Complaining: Spotlight Stealing Squad

This page appears to be a magnet for complaining and justifying edits. Is there anything we can do about this or is it just the nature of the beast?

Speaking as someone who keeps it on her watchlist...it's a bile magnet.

I've never tried to clean it up, although I axe justifying edits where I see them.

I admit to having it on my watchlist too, and I once had to remove almost a whole paragraph of complaining about Filia from Slayers Try.

Yeah I realized that despite Tropes Are Not Bad, a lot of the examples seem to have negative implications. I mean, how much spotlight does the protagonist steal to be considered a Spotlight-Stealing Squad?

If there is a small handful of core characters at most, I would think that any of them wouldn't qualify for this. This is more for like ensembles, or when a minor character steals the spotlight from major characters.

People complaining about Batman being in Justice League? What?

The description itself implies this is a bad trope, so that's not helping. The title too seems rather negative, what with "stealing the spotlght" stuff.

I guess we could try to make it an objective trope about out of focus protagonists if we don't already have that. Otherwise, in my opinion, we'd end up attracting a lot of 'I don't like this character showing up all the time' and there's no end to that.

I'd say it's the name that's largely responsible, though this will always be a problematic trope. If you use a term like spotlight stealing people are going to assume it's a complaining trope.

It's too bad the name can't be vaguely negative without attracting complaining. "Spotlight-stealing squad" is, like, perfect. Would the description getting some love make enough of a difference?

edited 20th Mar '12 12:05:30 AM by rodneyAnonymous

I would think the name indicates the other characters being robbed of focus, not a character getting more attention than some readers want.

^^ I do like the name. Before going for a rename we could at least try cleanup. I cleaned up the Naruto example the other day so it probably wouldn't be impossible. It'd require a lot of familiarity with the series though.

edited 19th Mar '12 9:55:43 PM by Arha

That is the trope, though, isn't it? Spotlight Stealing Squad is when a character takes up screen time that usually would be divided amongst the ensemble. If a character is just getting more attention without shutting out the rest of the cast, that would just be Ascended Extra.

Yeah. I'm stating that to me, the name indicates the trope. The problem seems to be some indicate the trope with any character getting more attention than some feel that character should, which is not this trope. It's not getting more attention. It's the others getting less.

just clean up or change the description?

hm?

Is this really an example?

• The original story members in the Valkyria Chronicles anime. The game's minor playable characters that they added to the show basically just sit in the background and do nothing. Most of them haven't gotten more than a couple of lines.

What it boils down to is that the minor characters got minor roles, and the major characters got major roles.

...That doesn't even seem to be the trope at all. The trope would be if the minor characters suddenly were the main characters, right?

Right. It's cut. Just asking to be sure.

...Maybe they meant that minor characters were made even more minor? Still not the trope, but at least then I'd understand what they meant.

It's entirely possible to play the game without them apppearing at all. If you're careful about not letting people die, it's actually very likely most of them won't show up, as you never or rarely replace the ones you have.

edited 28th Mar '12 12:14:49 PM by Feather7603

{{18}}: About it... the only thing in the description implying it is "if the minor characters suddenly were the main characters" is the mention of Replacement Scrappy and Spotlight-Stealing Title in the fourth paragraph. The third paragraph is "Most commonly happens to The Hero, The Lancer, or the Ensemble Dark Horse."

We're getting a few bad examples about popularity rather than focus.

Such as?

edited 1st Apr '12 9:25:23 PM by DragonQuestZ

c + p:

The Lion King movies have Timon & Pumbaa add the comic relief to them and are considered the most popular characters in the series. Lampshaded by Simba on House of Mouse Discussed by the filmmakers of Pirates of the Caribbean in the case of Johnny Depp, who took what was intended to be a secondary character, went wild in the wardrobe department (without Disney's permission) and pulled focus on every opportunity. Will was originally supposed to be an Errol Flynn-esque romantic hero with Jack Sparrow as the Loveable Rogue, big brother sidekick instead of the Straight Man to Depp's Ensemble Darkhorse Anti-Hero. In hindsight, of course, Depp was marketed as the star of the film. On that note, Alice in Wonderland might as well have been called The Mad Hatter of Wonderland with all the advertising it had.