Actually, I thought the tropes related to the character's personality in "ordinary life": where The Hero is an unpleasant person and the Big Bad is a friendly and paternal figure to his minions. It has nothing to do with their goals or actions, merely their personality.
edited 26th Mar '11 8:40:12 PM by nrjxll
True, but their goals and actions reflect on their personality and vice versa. One side of the equation does not necessarily tell us the other, but I do consider it illogical to separate them altogether.
Nonetheless, my point was simply that cruelty was more compatible with goodness than evil was with kindness.
"It" Is Dehumanizing can be a very effective trope when properly used, but I'm not sure many writers even realize it exists.
edited 27th Mar '11 1:35:42 AM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Not sure if this is the right board for this, but anyway... this thread is where we go to mention tropes we consider underappreciated, except ones we ourselves launched, of course.
Anyway, there are a variety of tropes I consider underappreciated, but I feel especially much this way about Good Is Not Nice. It is pretty much the converse of Affably Evil, (on a sidenote, was mentioning sex in the description of that trope really necessary?) yet is not used as often, despite arguably making more sense. Think about it; Affably Evil means nice despite being evil, which is arguably Fridge Logic when you consider that the cruel consequences of evil would rather seem to contradict being nice. Good Is Not Nice, on the other hand, seems like a much more logical setup, as doing the right thing can often seem unkind.
edited 26th Mar '11 7:03:15 PM by neoYTPism