Yeah, it feels backwards to say that it's a cultural problem while upholding a rule that outright enforces the idea that a CM must be exceptional. And I don't think I was twisting the rule into anything, just explaining why I think we can very easily still vet examples with this one rule removed since the work's context alone can tell us if the villain is exceptionally evil.
If the thread gets flooded, yeah that's a problem, but other rules had also been loosened and I didn't see any major impact as a result from it. People were worried that the thread would get flooded with propaganda and schlock after the tastelessness rule was removed, but that didn't happen.
Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 24th 2024 at 2:30:33 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallIt would at least fix the problem of the trope effectively being a mark of distinction because of how it's set up.
If people are going to treat it as one either way, and we'd rather it wasn't treated like one, the most obvious follow on from that is "make sure it isn't literally set up to be one at least".
Edited by RainehDaze on Jan 24th 2024 at 7:30:54 PM
The trope is literally "the worst possible villain". That's already exceptional. The rules that we set out, after exhaustive discussion, are derived from the original definition.
The reason for the genre rule is to establish that exceptionality crosses individual works and is based on standards that a viewer/reader/player of works across a genre will expect to be in place.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 24th 2024 at 2:34:16 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And you can be exceptional for the work / franchise specifically without having to be an exception for the entire genre. Especially if there's not even a clear rule on what "genre" means in this context, as James Bond was brought up as an example. Like, if people start approving random schmucks that only do the bare minimum that's a problem, but again there are so many other rules already preventing this from happening and if two works have completely different scenarios, it feels weird to compare them.
Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 24th 2024 at 2:35:27 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall![]()
Rather than deal in abstractions, why not present an example of a candidate who was rejected on the genre standard when they would have been accepted on the specific-work standard?
Not meaning to sound facetious, but there are more than enough examples of action-horror works for that to be its own standard. I already said that "action" is far too broad to be useful. If that needs to be explicitly spelled out in the rules, fine, but this is why I tend to get on edge about this sort of conversation. It feels like people will always use the worst possible interpretation of any rule to make their points. Trying to address this is how we get rule creep.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 24th 2024 at 2:41:15 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm not a thread regular so I don't know the details exactly. But people kept bringing up Bill Sykes.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallIt seems you missed the part where I used to complain regularly about people not keeping track of their candidates in C Ms By Troper, Fighteer (and have even occasionally added candidates to other people's sandboxes for that reason).
Part of the reason for the candidates by troper pages in the first place is, from my POV, less so that people have a "badge of honour" and more so that we know who to ask if something comes up about a past candidate that may or may not have been discussed the first time around, and to a certain extent, to know if said item was discussed previously.
If someone makes a mistake or acts in bad faith, it's easier for them to hold themselves accountable with these sandboxes.
Edited by SkyCat32 on Jan 24th 2024 at 2:43:17 PM
Yeah it again just feels kind of weird that CM has gone so long and been used this way as "must stand out among (insert genre/baseline here)" when no other trope really works that way and just subjectively judges tropes by the source they come from; not some vaguely-defined, arbitrary standard of "well a lot of a villains in action movies kill dozens of people, so (X) has to be a little bit worse to count for this".
Again, AFAIK we don't ask "is this Tearjerker moment really standout in the romantic comedy genre?" We don't say "idk, this Jerkass Woobie potential doesn't seem to suffer as much as many from the genre".
And just my opinion, but the repeated notion being presented of "tropers just want to list characters for bragging rights" or "they've run out of ways to apply the trope and so want to bend the rules" feels like a kind of unneeded leap to bad faith assumption for what is being a healthy discussion. Just IMO.
Edited by Ravok on Jan 24th 2024 at 11:42:49 AM
No! That is NOT Solid Snake! Stop impersonating him!Exceptionality within a work is one thing—but this is, again, the point where making it comparative across genres is where the whole mark-of-distinction thing comes right into it.
Like, take the CM description, and the admin page. Now, with or without the requirement to compare it to the entire genre. What we then have is two tropes: the worst possible villain in a work, and the worst possible villain in a work but made even worse than normal. That's what I meant earlier when I said that CM is going around playing the same but more to itself—because we have it embodying two things at once; the worst possible villain in a story, an irredeemable monster who commits heinous acts, is played completely seriously, and never shows any positive traits or indication of redemption—and the exact same thing, but again, just more than normal for the genre.
You all seem to be inventing a distinction that doesn't exist. Yes, the genre standard is meant to reduce the number of examples by requiring them to stand out more. That is the exact purpose of the rule. If it leads people to consider the trope more of a "bragging rights" thing than they would otherwise, that's unfortunate but unavoidable.
If Oliver & Company is the case we want to study, I just checked and it's rated G. That means it goes straight into the "must be really freaking exceptional to stand out" bucket since it is meant for children. Again, that is one hundred percent intentional.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Just gonna echo that I feel the Monsters by Troper sandboxes are a useful addition and I've never seen them used for "bragging rights", in fact, it's been useful to know who to direct questions to when something comes up as a potential cut, in need of a change or re-evaluation.
Edit per the above: I don't mean this antagonistically and please inform me if it sounds so because I'll happily edit or remove it!
Edited by 43110 on Jan 24th 2024 at 2:47:22 PM
Honestly yeah, I want it to be clear I have no personal stake in this. I'm not in a rush to get certain characters up. I just find it genuinely bizarre that the trope plays by different rules than the entire rest of the wiki, especially as there's no evidence that removing the rule would have an adverse impact.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallIf the sandboxes are meant to keep track of who proposed a candidate for administrative purposes, like paging them for more info, then that's fine, and I apologize if I misunderstood.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah, I wouldn't have the patience to be involved in the thread. Plus I don't think I watch enough relevant things, I'm just in the boat of "should this really be working unlike everything else?"
But the requirement that they stand out is the exact reason the standard is bizarre. Like, I think this whole conversation is going in circles, because it keeps coming back to CM requiring the example to stand out against other works, unlike every other trope, even all the audience reactions. But the why for this isn't really apparent apart from misuse—like, if you have a valid trope description without the requirement that any CM entry be exceptional, then CM as it stands now shouldn't exist because it's the same but more. If you don't have an example when you don't make it stand out, then it's really just saying "these villains are more evil than other villains who fit the same overall criteria contemporaneously in their genre", which I'm pretty sure isn't a trope by any normal definition we have.
Like, to turn it on its head, we basically have the building blocks of the villainous version of the Ideal Hero, only with the caveat "must be even purer than the norm for the genre, insufficient acts of heroism and sacrifice disqualify them".
Edited by RainehDaze on Jan 24th 2024 at 7:55:59 PM
At best it would be some sort of Trope in Aggregate, but even that doesn't cleanly fit.
And again, what exactly counts as a genre here? The definitions themselves seem subjective, so it ultimately boils down to vibes, specific works being upheld as the standard (again for reasons) and the opinions of the people on the thread who are tasked with enforcing this. In theory there's nothing preventing people from deciding that a genre's standards should be lessened, since there's no hard and fast metrics to begin with.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallYeah, that's never been in question (as far as I'm aware)
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWith mod hat firmly off -
From the point that an effortpost goes up, that proposal belongs to the wiki. Those are the rules.
Tropers generally show a lot more courtesy than that, and poaching someone else's candidate is understandably frowned upon... but it does add to the perception that it's "their" candidate.
Likewise, I can see the point in tracking who proposed it, given that forum search is... not good... and in this case the person making the edits may not be the person who researched the candidate.
(And yes, plenty of tropers also list the tropes and work pages they've launched on their own page, effectively the same thing).
...but on the other hand, if someone leaves the site for whatever reason, we cope, as we do for any other trope where we need to fact check an example.
There is sometimes a feeling that CM and MB is its own little bubble, in a way that parts of the site focused on other complex wiki tasks like TRS and TLP aren't. I don't know how fair that is, but I don't think it's unfair to say it's often viewed that way, which is something I'd personally like to remedy.
(Edit: typo fixes and slight rephrasing)
Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 24th 2024 at 8:05:03 PM

Removing one criterion isn't going to fix the problem either, Raineh. All it'll do is get the thread flooded by people asking to have their candidates reevaluated so they can tally them up on their troper pages for bragging rights.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 24th 2024 at 2:29:11 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"