Talk:Designated Monkey

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I wrote a lengthy text and it got lost on the way while trying to save it. Sorry.

Lucy Payne from DCI Banks - an example of this or not? I won't explain it in detail again. If you want to know about this character, watch the series...

In short, she's a Jerkass Woobie with a Dark and troubled Past who suffers horrible abuse once in prison (for her involvement in a series of child murders) and after premature release gets killed by a Knight Templar, although she definitely isn't a threat anymore due to being in a state of And I Must Scream. Inspector Banks sympathizes with her, initially hopes for a Heel Face Turn, and then is rather shocked over her outcome. However, most other in-universe characters hate her, and her death causes And there was a lot of rejoicing in the general population.

I seriously pity her, like Inspector Banks does. This may be the author's intention, or it may not.

Does something like this belong here? Or does the sympathy a few in-universe characters show for her rule out this trope?

I don't link the tropes in here now, as this reproducibly makes my browser crash-prone, as can be seen above.

When I re-read some existing examples, there is sometimes uncertainity in whether the author wants the audience to pity the character or not. See Wile E. Coyote from Looney Tunes, for example. So this doesn't rule out this trope apparently.

The problem is still that some important in-universe characters express honest pity over Lucy Payne's horrible fate, especially after they have apparently managed to grow her a conscience about her own wrongdoings. It's just that there is no person outside the police department who has the slightest sympathy, even though some of them are likely to know about her extremely abusive childhood.

Lucy Payne is quite obviously mentally ill but not to the point of being juridically insane, probably falling under some kind of reactive attachment disorder and complex PTSD. Initially she seems to see physical and sexual abuse as 'normal' expressions of affection. It's only thanks to Inspector Banks and Annie Cabbot that she appears to really understand what she has done at the end. And when it looks like she might be on the right track, she gets horribly mutilated in prison. (Details are not named about this incident, I think.) And then still there are people out there who hate her enough to kill her, even though she suffers from Locked-in Syndrome following her prison abuse.

I was a bit shocked over this biography which features nothing but abuse, violence and neglect from cradle to grave. And worse, except some cops who worked with her professionally, there is nobody in-universe who misses her the slightest after her death. (Her partner-in-crime died earlier during a police operation which ultimately led to her conviction. Not to forget, he was the main perpetrator and she was mostly a passive but supporting accomplice. And he not only abused the victims, he also abused her regularly.)

I also wondered if there are similar cases known in real life. The child-murdering couple has a real-life counterpart, Ian Brady and Myrah Hindley. But their further fate was far less horrific than that of Lucy Payne.

So after all, does this count, even though there are a few in-universe characters who think in a similar way to me? Possibly a case of Lampshade Hanging?

Rethinking this, I would say Lucy Payne does qualify. However, there is a problem in that this example is spoiler-rotten. Before you have seen the first episode of DCI Banks to the end, you don't know in how far she is involved in her husband's atrocities, and at the beginning of the other episode featuring Lucy Payne, you don't know who that mutilated woman is and why she gets killed until the reveal. It's only after watching both episodes that you can fully grasp what happened, and in my case much of the Designated Monkey status of Lucy Payne came from her murderer's Motive Rant at the end.

(There is a statement like "I (her murderer, who was herself victim to a serial raper and killer) must go through this unbearable pain, become a cripple (her genitals have been mutilated by said perpetrator), while scums like Lucy Payne are allowed to live in this world." This woman completely ignores the state in which she found Lucy Payne - herself mutilated even worse, and left in a state of And I Must Scream, already more pitiable than anything else despite the atrocities Lucy has previously committed.)

Together with the information that Lucy Payne was also a former victim of sexual and other forms of abuse before becoming a (co-)perpetrator (yet another spoiler), it made me think that it's completely unfair how most people in the films treat her, hate and abuse and ostracism everywhere as if she was a Complete Monster... while some of them are actually Not So Different from her without even realizing it. Especially the one who finally puts an end to her miserable life. (Which, ignoring the hostile intent, could almost be seen as an act of euthanasia, except that it is said that she bled to death rather slowly while being aware and fully paralyzed - not good. And possibly another spoiler.)

And it really doesn't help me "hating her" when I think of her Villainous BSOD at the end of episode 1 - one can't be completely sure that it's a honest reaction rather than manipulative pretense, but for me it appears honest and makes her later fate appear even more disproportionate. And - this is yet another spoiler again.

So when I add her, explain why and then mark all spoilers, basically the whole entry will be unreadable.