But we have Villain Decay.
"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight, but Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right." - Hillaire Belloc, The PacifistVillain Decay is about villains being less of a threat. Not about them getting nicer.
Villain Melioration? Technical but completely apposite (melioration is "the linguistic process in which over a period of time a word grows more positive in connotation or more elevated in meaning").
Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.Cruelly Crippling? Diabolical Decay? Nefariousness Nerfing? Reprehensibility Reduction? Depravity Decline?
Definitely didn't just use thesaurus.com to come up with a bunch of alliterative titles for "villainous" and "weakening". Nope.
edited 24th Feb '10 9:11:16 PM by deathjavu
Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.For consistency's sake, I linked this thread to the article.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"No offense, but did you read the thread? There's nothing in here about renaming Badass Decay.

Okay, I've been meaning to do this one for a while, ever since Spikeification was renamed, but, well, y'know....
Anyway, this is a case of a trope losing something it had before a rename due to a rename and rewrite. Basically, Spikeification was an odd mix of two tropes: Badass Decay, about badass characters becoming much less effective as badasses as time went on, and Evil Decay, about villainous characters becoming less cruel and sociopathic. Since the rename the second one has pretty much been only vaguely implicit in the trope and not actually the point, but it's still very valid as an actual trope and needs to be shown, especially since occasionally I see people using Badass Decay to refer to characters becoming less cruel even though that's not what the trope is about anymore.
So, basically, we should split out Evil Decay, about characters becoming less cruel and vindictive as time goes on, regardless of whether they actually switch sides or whether they actually lose some effectiveness, making it a supertrope of Heel–Face Turn, where most characters undergo this, much as they also undergo Badass Decay.
A good example of what I'm talking about is, say, Mandy from The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Many, who by the end of the show was a lot less cruel and evil as she was in her first few appearances, and seemed more like an extremely intelligent Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
Another good example would be Carmen Sandiego from Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego.