Misused: Creators Pet

Just skimming over those, Donny from Powerpuff Girls 2016 looks particularly wrong - the entry actually states outright that the "push" for the character had already been made before the writers could know that people disliked him.

I have to wonder what they were smoking when they made this entry.

• There were (and to a degree, still are) so many restrictions imposed on Disney writers when dealing with Mickey Mouse, that any other character in any given Mickey cartoon got carte blanche to steal the spotlight. The strange irony is that this happened because Mickey was the Creator's Pet of Mr. Disney, not the other characters.

That is nonsensical, of course. Delete.

To nobody's surprise, someone added this entry onto YMMV.The Last Of Us Part II

• Creator's Pet: Druckmann has gone on record stating that Abby is his favorite character in the game, explaining why she has a good majority of screen time in the game. The fanbase, however, universally has a different opinion of her.

Okay maybe she might qualify but regardless, since The Scrappy has a 6 month waiting period, shouldn't Creator's Pet be removed since being one is required for the trope?

Edited by Loekman3 on Jul 3rd 2020 at 1:11:54 AM

I think now that The Scrappy has a waiting period, people are trying to loophole by including characters someone doesn’t like under Creator's Pet.

Also, any Character Shilling in this game for Abby?

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 3rd 2020 at 4:12:20 PM

I don't think that example covers all aspects of the trope anyway - no shilling is described and "different opinion" is a little vague.

Probably not explicitly but the narrative sorta treated her in a significantly positive light compared to Ellie although that's probably stretching a bit too much

The entry in question:

• Creator's Pet: Druckmann has gone on record stating that Abby is his favorite character in the game, explaining why she has a good majority of screen time in the game. The fanbase, however, had a more mixed reaction to her. Abby gets a disproportionate amount of the better segments of the game either by virtue of them being more enjoyable levels or less brutal. An oft mentioned example being Abby never encounters dogs as an enemy variant whereas Ellie not only does but is forced to kill one.

Getting the more enjoyable segments sound like it should be a positive to fans. At least it fails to explain how she is getting backlash for such as what makes her so controversial is unrelated to what the entry describes.

Does CP only count for narrative favoritism? As gameplay favoritism sound like something up to the game designers, not writers.

If being The Scrappy is a perquisite for CP giving it the same waiting period.

Is being a Base-Breaking Character, Americans Hate Tingle, or Germans Love David Hasselhoff a disqualifier as they have too many fans?

As far as the Character Shilling thing goes, while it may not literally exist from what I've been hearing about the game, it does sound like there's something measurable going on there, what with all the controversy and fan opinion dissonance - but I'm not sure how, or if, it can be troped. I don't think the entry works.

Wait should Creator's Pet go through the No Recent Examples thread, or is it that by default since it requires The Scrappy which has a 6 month waiting period?

Yeah we're better of waiting 6 months like The Scrappy and I think we should probably wait til mid-December before we can properly discuss her. Cut her entry for now and add it to the blacklisted entry under The Scrappy bullet point

Edited by Loekman3 on Jul 5th 2020 at 3:25:22 PM

Should we put it in the No Recent Examples, Please! page too? I guess it’d have to be brought up there in the thread first.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 5th 2020 at 5:32:37 AM

Yeah, I think it should be put there too

Deleted this from YMMV.Danny Phantom.

• Creator's Pet/Designated Hero: Sam Manson is seen as Danny's true love and is favored by the creator, Butch Hartman. However, many see her as a Hypocrite and worse than the other girl that showed interest, Valerie. In the first episode, she had the entire school menu changed to fit her vegetarian lifestyle, without the consent (or knowledge) of her peers, or the teaching staff. When this angers the Lunch Lady Ghost, instead of reverting to save her friends, she insists that the school stay in danger for her agenda. She forces Danny to try and free a gorilla through blackmail. She enters a beauty pageant solely to make a statement about how it disrespects modern women (and when she won, she simply calls it stupid) despite that the other contestants were competing to actually win (and not demeaning her in the process). She spies on Danny when he went on a date yet when he did it to her she yelled at him and threatened to end their friendship (Danny thought the kid was trying to hurt Sam, and something like this did happen before, and nearly killed his sister Jazz.) In the final episode, she scolds Danny for purposely getting rid of his powers without considering the stress and trouble he was going through, and that Amity had ghost protectors already.

There’s many things wrong with this. The trope slashing, the Wall of Text, the fact that Sam is a Base-Breaking Character and not The Scrappy, etc.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 15th 2020 at 4:03:16 PM

Bringing up this example from The Flash:

• Creator's Pet: On one-side of the Barry-vs-Wally fandom rivalry, this is the main issue for Wally fans (for Barry fans, see Hype Backlash). Since his return, Barry has been pushed as the forefront of the Flash franchise, treated and touted as the iconic Flash, and the only character to receive any kind of attention. Pretty much every outside media has focused solely on Barry Allen, to the point it's treated as if he is the only Flash, with Jay Garrick at-best getting acknowledged as the AU Flash, while Wally, if he appears at all, is relegated to being Kid Flash. Understandably, fans of Wally (and the larger Flash Family) do not appreciate this, especially as adaptations have gone so far as to take Wally's stories and character developments and give them to Barry, in order to eliminate any need for Wally within the work, which many feel like an attempt to erase Wally for Barry's sake.

Bringing up the following examples from Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog:

• Creator's Pet:
  • Tommy Turtle, a childhood friend of Sonic that had never been mentioned before, but had once taught him a valuable life lesson. He died in his first appearance while performing a Heroic Sacrifice to save Sonic, but about a year later was revealed to not have actually been killed and was brought back. Unfortunately, after bringing him back, the writers didn't seem to have any real idea what to do with him, and attempts to make him more relevant (such as having him become infested with nanobots, causing him to develop Transformers-esque abilities) ended up just appearing ridiculous and making fans despise him even more. In Sonic Grams while Archie staff admitted that they knew a lot of their fans hadn't liked the character, they'd hoped they could change their tune, showing the clear divide between the staff at Archie at the time and the people actually reading the book. In the end writer Ian Flynn said when compiling a list of the comic's most unpopular characters, Tommy still ranked very high among the fanbase despite efforts to make him popular by previous writers. Tommy was therefore killed off (performing another Heroic Sacrifice) and hasn't been seen since.
  • Geoffrey St. John was this for Penders. You could tell when a story was headed by Penders simply because of how Geoffrey would always be portrayed in the right despite the logical gymnastics it would repeatedly take to get there, on top of Sonic Taking A Level In Jerkass whenever the two were being written by him to make Geoffrey seem more sympathetic. Combine this with a shoehorned Love Triangle (that comes completely out of the blue) between him, Sally and Sonic, on top of Penders's infamous comment that Geoffrey apparently took Sally's virginity off screen (keep in mind Sally is in her mid teens while Geoffrey is in his late 20s) and it's clear Penders wanted his character to be more important than the title character of the comic.
  • Locke. In theory, he's a noble man with some shades of grey who's acting for the greater good. In practice, he's manipulative, emotionally-abusive, and laser-focused on his own goals to the point of ignoring the murderous despot who controlled about 80% of Mobius until Robotnik's forces were right on top of Angel Island...but God help you if you tried to tell Penders this; Locke was his way of working out issues with his father, and he was so personally invested in the character that Flynn simply portraying Locke's actions for what they were resulted in Penders throwing a fit. (It should be noted that Locke did have plenty of fans who saw him as the conflicted, morally-grey echidna he allegedly was — right up until they realized, via Penders's comments, that Knuckles standing up to Locke's behaviour was not the intended progression for either of them.)
  • Amy Rose became this during Ian Flynn's run. She was often portrayed as more competent and mature than before while her flaws were downplayed, even overshadowing fan-favorites like Antoine and Sally. Some fans even argue that Flynn deliberately shoehorned her into every storyline possible.

Bringing up the following examples from Prehistoric Earth:

• Creator's Pet:
  • With writer!Drew's admittance to her and PE!Drew being amongst his favorite characters, plus Nathanoraptor's own thoughts about her, Cynthia initially came across as this. The fact that Drew reportedly tried immensely hard to push her into being a secondary main character alongside Drew at the potential expense of Jack and Leon certainly didn't help her case. However, thanks to several subsequent developments she's undergone, her and Drew becoming an official couple, not to mention the heavily hinted possibility that she might be a mole, and later confirmation as a reverse mole, she has successfully shaken off this initial impression. And even that wasn't enough to save her from still ranking fairly low in popularity amongst the readers or seemingly getting Adapted Out of the subsequent reboot Prehistoric Park Reimagined.
  • For that matter, PE!Drew himself (likewise, as previously mentioned, one of writer!Drew's favorite characters) arguably somewhat counts as this as well. As described in more detail in Franchise Original Sin below, there were several moments in the missions that unfolded before Cynthia's introduction in which Drew (the character) was himself seemingly guilty of a lot of the same problems that Cynthia herself earned the readers' (and Nathanoraptor's) ire over. And when Cynthia was introduced, writer!Drew ended up going so far as to attempt to transfer some of the character's own intended flaws to Cynthia while also having the both of them assimilate some of the characteristics of some of the other members of the rescue team into themselves for the sake of the writer's plans at having them seemingly be the sole main stars of the story.

This was listed on YMMV.Oz:

• Creator's Pet: Ryan O'Reilly. He manipulates everyone he comes into contact with for his own personal gain (including his own brother), is treated to a semi-sympathetic battle with breast cancer, is rarely in the crosshairs of anyone, arranges or is somehow connected to several deaths in the prison (including Dr. Nathan's husband, who treated him when he had cancer) and ends up with her in the end.

This is especially notable since Ryan O' Reilly is also listed as a Magnificent Bastard. One of the prerequisites for that trope is charm, thus if a character is too hated (i.e. The Scrappy) they cannot be a Magnificent Bastard. Is he actually just a Base-Breaking Character, or can those be Creators Pets? I thought only Scrappies could count?

Edited by jjjj2 on Sep 1st 2020 at 11:53:53 AM

Bringing up the following example from Marvel's Avengers:

• Creator's Pet: It seems likely that the launch campaign was made during Marvel's obsession with the "Inhumans" that dominated their business practices for the mid to late 2010s, as they have a lot of focus in this game. Some fans were annoyed by this though give it a pass since it at least allows Kamala's origins to stay similar to her comic counterpart and likely because the Fox buyout happened during the game's development, not giving them much time to add in mutants.

Would the film rights have any relevance to this game?

The film rights had massive and obvious effects on plenty of non-film Marvel products throughout the 2010s, so it would certainly have precedent.

I haven't played or seen playthroughs of the game to actually weigh in on the entry, though.

Edit: Actually, looking at it a second time, it seems to be using "heavily features the Inhumans" as the sole context, which does not qualify for Creator's Pet. Chop it.

Edited by nrjxll on Sep 8th 2020 at 7:45:46 AM

Bringing up the following example from YMMV.Jason Aarons Avengers:

• Creator's Pet: The Avengers 1000000 BC are not liked by many fans, and it doesn't help that Aaron loves to interrupt the ongoing plots to devote an issue to them, or to blatantly shoehorn them into the current stories (and considering that we are talking about characters from the ice age, yes, you have to stretch thing to great lengths to do that).

I don't know how the reaction is between Tommy Turtle, I do know Locke IS a creator pet (he is very disliked, and Flynn openly said he was an toxic father), but Amy Rose is blatant misuse.

This regarding Archie Comics.

I wrote this a long time ago on the recap page of the Tournament of Power:

• Creator's Pet:
  • At least this is how some see Caulifla and Kale. The promotional material and one of the writers admit of liking them, which explains their huge focus, but the general reception of the characters have been divisive with the fanbase. The fact Kale was created because Toei wanted to capitalize on Broly's popularity, with Akira Toriyama deciding to create Caulifla as a complementary response the idea, doesn't help.
  • A more pure example would be the U2 maidens, with Ribrianne in particular. She was introduced as a comic relief character, and you can tell Toei Animation loved working on her due to the amount of effort they give to their transformation ^note  creating her base form persona, Brianne de Chateau and focus (Pretty likely due to their experience with the Precure franchise), but the general reception to the characters have been pretty negative due their hypocritical personality and being out-of-place in a shonen series (By comparison, all the other fighters in the Tournament are inspired by genres well established in the Shonen demography). Also, this is considering the manga just shows the Maidens in their transformed forms the moment they arrive in the Tournament of Power, meaning it was strictly a Toei idea.

At least I believe Ribrianne counts as one.

I cut-pasted this from a different thread but here we go. I feel some of the examples on Western Animation are blatant misuse (especially Thomas The Train Engine and Mickey Mouse). I'm sorry if this is the wrong place but I feel these need to be addressed.

The The Fairly OddParents! examples don't count. Only Crocker ever got shilled ... on a couple occasions but he's a Base-Breaking Character and one of the closest things the show has to a main villain. Timmy's Dad and Ms. Crocker (no evidence of her being a Creator's Favorite) tend to be disliked but are almost never even praised (let alone unnecessarily). If anyone from that show counts, it's Chloe from the last season (she's a borderline Mary Sue who's sometimes seen as the worst part of the worst season).

Randy Marsh might be getting more focus but even the entry states that fans are divided over said focus. While he's got plenty detractors he's usually considered too funny/popular to be The Scrappy and is often a Butt-Monkey.

Taffy from Rugrats isn't on that page despite her being a character who's status as The Scrappy is largely because of her being a Creator's Pet. She probably wouldn't be as hated if she wasn't being shilled by everyone constantly.

As for the Dragon Ball examples, cut Caulifla and Kale. They are an example of Base-Breaking Character at worst and don't appear or get shilled much more than Cabba. Unlike the other maidens, Ribrianne is widely considered The Scrappy and has some Character Focus in the Tournament. She could stay if we have evidence of her being a Creator's Favorite.

Edited by Idisagree on Feb 20th 2021 at 5:17:14 AM

This was just added to The Black Cauldron.

• Creator's Pet: Disney CEO, Michael Eisner, was in love with the character of Gergi so much that he basically started putting Gergi expies in other Disney films around the same time as Cauldron premiered. This is despite the fact that his high-pitched voice and obnoxious behavior alienated a large percentage of the general audience.