Talk:Sugary Malice

The passage allowing "innocent" or "oblivious" actions with evil result conflicts directly with the definition of "malice". Someone like the elderly sisters in Arsenic and Old Lace, who poison old men out of a twisted sense of kindness are anything but malicious. Contrast them with Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter who pastes a sweetly simpering face on top of explicitly evil intent, and who I think embodies what the trope name seems to be about.

We either need to exclude "non-malicious" examples from the definition, or use a word other than "Malice" in the trope name, because right now the trope is a mass of self-contradiction.

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Methinks non-malicious examples should go elsewhere, with clearer distinction drawn between.

What GentlemensDame said.

Arsenic and Old Lace, the muddying part is that murder is still murder in it. The old ladies may think they're doing the men a favor, but are tricking them by poisoning the wine. They have some sense of what they're doing is wrong when they warn Mortimer not to drink it. Where do they stand in terms of competence?

I think the ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace are of the Well-Intentioned Extremist type; yes, they're kindly old grandmother types, (clearly far higher on both morals and ethics than Jonathan, arguably the true antagonist of the story) but their actions are still evil even if they assume them to be good. (Although the Arsenic and Old Lace was clearly written with Black Comedy in mind.)

Pretty sure most of this sort of Trope falls under Obliviously Evil

To me, this trope has two variations: The Obliviously Evil where the person is genuinely sugary and doesn't get nor care that what they like to do arevery bad things to do to others, and the people who are somewhat conscious that what they are doing isn't good but still hide under the saccharine mask whether for PR reasons or to unnerve their victim more, which is closer to Affably Evil with a dash of the Stepford Smiler Insane Type.

Tropes are flexible, however.

So what, we separate the trope into "Oblivious Sugary Malice" and "Deceptive Sugary Malice"?

I doubt we have enough examples to split the trope yet. Maybe mention the two types in the description, and let readers draw their own conclusions?

Going with Rob here, describe the two types as variants of the trope the way we did in Stepford Smiler and repeat that Tropes Are Flexible.