Duplicate Trope: Pyrrhic Villainy

Resolution: Pyrrhic Villainy will be merged into Pyrrhic Victory.

To-do:

• Dewick Pyrrhic Villainy, moving appropriate wicks to Pyrrhic Victory. Link to wick list
• Move Pyrrhic Villainy's on-page examples to Pyrrhic Victory
• Incorporate relevant aspects of Pyrrhic Villainy into Pyrrhic Victory's description

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 20th 2022 at 11:06:03 AM

Makes sense to me!

I don't get how does one merge AND disambiguate, but I like the disambig option.

I suppose it means to turn the page into disambig but move parts of the description and examples to the other page that is not already there. I'm fine with that.

Pyrrhic Victory and Meaningless Villain Victory already reference each other, so I'd prefer a concrete rewrite suggestion.

Merge into Pyrrhic Victory so Pyrrhic Victory allows villainous examples, similarly to how we merged Reverse Mole into The Mole and made the latter applicable to both heroes and villains.

Merge with 's proposal to expand Pyrrhic Victory and disambiguate

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jul 11th 2022 at 6:50:24 AM

i didn't get the ping that this was opened.

but yes, my proposal was to take all of the examples that can be moved to Pyrrhic Victory there and because the trope was also suffering quite a bit of misuse, to keep the page as a disambig. if we don't do that second half, I don't really care as it's not as important as the merge

and fwiw, we won't really have to redefine Pyrrhic Victory as the term as defined on this site and elsewhere isn't hero-centric, which was part of why I brought this trope here in the first place

Edited by amathieu13 on Jul 12th 2022 at 4:07:19 AM

A lot of the clean up is going to be just switching the Pyrrhic Villainy example to P.Victory or one of the 4 tropes it's been misused for

Below is a list of laconics for each of the tropes that I wrote to help me sort during the wick check that others can refer to if they want

• Pyrrhic Victory: You've won but in order to do so you had to sacrifice (or simply lost) something you hold near and dear/of significant value to you.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Villain wins but for some reason the victory is rendered meaningless or moot. May involve sacrificing or losing something important but also may not.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Villain accomplishes something but it has the unintended consequence of helping the heroes.
• Karmic Death: A person dies in a manner that serves as a fitting punishment for their misdeeds and is completely their own fault.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Villain is defeated by the exact same means/tools they were using to try to defeat the hero.

Edited by amathieu13 on Jul 17th 2022 at 5:23:01 AM

If any examples would fit any of these better, they should go there instead of Pyrrhic Victory. Feel free to bring up here any that are ambiguous.

It's still up to discussion if "Pyrrhic Villainy" should be a redirect to Pyrrhic Victory or disambig due to use

I took care of the lone video example.

So in the initial wick check I had a category for ambiguous examples that didn't seem to fit any of the tropes, i.e. "generalized consequences for actions"-examples. Take this one from ComicStrip.Retail:

Josh initially got away with lying about a job offer to secure a raise, but his days were numbered when Marla found out and told Stuart, who was initially his biggest supporter. With Marla making plans to fire him, and Stuart no longer protecting him, he was forced to quickly find a new job and leave while he was still ahead.

I don't think this fits Pyrrhic Victory or Meaningless Villain Victory. P-Victory, is "a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat" (took the wikipedia def). Like cutting off a limb in a fight to stop the poison in order to win the battle, but slowly bleeding out and dying. The action that you took to win harms you/your reputation/your loved ones in such devastating fashion that the victory can be seen as a loss.

In the above example, the lying in of itself didn't inflict a toll on Josh, it's the discovery of the lie and Marla telling on him that did, so it doesn't really feel like it fits. MVV also doesn't seem like it fits either because it focuses on "last second caveats" nullifying the victory. Marla telling Stuart isn't last minute.

IDK I might be nitpicking. If I don't think too deeply, I could slide it into either one, but if I actually read what's written it doesn't seem to fit.

What do you think?

Aw, sad to see this one on the way out. It's a very old trope (I think it actually predates us having an entry for Pyrrhic Victory) and I've curated it for a long time. But I have to agree that we don't really have a solid reason to split it from regular old Pyrrhic Victory.

Edited by TheWanderer on Aug 3rd 2022 at 10:59:19 AM

I didn't know we had Pyrrhic Villainy before Pyrrhic Victory. Reminds me of how we had Polygon Ceiling (or Sonic Syndrome as it was originally called) before we had Video Game 3D Leap, and the former was cut because the latter's existence rendered it The Same, but More (i.e., "Video Game 3D Leap done badly").

Checking in, as there is a wick on-page for another TRS effort. How far are we on the merge?

Not far. I stopped to get clarification on a sorting issue weeks ago, but no one responded

Edited by amathieu13 on Aug 20th 2022 at 3:42:18 PM

I added moving on-page examples to the to-do list because it doesn't look like that's been done yet.

I may do that tomorrow, unless someone else does it first.

I did some dewicking and I wanted to ask. There are some examples where the villain wins, but his victory is short lived. I want to move those examples to Meaningless Villain Victory, but I'm not sure, because the victory is not meaningless in itself. It's just that some stronger hero takes it away soon after the villain achieves it. Is it still Meaningless Villain Victory?

Also this example:

i think the specific example you gave fits under Meaningless Villain Victory since this isn't ruinous to the villain, it just makes winning feel somewhat hollow.

As for the short lived victory ones, it depends on how short that victory is, at least that's how I'm interpreting the "last minute caveat", which seems to suggest it has to be very soon after.

Edited by amathieu13 on Aug 21st 2022 at 8:58:52 AM

Thanks!

Also, do I remove this trope from Evil Tropes index, or change it to Pyrrhic Victory? I guess it's not Evil anymore, so it doesn't belong there?

I'd say remove. If Pyrrhic Victory fit the category, it probably would have already been there.

I agree.