Bumping again (this time with
crowners
because I've again found myself in a situation where I'm trying to describe this trope, but can't do so coherently because of the misleading name.
This trope is related to Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in that this trope is pretty much what happens when a Woobie gains the power to seriously damage the entire planet and also gains this mentality making him consider whether this is really such a bad idea. Once again, however, a Woobie in this situation does not believe that they are evil, nor do they believe they owe anyone an explanation for what they're doing. We're already having trouble defining this trope and I don't want to make it more confusing by linking to a completely misleading title.
See you in the discussion pages.- The Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds starts off as The Woobie, whether an Anti-Villain or just a loser. Then Let Me Be Evil starts off as Designated Villain.
- The Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds gains earthshattering power. Then Let Me Be Evil doesn't (usually).
- The Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds is a suicide bomber: they see Taking You with Me as a win - win for them (kill the tormenter and free themselves from the hell other people call their life). Then Let Me Be Evil does a Face–Heel Turn that may be discernable only to the audience and gets revenge via Create Your Own Villain.
- Then Let Me Be Evil is typically a justification for a Card-Carrying Villain (though they may be a Noble Demon, Hero with an F in Good , etc. at heart). The Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds often sees themselves as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
Nearly every statement in Some Guy's OP i diagree with. I especially disagree with his numbered points. I said before "... implied the character was asking for permission- only if the word let had only one very specific unadulterable meaning. Nobody thought of it that way. The other, that it implied the character saw the deeds as evil. Well, the characters do acts that they consider wrongs and admonish other characters for doing to them and consider their actions to be a sad necessity and a movement into a different moral standpoint. So yeah, they hardly see it as good. It's important to distinguish this trope from a simple tit for tat strategy." and I repeat the examples that we have contain an awareness of the standards of the other side, a sense of the situation permitting their behaviour, they are actions that often serves as explanation or rebuttals against the heroes and fits into a sense of tragedy (either genuinely in the work or manufactured by the villain).
I find explaining it spiffing-ly easy. I don't find the new examples fit. Perhaps originally Some Guy had a Seen It A Million Times moment and put something into YKTTW that was different from what came out but that's what YKTTW does. If anything he has got an argument for a sister trope Living Down To Expectations or Cosy In Your Pigeon Hole or similar.
I think a good name for this trope would be something along the lines of If This Is Evil,Then I Dont Want To Be Good or because of how ridiculously long that is Then I Dont Want To Be Right or Then I Dont Want To Be Good since the former can have multiple implications.
edited 26th Nov '10 8:00:46 PM by AymNaija
Some Sort Of Troper, your argument appears to be that the word "let" means something different than "to give permission or opportunity to". That's the only way I can make any sense out of your post. You'll find that nowhere in the description is there anything about the character in question requesting permission or opportunity to commit evil acts. He just does it. Additionally, just because a character "hardly sees it as good" doesn't mean they immediately interpret their actions to be evil. There's such a thing as grey morality, you may recall.
I also don't know what you mean by your implication that this trope has somehow radically changed from the YKTTW stage as a result of community involvement. Aside from one line that you added to try and rationalize this title the description is completely unchanged from how I originally wrote it. And the most recently added examples dovetail far better with my definition than they do with your name-
- Harley Quinn from Batman The Animated Series: Does she ask permission to be evil? No, she just does it because she gets really frustrated. Does she thinks she's being evil? Not really- she just thinks she's fulfilling her socially mandated role.
- Elphaba of Wicked never actually even commits an evil deed. She just gives up trying to be The Hero. In this case the title is completely counter-intuitive, because it's the hoi polloi who want Elphaba to be evil, not Elphaba herself.
Why you insist on interpreting this trope in as narrow a manner as possible I'm really not sure- the main reason why I went with The Shylock in the first place was to encompass a wide variety of currently undefined character behavior. This title only makes sense with a very narrowly defined character type of which there are few examples actually appearing on the page.
Would you please remind me again what would be so terrible about a name change to something like Then I Shall Be Mean, which would be broad enough that all of the examples on the page would make sense?
edited 27th Nov '10 7:57:07 AM by SomeGuy
See you in the discussion pages.Here I thought this is would be if the good guys decided they had to do something "evil" just to survive or keep their way of life.
Like in Negima Negi decides to stop the Anti-Villain just cause there wasn't a good enough reason to ruin his life and his students. "For the sake of my students I must comit an evil act." (Paraphrasing)
So... yes to rename.
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!Against a re-rename. The current name may imply the character asking, but I was able to correctly guess even with it. The characters may not actually outright say they're being evil, but they're close enough.
They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?Not sure how to make a short coherent post so time for bullet points:
1) Well what does "Let's Get Dangerous!" mean?
2) Mean is a more specific term than evil. Evil ranges in magnitude and manner, mean implies lower key dickery.
3) Not that the trope has changed, just that the group perception of the input data is different from yours. The process normalises everything because it takes stuff, throws it at a crowd and see what sticks and the nature of tropes is that they are what sticks. Yeah, that's not very clear. Look just think of this, if a page has been through every process that was designed to make it suitable for tv tropes then it will not fail to live up to our standards. Not pleasing everybody is not a failure of our standards so if one guy doesn't feel it's right, at this point I don't care.
4) There are several things I am taking from the recently added examples. Foremost is that they were added to the page so what's the problem? Second, these match the behaviour I've seen on other pages which is you have a trope that consists of "W, X, Y, Z" and which defines the centre very strongly and then people add the examples which fits around this. The benefit of having that strongly defined centre is that the examples know what they are holding themselves against. Third, again, they seem fine for the name and definition.
Now the crowner has just been getting slowly more negative and it has been on there for ages, is there any more of a point to this?
1) Let's Get Dangerous! is a first-person plural suggestive statement roughly equivalent to "allow us to start kicking ass". It's sarcastic politeness along the same lines as "don't say I didn't warn you". It's also a Catchphrase from Darkwing Duck, and nearly every example on the page either involves a character paraphrasing it, or the viewer would not be the least surprised if they did so. Contrast Then Let Me Be Evil, a phrase which implies sincerity on the part of the person saying it, is a phrase that as far as I know you made up, and which not a single example listed on the Then Let Me Be Evil page would use to describe their situation to anyone.
2) Again I question which dictionary you're using- mine describes "evil" as being "morally wrong or bad" and "mean" as being "offensive, selfish, and unaccomodating". I am unable to grasp a character who can be evil without, to some extent, being mean. I am especially unable to concieve of a character who can be evil while having a morally gray character, which is explicitly outlined as being a prerequisite of the trope.
3) What group perception? None of the examples on the page fit the criteria you're outlining for this trope's name. They all conform precisely to mine.
4) So what you're saying is, it doesn't even matter what the name of a trope is or if it's even remotely accurate so long as it's getting new examples that fit the definition of the trope rather than the inaccurate name? You're kind of begging the question of why this trope even had to be renamed in the first place.
I might as well be blunt about it- do you truly intend to force the author of this page to watch it be misused in ways he had never intended? This may be the right of the wiki, but it's a frankly shitty thing to do, and sets a lousy precedent for other YKTTW'ed tropes. This trope doesn't have to be my idea, it can be anyone's. But if that's how we're going to play it, then write your own description. Get your own examples. Leave mine out of it. I would have aborted this entire project at the YKTTW stage if I knew that Trope Repair Shop was going to force it to have a completely different tone than what I had intended.
See you in the discussion pages.do you truly intend to force the author of this page to watch it be misused in ways he had never intended?
Well, that's already happened a lot, and we've fixed it by redefining (see Even Evil Has Loved Ones and Nerds Are Sexy, to name two I was directly involved in). OTOH, in those cases, it was because the name misled people into thinking they knew what the trope was about, when they really didn't...
1)I'm sorry I really meant was thinking more of the character's catchphrase: he's not asking for permission. He's not being sarcastic, he is simply using "let's" as an indicator of intent. People can say "Let's rock and roll", "let's do this" "let's" etc and it is just part of my language that people use "let us" as an indicator of intent in response to circumstances.
2)Similarly evil: In my language, people say "necessary evil", they talk of people having to do evil, they talk of evil as an object rather than abstract, they talk of good characters having evil in them, they talk of evil characters having good in them. What they don't do is describe trying to kill someone as "mean".
3)The group perception is that the name is fine.
4)No, I'm saying that when it comes to examples that don't match the trope but seem strongly related, then we have no problem getting those.
5) No, it's not misuse. No, it's not a shitty thing to do. An alternative reality where I don't have to deal with you? Yes, please. Tropes and titles and words are social constructs. We know what they are only from taking a sample of humanity and asking them about it. We try to find tropes, not just one guy's opinion. If you don't want to put aside your opinion and do what makes a more accurate trope then go away.
Minor aside, Let's Get Dangerous! = normally ineffectual character (usually hero) is about to engage in some Badassery; Then Let Me Be Evil = not-that-evil character (never hero) decides to say "screw it" and be really evil.
edit: whoops, little bit wrong about the meaning of TLMBE
edited 27th Nov '10 6:25:45 PM by rodneyAnonymous
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.1) Oh, like Lets Be Evil? Well, then by all means, let's rename the trope to that. Let me apologize for thinking you did not understand the possible ambiguity of the word "let".
2) You're right. It is wrong of me to treat you as being evil for renaming this trope. After all, what you did was a necessary evil in disregarding my opinion to do better for the wiki.
3) Of course. An overriding crowner vote was reached, and that's what really matters.
4) So, you're admitting that these examples do not match the trope, but we let them stay on this page because simply disbanding them altogether would lead the wiki to a greater evil?
5) Good advice. I suggest you follow it and lock this thread.
edit: Well, Rodney, you're not the only one to be confused in this manner, so it looks like the issue is closed.
edited 27th Nov '10 6:32:38 PM by SomeGuy
See you in the discussion pages.
Crown Description:
Vote up for yes, down for no.

I'm normally content to let sleeping dogs lie on issues like this, but I thought of two examples today that simply do not make sense with this trope under the current title-
These are both examples of the trope, but Then Let Me Be Evil implies, quite incorrectly here, that the subject of this trope (1) believes their actions to be evil, (2) believes they owe an explanation to anyone as to why they are the way they are, and also (3) that they are evil at all. On the morality scale this character type is almost always grey, not black.
I'm not suggesting we bring back The Shylock (I only used it in the first place because I was not satisfied with other suggestions), but we really need something better than Then Let Me Be Evil. Even something as simple as Then I Shall Be Dark negates all the incorrect assumptions listed above and mostly conveys the correct meaning.
edited 12th Sep '10 4:29:13 PM by SomeGuy
See you in the discussion pages.