The Scrappy Cleanup

I think Silver the Hedgehog needs to be removed from the Scrappy page and put onto the Base Breaker one. He was pretty popular in several fan circles even before Sonic Generations, it's more a case of vocal hatedom making his reception seem worse than it was.

On Comic Books the new Jane Foster Thor has an enormous, bile-filled, kinda-sexist entry. Which still admits she's selling better than the male Thor's most recent book.

Looks like a Vocal Minority hatedom to me. And the entire page is a mess.

Found this in YMMV.Sonic Adventure (ignore the ZCE for now).

• The Scrappy: Big the Cat for a great many people, and not just because of his levels.
  • Base Breaker: Of course he has garnered a plausible fanbase over the years to balance it, especially following his cameos in the latter title below.

As far as I can tell The Scrappy should be winning out because hate for Big is borderline-memetic, but I'm not in tune with the fandom enough to make the call.

If a character is listed as both, Base Breaker is generally much more likely to be correct. But I also don't know the fandom well enough to say for sure.

The fact that Base Breaker was listed afterward as a Justifying Edit makes me leans towards The Scrappy, as it looks like somebody who liked Big didn't want to see him listed as such.

Something being memetic isn't a good indicator for anything, other than it being memetic. If anything, being part of a meme implies a certain popularity, if only for the sake of hating. Which is closer to a Hate Sink.

I wouldn't judge a Justifying Edit any different than the original example, especially with the lack of context.

There's also a mention of a Broken Base in relation to Big earlier on the page.

Hate Sink requires author intent, which I highly doubt is the case. I'd say a hateful Meme is pretty damning if it's unironic.

edited 1st Aug '15 3:07:46 AM by Karxrida

That's why I said "closer". Point is that it indicates people like to hate him. A meme is also in my experience not representative of the larger fanbase of a work. It's usually something pushed by a small and extremely vocal selection of fans.

Either way, I find more indicators for Base Breaker than The Scrappy. But then again, I don't know the work, so it might just be poorly written material.

I think that the issue with Big is that he was a Scrappy for a very, very long time because of how boring and annoying of a character he was. Basically, everything revolved around Froggy and his own stupidity. The fans didn't like that, so they hated Big.

... But then Sonic Chronicles came out, and Big wound up being very well-received because he had some of the funniest lines in the game, proving that he can be entertaining when he's written right. Of course, having an awesome skillset probably worked in his favor too.

Shortly after that, once fans were finally coming around to Big, it was announced that he probably wouldn't have any roles in the foreseeable future. This announcement actually disappointed people, whereas they probably would have been overjoyed if said announcement had come years ago.

So I think that when Big's longtime Scrappy status, his character resurgence, and sudden disappearance are taken into account, I think that he probably qualifies as a Base Breaker more than anything. There are still more than a few haters, but a good bit of the audience was really warming up to him by the time he left.

That sounds more like Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.

This is going to be big undertaking, but let's discuss the Family Guy entries. Counting both the YMMV page and the section on TheScrappy.Western Animation, Family Guy has a total of sixteen scrappys. I assume that's a bit much for one show. So here's a full list, as well as what pages they were on and any other Audience Reaction tropes they fell under:

• Brian (Both pages, listed under Base Breaker, Replacement Scrappy, Rescued from the Scrappy Heap)
• Carter (Both pages, listed under Love to Hate)
• Jasper (Both pages)
• Lois (Both pages, listed under Draco in Leather Pants)
• Quagmire (Both pages, listed under Base Breaker)
• Meg (Both pages, but in an in-universe sense. Listed under Unpopular Popular Character)
• Jeff (YMMV page, zero context)
• Conway Twitty (Both pages)
• Vinny (Both pages, listed under Replacement Scrappy, Rescued from the Scrappy Heap)
• The Griffin Family in general (YMMV page, probably should cut because it's a general example)
• Bruce (YMMV page, listed under Ensemble Dark Horse)
• Herbert (Both pages, listed under Ensemble Dark Horse)
• Chris (YMMV page, listed under Unpopular Popular Character)
• Paddy Tanniger & the Vaudville Duo (Scrappy page, just talks about how they were killed off because they were scrappys. Also the Weight Lifting guys are shoehorned in too)
• Carl (Scrappy page)
• Connie (Scrappy page)

edited 14th Aug '15 6:35:01 AM by chasemaddigan

I can't say I know a whole lot about the fandom of the series, but I think most of the ones with contrary tropes can be removed. I also get the impression much of it is written by people who just hate the series in general. Apparently it's a cool series to hate.

Jeff is kind of a weird situation. He was obviously intended to be a Hate Sink because of how he abused Quagmire's sister, but I know people who hate Jeff for being such an unrealistic depiction of abuse rather than merely being an abuser. So he's a hated character that was intended to be hated, but he's not hated for the reason the writers intended.

So... does he count as a Hate Sink or a Scrappy?

Both, from the sounds of it. Hate Sink is for when a character is written with flaws that are supposed to make you hate her (useful if you want a more sympathetic villain/antagonist). The Scrappy is when a character is hated for whatever reason and people think the work would be better without her. There's no reason they can't both apply to the same character, but the hate is for different reasons.

I was removing some examples when I noticed a few things I missed. The Griffin family example also serves as an entry for Peter. The Meg entry also includes an out-of-universe example, but that's mostly from upset Brian fans. I removed some of the spoiler tags, considering Brian's not dead anymore.

• The Griffin Family in general- a fair few people will call them some of, if not the worst, characters ever to be conceived. Peter gets this the most, if only because he seems to be involved in most of the Overly Long Gag shots.
• Meg Griffin is an In-Universe example. Curiously, as of "Life of Brian", she suddenly got thrust into this in real life by grieving Brian fans commenting on the outcome of the episode:

I'd like to suggest Akiko from Kamen Rider W. She often grates on fans because of her loud and obnoxious voice, her tendency to hit Shotaro, and calling him and Phillip idiots over the slightest instance (despite the show proving many times that they are more intelligent than her) while fangirling over Ryu. She is rarely helpful to the group, and yet she acts like she's the smartest.

Another one I'd like to suggest is Ryotaro Dojima from Persona 4. Throughout the game, he often suspects the Protagonist of getting involved with the murder mystery. His Social Link ends up being completely pointless for two reasons: 1. He is quick to distrust Yu after receiving a threatening letter. 2. After Nanako seemingly dies, he conveniently forgets that he learned to stop obsessing over revenge from the death of his wife. Another point against him is Nanako's kidnapping being mostly his fault. His best course of action after his family is sent a threatening letter is to take Yu to the police station and leave Nanako home alone without a sitter. You'd think a detective would know that is literally the last thing you should do in that situation.

edited 3rd Sep '15 9:34:02 AM by Animeking1108

No on Ryotaro Dojima. I've seen far too much love for that character from the fandom.

Akiko sounds like a typical fit, but I'm not familiar with the fandom. Nor with Persona.

edited 3rd Sep '15 10:43:41 AM by AnotherDuck

I'd like to mention about this expansion of an entry in World of Warcraft, and see if it's acceptable, this is to be put somewhere around the entry about Jaina's character derailment thing:

• Jaina herself WAS a very much fan favorite only in Warcraft III, but come the earlier versions of World Of Warcraft, she got decried for doing nothing and not involving herself in the conflict and is considered wishy-washy for not taking a side between the Alliance and the Horde, and in Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm, 'crying' over how she had to kill Arthas or witnessing Thrall marrying Aggra. By this, fan complains about her being an overly passive woman and wants her to do something or else. Blizzard actually heard this complains... and instead 'develops' her via the aforementioned derailment. This opens up a new can of haters: One that hates how she is no longer staying true to her peaceful and kind core self, an inversion of We Want Our Jerk Back!.

What do you think? I observed that there's been something of this trend about how people sees Jaina. They say that if I want to add someone to pages as such, I should report here, so... here I am?

edited 14th Sep '15 3:58:09 AM by ChrisX

What's the derailment? It's not written here, and examples should never rely on other examples for clarification.

That said, I'm unfamiliar with her and her fandom/hatedom past W3.

This line:

• Jaina's character derailment was even worse, entering "Ron the Death Eater" territory. She had a vendetta after the destruction of Theramore and was on the verge of trying to purge Orgrimmar. Even though in Warcraft 3 she indirectly helped Thrall and the Horde fight Theramore's forces and kill thousands of people, including her father Admiral Proudmoore, to prevent the Alliance/Horde conflict and restore peace.

Which refers to this line:

• There is another point of contention regarding Varian. Blizzard worsened the characters of Jaina Proudmoore and Tyrande Whisperwind, just to show how much better Varian was. Jaina and Tyrande are also two of World of Warcraft's few female protagonists.

You do have a point about not depending on other points for clarification, so how do you suggest tidying it up? Don't worry about your lack of knowledge, I'll cover it up.

Just include a short description of what that derailment was, with emphasis on what people don't like about it.

Also, just the words, "was even worse", suggests complaining and a badly written example.

Now, I actually looked at the page and wow, that's a mess.

Varian's entry begins with a pothole to Love It or Hate It, which is an instant disqualifier. The Scrappy is Hate It Or Hate It.

There's a lot of indention issues.

Thrall's and Malfurion's seem to imply they still have a bit of fandom, and there are just some fans jumping ship.

Just want to mention that Hate It Or Hate It is impossible. I know that even The Scrappy would have some fans. However, it's still a trope because in order to qualify, the lovers' amount must be DWARVED by the sheer amounts of haters. So maybe... loveitOrHATEIT

Fans jumping the ship seems to be a problem in the wiki at times, with some fans potholing what their personal opinions are as facts, which I think why the Thrall and Malfurion entry are like that. Perhaps a sound regulation would be fine to handle this?

edited 14th Sep '15 11:41:41 PM by ChrisX

People behaving like that is why we have threads like this one. Here we can at least try to determine what the real situation is.

But yes, it doesn't need to be absolutely everyone who hates a character. It needs to be the vast majority, though. Love It or Hate It, or rather Base Breaker as it should be, is about roughly equal and antagonistic sides of fans with regards to a character, and is mutually exclusive from The Scrappy. A character can transition between them, but not be both at once.