To-do list:

• Humiliation Conga was expanded to include jerks, antagonists, and other characters for whom humiliating events in quick succession would be cathartic. Remove wicks that don't fit that definition. Progress is being tracked using the Humiliation Conga Wick Cleaning sandbox.

Humiliation Conga is a trope that's pretty narrow and specific: At the end of an episode/story, the villain suffers a series of humiliations as their plans fall apart. However, as found by Image Pickin' and the wick check, there seems to be a lot of misuse in the form of it being any series of misfortunes at any point of the story, to characters that aren't even the villain (only 24 of 66 wicks are correct, a correct usage of ~36%).

I'd propose that a new name could help with misuse, although I'm not good at naming things. Villain Punishment Conga Line maybe?

EDIT: An addition to renaming, perhaps there's a missing trope here? There's Humiliation Conga for villains and Trauma Conga Line for when a character goes through misfortunes and is meant to be sympathetic, but is there a trope where the same things happen but the point is comedic effect?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 7th 2022 at 9:51:06 AM

Another option that comes to mind: Karma Conga Line, maybe?

Would we lose much by expanding to fit the misuse and noting in the description that "it is often applied to villains due to catharsis..."?

Wouldn't that make it too much of an overlap with Trauma Conga Line though?

I don't think being made fun of/embarrassed is necessarily tragic/traumatic; the examples in the wick check seem a bit pettier/comedic.

At the very least I don't think we lose much by expanding to jerks, since the Catharsis Factor is similar.

I do think we might have a missing supertrope here.

Karma Conga Line is much nicer than my suggestion.

Expanding to fit jerks could also probably help, although when I stated there was a missing trope, I specifically meant a common misuse of "undeserving character (normally a Butt-Monkey) is rapidly humiliated for no reason other than it's funny." Which I feel is already a trope but I wouldn't know the name if it actually exists. There was an unilateral edit to add it to the description, and it also covers the current quote and old image.

EDIT: So what I mean is there appears to be three tropes here:

• Humiliation Conga: An antagonist is rapidly punished, it's karmic and cathartic
• Trauma Conga Line: A character is rapidly punished, it makes them sympathetic.
• The trope that I described: A character is rapidly punished, its a way of timing comedy and is only happening for comedic effect.

Edited by valozzy on Oct 28th 2021 at 12:42:40 PM

I don't think we would. I don't see anything wrong with expanding the definition and tweaking the description while keeping the name the same.

Edit: And regarding your second post, I don't see anything wrong with limiting the expansion to include jerks instead of just full-fledged villains.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 28th 2021 at 11:51:37 AM

How about splitting Humiliation Conga:

• Humiliation Conga: Expand to fit misuse. Make it a supertrope to
  • Trauma Conga Line
  • Karmic Conga

I'd be fine with that as well.

I don’t think we need a split, just expand. Who cares if it’s at the end or not or even a ‘villain’.

I think there's an extra element to it being a villain due to overlap with Catharsis Factor. Non-villain examples are more for sadistic comedy.

I don't mind expanding it to allow Jerkasses, since they fall under the same cathartic comedy, but I agree that heroic examples typically fall under Trauma Conga Line.

It matters whether it's karmic or not. With baddies, the humiliation is usually presented as deserved.

Expand to include jerks.

Isn't this just Kafka Komedy?

Yes, actually.

Kafka Komedy seems to refer more to the overarching narrative being punishing than the specific event equatable to Trauma Conga Line.

As a lumper I think the idea of splitting off for villains is ok, but not necessary when we could also save ourselves the grief with a healthy paragraph in the description about "A common variant is the Karma Conga Line, where..." and leave it up to a more discerning TLP-er to do the legwork in the future.

I think the main difference is that for Humiliation Conga we're laughing at the karma, and for Trauma Conga Line we're feeling sad for the hero. Sort of like Kick the Dog and Kick The Son Of A Bitch, though it's not a perfect comparison.

We could easily get away with just expanding to cover jerkasses, renaming it to something like Karmic Humiliation Conga, and cleaning it up.

I'd be down for that.

So far our crowner options seem to be:

• Expand Humiliation Conga to all characters, not just jerks or villains, who get humiliated in quick succession (m.e. with expanding to jerks)
• Expand Humiliation Conga to jerks, antagonists, and other characters for whom humiliating events in quick succession would be cathartic (m.e. with expanding to all characters)
• Rename (not mutually exclusive with other options)

Not sure if "split off Karmic Conga" should be included in the first option.

Edited by Synchronicity on Nov 16th 2021 at 4:57:51 AM

Maybe if the first option gets traction we can have a second split crowner? Or just let it be and see if the TLP does its thing.

Options sound good.

If anything, we can send that idea to the Salvage Yard.

It does strike me that we won't need to rename as much if it's expanded.

I agree.

Expanding the trope so it can involve jerks

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Nov 19th 2021 at 6:19:46 AM