Topic on Forum:Trope Talk

The trope's name is horrendous. The scientist (or engineer) doesn't need to be reluctant or insane. All that matters is that he creates something that could potentially be used for evil, and isn't portrayed as evil. A completely willing scientist or engineer that displays none of the typical marks of a fictional madman that will work for anyone who pays him because he is more concerned far more about his work than how that work will be applied, and continues this view after his work has been used with horrific applications, explicitly qualifies. I think either the name or the definition needs to change. Also I think there is potential to split the trope up into at least 2 tropes e.g.: one of which actually requires the scientist (or engineer) to been coerced into compliance (perhaps with the requirement that the coercion is done by an evil faction), and another one where the morality of the 'character' is pretty much ignored and is more than likely treated (at least at first, a change of viewpoint later on might be a spoiler) more as a living Applied Phlebotinum that just pumps out inventions for whoever has it and: feeds it money, requested equipment, and attends to its metabolic needs; than a person with moral responsibility.

How about "Inventor Under Duress" as a possible replacement?

It's less assumptive than the previous name and covers the same ground.

Note sure how the trope should be split though, but it sounds like that might be a good idea.

Or "Engineer Exploited for Evil"? It's got that Alliteration.

I like QS' suggestion.

I'm not sure how well the implications of "exploited' work with a scientist working for evil under his own free will, even so it is an huge improvement over the current name. Exploit however, has multiple definitions, including:

• "make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource)" - the scientist/engineer that is amoral and not portrayed as evil is probably portrayed more as a resource than a person, so even if "exploited" makes my mind jump to the following definition, it still fits.
• "benefit unfairly from the work of (someone), typically by overworking or underpaying them."- blackmailing an engineer to work for you is exploitation.

If we are not going to do a split and are only going to do a rename, I don't think its going to get much better than "Engineer Exploited for Evil".

Despite the effort it would take, I honestly prefer splitting it because I see only 2 versions of the trope, and I think they are quite different from each other.