Put Them All Out Of My Misery and Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds

The pages for Put Them All Out of My Misery and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds state that they are the opposite of each other, but it seems to me like they can overlap, especially if the former category is a Type 4. In fact, I actually found one example (the Dogville one) listed in both pages.

Can someone go further into detail about exactly what the differences are?

edited 12th Sep '10 4:49:15 PM by RL_Nice

Put Them All Out of My Misery is when a villain decides that the only way to cure the world of its ills is to destroy it (and presumably start over). Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds is when someone is so miserable that the only way he can stand to end things is to take everybody else with him — in short, he's an Omnicidal Maniac that you are supposed to sympathize with.

edited 12th Sep '10 5:05:42 PM by Fighteer

But it seems possible to be both at the same time.

Say for instance, if a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds wants to destroy the world and all its ills because it is making him/her miserable.

The Put Them All Out of My Misery page states that you can have a villain who has experienced an injustice and wants to destroy the world for it. Isn't it very possible (probable, even) for a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds to have experienced an injustice?

It seems to me that the only difference is that a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds is explicitly sympathetic while a Put Them All Out of My Misery villain doesn't have to be.

But the question still stands. Isn't it possible to be both?

From the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:

"If a character snaps, or their actions are directly driven by their own suffering, it falls under this trope. However, if they literally have an overall plan to destroy the world, to get back at society, or are logically motivated by something that happened in the past, don't put it here. See Put Them All Out Of My Misery. "

WDoW is purely emotionally driven. PTAOoMM is not operating purely emotionally. He's considered the situation and decided that <whatever it is> must be destroyed as a bad thing.

edited 12th Sep '10 6:35:25 PM by Madrugada

"Put Them All Out Of My Misery is when a villain decides that the only way to cure the world of its ills is to destroy it (and presumably start over)." - Fighteer

That's strange, because some varieties of it seem like they could overlap with Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. I think what each is fundamentally about could be better explained. Judging from that description, though, I guess Ra's is a good example?

Let me try again. Both characters want to wipe everything out. If the character's primary motivation is his or her own suffering, it's Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. If the character's primary motivation is the evil/sickness/suffering in the world, it's Put Them All Out of My Misery.

These tropes used to be merged under Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, but it was observed that they fit into these two distinct categories and were therefore split.

I suppose it's possible to have some overlap if a character demonstrably has both motivations, but it seems like one should normally take precedence over the other. Anyway, if you find examples in the wrong trope, feel free to move them.

edited 13th Sep '10 6:48:41 AM by Fighteer

If it's about the suffering "in the world" then shouldn't it be "Put Them All Out Of THEIR Misery?"

Okay, the creation of Put Them All Out of My Misery still makes no sense to me. I've read the original discussion that lead to its creation, and it was started by someone stating that Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds was getting Trope Decayed by people just adding villains they felt sorry for. The plan seemed to be to create a new trope for what Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds was originally meant to be (bascially as school-shooter turned Up To Eleven), and leave the original page for Villainous Woobies. Instead, about halfway through the conversation, Put Them All Out of My Misery randomly got turned into this, which doesn't solve the original problem (people are now adding plain old Villainous Woobies to the actual trope page for W Do W instead of just linking to it), and creates some new ones.

As the previous poster stated, the title doesn't make sense. If they're out to destroy the world because they think it's suffering than it should be Put Them All Out of Their Misery, or Mercy Genocide, or something like that. If it's "a Non-Malicious Monster who doesn't realise that his plans to alter earth's atmosphere will kill everyone else" he's still not out to actually put everyone out of his misery. And most of the other examples seem to just be Omnicidal Maniac + another trope. For instance, Ra's Al-Ghul, who was held out as the perfect example of PTA Oo MM isn't trying to put them all out of his misery: he's just an Omnicidal Maniac crossed with an Animal Wrongs Group. Others seem to be Omnicidal Maniac + Nietzsche Wannabe or Humans Are Bastards which actually goes under Misanthrope Supreme.

On top of that, the page doesn't have a lot of internal consistency. The first line says that "this is a villain who's miserable, blames it on everyone else, and wants to kill them all because of it". Sounds like the original Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds (who in the words of the original article, hurts so much that the only way they can get over it is by making everything "go away"). Next line, apparently he's just trying to cure an affliction. Huh? I didn't actually know what the difference between the two was supposed to be until I came to this page and read this discussion. And there would actually be a lot of overlap, as face it, if you're out to wipe out humanity because you think Humans Are Bastards, you've probably got a pretty tragic backstory in there somewhere that convinced you of this. It really feels like splitting hairs to me.

As far as I can tell, the new trope is confusingly named, confusing to read, and doesn't actually solve the problem it was originally meant to solve. Or am I totally misreading both the original discussion and the page? (and if I am that's still probably proof that it needs clarifying)

edited 30th Sep '10 10:55:14 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar