Misuse: Kick The Son Of A Bitch

Perhaps because of the confusing title, but many of the examples on the page are about a villain getting his comeuppance. The trope is when a moment is meant to be Kick the Dog, but the "dog" is so evil or unsympathetic that it seems justified. The work treats it like a Kick the Dog moment, as if something evil has happened, but the audience finds it acceptable.

I'm not sure if a rename is in order—it's a pretty clever pun, anyway—but some redirects might be. And, as this is an audience reaction trope, it ought to be YMMV.

Correct.

To help differentiate between a trope it is probably more confused with:

Pay Evil unto Evil: An evil pimp who abuses and recently killed one of his hookers is walking down the street, and comes across a pair of escaping bank robbers. One of the bank robbers recognizes him as 'that abusive pimp' and shoots him.

Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Same thing, except they shoot him because he's in the way of their escape, they do not realize what an evil man he is.

Perhaps we should add that to the description?

Added Haseo's post to the description.

Do we still need to do some work, or can we lock this?

Needs more work. I removed a load of examples that were "bad thing happens to bad person." It still needs more work because I'm not familiar with a lot of the examples, so I just did the ones I know.

I went off the Laconic and cut anything that didn't fit a Kick the Dog moment. It's not just something bad happening to someone bad, it's got to be something deliberately cruel that comes off as ok because the victim was a dick.

"The trope is when a moment is meant to be Kick the Dog, but the "dog" is so evil or unsympathetic that it seems justified. The work treats it like a Kick the Dog moment, as if something evil has happened, but the audience finds it acceptable." - helterskelter

So you're saying it's specifically about moments the audience finds acceptable but the work did not intend? Would that make it a form of Misaimed Fandom?

I thought this was, as the other user pointed out, simply about when evil is payed unto evil, but those doing so aren't doing it because of their victims being evil.

Not necessarily. The victim doesn't have to be evil, just unsympathetic. Annoying, for example.

No no, it has to be evil. Otherwise it's probably Take That, Scrappy!. This trope is about someone doing something nasty to a person who's already done much worse themselves.

edited 25th Sep '11 1:13:13 PM by Crowley

This almost seems like YMMV. How can you tell if a character deserves it?

This is YMMV, or an Audience Reaction anyway - the whole point of the trope is that what the author intended as a Kick the Dog moment is not seen as that bad by the audience because they feel the victim deserved it.

The the name should reflect that.

Why would this be YMMV? It's Kick the Dog, except the "dog" is evil. That's often—maybe even usually—done intentionally by the writer.

The description, though, focuses on this as an act of Designated Evil - kicking the dog when the "dog" was felt by the audience to deserve it. I would not object to redefining it to something objective like what you're saying, but that's not the current definition.

So if it's objective, it would be that a villainous character gets a Kick the Dog from another villain?

When this trope was originally written, it was as an objective (i.e. completely intentional on the part of the writer) trope, but it looks like the description has been changed since then (with the laconic entry changing to match).

We might actually need a crowner on the definition before clearing anything.

I think we should rename it The Dog Was Asking For It.

Whoops, wait, did I forget to link to Sarcasm Mode again? :)

Given that this can be done intentionally (and often is), I see no reason to not just cut the subjective part from it. Make it only when a villainous character is "kicked" by another villain.

I actually like the idea of The Dog Deserved It or something similar, but we don't need another snowclone.

I do think a rename would help if we want to make this objective, though, as it sounds like it's about the subjective version to me - this is what the audience is yelling to the dog-kicker.

Kick The Evil Dog wouldn't actually be a snowclone, as this is basically a Sub-Trope anyway.

Support cutting subjective component. Kick The Evil Dog would be a snowclone, since it's based on a non-intuitive phrase. A quick google search says we're the only ones using it the way we are.

I would generally prefer to make it objective, but:

Kick The Son Of A Bitch found in: 510 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 247 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

That's enough use that I think it's worth taking a deeper look at how people are using it. We may find that a split is justified, or a rename, or even just some description cleanup.

There's been a call for a lock due to inactivity. Any chance of resolution on this?

I say leave it as it is.