Complaining: Scrappy Index

Based in the discussion in the scrappy cleanup thread, "it sounds like a random mashup of actual tropes and audience reactions." and "it's just "things that might potentially make somebody hate a character" - with no regard for whether they're intended to or not". My suggestion is either nuke this- as suggested in the thread- or change this to only tropes about fandom- related hated.

Opened.

Hmmm, not sure which is the better solution... I can go either way.

Defining this as an index of tropes that are about unpopularity - both from the audience and from other characters - seems like the best way forward.

That's kind of what I see it as it is now. It's basically about characters or traits that are meant to draw heat, or tropes about drawing heat.

I wouldn't mind limiting it to being about the audience, so tropes like The Un Favourite wouldn't fit, even if it's about unpopularity about the character, by other characters.

Could definitely use some going through to determine what fits and not. Speaking of the above, X-Pac Heat should probably be there.

Technically most kinds of villains would fit as well (that is, if they're not sympathetic one way or another), although for them I think it would be somewhat redundant.

We can put subindexes as well. Such as Villains if necessary but not all villains are meant to be hated.

I've noticed that Analysis.The Scrappy seems to cover what this index is supposed to, tropes that make characters unlikable. Moving examples there (I think the ones on this page are better formatted then in Analysis.The Scrappy since it clearly and objectively explains why they are hated) might fix this, anything else on this page can be moved to Hatred Tropes.

I think the best option is to create an "Unlikability Index", which acknowledges Tropes Are Tools (they can be used to deliberately make a character unlikable but run the risk of Scappydom if done unintentionally or poorly) and move examples on this page there.

Relatedly, I'm currently under the impression Hate Sink and The Scrappy can overlap if there are unintentional reasons for the hatedom. Y/N?

Sure. If Hatred Tropes exist, disambiguating this between The Scrappy subtropes and Hatred Tropes may work as well.

The Scrappy Index is not "tropes that make characters unlikable". It's part of it, but not all of it, since for one, The Scrappy isn't one such trope.

Analysis.The Scrappy is about what makes a character more likely to end up as The Scrappy, specifically. (And most of it can be summed up by "bad writing".)

I think the best course of action would be to make Scrappy Index to be about audience hatred (intentional or not), while Hatred Tropes would work for In-Universe hatred (which is pretty much all of it as it is already).

Perhaps more of a topic for The Scrappy Cleanup thread, but yes, Hate Sink and The Scrappy can overlap. Those are two different kinds of hatred. Happosai from Ranma ½ is one example. He's one of the least sympathetic characters (which says a lot, considering the series), and frequently an antagonist of sorts, so he's clearly meant to be hated, but at the same time, people hate him so much they just stop watching episodes he's in, which isn't the intended way of hating him.

Basically, there's a difference between hating a character because you want her to get her comeuppance, and hating a character because she just ruins the story, and it would be better if she was just erased from the continuity. Someone to root against vs someone to exclude from the story. In-story hatred vs out-of-story hatred.

I see your point, but just because they can overlap doesn't mean that they should be grouped together. If they do happen to overlap, that should be specifically documented on their example on The Scrappy page. I think that dividing the index's contents into more appropriate categories is a good idea as well. (Edit: This is what I always meant, just clarifying it)

edited 6th Nov '16 8:09:59 PM by GhostHouse

Yeah, example sectionectomy seems like a good way to go.

There are no examples. It's an index. It has tropes on it.

Not an example sectionectomy exactly but a sectionectomy in spirit.

Nuking this is a bit extreme.

If we are to do anything, I like the proposal offered by Septimus in 3.

edited 13th Nov '16 10:02:08 AM by Karxrida

What would be left?

I still favour my suggestion in 8. It's about audience hatred. That's to separate it from Hatred Tropes, which is about character hatred.

8 works too; I'm not going to be that picky.

I'm cool with that, but the title "Scrappy" index is still kind of misleading if it's going to be about more then unintentional audience hatred.

Can you back up that it's misleading with any numbers pointing that direction, or is it just your opinion?

Well, The Scrappy is, by definition, about Audience Reactions. And since we seem to be going in the direction of hatred, intentional, unintentional, in-universe, or otherwise, then The Scrappy isn't an entirely clear thing to name it, because the original trope has already been established as exclusively unintentional audience reactions. And that's why I feel that the title as it stands could be misleading.

Maybe the index could be exclusively about those "Scrappy" clones.

In addition to everything above, shouldn't Base-Breaking Character be listed on the page instead of Broken Base or am I mistaken?

Despite using a title that also refers to the reaction of a character, it seems to be more about hate in general.

Maybe we could make a index pertaining specifically to negative audience reactions and call it something like the "Hatedom" index. That way, we could still have our index organized as such and it wouldn't get confused with in-universe hate tropes, and people wouldn't confuse it as a supertrope for The Scrappy tropes.

Is there evidence of misuse or underuse to justify a namechange?

Is there evidence of misuse or underuse to justify a namechange?

• Anyway, if we go with my idea, we wouldn't just rename, we'd just regroup all the negative audience reactions and group them in a specific index about that thing. After that we would have still have a random mix-up of in-universe tropes possibly leading to hate or about in-universe hate, and we could either nuke that or further regroup them. With it's current name, it's just rather confusing. What I'm suggesting wouldn't be a total fix, but it might help.

That could work. Hatedom encompasses anything and everything on fan-hate, so it would definitely be relevant. I don't think that there's anything called a "Hatedom" Index, and the actual article prohibits examples, so the name's free for taking. As for the rest...the index as it stands is flimsy at best, with a confusing name. People aren't sure whether it's solely about hate, as the index itself claims, or if it's about hated characters, as the title suggests. And then mixed up in it all there are these tropes that merely the have potential for being a trait of a Scrappy. It really doesn't add much to the wiki.

edited 26th Nov '16 12:54:02 PM by GooglePlexPower