Complaining: Temporary Scrappy

It's not always a "replacement"

"Someone who's written out because she's become The Scrappy is not this trope."

Then I SHALL make it.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

This trope is fine, but the name is awful; it sounds YMMV and has nothing to do with the concept of a Scrappy. A better name would be Shoo Out The Hate Sink or something similar.

I liked Hate And Switch as a pun. It's maybe not quite clear on its own, but I think it puts the emphasis in a better place once you've read it.

Should we link this discussion to the Temporary Scrappy page?

edited 21st Jun '17 4:39:39 PM by GhostHouse

It should have been auto-linked, but when the thread is created with a . instead of a / separating the namespace from the page name it doesn't link. I have corrected it, and it is now linked.

Hate And Switch

It covers what I think this trope should have been about. Here are some examples that would fit better here.

From Hate Sink:

• Fluttershy brother Zephyr Breeze in "Flutter Brutter". For most of the episode Zephyr is lazy, obnoxious, and narcissistic, and his constant, clearly unwanted hitting on Rainbow Dash doesn't much help. It's clear that viewers are not supposed to like him until the end.

He subverts Hate Sink since he becomes sympathetic in the end.

From Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:

• Prince Wu at the start of season 4 was initially despised due to being seen as an obnoxious, less funny comic relief sidekick to Mako in comparison to Bolin (who at the time was hanging out with Kuvira). However as the season progressed his Character Development turned him from a Jerkass Royal Brat to a Jerkass Woobie with a heart of gold and Hidden Depths that genuinely cares for Mako (best shown in the episode Reunion wherein he's genuinely grateful for Mako rescuing him from Kuvira's men instead of complaining about Mako not protecting him properly. His Take That, Scrappy! moment at Mako in the following episode (calling him out for the mess he made of the Love Triangle in the first two books) his Crazy Awesome tendencies and surprisingly clever thinking during Kuvira's invasion of Rebublic City helped earn him quite a few fans.

This is (possibly) not Rescued from the Scrappy Heap since it happened within the season, so it was likely intentional as opposed to an after the fact fix that this trope is about.

And my own proposed addition:

• Princess Cadance at first seemed like a whole bunch of bad clichés, a pink pony alicorn princess (a status previously reserved for the settings Physical Gods) who's extremely close to Twilight Sparkle and to be wed to her brother, despite never appearing or being mentioned until then. Her actions during her debut did nothing to help. Then it's revealed "that" Cadance was an evil imposter, while the real Cadence was every bit as nice as we were led to believe. That, plus her [Silk Hiding Steel surprising competency]] and all she had to go through to get her happy ending, quickly endeared her to audiences.

In short, this should be about deliberate subversions of Hate Sink; characters that look like this at first only to show likable traits later.

Exampls of "characters it turns out we were supposed to hate" is probebly redundant with Hate Sink, Evil All Along, Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, Broken Pedestal, and Parody Sue. I'd say cut as is

That's Not A Subversion of Hate Sink. That's Character Development in character from Hate Sink to a sympathetic character, not a case where the trope was never in play at all.

Temporary Scrappy is a subtrope of Hate Sink, and as such can't be a subversion to it, without being a subversion in itself.

edited 21st Jun '17 6:07:56 PM by AnotherDuck

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Agreed. I like the names "Shoo Out the Hate Sink" and "Bait and Switch Replacement".

So, what should we do?

We could make this YMMV, or just recreate this in TLP.

Making it YMMV makes perfect sense, since the standard The Scrappy page IS YMMV.

I say we do that.

I don’t know, this is more a subtrope to Hate Sink and not really The Scrappy, a majority of these examples are intentional to create drama or fuel for Strawmanning.

Yeah, this is not a subtrope of The Scrappy, so whether The Scrappy is YMMV is completely irrelevant.

This is a subtrope of Hate Sink, which isn't YMMV, so if you're going by the parent this shouldn't be YMMV.

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So what exactly is this trope?

I'd say not worth keeping. With how long and little progress this thread has made, it's better off being cut and anything worth saving started from scratch.

With only 11 wicks last I checked, It won't be missed.

edited 21st Nov '17 2:02:19 AM by Ferot_Dreadnaught

A character is introduced for the specific reason of pissing people off and potentially shaking up the show then Put on a Bus or Boom, Headshot! killed after they did their job.

If it was unintentional the path and result is still the same.

Captain Jellico in Star Trek The Next Generation comes to mind.

edited 21st Nov '17 3:38:16 AM by Memers

If that's the case then I think this page should be cut and the proper concept should be sent to the TLP.

Why?

I don't think always defaulting to cutting pages that are problematic in any way is a good policy. "Cut and send to TLP" is shorthand for "cut and pretend we're improving the wiki".

Thread not making progress does not mean cutting is the best solution. If there's over a page of examples, having few wicks is a crap reason to cut it.

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The name is bad and I don't think it should even be used as a redirect, it has almost no work-related wicks, and a lot of the examples on the page don't seem to fit the definition discussed in this thread. Might as well send it back to the TLP we can decide on a trope description, and an actual trope example list.

edited 21st Nov '17 2:13:54 PM by captainpat

If the name is bad, the default solution is not "cut the trope".

If there are some 20-ish examples on the page, it's not too small to cut.

Most examples fits at least roughly. The problem is the Example As Thesis way it's written, which is a little too specific. There's a sequence of events described and most examples hit most of the points for it. The main difference is whether the rest of the characters like the replacement.

Honestly, leaving it as it is is a better solution than cutting it, because it's at least a trope that shows a pattern used in storytelling.

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A rename and a rewrite is really what is needed here IMO.

At most we could troll for examples in YKTTW, copy the trope to a ykttw and say looking for examples then copy them over to live after 3 days.

You're confusing what I want for something else.

That works for me and we should also redlink the name Temporary Scrappy

In practice, sending to TLP is roughly the same as cutting. It depends on people actually doing work there on that specific trope for it to not be cut, and considering how the vast majority of tropes in TLP never see the light of day, it's equivalent enough to just cutting the trope. The signal to noise ratio is far worse in TLP than in TRS.

In other words, I'm never going to agree on sending anything to TLP until that's actually a practical option to improve the wiki. As it is right now, it isn't. It's just a way of cutting content while pretending it's not.

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Considering the amount of time this page has been on the wiki (since 2008) and the lack of wicks/examples it's gotten over the years, I wouldn't care if it got cut. Might as well throw it to TLP to see if we can squeeze anything out of the concept.

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

That's probably because a lot of the things proposed in there aren't tropes. It is not that hard to come with a basic trope description, get a decent number of examples and 5 hats.