Unclear Description: Obligatory War Crime Scene

But even when it's portrayed as justifiable, doesn't use of the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique automatically render a character some measure of Anti-Hero and include some greying of morality on their part?

Also, wouldn't I Surrender, Suckers only constitute a war crime if it happened during a war?

Edited by Azorius24 on Mar 16th 2022 at 12:17:13 PM

Just thought I'd chime in and say that I'm fine with Azorius taking ownership of this thread (so to speak) partially because this thread was their idea, and partially because I have a cold again and might not be as active on TRS. (I never intended to claim this thread as my own, anyway; I just made it to help clear out the TRS Queue.)

So, what to do with all of the villainous war crime examples listed in the event of an overhaul? I don't think they can just be abandoned wholesale or placed under incredibly broad tropes.

Would launching a trope like War Crimes Are A Special Kind Of Evil work?

I think it would be worth Yarding, but I don't know if it would be doable with the misuse of this trope. The villainous misuse of this trope seems to be about the villains committing war crimes in general, as opposed to it being portrayed as being worse than other things they've done (such as if the war crimes cause them to cross the Moral Event Horizon).

I guess I'm not sure what trope we could launch that could catch the villainous misuse without being chairs and wouldn't fall under tropes like War Is Hell

That's kind of the problem, the villanous examples have made OWCS Chairs since villains do bad things. Few of the villanous examples seem to be marked out as particularly 'special' or heinous by the villain's standards.

Edited by Azorius24 on Mar 16th 2022 at 2:08:28 PM

Yeah, the reason I'm in favor of renaming Obligatory War Crime Scene and reverting to and enforcing the original definition is because having the heroes commit war crimes is a way of showing that neither side is completely innocent, meaning the war isn't based on Black-and-White Morality.

Not all war is based on BvW. There is a space for "the only bad things that the villains do are war crimes". Such as the Empire in A New Hope; we know they are bad for attacking a "diplomatic vessel" (actually justified, as they were spying), for torturing a prisoner of war (another war crime), and genocide by destroying Alderaan (war crime).

I'm not certain that idea is exactly distinct from "the only bad things that the heroes do are war crimes". I do find the idea of moralizing vs not moralizing a distinction. So Jack Bauer's "getting dirty" would not be a "Special Evil", but "cried out, and were silenced" would be.

I personally don't think "the only bad things the villains do are war crimes" and "the only bad things the heroes do are war crimes" are sufficiently distinct from each other, for pretty much the same reason Reverse Mole was merged with The Mole (since the only difference was which side the mole was working for). However, I do think it's more tropeworthy than villains committing war crimes in addition to doing other evil things.

As for whether we have enough villainous examples in that vein to define the trope in that way, I'd probably have to take a closer look at the wick check again, but I'll save it for later since I'm not feeling the best right now.

Edit: Also, it's possible that I misread/misinterpreted the above post, since I'm out of it for reasons I previously mentioned.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 16th 2022 at 10:20:06 AM

I agree that “villains committing war crimes” is Chairs because villains do bad things, so it’s not notable or exceptional in that sense. Now, the crimes themselves can be their own tropes (for example, the destruction of Alderaan is a Final Solution and/or Earth-Shattering Kaboom, and torturing a POW falls under Cold-Blooded Torture.

What about "villains do war crimes to establish their villainy", in the vein of Kick the Dog?

That would just be Kick the Dog and Establishing Character Moment, no? I guess a spin as "an excuse for the hero army to not hold punches" can work, but it may be covered by other tropes.

Also can Sociopathic Soldier be used for the entire army? Also for the record we have Armies Are Evil and Colonel Kilgore.

Btw when the trope talks about "war crimes", is it referring to The Laws and Customs of War or it has own list in mind?

It does refer to them in the description and does not form its own list of war crimes. Also, to answer your other query, the description for Sociopathic Soldier mentions that if the whole army is made up of them it is an instance of Armies Are Evil.

Edited by Azorius24 on Mar 16th 2022 at 7:48:36 PM

Yeah, I agree that either Kick the Dog or Establishing Character Moment would cover those scenes.

Yes, no need for a separate trope that’s “Kick the Dog, but specific to war crimes”.

That's a shame, since I do still believe that villainous war crime portrayals could be their own specific sub-trope of sorts. They can be used as an Establishing Character Moment for the enemy faction, a way to make examples to their own men, the enemy, and civilian populaces, and that war isn't Black-and-White Morality or necessarily a good vs. evil debacle. An inversion of sorts to this trope, but to establish exactly why and how they're the enemy through the actions they commit, and not just some narrative or propaganda being espoused by the heroes or their allies. Yes, the villains do commit war crimes, but seeing their motivations, reasons, and methods in doing so is probably just as important and does help deepen the plot of a story.

I would be for the War Crimes Are A Special Kind Of Evil, provided good examples for that potential draft can be given. It can't just be tossed aside with the number of villainous war crime examples that serve as plot devices.

Edited by Rmpdc on Mar 16th 2022 at 8:41:44 PM

Re: this, not necessarily/depends on how the work portrays the torture. The work could glorify the torture because its being done "for the greater good" or because it's being done to people who are "deserving" of it; for that latter part, consider What Measure Is a Mook?. There's a lot that "heroes/good guys" do that with Fridge Logic can be understood as crimes and I don't think that's what this trope is trying to cover.

i think the reason there are so many examples of villains committing war crimes is because as others have said, war crimes are the BIGGEST bad thing and it is a quick way to establish a villain as bad by showing them doing it. That's thematically different than what this trope seems to be about which is about a force committing a war crime in order to increase the moral ambiguity of the war itself. The former can be covered by Establishing Character Moment or Kick the Dog fairly easy so the examples need not be lost, just relocated. For other depictions you described there's Well-Intentioned Extremist, I Did What I Had to Do, Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters, etc. I don't think its particularly useful to have one "war crimes" trope specifically because they can be depicted in different ways, and since we have tropes to cover the myriad of depictions a villain/anti-hero in particular may have, keeping this one hero specific makes more sense

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 16th 2022 at 8:58:34 AM

Good point, I hadn't thought of the "they're bad so it's okay to torture them" angle.

I think most people here have generally agreed that the distinguishing factor of an OWCS should be that it serves to introduce and/or emphasise ambiguous morality on the protagonists' side, in cases where the morality would otherwise appear straightforwardly heroic?

Edited by Azorius24 on Mar 17th 2022 at 9:29:58 AM

The trope name absolutely has to be changed at the very least. It does not make it clear that it must be the heroes that commit the war crimes.

I do agree. Could this be added to the crowner?

I'll run another crowner tomorrow for whether to rename after we're done with this one. I'd rather make it separate from this one so we know what the definition is first (though we already know that the top option is a given at this point; it's more of a formality).

I previously suggested Heroic War Criminal as a name earlier in the thread, so renaming was already on the table if we changed the definition. It's just that as WarJay mentioned in this post, it would be better to know what we're doing with this before deciding whether to rename.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 20th 2022 at 7:00:15 AM

Alright, makes sense.

Heroic War Criminal makes it sound like a variant of Designated Hero. I prefer No Heroes In War or There Are No Heroes In War as it is the saying that describes the phenomenon of both sides in a war committing crimes, so there is no good side.

Edited by MasterN on Mar 20th 2022 at 11:37:27 AM