. That's the way it's used, and that's the way it's been for a while, and, most importantly, it is also a valid trope this way.

Which is why I support, as in all situations like this (this sort of thing happens all the time) splitting off the original meaning, while keeping this as it is, with the definition it has, as, original as it is, the "comedic" definition is just muddling up the one it has right now.

edited 21st Mar '11 4:11:50 PM by KnownUnknown

Um, it's being renamed for a reason. I don't know what will happen to the name Heroic Sociopath but the sociopath played for laughs needs a new name.