Misused: Crazy Awesome

Crazy Awesome is supposed to be about characters who are mentally unbalanced and said unbalancedness is a key part in their effectiveness. Pretty much all the examples I've seen have been referring to things (characters, events within a work or even the works themselves) that are considered by the troper writing the example to be really, really awesome.

Wick Check:

• Laconic.Achievement Hunter: Used as part of a sentence, doesn't provide enough context as to whether it's used correctly.
• Manga.Akagi: Sinkhole.
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: Sinkhole.
• YMMV.American Dad:
  * Crazy Awesome:

  • Principal Lewis. He gets into fistfights with dogs, his life was the basis for the sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes," and he was a drug trafficker years before he became a high school principal.
  • A lot of episodes ("Iced, Iced Babies," "You Debt Your Life," and "Naked to the Limit, One More Time") infer that Principal Lewis is still a drug trafficker while serving as principal.
  • Roger can sometimes be this, like gunning down a gang like some kind of action hero after getting a facefull of cocaine.
  • Stan had moments of this originally, though his Badass Decay of later episodes diluted it, usually punctuated with others such as Roger and Francine outdoing him at the trope.
  • Bob Tod from "For Whom the Sleigh Bells Toll", a crazy mountain man who makes the strongest whiskey known to man and makes love to slain reindeer, but is more than capable of killing murderous elves and giant evil snowmen.

Opening. What worries me about the trope is that some of the examples shown in the wick check have inadequate context: Kung-Fu Jesus, Space Dandy, and one of the Ghostbusters entries, to name a few.

Now would probably be a good time to say that I've never seen this trope used properly. I usually see it misused to mean "So Crazy, It's Awesome" or something like that (with misuse thinking "crazy" is being used figuratively in the sense of "outlandish" or "over-the-top" in those cases) and not its proper definition. The amount of wicks this gets for things other than characters, despite being a character trope, isn't a good sign, either.

Edit: I should probably clarify that I wasn't saying it's acceptable to put this on character sheets when I said this is a character trope. I was saying it isn't acceptable to apply it to things other than characters, due to its character-specific nature.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2018 at 3:57:22 AM

^ Not sure if a YMMV tagged trope can be considered a character trope.

^ Should be noted that despite being a YMMV trope, if you look at the related page the majority of the wicks are on non-YMMV pages.

First; the Wick Check is flawed. The minimum is [50] or [the square root of the wicks], whichever is larger (exception: check all the wicks if there are fewer than 50 wicks). Also, the apparently 0% correct use makes me wonder if you cherry-picked wick examples.

YMMV or not, it's exclusively for characters, so all the examples for other things are incorrect by default. As crazysamaritan mentioned, Complete Monster is also characterization-related and YMMV, so Crazy Awesome's proper definition isn't an isolated case.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 15th 2018 at 1:56:44 PM

Rephrasing my concern as a question: Are YMMV tropes allowed as examples on character sheets? I noticed that users tagged entries "in-universe" to get them listed, like on Characters.The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, Characters.Farscape Main Characters or Characters.Mistborn The Original Trilogy.

Edited by eroock on Oct 16th 2018 at 10:57:52 AM

Not sure, but off the top of my head I at least can't think of any times it would be acceptable to put Crazy Awesome or other YMMV character tropes on character sheets. I could be wrong, though.

Anyway, my reference to this as character-specific wasn't saying it's OK to put on character sheets, nor was it referring to its usage on character pages; it was in response to the large amount of shoehorning to refer to things other than characters, such as works or events, hence my second post. I should probably edit my first post to clarify that.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2018 at 4:01:03 AM

YMMV elements like Crazy Awesome can never go in character sheets. That's for objective tropes.

Regardless of the status of this thread, I'm going to remove some of the misuse.

My previous post was related to in-universe instances of YMMV tropes, which are considered objective examples in those cases. When I said I can't think of any times it would be acceptable to put YMMV character tropes on character pages, I meant to say that in-universe/[[invoked]] tagging may be being misused in cases where they're put on character pages anyway. (Note that I hadn't checked the example pages given; I was referring to the site as a whole.)

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2018 at 7:51:58 AM

Nah; people generally haven't bothered with using the (Invoked) tags, simply adding wicks where they've wanted.

I assumed that's what you were referring to. My reference to invoked tags was related to eroock's post about YMMV examples being referred to as in-universe on character pages.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 16th 2018 at 8:21:59 AM

With a name this obtuse, it's no wonder it's so misused. It's almost as if whoever named this page was intentionally trying to make the most unclear name possible. Not only can crazy mean "very", this meaning is the most evident one since it looks like the "crazy" is modifying the word "awesome" and not the character that's being called awesome.

If we wanted it to be clearer, it should be Crazy But Awesome or Crazy And Awesome.

1. Is mentally unstable,

2. Is effective at what they do because of said mental instability,

3. Is liked by the audience.

I'm not sure why point 3 is needed. Isn't "a character who succeeds due to being crazy" already enough of a trope? What's the purpose of the subjective aspect requiring them to be a popular character?

^ Good question.

Yeah, I'd remove 3. I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the misuse is because of it. Keeping it would definitely continue the misuse.

I think 1 is also misuse; my understanding is "this character is abnormal". The two terms are colloquially synonymous, but I don't think the trope describes "mentally unbalanced".

I'd support removing 3 as long as it doesn't result in a duplicate of another trope.

And if removing that requirement DOES make it a duplicate, we should just cut Crazy Awesome since I don't see why being popular would be a notable difference. Why not make "X but fans love them" versions of every other character trope otherwise? The Same, but More Specific is a rule the site has.

I don't think changing the definition would do much to lessen misuse compared to changing the name. It's clear that people aren't reading the definition that's already there; misuse often comes from people reading the name without reading the description, and this is a particularly bad case of that.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 18th 2018 at 12:57:17 PM

Name change seems inevitable. I still see interest here to make this a proper trope by removing the audience reaction part.

There are 5,000 wicks waiting to be reviewed. Would a name change be done via quick & dirty redirecting or would it already involve changing the wicks one by one? ^note Of course, in a properly prepared environment there could be script to batch change all occurrences on db side but I am not assuming this is in place here.

Edited by eroock on Oct 19th 2018 at 11:34:41 AM

I'll add that I'm also in favor of removing the subjective aspect.

Edit: See my next post regarding Essential Madness.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 25th 2018 at 10:21:07 AM

to rename and removing the subjective aspect.

I've found Essential Madness while removing Main/ wicks (honestly, I'm thinking most of these are from pre-YMMV status).