BoJack Horseman Clean-up -- Revision and Trope Misuse

Can my Broken base entry be rewritten then, to reflect on BoJack being redeemable or not? Unsure if that's a character or a plot thing, since the ongoing plot of the show asks that question.

I dunno, but you might also want to ask about this with the Broken Base Cleanup thread.

...Upon checking the Edit Banned thread, looks like High Crate really did end up bounced. What now?

Well, let's just try to resume the character page cleanups. So where were we?

BoJack Horseman - L.A. Residents, I believe, though we (and by we I mean mostly Sync) cleaned out most of that page so I'm not sure where to go next.

Sorry, my attention's been taken by other projects.

I was thinking of just removing spoilers for Alex's folder. He's just an inconsequential One-Shot Character at the end of the day. Thoughts?

No problem, I deeply appreciate your dedication to the cleanup even while you're busy with other stuff.

Yeah, I think I mentioned that when I brushed through his folder. If you know who Alex is, you've seen the episode and know the twist. At the very least, not every single entry needs to be spoilered out in its entirety - maybe just a few words if necessary.

Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 18th 2020 at 11:52:59 AM

So, is it okay with anyone that I went to Characters.Bojack Horseman and applied my proposed outline for the character index? Of course I remember that we'll be reorganizing the index and consolidating the subpages after the content-trimming has already been complete. I just wanted to give a preview of what to expect later.

So is BoJack Horseman - L.A. Residents all cleared yet? Now what about BoJack Horseman - Hollywoo Residents and Other Stars?

Right off the bat, I see Hollywoo has its own "general" folder, and all of that can probably be moved to the main page itself as it's not about specific characters and is more about the setting.

Yes, main pages.

Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 26th 2020 at 4:53:44 AM

[deleted]

Edited by AHI-3000 on Nov 26th 2020 at 1:45:04 AM

You mean under some of the WesternAnimation.Bojack Horseman subpages? Yeah I would agree with that.

Edited by AHI-3000 on Nov 26th 2020 at 1:46:55 AM

So the entry on AlternativeCharacterInterpretation.Bo Jack Horseman about Herb has always made me...slightly uncomfortable, because it proposed that Herb being attracted to BoJack and wanting to introduce him to show business meant that he was "grooming" him...I have no idea if this is a common perception in the fandom (I know some people do blame Herb for the incident but saying he was grooming BoJack seems to be a bit too far), but it rubs me the wrong way.

But I checked again and I forgot...this is ridiculously long, and probably veering into Ron the Death Eater more than a legitimate exploration of Herb's flaws.

Edited by mightymewtron on Dec 29th 2020 at 12:39:36 PM

Is anybody here? Somebody called attention to the Anvilicious entry on YMMV that's just a lot of bashing. It might also be misuse of Anvilicious as it rants more about the messages being bad than being on the nose. Some of this (like the "anybody who raises a child is bad" point) is just...deliberately warping the messages of the show.

• Anvilicious:
  • This show has yet to meet a political matter than it can't take an iron-fisted left-wing perspective on, and the results are... a bit tactless to say the least, especially when the matter has nothing to do with showbusiness (and when it does, it depicts Hollywoo is pure evil). It also won't hesitate to use the characters as mouthpieces for shameless, unapologetic proselytizing about feminism often in the form of hastily spat-out Anti-Humor, make even worse when it uses other, more controversial topics (gun control, whales in captivity) as a springboard specifically for feminism, or that said topics never come up in the show again once they've served their purpose.
  • Also, the show really want you to know that you don't need the approval of your birth family to be happy, as evidenced by the uncomfortably realistic depiction if Bojack's abusive parents and Princess Carolyn's gaslighting mother and Bojack outright telling Diane that family is "a sinkhole" when she fails to gain the approval of her own cartoonishly exaggerated family of bullies. Compare this to the more sympathetic depiction of adoptive parents, especially Hollyhock's eight polyamorous fathers, or dearth of scenes depicting kinder birth parents (the episode with Yolanda's parents deliberately glosses over a pleasant heart-to-heart she has with them then writes her out of the show, as if avoiding showing birth parents in a positive light). While most fans have said that they sadly identify with the depiction of negative parental relationships, this seeming derogatory depiction of birth parents can come off as needlessly grim to those who don't have bad relationships with their birth families, if not more than a little insulting to those who have a legitimately good relationship with them. It also doesn't help that the show consciously deconstructs the Good Girls Avoid Abortion trope at every opportunity, which, when combined with the above, can come off as prejudice towards anyone who bears a child or raises the child they gave birth to, period.
  • Being such a dialogue heavy show, most episodes have at least one scene of a character, usually Bojack or Diane, giving some flowery pontification about life and relationships, usually with very vivid analogies (Diane's "I'm tired of squinting" speech comes to mind) as if the characters are outright incapable of articulating anything in less that a verbal Wall of Text. At times, it feels like the show is trying to give viewers quotes to mine.
  • As mentioned above, not only is celebrity culture depicted as inherently toxic or even evil, but no character involved in the arts is in it for the love of the craft, only some ulterior motive (monetary, self-esteem) and those who've achieved happiness have either left the arts or just failed their way into successful careers, which comes off as the show saying that the arts in general are inherently shallow.
  • The show also takes every single opportunity to deconstruct The Power of Love and The Power of Friendship by repeatedly having Bojack accidentally drive away any and all help with his deep-seeded bad habits. He's also the only character who experiences this, as literally everyone else's lives are visibly, significantly improved by having someone stick by them when they're at their lowest point. The intended message is how it's unhealthy to seek you own happiness in other people, but more often, it feels like telling a friendless loser to just suck it up.

I'm just tempted to say cut all of those entries. The show is heavy-handed in its messages, but every single one of those entries is just complaining about how the show handled them. It reads more like a list of Broken Aesops or the old "Family Unfriendly Aesop" we used to have than describing how the show isn't subtle about its themes.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Jan 7th 2021 at 7:24:12 AM

So can I just revert back to the old entry? It was short and didn't cast too much judgment.

Looking through the history it seems a lot of the negative entries were added by The Remedy 91.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 7th 2021 at 7:43:38 AM

Good lord, those are complain-y! Whoever added those clearly had an issue with the show, or more likely (judging by the first sub-bullet) the show's politics, and quite frankly nothing there is salvageable. Cut them all.

Okay, I rewrote the entry. How about the ACI page I mentioned above? Can we clean that up? There's a lot of reaches regarding character intentions. I think some people are bending over backwards to defend the title character. (Surprise surprise, The Remedy 91 is behind a lot of that page as well.)

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 7th 2021 at 8:51:11 AM

Just peeping in to say I've been iffy on that page myself for some time. Sorta feels like Draco in Leather Pants is in play with that troper. And you know, sure, the show isn't perfect and you don't have to like absolutely everything about it. But this is one of those times where I really do question how many other people really agree with something on a YMMV page (and in this case, aren't shitty people).

Edited by AyyItsMidnight on Jan 7th 2021 at 6:48:40 AM

And the topical episodes make it a point that Hollywood in general handles them tactlessly...

This show does have a pretty divided fandom, so I'm not opposed to noting that at least part of the fandom does believe Bojack got a raw deal and stuff like that. But some tropers spend paragraphs analyzing why they think a character is actually cruel to Bojack for very flimsy reasons, or that the show has an agenda I have never seen people say it has (like the accusation that it's anti-sex or anti-biological-family). I don't even think it's just Remedy because others have added stuff like Designated Monkey that seems a bit complainy.

This is an off-page example but it's still kind of weird.

• Bojack Horseman, arguably, deconstructs this concept by pointing out how fickle the population can be about celebrities. A person who was loved one day can be a pariah the next, and vice versa. And if a celebrity is very powerful or influential, he may be 'too big to fail' and even exposing his crimes doesn't make a dent in his popularity, such as the case of Hank Hippopopalous being exposed as a sexual harrasser: if anything the secretaries and Diane, who exposed him, suffered the Role Ending Misdemeanor since Hank just made too much money and was too popular to be brought down. The nadir of this deconstruction is shown in the finale. During the final season Bojack is exposed as a predator toward women who indirectly caused Sarah Lynn's death by overdose by not calling until seventeen minutes after she lost consciousness in order to think of an alibi, which leaves him a total pariah in Hollywoo. Cut to a year later, and the last movie Bojack did before going to jail, The Horny Unicorn, is a smash hit, and Hollywoob loves Bojack again, with him having prospects in line once he finishes his jail sentence.

First off, can you even deconstruct in-universe Trivia items? Secondly, is this really even a deconstruction, or just fans of the show trying to gush about its depth again? Thirdly, the entry says a lot without actually explaining the context of what happened. (How would non-fans know what happened with Hank?)

Ah shit, I forgot to mention it. It's on Role-Ending Misdemeanor, specifically the subpage for in-universe instances. There are in-universe cases in the show, but I don't know if I'd call them deconstructions.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 12th 2021 at 10:51:58 AM

I think it can be cut.

What is the trivia item again?

Saw this example on Dysfunction Junction.

• BoJack Horseman's heavy focus on Hollywoo mental complexes results in this. The title character is a deeply depressed and unpleasant man who is discovering that having Abusive Parents, substance abuse issues and fundamentally good intentions doesn't justify his unlikeable behaviour - and that's just the beginning of his problems.

Is there anyway to rewrite this to remove the Examples Are Not Recent wording?

A bunch of texty examples were recently added to Characters.Bo Jack Horseman Main Characters, and I'm concerned they're the same type of wall of text possibly-misuse examples we've been cutting back on.