CM/MB Policy and Thread Culture

That's the thing, though. The "genre baseline" for children's animated media should be lower than across all media taken as a whole. We shouldn't apply the same heinousness standard for Disney films and slasher flicks.

Oh apologies, think my message gave the wrong impression, I just meant the two convos were happening concurrently, not that Disney villains were getting DQ'd because slashers exist lol

I guess the issue is just when it comes to characters like, for simple example since we've had plenty talk about him, Sykes...he may come from the genre of kids' films, but so do Frollo, Scar, General Mandible, etc., so there's still sometimes a—IMO unneeded, which is what this whole convo boils down to—comparison lodged when someone like Sykes comes up of "yeah he's from kids' media but kids' media can have genocidal tyrants like Frollo or familial murderers like Scar so he still doesn't pass the genre baseline"

When the approach should IMO just be "well he's a very dark murderer and child kidnapper in the film he comes from while being the worst character in the story so he shouldn't have to be compared to others from the genre"

Very much agreed that is where the argument boils down to.

Agreed too.

Ultimately just feel it just goes back into hypotheticals when we had the whole "this will open floodgates" argument before numerous times and that has not happened.

Begging pardon, but that is quite false - we did use to have a time where that floodgate was open and the trope got swamped with all manner of generic villains, groups and offscreen villains.

And we've loosened the restrictions on the latter two rules despite concerns of opening the floodgates and that didn't happen.

x2 That was a decade ago right?

Yeah after some of the rules are loosened I haven't seen much misuse to put things in. Redd White and some of the Dividuals consisting of 4 or more entities, alongside other things I forgot made sense.

That was before any sort of guidelines right? These new rules wouldn't be getting rid of guidelines, just some of the more restrictive nebulous ones? Obviously some candidates will be able to count that haven't before, but I'm seeing no real convincing evidence that this means we'll be swamped with an influx.

Edited by jjjj2 on Jan 26th 2024 at 10:14:29 AM

Nope. There were so-so guidelines before and a lot of examples had to be removed. Also, if you removed rules about offscreen villains and groups, either you are adding groups and offscreen villains or what is the point of this change?

For the sake of making sure we understand tone and because I see Russ Cargill has been named dropped enough times to give me a concern I'd like to point out he is absolutely not played seriously enough. When distraught over being outwitted, Cletus tries to make him feel better with a "Don't worry, I once lost a game of tic-tac-toe to a chicken" likewise, his trying to kill the heroes for foiling his plan is made silly "There are two things they don't teach you at Harvard Business School: how to take defeat and how to handle a shotgun." I'd just like to make sure we aren't looking at this and thinking Vile Villain, Saccharine Show because that's just incorrect.

Not weighing in regarding the changes, I'd just like that pointed out.

Edited by 43110 on Jan 26th 2024 at 10:22:06 AM

We didn't "remove" anything, we loosed some of the more arbitrary restrictions (like having a dead set cut off point for how large a group could be, whereas before it was 3 characters or less). Basically, exactly what is happening here with this rule change, just focusing on a different rule - keeping a general idea intact (the general baseline) while removing the more arbitrary part (the genre baseline). Just like now, one of the primary opposition points was that it would open the floodgates to "bad" candidates, and it simply never happened.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Jan 26th 2024 at 10:24:34 AM

That's tantamount to removing a rule about not having groups with more than 3 villains, though. It seems like you are making a semantic distinction.

FWIW, I think that already 2-3 member groups are questionable; you'd have to demonstrate that each villain is heinous by the standard of the story without being matched by others in the group, and more importantly, that they are acting for purely selfish reasons rather than group reasons.

Yes, and if you can prove that, then they count. That was actually the literal point of the rule change.

And… yes, that is tantamount to removing a rule about groups having more than three villains, because we’re discussing removing a rule about comparing works to others in the genre. That’s not a semantic difference, it’s just what’s happening.

The "no groups" rule already says that it's flexible in cases where individual agency can be established. I'm pretty sure I wrote that ages ago.

Yeah the hard limit of 3 was just an arbitrary number that had been adopted by the community as a whole in spirit but not letter, all that was changed was the perception, the rule of groups still has to be followed to prove that members are individually characterized/have agency to count.

There are times where tone could potentially be a problem, but I do agree that there's a threshold more often than not when the comedy won't overwhelm said threshold.

As for the "no comedic villains" rule, that was also meant to be flexible. The purpose was to establish that a valid CM candidate must cause fear and disgust in the audience, and that's much harder when they're also making us laugh. Xykon from The Order of the Stick was held out as a specific case where his humor only makes him more frightening because it helps establish how inhuman he is.

The comic stuff I've felt pretty confident on the thread's handling... Junko Enoshima's over the top executions and crude humour likewise just highlight what a psychopath she is to find enjoyment in the horrors she commits; Russ Cargill is a parody with the fishbowl and silly grumblings, trying to direct President Schwarzenegger to pick his Evil Plan, etc. (leaving aside Sideshow Bob also tries using nuclear weapons in a ridiculous scheme to kill Bart), we seem pretty good at picking out the differences and distinguishing.

It's been hard to follow, I was just responding to the above.

Edited by 43110 on Jan 26th 2024 at 3:08:42 PM

Yeah. Comedy, though, thought we were going to put a pin in that for now?

I think at this time myself and others are just going to give people like Sykes and Scroop a fair shake on the CM thread and see if we can better implement the use of the genre baseline. The baseline for kids' movie villains is definitely not so commonly high as to disqualify a child-threatening mobster, and I think some proper proposals and discussion of that fact will help all parties better understand that, AFAIK, the mods are trying to communicate that the genre baseline isn't as disqualifying as we originally thought. If that is the case, then I am fine with it, just so long as we acknowledge that every genre has thousands of villins and so just because a Frollo or Scar exists in kids' media, it shouldn't exclude a lower-scale villain like Sykes from qualifying.

Edited by Ravok on Jan 26th 2024 at 2:43:31 AM

Yes, that's what we've been trying to say.

Okie dokie then, I think that's been mostly cleared up my concerns now that it's been stated plainly. Thanks for the chat, all.

Edited by Ravok on Jan 26th 2024 at 2:57:09 AM

Fair.

I still find the genre baseline a weird notion on the other end—"because you would expect characters in this genre to qualify based on every other point in CM, they can't qualify in some sort of weird genre escalation contest". It's probably less important; I don't think anyone's actually shown an example of it, but it seems to make horror-based villains in particular focus on some idea that it should be a shock... even though by definition of 'expecting brutal and heinous things to come of a horror villain', it's not going to be shocking when they are.

It seems overkill that they need to potentially be excluded on notions of not being excessive enough in the genre most likely to go in for one-upping itself over time and making the requirements more ridiculous when the whole need for agency and motives would already get anything too generic.

Are we at least still taking individual stories in consideration or not?