Misused: Creators Pet

Stryker is the most plausible. However, how is he shilled by other characters? How does he have an unreasonable amount of focus?

Scorpion, yeah, no. It's funny how it tries to claim he was met with "almost universal scorn", but later goes on to describe that he's both got fans and that even haters think other characters are worse.

Bo' Rai Cho doesn't sound hated enough even for Base-Breaking Character. He might be, but the example doesn't provide a sufficient argument for that.

This was on Pearls Before Swine: Rat has a few shades of this. Though to be sure, Rat is..."liked", and to note, Pastis has stated that Rat is his evil alter-ego and he often lets Rat say things he wishes he could. So, a possibly Justified version.

Wording like "a few shades of this" implies that it is at best a weak example. The example even mentions that Rat is liked, albeit in a Love to Hate fashion. Cut.

Found this on * Outnumbered while Woobie Cleaning: Karen definitely comes across this way. Sorry, she can be horrible to anyone and everyone, and nearly everytime she is shown to be "right".

"Comes across this way" are Weasel Words and gives no indication of how she falls under the Character Focus requirement. Cut.

Scrolling through edit reasons led to me finding this on YMMV.Norm Of The North:

• Creator's Pet: In the sequel, the Lemmings become this thanks to a scene near the beginning where Norm tells them they can't come to New York this time only for them to launch themselves onto the ship anyway. As the Lemmings themselves have had none of the issues that made them scrappies have been fixed, it feels like their re-inclusion was a deliberate middle finger to the characters' hatedom.

CreatorsPet.Comic Books has some non-examples of characters that weren't hated by the fans (Monica Rambeau), characters who can be this but aren't all the time (Doctor Doom), and characters who don't seem to fit all 4 criteria (Barry Allen). A couple other examples also seem to be written as new material was released (The Sentry, Carlie Cooper) or turn into creator-bashing.

Edited by lalalei2001 on May 2nd 2019 at 1:44:04 AM

Deleted this from YMMV.Shokugeki No Soma:

• Creator's Pet: Erina Nakiri. At the start of the story, she is the über talented scion of the wealthy Nakiri family and the School Idol (despite her obvious lack of social skill). Most of Erina batchmates were handpicked by her grandfather to serve as stepping stones for her. Throughout the story, she never faces even a single loss (whereas chefs like Eishi, Joichiro and even Asahi suffer losses). On the other hand, she curb stomps many of her seniors in the matches, even though they are supposed to outrank her in ability. Then Erina is promoted to being the Dean of the institute. In the final BLUE arc, despite her lack of confidence in her abilities in the final match, it is Erina who wins the championship.

Erina is one of the most popular characters (she's a Base-Breaking Character at worst) so she isn't The Scrappy.

Edited by Zuxtron on Jul 28th 2019 at 9:44:48 AM

CreatorsPet.Video Games

• Pokémon: The Charizard line seems to have become this around Gen VI, where Charizard was the only starter to have version-specific Mega Evolutions and the only Pokémon to bear such a distinction other than Mewtwo. Not helping matters is when it turned out to be the only pre-Galar starter to be found in the pruned Pokédex in Sword and Shield on top of having a Gigantamax form, and has since been mocked mercilessly for its overexposure. This even extends outside of the Pokémon games, where Charizard appeared in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U as a solo character separate from Squirtle and Ivysaur, with whom it shared a slot in Brawl before reuniting with them in Ultimate

If it’s getting this much favortim due to it’s popularity with fans, I don’t think it has enough of a hatedom to count. Cut.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Nov 6th 2019 at 3:21:42 AM

Besides that, it violates our policy on troping leaks (the only source that no previous starter save the Charmander line is in Sword and Shield is the leaked copies of the game itself).

While Charizard been getting a fair amount of backlash recently, it's probably a Base-Breaking Character at worst right now. And it can't even be labeled as a BBC due to the 6 month waiting period.

Edited by Karxrida on Nov 6th 2019 at 6:00:59 AM

Didn't we have a rule that species and races couldn't be listed as Scrappies? Wouldn't that rule apply to Creator's Pet as well?

Charizard doesn't qualify as a Creator's Pet because it fails to meet the "hated by the fans" requirement because Charizard still has a lot fans despite its overexposure, and is only a Base-Breaking Character at worst.

Well, Charizard still meets the criteria for base-breaking character from previous installments. It’s just made worse with this latest installment.

I was mainly doing some cleanup for the Teen Titans cartoon when I saw this in the comic section.

• Creator's Pet:
  • Danny Chase was universally loathed by fans within a few issues of his first appearance. He was a Cousin Oliver (he even looked like the original Cousin Oliver) introduced to make the team seem younger, as he was only in his early teens while everyone else was pushing 20. Despite his age, he constantly argued with the other members of the team, criticized them, was supposed to be a genius superspy teenager with telekinetic powers, but then went crazy with fear whenever an actual fight took place. And when Dick was distraught at the death of Jason Todd, Danny said it was no big deal because Jason 'knew the risks'. The only people who didn't seem to grasp how loathed this character was was writer Marv Wolfman who, to this day, still insists it was the readers' fault for not "getting the character," and Linkara, who calls Danny his favorite Titan in his look at the Titans history in 2013.
    • As a tip, in a series about costumed superheroes with codenames, whose fans presumably enjoy reading about costumed superheroes with codenames, having a character who continually goes on about how lame costumes and codenames are and how he's too cool for a costume or codename probably isn't going to go down too well.
    • It also hurt that Marv Wolfman had no idea how to write a telekinetic to complement the Titans' diverse power set. Chase's powers were mainly shown to be (at best) extremely limited: at best he could levitate himself (but only while sitting Indian-style) and throw small objects around at bad guys to annoy them. Jean Grey he wasn't; this combined with his wussy behavior during combat, made him practically useless in battle. As bad as Cypher was power-wise, at least he had training in hand-to-hand combat and was willing to take a bullet for his teammates when necessary.
  • Deathstroke was also Wolfman's Creator's Pet for most of his run. When George Perez left The New Teen Titans, Wolfman had free reign over Deathstroke's character, and it seemed that he had no objectivity where he was concerned. In a very jarring, sudden turn of events, Deathstroke became a Karma Houdini for his actions, his earlier characterization forgotten and now established as an Anti-Villain who bore the Titans no ill will^note (When Perez was still on the title, Deathstroke blamed the Titans for his son's death and took very clear, visible pleasure in setting them up to be betrayed and murdered) turned Anti-Hero, being Easily Forgiven and becoming a father-figure and friend of the Titans, including his biggest victims Nightwing, Changeling, and his own son Jericho who was rendered mute because of him. Wolfman has also stated repeatedly that he never saw Deathstroke as a villain, but as a victim of circumstance stuck in a bad situation, whose actions (including sleeping with a teenage girl) weren't truly his fault.
  • Wolfman made extensive use of The Wildebeest, giving him had no less than three personal arcs, but the Wildebeest's design was an absolute favorite of editor Jordan Peterson's, who wanted Wildebeest to figure both into the tenth anniversary event that became Titans Hunt and even have a Wildebeest character join the heroes.
  • The second Wonder Girl, Cassie Sandsmark, was felt to be this after she became team leader in Teen Titans volume 3. While talked up as a leader by the writers, Cassie didn't really do all that much and more page time was often given to her acting obnoxiously condescending or being a Jerkass to her boyfriend. Fans also felt insulted when Felicia Henderson brought Beast Boy back to the team: Rather than give him his leader role back, Henderson had Cassie continue to be leader while lacking any character development, while the older and more experienced Gar was demoted to obnoxious comic relief and treated as if he were younger.

God that natter in the first entry.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 15th 2020 at 9:44:58 AM

CreatorsPet.Comic Books

• The Punisher can slip into this when written by certain writers who a fanboys of his like Garth Ennis. These writers don’t gloss over his flaws as a character (if anything the emphasise them because that’s what they like about him), but do depict him as ridiculously competent. Despite being a normal man armed with conventional weapons, he is often shown effortlessly defeating superpowered characters who by all rights should bulldoze him. The ultimate example of this is The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, which starts with him killing Bruce Banner with a single bullet to the head and just goes from there. This is especially noticeable since, when written by writers who aren’t in love with him, he’s been beaten up by Spider-Man, punched out by Molly Hayes and eviscerated by Daken.

• Some have felt this way about The Joker for some time now due to his massive overexposure in DC media, escalating brutality and lack of real consequences, frequently humiliating numerous heroes and villains that are far more powerful than him and being the number one argument against Batman's no killing rule.

I believe that main character are exempt. And if this is depending on the writer like Punisher, are the consistently disliked enough to count? And Joker I'd say cut because if his overexposure is doe to popularity that's too popular.

That particular page is a mess.

Honestly, the thing that immediately jumps out at me about those is the weasel wording: "some have felt", "can slip into this"...

Main characters are exempt because of the Character Focus part of the definition. The main character having the most focus is perfectly normal. There also needs to be solid evidence they're hated by the vast majority of the fanbase. I doubt Mr. Punisher is, and the Joker most certainly has a buttload of fans.

No idea about how prominent those characters are in the works they're supposedly Creator's Pet, but yeah, too much natter. I also see nothing about Character Shilling.

Bringing up these examples:

• While there's a lot of argument in Doctor Who about this, particularly pertaining to companions, in the revival series it's generally agreed that there are two particular examples, who were the pets of their respective show-runners: Rose Tyler and Clara Oswald.
  • Rose was the first Revival series companion, and was frequently treated as the perfect companion personality-wise despite possessing numerous character flaws that tended to be downplayed or overlooked. She was often discussed as if she was the only person willing to stand up to the Doctor despite the fact that her relationship with him had her as much more of a yes-woman than successors Martha and Donna (neither of whom was afraid to challenge him and call out his displays of arrogance), her supposed kindness and compassion were often flagged as her central character traits despite a marked tendency to act selfishly and disregard the feelings of the people around her, especially her boyfriend Mickey (whom she essentially threw over for the Doctor at the first opportunity), and her relationship with the Doctor devolved into a Romantic Plot Tumour in Series 2 and a cause for major Wangst in Series' 3 and 4. Despite all this, the dialogue and narrative practically raised her to sainthood, the creators tended to heavily emphasise her superiority to classic series companions, and she was even given a half-human version of the 10th Doctor to love and grow old with. It even became this In-Universe, with Martha walking out after realising that she couldn't compete with Rose's memory following a season of being overshadowed by someone who wasn't even there.
  • Clara, meanwhile, mainly suffered from being a walking plot-device, 'the Impossible Girl', and more of a mystery for the Doctor to solve than a companion. Additionally, beneath her bubbly exterior, it quickly became apparent that she was a Control Freak and came across as a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing at times - as she later put it, when asked who she was under a 'truth-field', "bubbly personality masking bossy Control Freak!". The romantic arc with the Doctor, which casually shoved aside his relationship with River, and her steady development into someone very like the Doctor, did not help matters. Later revelations that she'd been picked by Missy precisely because of the less appealing aspects of her personality, putting together "the Control Freak and the man who must not be controlled", her attempts to be like the Doctor led to her being Hoist by His Own Petard, and the fact that it was made extremely clear In-Universe that she and the Doctor brought out the worst in each other were mitigating factors, but even still, many considered her to be insufferable.

I thought we'd wiped off all of the Doctor Who companions. They are main characters of the show; they cannot qualify for the Character Focus part of the trope by definition. The Character Shilling part I'll give you: they get that in spades, but it applies to pretty much all of them, plus all the Doctors. ^note (In my more cynical moments, I complain that half the dialog is the characters telling the audience how great they all are.) Moreover, every companion has a significant body of both fans and detractors, so cannot qualify for The Scrappy requirement.

Edited by Fighteer on May 12th 2020 at 11:49:55 AM

This Simpsons example... Is way too general.

• The Simpsons: Though it's not a single character, "As Himself" is something of a taboo phrase in Simpsons fandom. Most of the time, especially after Season 10, most any guest star to play themselves shows up with little reason, acts cool and popular, and isn't given much if any funny lines, Hence, the star comes off as less there to service the plot, and more as a means of mooching off their popularity. Infamous examples include the stage magicians in "The Great Simpsina" and Lady Gaga in "Lisa Goes Gaga". The latter in particular's spotlight episode was massively promoted and played heavily on her public image without saying anything new or interesting about it. Many contrasted her performance to that of Michael Jackson, who guest-starred as a fat white bricklayer living in a mental ward and received a good amount of acclaim for his part.

Cut for being too general.

There's a South Park example that's been bothering me, but then I realized that it was the most recent addition to the page:

• South Park has Randy Marsh, who at first was a random geologist, then became Stan's dad, and then lost all his seriousness to become a manchild with a huge number of wacky interests and hobbies, so long as Trey Parker and Matt Stone can use him to tackle whatever topic becomes news-worthy. It got to the point that, even after Season 20's fiasco that caused them to abandon serialized plots, Season 23 still had a recurring storyline that revolved mostly around Randy.

Despite saying a lot, it dosen't really explain anything. I don't remember the creators saying that he was their favorite, or that he was being shilled by other characters.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 27th 2020 at 5:46:29 AM

When I was a South Park watcher, Randy was more of a Base-Breaking Character than The Scrappy, and I don't remember him getting much in the way of Character Shilling either.

Honestly, the entire Western Animation page needs to be looked at. A good bunch of these aren’t examples from just looking at them.

• Family Guy: Brian Griffin. During the shows run, Seth MacFarlane has admitted that his intentions were for Brian to be the show's most popular character, while Meg would be the least popular, but to his complete surprise, Stewie became the show's breakout star, while Brian became the show's scrappy. The crew seems often desperate to make Brian more popular, at one point even killing him off then bringing him back just three episodes later, which fans would've been happy to hear, until they realized that these Family Guy episodes took six months to produce. They started to give Brian more noticeable flaws in the later seasons to prevent further backlash.
• The Fairly OddParents!:

• Denzel Crocker and Timmy's dad became this starting in Season 7. Butch Hartman himself has admitted that they're his favorite characters and he thinks they tend to be used as the main source of humor in the series. It came to a head in Season 9, where you'd be forgiven for thinking you were watching a Spin-Off called "The Mr. Crocker and Timmy's Dad Show".
• Mrs. Crocker, Denzel Crocker's mother, has become a minor one. Most fans see her as a plain, boring, and obnoxious old lady, with nothing interesting about her character other than being related to Denzel—yet starting with Season 7, the writers seemed to get it into their heads that, along with Denzel and Timmy's dad, she is one of the most entertaining and hilarious characters on the show and that viewers couldn't get enough of her.

• The Lemmings from Norm of the North seem to have gained this status in the sequel, since there's a scene where Norm tells the Lemmings they can't come to New York this time, seemingly writing them out of the movie, only for them to force themselves on board anyway. They then proceed to do what made them so hated to begin with.
• Donny from The Powerpuff Girls (2016). He is abhorred by the older Powerpuff Girls fanbase for more traditional reasons, but mostly due to the misinterpretation that he was meant to be a metaphor for trans people. His debut episode is, however, one of the most infamous episodes in the reboot because, if interpreted as a transgender metaphor, its message is negative at best. Unfortunately, the creators didn't notice this backlash in time. They had expected him to be a hit amongst the fans, likely because he's a unicorn (which didn't happen because the show was Screwed by the Network and not very popular amongst kids), and as a result he reappears in several episodes, including season 2 episodes (which were made right after season 1 and thus before the backlash). He's even featured on a DVD for the series named "The Last Donnycorn" (which is also the name of an episode).
• Rocko's Modern Life has an In Universe Example. While working on the "Wacky Delly" cartoon for Ralph Bighead, Filbert becomes very protective of The Cheese, the character he created/voiced.
  Cheese: I am The Cheese! I am the best character on the show! I am better than both The Salami and The Bologna combined!
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil gives us Flying Princess Pony Head. Many viewers accuse her of being this, since they think she is a spoiled, obnoxious, jealous, self-absorbed and plain unpleasant person to be around who never learns anything, yet Star treats her like a true friend and she's rarely called out whenever she actually does something wrong. To the show's credit, she suffers in multiple instances in Season 3 and one episode reveals that even her own family thinks of her as a Black Sheep.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: Somebody at Warner Bros. really liked the character Elmyra Duff since she took up a lot of screentime, to the point they tried to get a spinoff series off the ground with two pilot episodes about her and her family. That wasn't enough, though. She went on to make cameo appearances, as well as a guest-star appearance, in the show's successor series, Animaniacs. Even that wasn't enough. The spinoff series of Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, received a unneeded revamp after its third season, where the duo have become Elmyra's pets.
• Total Drama:
  • Owen in the first two seasons. The writers and voice actors of the show often wrote glowingly of him (Christian Potenza is quoted as having a man-crush on him), yet he is considered a Base-Breaking Character due to his constant Toilet Humor, Character Shilling (such as Gwen calling him sane even when he does exceedingly odd or stupid things, and the rest of the cast talking about how awesome he was during his elimination in the 2nd season, despite the fact that he cost the team the challenge and spent the entire episode trying to eat two of his teammates), and Character Focus (such as extended dream sequences of him naked and frolicking on mountains made of cheese). His face was even used as the icon for the first season on at least Cartoon Network. However, this decreased as the series went on, the second season giving him a lesser role and the third season giving Owen much less praise from the other contestants, and he received some decent character development with his friendship with Noah and his breakup with Izzy. The writers must have noticed the backlash, as Owen does not appear in seasons 4 and 5, save for minor cameoes.
  • Mike and Zoey, especially once All-Stars aired. Both characters get way more screen time than the rest of the cast on both seasons, even overshadowing the likes of Duncan, Gwen and Courtney on the latter, just to show off their relationship, without having much character development overall.
• Thomas the Tank Engine:
  • The titular character was this for several seasons, until it stopped when Andrew Brenner took the helm of head writer. 90% of all stories focused on him and he had more screen time than the other engines.
  • Philip became this towards the end of the Brenner era. He was involved in almost every story, and had his own episode ("Philip's Number") to himself.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jun 28th 2020 at 6:01:32 AM