Misused: BerserkButton

Here's a list of the existing work-specific subpages. I went over those to see which ones we could cut and how much misuse there is. I'm only familiar with a few of these works, so if someone can chime in, great.

• BlazBlue: Cut, cut, cut. Now that I've taken a thorough look at it, it's the worst page by far. Nearly every character in the series is listed, and most of it is people getting mad because their loved ones are hurt in front of them, someone's insulting them, or someone likes to bring up past traumas to be mean. Terumi has a couple over minor stuff, but he just sounds like he has a Hair-Trigger Temper. I see only 1 potentially good example for Noel being called a girl, maybe 1 or 2 others depending on context. Not enough to salvage this.
• Dogs: Bullets & Carnage: Clean-up. There's a lot of misuse, but some potentially good examples.
• Dragon Ball: Broly, Blue, and Chi-Chi look valid, the rest is misuse. I'd be fine with moving that back to the trope list and cutting this.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Clean-up. Some misuse, but more than enough valid examples, probably because it provides the page image.
• Gundam: Hard to tell. Maybe a few good examples?
• Naruto: Cut, probably. The vast majority looks like misuse.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: First example is lacking context. A few others are about hurting loved ones. Don't know about the rest, but they're possibly good.
• One Piece: A few possible ones like the wasting food example, but the majority is misuse for killing loved ones.
• Overcoming The Clashing Tides: Cut. Only the "calling Lizzie useless" and last example are possibly good, though the latter might fall under Crazy Jealous Guy or My Sister Is Off-Limits depending on the relation of these characters.
• Pokémon: Clean-up. There's some misuse, but it starts off good.
• The Simpsons: Cut. As much as Homer's character has shifted over the years, I don't think he really has a Hair-Trigger Temper or a definite Berserk Button. Or at least, it swings wildly between Homer being a hothead and a composed if dimwitted guy. And while Homer's treatment of Bart verges into Hilariously Abusive Childhood, it's usually because Bart is being mischievous. Principal Skinner is a classic 'the straw that broke the camel's back' scenario. There's a few 'hurting loved ones' misuses, and some others I'm not sure are character traits or just one-off incidents.
• YouTube Poop: I'd be inclined to cut; most of it is lacking context.

Looking at more and more of these entries, I also think a problem with Berserk Button is that people are treating it as a meme that directly adresses the reader, i.e. "If you value your life, don't do this. Because X will find you, cut your heart out with a spoon, get medieval on your ass, and fertilize the land with your mushy remains!". It just encourages people to exaggerate and shoehorn by copying this pointlessly hyperbolic style from each other rather than just stating the facts.

edited 28th Aug '15 3:33:22 AM by Morgenthaler

Oh hey, I'm the one who moved Gundam to its own subpage. So!

Zeta: Kamille eventually calms down about his name, and he doesn't always have the same extreme reaction he did in Episode 1. But his reaction is so extreme (seriously, running across the room to punch an elite soldier in front of his buddies just because of a muttered comment).

Unicorn: I think it only happens once.

Wing: About threatening someone important, so that one can go.

Turn A: Corin's happens more than once. And attacking a Gundam-shaped parade float should definitely count as "irrational". Loran's might not work so well... it's the only thing that makes him truly angry, but that might be O.O.C. Is Serious Business? It's certainly reasonable for him to be pissed.

00:

• Terrorism isn't trivial, but it makes Lockon act in a very uncharacteristic manner, viz, almost punching his teammate isntead of just saying Dude, Not Funny!. He also attacks terrorists much more viciously than other enemies, and saying (in effect) "I know you were a manipulated child and not the perpatrator of bombing my family, but let me shoot you anyway" to his sort-of little brother is definitely irrational. (To say nothing of the fact that his teammates decide to lock him in his room when they know his terrorist nemesis is on the battlefield because they think he'll get himself killed in vengeance... and he breaks out and gets himself killed in vengeance. His brother, on the other hand, hates the guy but isn't about to kill himself over it.)
• Don't remember exactly how Tieria reacts to badmouthing Lockon. Pissed, yes, but I don't know if it's pissed enough (and "mad at badmouthing a dead friend" isn't unreasonable?).
• Setsuna... well, Ali manipulated him into killing his own parents, so that's a reasonable anger. But he goes totally Leeroy Jenkins any time Ali is nearby to the point where he'll jab himself with some keep-awake medicine to keep at it. He's usually cold and methodical. Can't remember how mad he gets over messing with the Gundam; it's been a few years. The Nena thing can probably just go under "doesn't like to be touched".
• Louise hates CB because she blames them for her family's death, but the degree of her anger is clearly Sanity Slippage (not rational) and she immediately wants to kill her former Love Interest when it seems he's with CB without letting him explain himslf. BUT, the sole reason she joins the military is to get back at CB, so I don't know that it's really a button if she's wrapped her whole life around it.

AGE:

• Flit: hating Vagan for the things they did to his life is rational but getting mad for not shooting PO Ws is irrational, and he gets hella pissed at any other suggestion they should be thought of as human.
• Asemu on the battlefield normally: New Meat, follows orders, stays in formation. Asemu when Zeheart shows up: Leeroy Jenkins. He does it repeatedly and continues almost until the end of his arc, even though his superiors alternately chide him or try to kindly encourage him not to be such a banana over it.

edited 11th Sep '15 1:33:19 PM by eowynjedi

Any input on the Gundam examples? Someone went in and cleaned the subpage but I do think some of these still count as the trope. Since this is a cleanup project though I don't want to go and readd them without discussion.

Particularly with Lockon / Neil from G00, since you have a huge contrast with how he reacts to terrorism and how his brother Lyle reacts. They survived a bombing that killed their family, but Neil absolutely loses his head whenever terrorism comes up, while Lyle is much calmer about it. (Both fight Ali—the terrorist nemesis—but Neil's approach is very much Revenge Before Reason, while Lyle gives him a Last-Second Chance that is promptly refused.) Theoretically they could both have the same reaction, since they shared the experience that drove Neil into his Revenge Before Reason ways. (I think that there was a scene where Setsuna tells Lyle "I was a child terrorist" and Lyle reacts calmly. Neil immediately wanted to shoot him.)

Also, Setsuna's Ali example was left up and that one definitely ain't trivial, since Ali brainwashed him into killing his own parents, so either both are valid or neither are.

With the context you've given, those sound to me like cases where, even if you'd expect a response, the response still has a notable aspect to it.

I don't exactly know how I feel about this page though. There have been a couple of times where misuse of a trope gets strong and I realize I've been falling into it a bit myself until I'm encouraged to look it over again and realize my mistake. This time, however, I'm still leaning toward the misuse.

The name seems perfect for the misuse. A button that triggers a character to go berserk, even if it only happens once, and even if it should be expected, well, it was a button that got pressed and made them go berserk.

If that definition is too wide for a trope (the Gundam examples seem like a good counterargument to me, but might be too hard to enforce), then I think Berserk Button should be left as a definition only, or transformed into an index or supertrope.

Something innocuous that a particular character explicitly flips out about more than once, seems way too specific for the general name "Berserk Button", while also seeming to trend toward a more comedic tone than the more serious-sounding "Berserk Button."

Rant Inducing Slight at least has the "slight" in the name to get across the idea that it's something you wouldn't normally expect to be a full-on Rage Breaking Point.

I think I'd prefer Berserk Button being turned into a page with a definition that mentions that attacking someone's family is totally a button you can press to make someone go berserk, but that it's too normal to bother listing examples for, then listing related pages (like You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!, Rage Breaking Point and Rant Inducing Slight) or variants that are narratively unique enough, like the proposed use in this thread of a character who overreacts to something seemingly small or unexpected.

edited 1st Oct '15 1:09:14 AM by Jokubas

I would be fine with making the page an index and then breaking this trope's original definition (an irrational trigger that induces comedic rage) into a different trope with a more fitting name. At this point, I feel like Berserk Button's misuse is too widespread and rampant to clean up, especially with how people keep adding two more misused examples for every one that's cleaned up.

Plus, I get the feeling that cleaning up the paged is proving too much of a daunting task and slowing down the cleanup project. While I'm deleting misused wicks as much as I can, every time I come to give the main pages a scrub, I pause at the sheer length and decide to just do it another day. Again, there's just too much misuse to scrub clean from the wiki and people re-adding misused examples despite the warning put up.

Nuking the pages / splitting into a page with a more indicative name and making this an index for these kinds of tropes might be for the best. I vote for.

Hmm... I think I've been confused on whether it's the button or the reaction that has to be called "irrational". If it's the button only, then only a few of the Gundam examples count (Zeta, Corin's from Turn A, and Asemu's from AGE), the subpage can be cut, and some of the examples can be shuttled off to tropes like You Killed My Father. If it's about the reaction, then most of them still fit.

There's definitely been some definition drift, because I've always understood it as a trope that can be comedic or dramatic; if the button is always irrational that would mean it's almost always a comedy trope rather than a 50/50 split.

It definitely is a huge task to tackle. I've been off-and-on trying to clean up the things that should really go under Rage Breaking Point (which, on the works pages I frequent, seems to be the most common misuse) but it's a drop in the bucket. Splitting/indexification might be a good idea because then we could list stuff like Mama Bear and You Killed My Father (which are rational rage buttons) and people would go off there before adding bad examples.

edited 6th Oct '15 8:25:23 AM by eowynjedi

The thing about rational buttons is there are already many tropes that cover them, such as It's Personal, You Killed My Father, the relative and relation tropes, etc,etc... That's why Berserk Button is generally geared for comedic examples, like Ed being The Napoleon. However, in its current state, it's just too vague and can cover too many things that we already have tropes for. That's why I feel why making this an index and making it's original meaning a different trope is a way to go.

If we do this, I feel like something along the lines of Comedic Irrational Rage Inducer would be a good name. It states the main two things people forget about the current trope (that it has to be comedic, and the anger irrational) and gives an idea that it has to be a reoccurring thing (another thing people tend to forget about this trope in it's current state.)

edited 6th Oct '15 9:19:06 AM by TokoWH

That kind of adjective stack is actually a bad name choice. Very clunky.

Admittedly, I am pretty bad at names... Maybe something like Running Gag Rage Inducer or Running Gag Rage Button?

Since it also pertains to this clean-up, there's a YKTTW for Knight Templar Caretaker as a supertrope to all the "protect your loved ones" tropes that this one is so often misused for.

And I hosted it. :D

So would we move some Berserk Button examples that involves "someone you cared about is threatened" there? Regardless, I'd like some help for the ykttw.

By the way, so... is this trope really too broad for everyone's tastes? Why limit the definition to "irrational anger over something innocuous"?

"Getting mad because someone you care about is threatened" sounds like chairs to me.

Not really. These reactions have storytelling significance in almost all circumstances.

that's like saying Big Brother Instinct or Papa Wolf is chairs. Which is wrong.

We still have to include "protectorate button" here.

edited 19th Oct '15 1:33:34 AM by DAN004

It would need to distinguish storyline-relevant examples that are not covered by other tropes from one-off moments or moments that don't really seem to impact the storyline. Not every example of someone firing off over a loved one is going to be noteworthy, even within the confines of the story being told. After all, not every example of a parent protecting a child or a brother protecting a younger sibling would classify as Papa Wolf or Big Brother Instinct.

edited 19th Oct '15 4:20:23 PM by Wyldchyld

And why not?

Because not every instance of a parent/older sibling protecting their child/younger sibling will fit those two tropes.

and why that not?

I think the problem lies in the description line:

• In dramatic works, the Berserk Button is often tied to something important about a character; a particularly hated enemy, or a painful failure that hits too Close To Home. Insulting the memory of a dead family member, for example, or pitying someone who insists "Don't You Dare Pity Me!." If you're unfortunate enough to hit someone's Berserk Button in a dramatic work, being on the receiving end of a rant is the very least of your worries depending on the situation and the character.

Which is still in the description despite comments in April supporting its removal. This completely clashes with the below line:

• This trope is not about anger in response to something that would reasonably enrage someone, like a loved one being hurt or threatened, being personally insulted, or otherwise treated in a way that's disrespecting, because that is a reasonable response. If you see such an example on the page, or were link here by such an example, please remove it.

edited 4th Dec '15 7:55:33 AM by Arawn999

Anger that stems from your loved ones getting threatened still has a narrative purpose. It's not chairs.

Covered by Mama Bear and Papa Wolf anyway.

What's if it's the child that has his parents insulted/threatened? What if it's his sibling instead? His friend? His teacher? Heck, just someone he cared about?

They all count here.

I suggest you read the OP of this thread if you haven't already or just need a refresher. It covers everything.

EDIT: The trope description also explicitly excludes the type of examples you're bringing up.

edited 4th Dec '15 5:48:21 PM by Karxrida

"Things this trope is not: Becoming enraged only once (not a Button), becoming enraged to something perfectly reasonable (not a trope), becoming only slightly irritated instead of enraged (remember, Berserk Button), or irritating someone until they lash out (the closest analogue there is probably Bullying a Dragon)."

I agree with everything except the bolded one (emphasis mine).

What if a guy is enraged over something innocuous, but then it's revealed there's a very good reason why?

The change was made months ago to prevent misuse and approved by a mod. I don't see the point in arguing this.