Misused: Grand Theft Me

I think this trope is being misused in the following ways:

The definition seems uncertain regarding whether two bodies are actually being swapped (i.e. exchanged) bilaterally or unilaterally. Following this most of the examples are simply someone hijacking the body of another. Other examples seem to be one character simply impersonating another (although I may not know the story behind the examples well enough)

I think Grand Theft Me should simply be when one person with a body hijacks another. And a possible subtrope if this which is bilateral, or use the Freaky Friday trope, which seems define a body swap well enough.

This is my first post so sorry for any sloppiness.

edited 11th Jan '14 7:04:17 PM by I.O.M.

Fixed the tag. You should write the title in CamelCase form.

That being said, I wholly agree with the problems you mention. Whenever I come across a wick example of this trope, it's almost always simply about "a character possessing/taking control of another character's body", rather than actual body swapping, and that's what I get across from the page image. The description and laconic is not really clear on this either. The "second type" of the description, especially, seem to talk more about Identity Theft rather than Body Snatching or swapping. In fact, this line saying "This version does not necessarily require swapping bodies" does nothing but confuse the definition of the trope.

I've always seen this used to mean "taking over someone else's body", which is a subitem of Body Snatcher. The definition "forcibly swapping bodies with one another" is a subitem of "Freaky Friday" Flip, which isn't necessarily forcible.

Originally created in YKTTW 1.0. The name definitely sounds like one-way hijacking, but I'm not sure how different the two-way variant actually is; from the villain's perspective, it's really just a side effect of the one-way approach.

Yeah, it's the name. When you perform Grand Theft Auto, you aren't giving the other guy the car you were driving before.

If this is a one-way sort of thing, where did the "swapping" come from? Swapping implies that you take the other person's body at the expense of your own.

Not to mention, by letting the examples remain as a pseudo-form of someone stealing someone else's body/identity, how is this any more distinct or specific to Body Snatcher?

I am just guessing that Body Snatcher doesn't require the snatcher to have a body itself. I don't know how many examples of this lack a body, though.

Judging from the original YKTTW, this was originally intended to include the "swapping" part before the name was suggested, but it doesn't seem to have been all that stressed.

Doesn't Demonic Possession already cover entities with no bodies of their own?

I question how much "possession" equals "taking over someone's body". Often, there is some mental conditioning involved.

It's been a month since the last post; clocking.

Is there already a trope for the misuse? If not, is there any reason why there can't just be an expansion?

I still say that I can't see a reason why this can't just be expanded to fit the misuse.

This one doesn't seem to have gone anywhere; locking up.