A Comparison of Sacred Cow and Ensemble Darkhorse

You know, I have been thinking:

Could a Sacred Cow essentially be to Main Characters as an Ensemble Darkhorse is to Minor Characters?

As far as I know, Ensemble Darkhorses are Minor Characters who are very popular and loved by almost all of the entire fandom and have almost no fans who dislike them as characters!

It seems to me that Sacred Cows could most likely be Main or Major Characters who are also very popular and loved by almost all of the entire fandom and have almost no fans who dislike them as characters (which, I think, makes them have the same level of likability as the Ensemble Darkhorses as a result)!

I thought I'd bring this up because of these posts about Luigi, Kirby, and Goku who are regarded as Sacred Cows as shown in these YMMV Pages:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/SuperMarioBros

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/Kirby

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/DragonBallZ

I actually tried asking this question before, but nobody answered, so I thought that I needed to post my question on the forums! I would just like to have things sorted out if that is alright with all of you!

Edited by P360360P on Feb 6th 2022 at 6:58:38 AM

I don't quite see them as equivalents.

Sacred Cow is broader by a good margin, entire games, episodes, or story arcs can be Sacred cows for a given fanbase, while Ensemble Dark Horse is reserved for characters only.

Ensemble Dark Horse is also more related to popularity than "unmatchable and uncriticizable", an Ensemble Dark Horse, while they can't be base breaking or a scrappy by definition, doesn't mean that people can't criticize or poke holes in them without getting torn apart by the fanbase (as Sacred Cow entails).

tl;dr

Ensemble Dark Horse: Minor Character who gains unexpected popularity

Sacred Cow: Something that is considered to be beyond criticism by a fanbase.

They're not really sister tropes or equivalents in my eyes.

Edited by Tonwen on Feb 6th 2022 at 9:47:09 AM

At the "most basic level," a Sacred Cow is "a work or something within a work that everyone, including you, is supposed to like and is granted immunity to any form of criticism in any way, so to speak." It is not limited to characters, and it is not the case that everyone does like the Sacred Cow — only that many people (e.g. fans) do and the people who do like it expect others to also like it. As such, it's a subtrope of Unacceptable Targets.

An Ensemble Dark Horse is "a relatively minor or undeveloped character" who "gains a fanbase all out of proportion to their role in the work." As such, it is limited to characters, and it has nothing to do with Unacceptable Targets.

If a character is the Sacred Cow, then that character may be an Ensemble Dark Horse, but that isn't necessarily the case. Main and minor characters could be a franchise's Sacred Cow, but only minor characters can be an Ensemble Dark Horse.

As a huge Kirby fan, Kirby himself is not an Ensemble Dark Horse since he's the main character and gives his franchise its name.

Sacred Cow, I am extremely biased and must say that Kirby (both the character and the franchise) is one.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Feb 6th 2022 at 11:17:17 AM

@Tonwen: the thing is, Luigi, Kirby, and Goku are regarded as Sacred Cows even though they are characters and not games, episodes, nor story arcs, which gave me the idea that Sacred Cows can also be the definition of main character equivalents of Ensemble Darkhorses. It's like how many words have more than one meaning!

@Water Blap: What I do know is that even Sacred Cows and Ensemble Darkhorses get their criticism from time to time, but even then it is relatively minimal compared to how much love they get as a whole! As far as I know, even relatively minor or underdeveloped characters could possibly have their day in the limelight and gain character development and still not even remotely qualify as Base-Breaking Characters nor Scrappies!

@Nen_desharu: I am aware of what you are saying. I am just trying to figure things out so people won't misuse these tropes! ^_^

I think there should be a trope for main characters who have the same level of likability as the Ensemble Darkhorses and are thus too liked by the entire fanbase to be Base-Breaking Characters and are disqualified from being Scrappies by definition. If Sacred Cow isn't an acceptable definition for these kinds of characters, then what is?

Edited by P360360P on Feb 7th 2022 at 6:50:41 AM

I don't think "The protagonist of this work is really popular with the fanbase!" is a tropeable or even remarkable concept. I think it's much more noteworthy when people don't.

I don't believe that "Sacred Cow" is specific to games, episodes, story-arcs, etc.

Rather, it's that while "Ensemble Dark Horse" is pretty much specific to characters, Sacred Cow encompasses any element of the work: episodes, places, characters—whatever.

Thus "Sacred Cow" is far broader than "Ensemble Dark Horse".

Further, a main character can potentially become a Sacred Cow, I daresay—but so too might a minor character.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Feb 7th 2022 at 6:43:03 PM

I have to agree with Eiryu here. The protagonist or main characters being popular isn't really tropeworthy by itself, it's kind of the default that you expect from a protagonist or main character.

Also, Sacred Cow is not necessarily a positive trope, if anything it's more about the fans than the character in question, and it's got a bit of a negative connotation to it in that said fans will flip at the slightest negativity regarding their sacred cow. You also seem to have missed the main point I was making, which is that Sacred Cow is both far broader than Ensemble Dark Horse and also is not mutually exclusive with it.

Edited by Tonwen on Feb 7th 2022 at 10:47:24 AM

Nobody's perfect! I didn't even realize that Sacred Cow is a bad thing!

Edited by P360360P on Feb 7th 2022 at 8:14:08 AM

I wouldn't say that Sacred Cow is inherently good or inherently bad; it's one of those circumstantial things.

Edited by bowserbros on Feb 21st 2022 at 11:33:22 AM

I think the biggest question that sets the difference is, would you be upset if someone said bad things about something you liked? Or have you seen people get upset with criticism directed towards it?

Examples:

• Ensemble Dark Horse: "I think the janitor from Arthur is pretty cool."
• Sacred Cow: "I love Batman Beyond and if you don't like it then you suck!"

Even still I feel like Sacred Cow shouldn't be a trope. Everything deserves criticism and it's wrong to shoot these people down.

Nobody's doing that. All we do is describe fandom reactions.

the biggest difference is that Sacred Cow is "if you don't like this then it's equivalent to heresy", which is different from Ensemble Dark Horse being "a lot of people like this minor character/aspect". it's much different in tone

Sacred Cow always rubbed me the wrong way. On YMMV pages it's usually used for gushing (except for that one time I saw it on a work with a massive hatedom), and the description feels really pretentious.

if it is just a fan reaction, why does it feel so selective? Couldn't that apply to A LOT more works than what I've seen on this site?

Sure, probably. It's not selective, people just don't apply it very often.

I see it less as gushing, I think it'd be more likely added by someone rolling their eyes at fans for being so protective and averse to criticism of what they like.

Edited by harryhenry on Apr 24th 2022 at 7:59:44 AM

I wish I can agree, but most examples listed as "sacred cow" is basically described as "this is one of the greatest things ever and just you dare criticize it" showing the inherent biases that plague this site.