Misused: Creators Pet

Also, "following the success of his movies" implies he's not hated enough, and that his higher prominence is a response to a positive fan reaction to him.

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I'm pretty sure Iron Man actually became more popular after his first movie was released (at least according to our YMMV page). Delete the entry if you haven't already with extreme prejudice.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Terminated.

The following example was included:

• Fairy Tail: Many characters have been called out as being Hiro Mashima's pet, but the two most evident are Natsu and Jellal. Both of them frequently overpower foes long established to be able to wipe the floor with them with little to no explanation], and both of them get away with actions that are both [[WhyDidYouMakeMeHitYou morally despicable (both before and long after possession, in Jellal's case) and frankly asinine, without so much as a slap on the wrist. Jellal's case is especially glaring, as even when he shouldn't be relevant or a plot could be written without him, Mashima somehow manages to work him into every single arc ever since his original one, despite not being a central character. Yes, including the Tenrou Island one. Strangely, as other fandoms that rub elbows with Fairy Tail's will tell, the fandom was for quite a while very much on board. This is changing with the times though, with more and more people showing negative reactions to these two characters and calling them out on being Creator's Pets.

Sounds as misuse.

Care to detail your reasoning?

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If nothing else, it's certainly not well-written.

Natsu doesn't qualify because he's the protagonist. Jellal isn't exactly a hated character (to my knowledge), and isn't really shilled by others.

Then yes, they don't qualify.

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I pulled out this.

• Clara from Doctor Who. Fans seem to universally loathe her for season 8 and for bringing soap opera drama into the show in form of Danny Pink. Moffat tends to sing her praises in interviews and the character's actress got top billing in the season finale over Peter Capaldi, the actor currently playing the titular character. She's always taking moral high ground and season 8 was more about her relationship with Danny Pink than it was about Doctor finding himself since Doctor's entire revelation was shoehorned in the finale. It also didn't help that due to her relationship with Danny Pink, his questioning of the Doctor seemed more like just a jealous boyfriend being pissed off, especially since it turned out that Danny had no justifiable reason to be so pissed off at Doctor since he had no actual reason to be pissed at officers. Danny killed the kid himself and it wasn't on any orders and yet he was calling out Doctor for having blood on his hands because Doctor is some sort of an officer, marching his armies into war.

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I think she's a Base Breaker like every single companions in the revived series.

I'd say probably true. Not too familiar myself, other than I know people really love to argue about the companions.

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Frankly, I think the Doctor Who fandom is too autocannibalistic for any character to qualify as a Creator's Pet or Scrappy instead of a Base Breaker.

Indeed. Companions are main characters; they cannot be a Pet by definition.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I mean the complains about Clara are basically the same for previous companions (mostly Rose, Amy and River).

Well, that too. The complaints are recycled with each new Companion.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Hello. I'd like to call into question the Creator's Pet examples for Yu-Gi-Oh!. They are as follows:

• The Elemental Heroes (and their spiritual successors, the Neospacians) from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX are certainly qualified here; already having a strike against them as the signature cards of the anime's unabashed Boring Invincible Hero Judai, they are absolutely reviled by most duelists due to their weak stats, underwhelming effects, their Fusions being unable to be summoned by fan favorites Cyber-Stein or Metamorphosis, and half of the Elemental Heroes being normal monsters. What pushes them over the edge, though is how throughout the show's run, Konami could hardly go through a set without dedicating at least a fourth of it to the E-Heroes/Neospacians and support cards.
  • Elemental Hero Mudballman is the king of this trope, being the only fusion with no actual effect, but still can't be summoned outside of fusion summon. At least Dragon Master Knight and Five-Headed Dragon has reasonable effects to make up for it.
  • Similarly, Elemental Hero Flame Wingman and especially Elemental Hero Neos, as Judai couldn't seem to go one duel without using them almost exclusively. At least Flame Wingman remained silent, though; Neos also had the distinction of being The Obi-Wan since his introduction, and in seasons 2 and 4, he became a virtual Deus ex Machina, becoming "real" to take care of non duel-related threats. As you might have guessed, fans are sick of their overuse.
    • The pinnacle of Neos's Pet-ness would have to have been Gladiator's Assault's cover card. Now, Gladiator's Assault introduced three new archetypes: the titular Gladiator Beasts, which were impressively strong, and the Evil Heroes and Cloudians, which weren't nearly as good but had enjoyed some prominence in the anime. It also gave some support for Roids, Gemini, and Six Samurai. So, with so many great cards, what was the cover card for the set? Elemental Hero Chaos Neos - one of only two Neos-related cards in the set, that had appeared in the anime in all of one episode. It wasn't even a good card; it took three monsters to bring out and its effect was a gamble that stood an excellent chance of killing itself, but it got the nod over Heraklinos, Dark Gaia, Stealth Union, and Eye of the Typhoon!
  • The manga's Attribute Hero fusions, meanwhile, did a lot to tip the scales in their favor; they had an actual usable strategy, they were easy to fuse, and they even comboed perfectly with Super Fusion, a card that had previously seemed useless. This has led to Elemental Hero Decks finally having some time in the sun (to the point that some now complain about them being OVERpowered).
  • Synchros and Tuners are (albeit less commonly) hated by fans for similar reasons - they utterly dominate the plot and duels of 5D's, Konami dedicates an average of three-quarters of a set to them, but unlike the E-Heroes, the majority of Synchros * cough* Dark Strike Fighter * cough* are on par with effin' Chaos, which either totally redeems them or makes them glaringly worse, depending on which side of the Broken Base you are on. In addition, Xyz monsters also seem to have taken this place as well, dominating the plot of the series ZEXAL, as well as getting put into every pack with effects that often make them more valuable than Synchros, since you no longer need to use Tuners or any other special cards or types in the limited deck space available.
    • Don't forget the predecessor of Synchros, Fusions. It's like the purpose of GX was to try and make them relevant. Never mind that you have to go through so many hoops to play them that Synchros were made to make them usable, pretty much every duelist in GX used them. Judai's E-Heroes, as stated, most prominent.

To put it simply, these examples reek so much of nostalgic fanboy Complaining about how, to them, They Changed It, Now It Sucks! that it's kind of painful for anyone up to date with the current meta of the card game to read. While a footnote about the Elemental HEROes being this during the GX era could work, they've long since trailed off and the current Power Creep of the card game makes it so that only people who generally play casually will use them.

As for Synchros and Xyzs, they were the new mechanic at the time, so of course they're going to push them to the front of their era. The only way they can possibly qualify is if an archetype is really good at abusing the mechanic. Maybe the Xyz mechanic itself can still qualify since it is very versatile even outside its era and still receiving good cards that even some competitive players are tired of them at this point, but even then...

As for something that can still qualify, the Blackwings archetype definitely would. They dominated their era, were still powerful and receiving minor support in the Xyz era, and have received a sudden surge of support in the Pendulum era as well. It's to the point that, while most archetypes have 10-20 different cards and support in it, Blackwings are verging on 50 cards and support for them.^note At the moment, they're at 49, which is still insane by archetype standards Even most sites that cover card news tend to snark about them whenever they receive yet more support.

edited 6th Oct '15 9:22:53 AM by TokoWH

I'm not sure even the Blackwings example could stay. From what I recall, the reason they got more prominence in the first place was because they were popular with fans.

Also bad game balance by itself does not a Creator's Pet make, that's more Tier Induced Scrappy. I think that entire section could be axed.

edited 6th Oct '15 9:29:23 AM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Lots of whining, natter, and bad formatting. There's also a mention of Broken Base, which means there are enough fans to disqualify it from an example. I also question the focus on it, since if it's something used by the main characters, it's something that should have a lot of focus.

If anything, it's Tier Induced Scrappy, but then it should be rewritten to something properly formatted and less complainy.

Axe it.

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Two points to make. One, this is not a trope. There are no "trivia tropes". These pages have different banners for a reason.

Second point. Being a main character or antagonist dues not disqualify a character from being The Scrappy. There is nothing int the description of creators pet that says they are disqualified either.Idioms like Mary Sue, Villain Sue, Boring Invincible __ would not exist if this was the case. Haters gonna hate.

Okay, more than two points but getting those two out of the way is most important.

Three. The 'criteria' are hated by audience-loved by creator-character focus-character shilling.

But another important element to the creators pet how the creator uses them. Not just in amount of use, or bending the world to be more about them, again, that's Blackhole Sue. Love itself manifests in keeping the character traits that cause dislike rather than downplaying, changing, deconstructing or otherwise addressing them in an attempt to address the audience gripes.

In 2005 or so. Both John Cena and Edge were booed in their hometowns as baby faces. Both continued to be exposed in all things WWE Raw brand, pushed to the moon and shilled as the most important things ever. The difference here is Edge went through four gimmick changes, going from Goldberg replacement, to opportunistic ruffian, to sleazy man whore, to crazed hellion, to hating everything stupid. His wrestling style also subtly changed from technical mat work and athletic spots to lots of punch kick. John Cena, for ten straight years remained virtually unchanged. Everything that got him booed in the first place just got magnified. His gimmick became more watered down and generic. His wrestling matches became increasingly formulaic. Protagonist-Centered Morality went through the roof to the point Cena was The Paragon regardless of context. Cena was showered with praise for his work with the "Make A Wish Foundation" while the rest of the roster's efforts were ignored. Cena's crossover into other realms of media were highlighted when he had to sit out during injury, eating up time the other wrestlers could be using to wrestle on the main tv show, the other wrestlers not receiving nearly as much publicity for their breakthroughs into other media and in fact being actively discouraged or barred from attending UFC events, comic cons and such. One the "writers" were willing to change multiple times to get the desired reaction, one they clearly loved the way he was enough to not change until they endured ten years of not getting the desired reaction, ten years of trying to prove to the fanbase they were wrong for not reacting the right way.

It is just my personal feelings, my individual reaction, but I can say as someone who was a John Cena fan, who didn't jump on the initial hate train, having been a fan of his pre WWE work, that their disgusting shilling, shoehorning and overall use of Cena turned me against him. We can all see the so called writers loved him, listened to fans voice their hatred of him and showed contempt for it.

Oh, and a good villain case is Thanos Of Titan. The trick here being he is a character fans think is "badass". What makes him a good case then? Multiple writers. Doesn't matter if Thanos is defeated by something long established to be more powerful than himself, by a Deus ex Machina, by a unfortunate circumstance that would have caught anyone off guard. Jim Starlin will retcon it all away. Thanos is smarter than every other Marvel character and can only be defeated by his own subconscious desire lose and or Starlin's other pet character Adam Warlock, who is an even better example, having gone from man child slightly enhanced by cybernetics to a mature, super intelligent, cosmic savior who can survive an encounter with 4/5ths of omnipotence.

Well, it's basically an Audience Reaction and Trivia, since it contains elements of both.

No, but it disqualifies them from being a Creator's Pet. A main character is supposed to get a lot of focus. The requirement for Creator's Pet is an undue amount of focus.

I usually stay away from wrestling, since I'm not too familiar with it, and the story structure is different from others. I'd argue that there aren't any main characters as a whole, at least not in the traditional sense. It's supposed to be a competition. It's not like characters are just created from scratch like any other work. You get a wrestler and then you do something with that wrestler depending on the audience, performance, and other things. I mean, sure you can give them whatever personality you want, but that still has to gel with the wrestler.

With popularity, I'd say this is one case where you have a good objective indicator for that. Do they sell tickets and PPVs? If a wrestler is hated as The Scrappy, then that would mean less sales. If they still sell, that means people still enjoy seeing them wrestle. More importantly, it means the managers are doing something right, and that they're operating after the cash flow rather than their own personal likes.

Thanos is plainly well liked to my understanding. Probably a good case of being loved by the creator, and probably shilling, but that's not enough for the trope.

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Indeed, it's important to remember that some characters in wrestling are designed to be Hate Sinks; that a substantial portion of the fanbase hates them is entirely intended, since it creates audience investment in seeing them eventually get brought down.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

From Steven Universe

• Creator's Pet: What many of Pearl's detractors argue she has become. Pearl has received numerous episodes (and even a full arc) focusing on her and her actions, which only seemed to increase when she received backlash for her actions in "Sworn to the Sword" and "Cry for Help". Many people who dislike Pearl are irritated that she has gotten more focus episodes than Amethyst and Garnet combined.

• It adress the Character Focus, the hate against the character but not the Character Shilling

Who are the three rocks, and why does it matter if she gets more focus episodes? Getting a full arc focused on her indicates she's a main character.

It could be an example, but not enough context is given.

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So I think Sliske from Rune Scape needs to go. He seems to be much more positively received than whoever wrote that entry is implying. As a citation, I offer this thread about who the next main villain will be after he dies, and it has a number of people praising him and saying they'll miss him.

Also, it kind of sounds like he was some kind of main or very prominent villain. Which is all kinds of questionable for the trope.

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Rune Scape is a very nonlinear game, being a constantly-updated MMO, but he is currently the best candidate for the main villain of the whole game, yes.