Seasonal Rot / Sequelitis / Audience Alienating Era Cleanup

Yeah, just axe it and start from scratch.

Let's cut the mention of the 2020 dork age too, and put a note saying that this Era should not be mentioned on the page till 2025, if applicable.

Edited by magnumtropus on Mar 3rd 2022 at 3:36:42 PM

YMMV.Dragon Ball Z

• Seasonal Rot: The Buu Saga is seen as this by some fans. Most of the issues pointed are the story being more over the top than ever, Piccolo being Demoted to Extra, Buu lacking any solid motivation, Vegeta making a Senseless Sacrifice despite an attempt to develop him, Goku and Vegeta being the Spotlight-Stealing Squad again when the series appeared to be focusing on Gohan, the divisive characters of Goten and Trunks, and having an Idiot Plot where characters repeatedly make dumb decisions in order to pad out the story. However, this sentiment seems be based more in the West. In Japan, Buu was a more popular villain than Cell (who was seen as a step down from Frieza) and Japan's audience wanted Goku back (he was ranked #1 on a fan poll) so they didn't mind him taking over the last leg of the arc along with Vegeta (who ranked #2 on the same poll). They actually liked Trunks/Gotenks significantly more than Gohan and saw the latter as something of a Replacement Scrappy for the former; in that same poll, Trunks is ranked 3rd followed by Gotenks at 4th, and ratings dropped when Gohan came back in the story, after spiking while Gotenks was fighting Buu in the time chamber.

The entry suggests that the sentiment isn't universal and that many Japanese fans liked the Buu arc just fine, better than Cell arc which the Western fanbase liked better. Should I rewrite and move this into an Americans Hate Tingle entry?

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 12th 2022 at 7:00:06 AM

Is Americans Hate Tingle for more than just characters? ...Eh, maybe it is.

It can apply to works. I just don't think it can apply to like parts of works like story arcs from the trope description since DBZ is pretty well-liked worldwide.

That's fair. Maybe Broken Base?

By the way, the summary in the OP for the TRS decision on Seasonal Rot is incorrect: it says the TRS decision was 6 months for the end of the show or season. It's actually 6 months for the end of the show or 1 year for the end of a season, whichever comes first.

Paging ~magnumtropus

I've removed this entry from Seasonal Rot because it of the time clause. Season 2 aired on HBO Max between 4th November - 23rd December 2021, and was made available to Rooster Teeth First Members on 23rd March 2022. So, I'm not sure if this means Season 2 can be assessed from the 23rd December 2022 or the 23rd March 2023 (I'm assuming the latter date), but it can't be done yet. It also has the clashing issue that the established gen:LOCK fandom dislikes it, but professional critics like it, but that can be dealt with when the season becomes eligible for review.

• When gen:LOCK left Rooster Teeth and went to Hbo Max, the results became widely disliked by fans, as the Darker and Edgier route was so bleak and miserable it became joyless between the characters being jerks, the increased visceral violence, and important characters getting unceremoniously killed. The scripts also downplayed the slick mecha action and character moments which won people in season 1 in favor of half-baked political drama, and the addition of sexually explicit content shocked viewers in the wrong way.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Apr 9th 2022 at 10:05:29 AM

Regarding the Cartoon Network entry mentioned on the previous page, should it be cut, or does anyone have any other thoughts on it?

i want to ask if this entry i wrote is okay for Audience-Alienating Era under its new definition or if it should be moved somewhere else

• Kirby is generally considered to have undergone a slump in the mid-2000s, sometime between the departure of Masahiro Sakurai as the series director in 2003 and the stepping-in of Shinya Kumazaki as the current director in 2008. Kirby Air Ride, while Vindicated by History, was overlooked and dismissed when it first came out due to its relative simplicity and genre shift, and Sakurai was unhappy with it because of his disillusionment from the gaming industry as a whole. After that, a grab bag of Kirby games were sporadically released and garnered mixed reception: Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (a Metroidvania which is polarizing to this day), Kirby: Canvas Curse (a fun but insubstantial game, also largely an excuse to show off the then-new Nintendo DS's gimmicks), and Kirby: Squeak Squad (the most "traditional" of this era, mostly considered So Okay, It's Average). All of these were handled by B-teams or outside developers, as the main team was focusing on the GameCube Kirby title, which was deep in Development Hell and caused even more disappointment in these lower-key games. Kirby Super Star Ultra was considered a good sign that the era was ending, even if it didn't have much in the way of original content, and while Kirby's Epic Yarn was met with some initial disappointment due to not being a traditional Kirby game, it was still warmly-received for its unique art style and identity. Finally, the long-lost GameCube Kirby was re-imagined (after three failed attempts) as Kirby's Return to Dream Land, which marked what many consider to be the start of a new era for the series, with a much more consistent release schedule of higher-quality titles.

Looks good and as a huge Kirby fan, I can verify it as the case.

The 2000s are indeed the low point of the Kirby franchise, but even then, the worst games are So Okay, It's Average at worst as there are no Kirby games despised by the Kirby fandom in general (even leaving bias aside).

You should mention Kirby Mass Attack for the DS (which plays more like a Lemmings game than a traditional Kirby platformer) as it was released about a month before Return to Dream Land.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Apr 10th 2022 at 6:02:51 AM

thanks! kirby mass attack seems to be fairly loved or at least Vindicated by History so decided not to include it in that entry

Wrong thread

Edited by PlasmaPower on Apr 20th 2022 at 6:50:54 AM

While the Cartoon Network example has been cut, there's a similar example for Nickelodeon that I think has a lot of the same problems— as in, it's written mostly from the perspective of the network's Periphery Demographic, and doesn't actually take into account how successful it was with its target audience.

The entry is here, if you want to read it:

Edited by ElSquibbonator on May 2nd 2022 at 11:25:31 AM

Were the shows successful with kids, though? I was a kid (about 8 to 10 years old) during the CN Real era, and the only new show I watched was BrainRush — I thought the others were dumb. Most of these shows were cancelled after a season or two, so I doubt they were very successful with even the target audience.

The 2014 onwards era, however, might not count. It does (did?) have less content... but kids liked TTG, right?

Maybe the late-2000s one can be put back, since it's pretty clear that Cartoon Network didn't have any breakout hits during that time, but that's it. I still think the late-2010s one wasn't sufficiently unpopular with its target audience to be considered an "audience-alienating era".

I think a big problem with a lot of these "audience-alienating eras" for kids' networks is that most of them are written from the perspectives of adult fans, based on whether the shows they liked were airing at the time. But that doesn't reflect how popular the networks and their shows actually were with their target audiences. That, I'd like to know.

Edited by ElSquibbonator on Jun 17th 2022 at 10:45:43 AM

Yeah, that's been a problem on the site in general for a while now in general, I've seen it in other tropes like Network Decay. It's okay for adults to enjoy children's media, but it does lead to this weird bias where you discount the opinions of children for your own, as if that's what matters here. Nostalgia Filter is also a factor, where the shows/movies adults called crap in 2009 are celebrated now as the kids watching them at the time grew up and supplanted the older people online.

There's also how long both examples are: Even though they're separated into bullets, if they'd valid they could be more sussinct.

Luckily I think CN Real has evaded the Nostalgia Filter, because even those of us who were kids at the time seem to mostly just remember wanting to watch cartoons instead.

As some who lived through CN Real, I agree. Though honestly, I just saw it as the network experimenting with their content rather than something truly alienating.

Also, Unnatural History was pretty neat.

I watched a lot of Destroy, Build, Destroy, personally. At the same time though I definitely remember complaining that there's "no cartoons", so, yeah.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 3rd 2022 at 6:32:18 AM

I actually liked that show too, would have been better for something like GSN (I think)

What about the Nickelodeon example? I agree with the person who brought it up that it doesn't seem to focus on the target audience.

Edited by costanton11 on May 5th 2022 at 8:32:00 AM

Okay, I gotta ask: is Superman (Brian Michael Bendis) truly an Audience-Alienating Era? The entry reads:

"While not universally hated, Superman (Brian Michael Bendis) is widely disliked by many Superman fans for a variety of reasons, with many seeing it as the biggest example of DC's poor creative direction around the end of The New '10s. The run was already met with immense scepticism before it debuted, owing to forcibly ending the beloved Peter J. Tomasi run on the book, and Bendis' extremely controversial reception, and this only compounded as the run progressed and Bendis' run became infamous for making widely divisive decisions which alienated long-time fans, most infamous among them being his decision to give Jon Kent a Plot-Relevant Age-Up (the backlash to Bendis would infamously mock fans for in both the book itself and on twitter) and have Clark publicly reveal himself as Superman, both of which were derided as spitting in the face of fans. Bendis' run also became known for its weak villains, with a large amount of time spent on Generic Doomsday Villain Rogal Zaar and the overlong, directionless "Leviathan" storyline which eventually petered out into an Aborted Arc despite continual promotion, as well as his well-known quirks such as meandering dialogue and scattershot approach to continuity and established mythology. All in all, despite the substantial push, Bendis' run would end unceremoniously after a little over two years and leaving Phillip Kennedy Johnson to pick up the pieces."

First of, the entry kinda shoots itself in the foot several times by stating that the Bendis era isn't as hated as much as it is divisive.

Secondly, websites and reviewers like Superman Homepage, Comic-Watch, Fortress of Solitude and DC Comics News have positive reviews for the issues directly written by Bendis so there's support for Bendis' comics.

Third, the general consensus for the Bendis era is that "good concepts with bad execution, Superman as a character has a pretty good portrayal but the villains are mediocre", so I sincerely don't know whether the people who hate this run are either a vocal minority or a very sizeable crowd.

Fourth, last time I checked, Audience-Alienating Era applies when

1. the run is a critical and financial disappointment

2. any changes caused by this run are reverted by later stories

3. any time this story is referenced to, it's done in a negative and mocking manner.

So, what do you say?

By the way, I already asked this at Is this an example? to get a proper consensus?

What period of time do these comics cover? From what I can tell from the work and creator page, he didn't start writing for Superman until 2017 or 2018. So, either the entry is just barely in scope, or it won't be in scope until 2023.

But, yes, as written that entry comes across as "divided fandom" rather than "alienated fandom".

Sorry for the late reply. Anyway, Bendis only started work on Superman comics until 2018, with the release of Action Comics #1000 (April 2018) and concluded his work on December 2020. And yes, the entry describes the fandom as divided, not the fandom rejecting the whole run. Even Is this an example? agrees.

So, what should we do?

Edited by MasterHero on May 14th 2022 at 9:28:09 AM

Well, it's definitely not an entry as written because fan division is misuse. However, the fact that his run of comics only began in 2018, it's not even eligible for considering right now. It has to wait until 5 years after it begins. So, that's 2023.