December Daily: Then Let Me Be Evil

[resonant]

minoanmiss - "One of my favorite tropes is Then Let Me Be Evil. What do you think of it/have you explored it/so on and so forth?"

Ohh, this one hurts! I don't like to read about people being repeatedly hurt by the alleged good guys! It's too much like reading the news!

(It's probably less infuriating for me to read than the Sara Crewe/Cinderella plot where the person who's repeatedly hurt just remains good and nice until eventually fate rewards them for never going off on people who richly deserve it.)

A variant that I've seen in tumblr headcanons but not in real stories is one where the protag is hurt once too often by the 'good' guys, flees to the villain, and the villain says, "Oh, hell, no, you must be joking, are you telling me you didn't even get a lunch break? No health insurance? Nobody ever came around and said, 'Keep up the good work'? This will not stand!" Now that would be a genuine pleasure to read.

Anyone got any recs for anything in this subject area?




Specify a date if you want; otherwise I'll just answer them whenever.

This year, in addition to the usual kinds of questions, I'd also love to get storyish prompts. Storyish meaning you never know what you might get: two sentences of a story, or a description of a story that will never exist, or a love song about how much I like that trope, or a rant about my pet peeve about that trope, or I know nothing about that canon except what I see on social media and here's what I think it might be about, or Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate/Am Indifferent To that character, canon, or trope, or ...

As always, I'd love to hear about it if you're doing the meme too.


22. hypertwink - "21. Now that you've come back, is there a fandom that you want to dip your toe into? (Follow up: Are you apprehensive/excited about it?)"
23. slvrbld47 -- "MCU, Tony lives through Endgame: Miraculously. As a Consequence, versions of Tony Stark are flung through the Multiverse, ending up in every Fandom. Including Your Favorites. Tony Stark is the new little black dress. I would love to see Tony Stark a werewolf in TeenWolf..."
24. runpunkrun - "John and Rodney in 2020"
25. wychwood -- Favourite Due South secondary character?
26. ride4ever - "for any dS or C6D pairing that you ship, how that ship is doing in 2020."
27. reginagiraffe - "Hermione/Harry/Ron from Bed and Board in 2020"
28. laurenthemself -- "What grammatical (or punctuation, spelling) hill would you die on?"
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Comments

[pauraque]

It's too much like reading the news!

*snerk*

This trope was a big part of why I stopped watching Smallville. I think it can be done well, but if done poorly it just leaves you wondering why the supposed good guys are such assholes.

[runpunkrun]

Me too! I couldn't handle how Lex was being treated, and it was too stressful for me to watch.

[lunabee34]

I feel like there's a whole subgenre of HP that's got to fit this bill, the ones where the Weasleys are being paid to befriend Harry and the Slytherins are actually reasonable. LOL

[terrio]

You are not wrong about that, though I can't call one to mind at the moment.

There are also stories where Voldemort is really a good guy, or at least grossly misunderstood.

And then there's flat-out crack, such as Second Chances, which is all kinds of fun, though it could have used a good beta. One-sentence summary: Harry's pregnant; Voldemort is the daddy.

[lunabee34]

Oh dear. LOL Well thank you for setting up my next read for me. :)

*

[minoanmiss]

I really need to find a story idea for the "character flees to villain who is a much better boss" because I LOVE the idea of that variant.