My Thoughts On The Karma Houdini Trope

NOTE: gjjones suggested to me that I post this here for further review! But at the same time, I don't want to beat any dead horses and be treated as a pariah! I would try the Trope Repair Shop, but I can't; The 50 thread limit had been activated! Please try to understand!

To Whom It May Concern:

Back in September 7, 2023, after doing some research and thinking on my part beforehand, I put in a "Note To Editors"'Section for the Karma Houdini Trope Page concerning instructions for users to follow so that the trope wouldn’t be misused!

But then, in December 27, 2023, for one reason or another, the Note To Editors Section I had created with the very intention to help reduce misuse of the trope had been deleted by this user named Ultimatum.

Apparently, one day ago, according to Vilui, they gave me this message!

So, I figured I would try and follow their instructions.

The thing is, my intention with specifying certain tropes is to prevent them from being misused and I thought other users might use some help, and keep in mind that my own personal studies and thoughts on this subject are what made me think of this being a good idea to prevent Karma Houdini Trope Misuse:

According to the dictionary, Karma means:

“a situation in which things happen to someone as a result of their previous actions, or the force that makes this happen.”

With all this in mind, I would like to propose a Karma Houdini Cleanup Thread for this sort of thing since the trope in question has been misused quite a lot and a good number of characters should be under Karma Houdini Warranty instead! If it worked with the Too Bleak, Stopped Caring & So Bad It's Horrible Cleanup Threads, then we can make this work too!

As the old saying goes, what comes around goes around (which is an idiom used to say that if someone treats other people badly, then that person will eventually be treated badly by someone else)!

Before you can post on TRS, it is important to do a wick check first.

Read here on how to do a wick check.

I'm going to repeat what I said on ATT: which is that this is a change that would make the trope functionally meaningless

Yeah, I don't think the trope is the one with a problem. Karma is not the same as "anything bad happening".

Personally, I think both Karma Houdini and Karma Houdini Warranty should be axed, since the former is just "Waaah! My least-favorite character wasn't ripped to shreds by a pack of wild boars!" and the latter is just Laser-Guided Karma under a less-intuitive name.

I would like to point out this isn't the only time OP has proposed an absolutely insane redefinition of a trope based on their own personal taste

• Here they suggest "fixing" misuse of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring by applying a set of ridiculously strict rules no piece of media could ever actually meet

• Here they propose that only Jerkasses or other unlikable characters should be Base Breaking Characters and provide a huge list of characters who they think it's unfair that they qualify, based on them being nice characters and good people

• Here, they make a whole thread about how Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game should only include games that are absolutely unplayable

• Here they spend multiple messages making it clear that they think Ensemble Dark Horse should apply to any character who isn't a Scrappy or Base-Breaking Character, and that removals are unfair to the character's fans

• Here, they completely reverse their previous statements on TBSC and say it should apply to any cynical or depressing work

It's kind of a pattern that's starting to worry me

Edited by Libraryseraph on Feb 9th 2024 at 10:46:21 AM

Yeah...

But getting to the gist of what OP is arguing currently: enforcing the rule that absolutely nothing bad can ever happen to a Karma Houdini massively—and needlessly—restrains its definition. Reading through the description, there seems to be more focus on a villain's "ultimate punishment"—when all their accumulated misdeeds bring about their downfall—only for them to escape justice for their crimes. The Big Bad can still face some setbacks to their evil plans as a result of their actions, but what matters more broadly is that the narrative does not deal out an ultimate punishment for them. Remember, Tropes Are Flexible; putting severe restrictions on trope definitions contradicts the idea of tropes in itself.

And responding to : we can't just throw out a trope with 17472 wicks. And Karma Houdini Warranty is not necessarily redundant with Laser-Guided Karma; it's for when a character who is initially a Karma Houdini faces their punishment in another installment. Laser-Guided Karma's laconic states that karma occurs at "opportune times", while Karma Houdini Warranty is for when karma arrives late (i.e. not on time). This one is on the TRS Queue, but not due to concerns regarding the definition of "karma".

Edited by jandn2014 on Feb 9th 2024 at 11:08:56 AM

I'm sorry, but I still can't see a difference between Karma Houdini Warranty and Laser-Guided Karma, other than that the former's name is more ambiguous.

While, as others have already mentioned, it is true that Karma Houdini Warranty has some serious problems, the two tropes are not really the same, nor are they that similar in my opinion.

Edited by SoyValdo7 on Feb 9th 2024 at 1:30:47 PM

The thread on potentially duplicate tropes is this way.

I do somewhat agree that there's a certain intrinsic problem with Karma Houdini as a trope. Specifically:

Karma Houdini is used by editors to, essentially, complain about the way a story ended. They feel that a particular villain deserved to be punished and wasn't. Occasionally you could argue that it is still objective if it is unambiguous that a character was a villain who deserved to be punished, didn't get a properly-convincing face-heel turn, and wasn't sufficiently punished by the narrative; but each of these is often subjective, especially because the "complainy" way the trope is often used means that editors feel free to ignore things that the writer clearly intended to provide the catharsis that Karma Houdini says they didn't include.

(An added issue is that this trope is sometimes applied to villains who undergo a heel-face turn without first being punished or suffering, and sometimes isn't, and the difference mostly seems to be whether editors personally feel that what the villain did before turning was so severe that punishment is required or not - and this is often subjective.)

If the trope was created today there would be two options:

• Examples must unambiguously highlight the lack of consequences for the villain; there must be a scene or line specifically and clearly intended to evoke a sense of injustice in the viewer at the lack of punishment, and this must be unambiguously identified in the description when adding it. "I personally don't feel they suffered enough" is not a trope; it has to be invoked.

• Or, alternatively, it would just be a YMMV trope.

I'm skeptical that these are possible today, but honestly "just toss it in the YMMV bin" is what would happen if this trope didn't currently exist and someone tried to create it today.

Edited by Aquillion on Feb 11th 2024 at 12:28:18 PM

I mean, like everything this statement requires a wick check to prove. Additionally, people complaining isn't always the trope's fault; we don't like to completely alter tropes just because the community likes to whine.

Additionally, point one is just... standard contextualizing. Like every example should already have that info, ideally.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 11th 2024 at 3:19:53 PM

A proper wick check would require that we agree on what we're looking for, though. If we're in agreement that just stating that this person is a villain and that they evaded punishment is not enough, that would be almost every example. If they also have to demonstrate that the work itself clearly intends us to feel that they got away with everything, I'm not sure there are any valid examples at all.

But just skimming the wicks for the anime subpage, here's some thoughts about common issues I noticed and entries that seem like they might point to particular problems and possible solutions:

Mr. Kimura's behavior is always Played for Laughs. Maybe that's inappropriate but that's an audience reaction - at no point in the series is he ever treated as a villain who might be punished.

You can feel how strongly whoever wrote this example felt about this! Apparently a slap in the face wasn't enough punishment for them; that's certainly how they feel, but is it a trope?

...so, he was punished. Repeatedly. He was humiliated, felt guilt, and then was punished more on top of that (and I'm not an expert on the series but I vaguely recall lots of other bad stuff happened to him, too.) This is just not an example. It does point to possibly a subtrope or related trope where a criminal avoids legal punishment for their crimes, though, which is possibly more clear-cut.

This particular example goes on and on and on, so I cut it off here. I feel like I've seen a lot of this related to that specific scene in particular (where the Black Knights discover that Lelouch was lying to them and using them and turn against him as a result) - it evokes a lot of strong emotion, as it was intended to, and naturally people side with Lelouch given the Sympathetic P.O.V.. I'm not sure we're actually supposed to see them as villains deserving of punishment, though; it was a complex situation.

...so he became a senile old man and then died, and that means he wasn't punished? I guess we can argue that everyone suffers that "punishment", but this gets back to what I said earlier about how a subtrope that is just about avoiding legal punishments might be a good thing to create and could at least clean things up a bit.

This gets back to the "authorial intent" thing. Ryuk is clearly portrayed in the series as a sort of force of nature; the work clearly never intended for viewers to be sitting there eagerly awaiting his comeuppance. But some editors will, anyway.

This provides a ton of conflict but the basic premise doesn't make sense. If the fused character is considered a different person then they experienced ego death in the moment of fusion (if willingly.) Either way, ultimately everything they did amounted to nothing and they themselves ceased to exist.

(There are also a lot of much briefer examples with less context that I'd highlight in a proper wick check, but I feel like the real problem with the trope isn't the low-context examples, it's the examples that provide enough context to make it really really obvious that this is about an editor not liking how a particular arc or story ended.)

Anyway I'm not sure I'd suggest changes to Karma Houdini but I do feel like that subtrope / related trope for people who evaded legal punishment even if they suffered in other ways might be tropeable. Though there are some even more specific tropes for that which are listed under Miscarriage of Justice (which is not that trope, as it says.)

Edited by Aquillion on Feb 11th 2024 at 12:39:49 PM

Okay, may have misread what point 1 was about. No, requiring a scene to make the audience feel the injustice isn't currently needed, you're right. And nobody is disputing that the trope is misused; I pointed out the need for a check because statements like "I've seen a lot of misuse like this" doesn't cut it.

The thing is, there are clearly deliberate examples of Karma Houdini. The current page image, Mr. Burns, is meant to be someone who faces no real repercussions of his evil due to his wealth and power. This isn't a subjective interpretation or fans complaining that their least favorite character wasn't punished. It doesn't really make sense to classify that example as YMMV.

Yeah. The question is "how would we establish that a particular example is deliberate."

My half-serious idea above might work. I suspect that it would be easy enough to find jokes from the Simpsons specifically highlighting the fact that Burns avoided consequences, although it's tricky for The Simpsons because Status Quo Is God and he definitely does suffer at least temporary consequences in certain episodes.

But there's probably also examples where it's intentional but it would be hard to say exactly how we'd show it's intentional.

Even in the list of examples above, say - I could look at Ryuk and say "yeah there's no way the author intended us to see him as a villain deserving of punishment who evaded it" but it'd be tricky for me to articulate how I know this beyond just gesturing plaintively at everything about how he's presented.

And then you get into weirder examples like the Diamonds from Steven Universe - complaints about them not getting enough punishment are everywhere and extremely high-volume. And perhaps they're not wrong but this is probably mostly the result of the series having an extremely rushed ending for out-of-universe reasons. I don't think we're intended to see them as a Karma Houdini from the perspective of authorial intent. They did get defeated and sort-of humiliated - well, White Diamond did, the other two switched sides on their own - and ended up giving up their space empire, but lots of viewers felt that that wasn't enough for people who were portrayed as murderous Space Authoritarians. I think that there's a valid audience reaction trope there, but if there's also going to be a non-audience-reaction version, it would require an extremely clear line to avoid cases like that being placed in the example section.

I know I haven't been taking part of this discourse, but I definatly agree that many see Karma Houdini as one of those Bad Tropes that tropers complain about every time it happens. I've always wondered if there should be a YMMV trope about audiences thinking a character wasn't punished enough despite a Heel–Face Turn or actual punishment, kind of like an inverse Catharsis Factor, but I don't know if that would be used for soley complaining too.

And regarding this post, have there been any other instances of this troper editing restrictions onto the trope pages?

Edited by PlasmaPower on Feb 11th 2024 at 2:45:49 AM

I keep having difficulty with all sorts of things like this, like wicks and stuff.

@Libraryseraph

Look, I don't want to make any waves or anything nor sound rude, but this isn't just about you. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to try and make perfectly logical and sound improvements and fixes on what is likely deemed necessary, and to share ideas and discussions on what parts of TV Tropes can be improved on and fixed, without being treated like a pariah?

My thought process and how I perceive and view things is not the same as a normal person. It's something that I often struggle with.

Edited by P360360P on Feb 13th 2024 at 5:57:51 AM

My intuition on this is that we should make Karma Houdini a YMMV, and then create an "Above The Law Villain" for objective cases of villains who can never be dislodged from power (it would be distinct from Joker Immunity in that it's about the villain retaining their position and not just surviving every fight). But it would be quite an undertaking.

@Reymma

A good idea on paper, but let's see what the higher-ups think!

If so many people are constantly disagreeing with you and your proposed changes, is it possible they're not as "perfectly logical and sound" as you say they are?

Karma Houdini has plenty of misuse, that's no surprise. But the answer is not to arbritarily restrict its criteria to an excessively narrow degree.

A wick check is probably in order to refine examples and cut those that are blatant misuse.

Yeah, I am not unfairly treating you like a pariah, I am pointing out a pattern of behaviour that has progressed to you redefining tropes without permission. I'm not going to not mention that just because you think you're doing the right thing, or because you think it's too mean to point it out

@Arthur Eld @Libraryseraph

I wasn't trying to vilify you. I was just saying that my thought process is not the same as everyone else's. I just want to do what I can to help out around here like everyone else does and prevent misuse from occurring like anyone else would.

If anything, it's frustrating that (from my experience) when I try to do something that is meant to be good, it's considered bad, but when someone else does it, it's not the case for them.

(Kind of like a Moral Myopia situation if you will)

Edited by P360360P on Feb 13th 2024 at 8:12:08 AM

The thing is, people don't do this. We very specifically discourage people from making unilateral changes. This is why people are telling you to do a wick check. That's the only proper avenue here.