Big "Big Bad" clean-up project

Does the cleanup effort also include the tropes subtropes, like Arc Villain, Big Bad Duumvirate or Big Bad Ensemble?

If the problem extends to them, I see no reason not to work on them as well.

I think it sort of has to, since examples go on the most-specific subtrope. So for example, AFAIK there is no one single overarching Big Bad that applies to all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so the Big Bad entries for that series would go under the subtrope Arc Villain and not on the Big Bad page.

Edited by HighCrate on Feb 15th 2019 at 12:33:51 PM

Since we're on the subject, it might be instructive to lay out the Super-Trope / Sub-Trope relationships at work. Here's how it's laid out right now according to the trope descriptions:

• The Antagonist: Any character or force that opposes The Protagonist.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: A villain who is more dangerous or larger in scope than the Big Bad, but doesn't directly influence the plot of the story.
  • Big Bad: The character who is the direct cause of all of the bad happenings in a story.
    • Arc Villain: The Big Bad of one Story Arc, but not of the entire series. (If they're Big Bad of the entire series, they're just the Big Bad, not an Arc Villain.)
      • Filler Villain: An Arc Villain for a filler Story Arc.
      • Starter Villain: The first true threat to the heroes, who is later surpassed.
      • Disc-One Final Boss: An Arc Villain who appears to be the final Big Bad, but isn't.
    • Big Bad Duumvirate: Two or more Big Bads intentionally colluding with one another.
    • Big Bad Ensemble: Two or more simultaneous Big Bads, who may be intentionally colluding, at odds with one another, or have nothing to do with one another.
    • The Big Bad Shuffle: Several potential Big Bads are presented to the audience so quickly that it's hard to tell who the true Big Bad is.
  • Monster of the Week: A villain who is introduced and defeated in a single episode of a serial story.

A couple of problems:

First:

Starter Villain is listed as a Sub-Trope of Arc Villain. That would mean that every Starter Villain would also have to be an Arc Villain (that is, the Big Bad of a multi-episode plot arc). However, a quick look through the examples section reveals several entries that are not Arc Villains, but are introduced and defeated in one episode instead, which would make them Monsters of the Week.

So either Starter Villain is not a Sub-Trope of Arc Villain, or those examples do not fit the definition of Starter Villain and should be removed.

Likewise, there are examples of Filler Villain that are Monsters of the Week and not Arc Villains.

Personally, I think the simplest solution is to declare that Starter Villain and Filler Villain can overlap with, but are not subtropes of, Arc Villain (and by extension, not subtropes of Big Bad either).

Second:

Big Bad Duumvirate and Big Bad Ensemble seem a little redundant, since BBD requires that they intentionally collude with one another, whereas BBE allows for examples where they intentionally collude, are fighting each other as well as the protagonists, or have nothing to do with each other at all. Also, their Sub-Trope / Super-Trope relationship is never explicitly described, although it seems obvious from context that both should be considered SubTropes of Big Bad.

The simplest solution here would seem to be to declare Big Bad Duumvirate a Sub-Trope of Big Bad Ensemble, which would involve cleaning all BBE entries that actually belong under the more specific Sub-Trope of BBD.

That would make the final arrangement:

• The Antagonist: Any character or force that opposes The Protagonist.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: A villain who is more dangerous or larger in scope than the Big Bad, but doesn't directly influence the plot of the story.
  • Big Bad: The character who is the direct cause of all of the bad happenings in a story.
    • Arc Villain: The Big Bad of one Story Arc, but not of the entire series. (If they're Big Bad of the entire series, they're just the Big Bad, not an Arc Villain.)
      • Disc-One Final Boss: An Arc Villain who appears to be the final Big Bad, but isn't.
    • Big Bad Ensemble: Two or more simultaneous Big Bads, who may be at odds with one another, have nothing to do with one another, or be intentionally colluding with one another (in which case examples go under the more specific Sub-Trope, Big Bad Duumvirate).
      • Big Bad Duumvirate: Two or more Big Bads intentionally colluding with one another.
    • The Big Bad Shuffle: Several potential Big Bads are presented to the audience so quickly that it's hard to tell who the true Big Bad is.
  • Filler Villain: A villain of a filler Story Arc or episode.
  • Starter Villain: The first true threat to the heroes, who is later surpassed.
  • Monster of the Week: A villain who is introduced and defeated in a single episode of a serial story.

Thoughts?

Edited by HighCrate on Feb 16th 2019 at 10:48:05 AM

Everything looks good to me.

Awesome work and great analysis.

I particularly approve of the model examples.

I agree with the changes.

Honestly, Arc Villain should apply to any villain for a single arc, not just a Big Bad. Especially since some of the examples on that page aren't Big Bads themselves (like [[Avatar: The Last Airbender Zhao, who is an Arc Villain who works for the actual Big Bad).

The reason why I created Overarching Villain was to stop people from using Big Bad to refer to villains lasting the whole series. But alas, it has failed.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on Feb 15th 2019 at 6:45:37 AM

A valiant effort nonetheless.

With this criteria in mind, can we go through what's currently on Sandbox.Big Bad Animated Films and determine if any of the currently visible examples are valid as written?

Also there are a good amount of examples on the page Arc Villain who are not actually Arc Villains because they are villains outside of a single story. This is another part of my argument that Arc Villain should not be mutually exclusive or a subtrope of Big Bad.

I don't think we should go ahead making changes yet until stuff like that is sorted out.

What do you propose we do first?

I mean, we should probably sort through Arc Villain and take out examples that last beyond one arc. Possibly open a Trope Repair Shop thread for it.

Wish I could do some fixing myself, but I got three exams coming up next week, so I can't really dedicate any time.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on Feb 15th 2019 at 10:15:16 AM

I wouldn't mind joining in on a TRS effort if some threads get resolved. It's a little backed up there. (I can't really make the thread either, no experience doing so...)

If you want Arc Villain to apply to any villain present only for a single arc (and not just to Big Bads who only remain Big Bad for one arc), you're going to have to take it to TRS anyway, because that's a pretty big change to the definition of that trope. Right now it is very clearly defined as "Big Bad but only for one arc".

That being the case, if you're planning on doing that, I move that we table the Arc Villain discussion for now and continue cleaning Big Bad example subpages, as that will need doing no matter what happens with Arc Villain.

In that case, back to my Sandbox.Big Bad Animated Films question. Do the current examples look valid?

All of them could use some rewriting at minimum. The rule of thumb in avoiding a Zero-Context Example is that someone who hasn't seen the work in question should be able to read the example text and know that the trope applies. That's not true of any of these entries:

• Chicken Run: Everything before "Mrs. Tweedy is the one who sets up the plan to kill the chickens" is irrelevant. Are "the chickens" the protagonists of the film, or is "the plan to kill the chickens" otherwise the main conflict of the story?
• Ice Age: Who the hell are Diego, Manny, Roshan, and Sid? Protagonists? Antagonists? I couldn't tell you. Who are the protagonists and how does Soto cause problems for them in such a way as to drive the plot?
• The Book of Life: This lists two Big Bads for a single film, which is very unusual if true. If they're one right after the other, then likely neither are a true Big Bad; films aren't typically long enough to support two in sequence. If they're both active at the same time, then they're either a Big Bad Ensemble or a Big Bad Duumvirate. Which is it?
• Big Hero 6: This one looks potentially legit, but it's an All White Entry, and that should be fixed. Also, the title of the work should come first in the example text, not the character's name. Also also, it needs to be established that his evil plot (and desire to kill the heroes) is what drives the plot of the film, as opposed to being a minor subplot.
• Free Birds: Is Reggie the protagonist? Is the conflict described the thing that drives the plot?
• We're Back: The title of the work should come first. "Making children sign a contract in blood" sounds like a nasty thing to do, but does it drive the plot? Also, getting eaten by crows is creepy but irrelevant. Does his defeat resolve the plot? That's a pretty good sign that he's a Big Bad if so.

Edited by HighCrate on Feb 15th 2019 at 7:33:58 AM

I hadn't even realized that no example even gives enough context to let every reader understand what the example is talking about. Good eye. To be fair, I was more focused on the million examples that were just "X from Y"... but yikes.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with commenting out all of the "[work title]: [character name]" examples and then trying to rehabilitate what we have left. It's a whole lot of work that's going to need doing no matter what order we do it in, so the most important thing is that we tackle it.

I was planning to go in and try and add some context to Disney examples at least, but I decided to hold off before I knew if the current page examples were valid. So, what? Do we comment-out everything and start from scratch?

Well, the things that need doing are:

• Commenting out ZCEs.
• Adding context to legitimate examples that need it, that you're familiar enough with the work to do so.
• Deleting entries that are misuse.

Those don't need to be done in any particular order. You can do one at a time, or do one for a while and then switch to another as you get bored. Whatever helps us get the work done without going insane.

Edited by HighCrate on Feb 15th 2019 at 7:43:16 AM

Finished preliminary cleanup of Live-Action Films #-M. Not all of the entries that are left are, like, great, but we can circle back around to them later.

How does Disc-One Final Boss fit in to the hierarchy?

Definition: The heroes seemed to have defeated the Big Bad but then the player realizes that they're on the first disc of a multi-disc RPG (or the audience realizes that the show is only in midseason).

The description mentions that it overlaps with Arc Villain and Starter Villain, and it seems to be a prerequisite for The Big Bad Shuffle.

Edited by naturalironist on Feb 16th 2019 at 8:59:44 AM

While the Disc-One Final Boss trope description doesn't explicitly say so, it appears that it's intended to be a Sub-Trope of Arc Villain, since it says the DOFB is "the driving force behind this early part" of the story with a link to AV.

Judging by the description it would appear that The Big Bad Shuffle intended to be a Sub-Trope of Disc-One Final Boss, but I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case. The core of DOFB is "the heroes defeat the DOFB and think they're done, but it turns out they're not." It's not hard to conceive of a situation like a conspiracy story where it's unclear which out of three or four villains is the real Big Bad, and all of them seem like they might be at some point, but the mystery gets solved before any of them are defeated. It seems to me that that would be a Big Bad Shuffle without any of the villains being a DOFB.

Edited by HighCrate on Feb 16th 2019 at 10:58:38 AM

Slapped an invisible note on BigBad.Animated Films, directing people to add new examples to the sandbox as well (so that nothing added during cleanup gets lost when copy+pasting the sandbox formatting later).

I've also commented out every example on the sandbox, and wrote a (visible, because sandbox) note at the top explaining that every example needs specific context before being uncommented. This way anybody who ends up visiting the page because of the note won't just be slapping more bad examples on the page and going on their way. (I hope.)

I'll be working on adding context to some examples now.