Character Perception Evolution cleanup and maintenance

I think it is more this case that we are seeing haters that were always there crawl out of the woodwork over people retroactively turning against Ahsoka's earlier appearances. Let me explain some context.

TCW had always had a hatedom among the diehard Legends fan circles due to it being one of the first open signs pre-Disney that Lucasfilm wasn't willing to allow EU lore to determine the direction of the lore due to some altercations impacting Legends era lore even as they took some characters introduced in the EU or were blink-it-or-miss cameos given genuine characterization by the EU. While this crowd had vocal support at the start of the Clone Wars, they gradually died down due to a lot of factors. For one, TCW was praised for improving the narrative created by the Prequels and making Anakin sympathetic to those whom hated the character or felt he "ruined" Darth Vader, and Ahsoka grew to be a solid character in her own right. This was also coinciding with the fact that Legends was in a generally agreed upon Audience-Alienating Era with the Legacy of the Force books and the Revan novel, the KOTOR MMO being well regarded but ultimately an Acclaimed Flop that drew its' own hatedom due to Bioware's decline and the MMO mechanics being too derivative of WOW, multiple failed spin-offs and cancelled projects, and the fact that Karen Traviss(already a major Broken Base in the SW fandom), the author with the most umbrage at TCW's lore changes, wrote a couple of books set in the Halo universe that were seen to be poorly written or lore-breaking.

In general these lore changes brought by TCW were seen to be an improvement both for the Prequels and over whatever Legends has done, and the diehard Legends purists having little to stand on considering that the state of the EU wasn't really in a good place and certain authors they upheld being critically re-evaluated, forcing them to flee into the shadows or acknowledge that TCW's fandom had legit points.

Now fast forward to now. For reasons I would not go into but we should be familiar with, Disney's Star Wars were seen to be even more polarizing than Star Wars under Lucas and apart from a few outliers their EU fared no better in that regard. While Ahsoka's role in Rebels was a welcome presence, Thrawn was always seen to be a Tough Act to Follow with massive cases of Only the Creator Does It Right directed towards Filoni regarding his take on Thrawn and the Thrawn in canon being seen as a step down to his legends self(this being despite the fact that the "Creator" in this context gave Filoni the blessing to do this). This gave room for the Legends purists to crawl out of the woodwork, and not helping things is how Filoni's "roadmap" is basically an adaptation of the Thrawn trilogy refitted for canon lore. And now let's talk about the roadmap...

Originally the "roadmap" that began with The Mandalorian was seen as a way to win back disgruntled fans from the Sequel Trilogy, however apart from the Mandalorian Seasons 1-2, Clone Wars Season 7, Andor and maybe the Star Wars: The Bad Batch, a large chunk of the "interconnected roadmap" being Love It or Hate It affairs, or failing to take off at all(ie: the planned X-Wing movies), so the polarizing nature created an opportunity for Legends purists to crawl out of the woodwork.

This is also around the same time that, thanks to the Post-Endgame MCU's many failings seeming "proving their point" combined with a slow renaissance of "arthouse/high brow" movies(ie: Barbieheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon all come to mind) "arthouse buffs" were also crawling out of the woodwork and decrying every single attempt at making a Shared Universe over a self-contained story with a defined ending as a corporate cash grab, viewing Filoni as trying to "MCU-ify" Star Wars into a even bigger cash grab and make sure that his characters displace Lucas' legacy despite how much Filoni has been credited with "saving" Star Wars in the past.

So it's less that people stopped liking Ahsoka and more the extreme hatedom that was always there combined with the vocal backlash to shared universes crawling out of the woordwork.

Edited by xie323 on Jan 18th 2024 at 7:42:47 AM

So would you say Ahsoka is base breaking now and the entry just needs rewriting? Or should it be deleted for now

It should be deleted to be honest, especially with the context that people still liked her appearances in TCW, Rebels, and even Mando S2 and parts of the hatedom are people that never liked TCW or even the idea of a Shared Universe in the first place now crawling out of the woodwork. Like we've removed both Xehanort and Sylvanas on the basis that people liked their earlier appearances, and there wasn't really much of a consensus to re-add Rumple either when he was brought up

Edited by xie323 on Jan 18th 2024 at 10:52:16 AM

There's also the fact that the more polarizing works featuring Ahsoka are much more recent, like 2-3 years recent, and apparently the CPE wait time is 5 years.

Edited by xie323 on Jan 21st 2024 at 8:43:09 AM

The 5 year waiting period is established after a character's debut, not when it begins to change in a different installment/season.

With that said, I do agree that a lot of the negative words about Ahsoka as of late do seem to be made in bad faith, so her entry being removed makes sense.

Ahsoka has been removed but I disagree with Xehanort being removed given the conclusion to his arc seems to have damped discussion of the character as a whole and his reception. I have an aquatience online who won’t shut up about how much they hate Xehanort as a whole now. Furthermore, the character’s reception has already been on a decline thanks to Dream Drop Distance establishing his losses in prior games at best did nothing, and at worst only helped him in the long run.

Edited by Mariofan99 on Jan 21st 2024 at 10:15:28 AM

I do think there was some consensus to re-add Xehanort, even through the same person that vouched for Sylvanas getting cut didn't really support that.

Edited by xie323 on Jan 22nd 2024 at 7:36:21 AM

For 3 it’s definitely the belief it was mishandled while DDD’s plot and Xehanort’s apperence is heavily scrutinized as it applies a Happy Ending Override and esenitally says he ALWAYS planned to lose which made several fans feel cheated and could be seen as retroactively tarnishing the stories of earlier games, and by proxy his earlier appearances

Edited by Mariofan99 on Jan 22nd 2024 at 10:43:50 AM

I think what prevents Sylvanas from being CPE in a negative sense is the fact that a case could be made that people hated what the character became and not what she was, and I think at the very least, her appearances up to Wrath was well regarded to some extent. The fact that Golden legitimately was seen to have tried her best to rehabilitate Sylvanas with the concept she was given in her novel and the fact that the worst of Sylvanas actions were forced by the hand of literally one writer overruling everyone else I feel may give some leeway.

Also since it's now "5 years after a character debuts" rather than "5 years after a work comes out", could Goro Akechi from Persona 5 qualify for CPE, specifically among the Western fandom? While Japanese fans always liked him, he was much more polarizing in his debut among westerners, but Royal really fixed that for many.

Edited by xie323 on Jan 23rd 2024 at 7:07:53 AM

Here is an entry for the Video Games page of CPE I wrote in the past:

• Aerith had the perception of her role in the Love Triangle between her, Cloud and Tifa, as well as the perception of her relationship with Zack and Cloud shift among the Western audience over the years. Upon the original game's release, many players, particularly those that shipped her with Cloud, supported the interpretation that Aerith wanted to move on from Zack and to both know and love the real Cloud, but wasn't able to due to her death. This view fell out of favor among the Western audience^note The interpretation of Aerith as wanting to know and love the real Cloud is still popular to a degree among Japanese audiences even as the CloudXTifa ship is the more popular ship in both the Western and Japanese fandoms. This may be due to the CloudXAerith ship having a larger following in Japan and how frequently Aerith is marketed besides Cloud in spin-offs by Square Enix. with the Compilation. Advent Children implied that Zack and Aerith ended up Together in Death. Crisis Core further expanded on Zack's relationship with Aerith. Both works contradicted earlier side material^note In particular the Dismantled strategy guide and the Maiden Who Travels the Planet novella. The former having Aerith's monologues indicating that she loved Cloud over Zack, and the latter had her spirit reject Zack's spirit in the Lifestream throwing more ambiguity towards Zack and Aerith's relationship and won Western fans over to the "Zerith" ship. As such, most Western fans latched on to an interpretation of the love triangle that saw the real Cloud as always in love with Tifa and only returning Aerith's affections because of his false persona, while Aerith was purely attracted to said false persona over Cloud's true self.

There has been an concrete effort to rehabilitate the "Clerith" ship in recent years by both more neutral fans that don't care about shipping and actual CloudXAerith shippers in light of the Remake due to more awareness of how grossly mistranslated the original game was, awareness that some of the more overzealous "Cloti" shippers took certain scenes for granted as hardcoded cnaon despite the fact that them being triggered requires having high affection with Tifa(the Highwind "sex" scene is the big one) and themselves were willing to accept mistranslated text if it means validating their ship. Remake reintroducing us to Aerith and her interactions with Cloud once again combined with Briana White's generally agreed upon extremely well done voice acting and translation of Aerith's lines into english.

I am thinking of rewriting this to reflect the new information given that Aerith debuted(and died) decades ago and isn't under the 5-year wait rule. However, I am wondering if I should go through with it or should I wait on this a few years because the Remake project won't truly be concluded for years and in general, Aerith will very much still be in the crosshairs until the end of Part 2, and if the gun still fires and depending on how Part 2 goes and we get a purely Cloud and Tifa game as a result of you-know-what happening again, Part 3 may swing the pendulum back in the same direction.

So should I rewrite this or wait, even through it will be years?

No offense, but that whole entry needs to be thrown in the bin. Clerith vs Cloti has been a massive war forever, and Cloti fans maliciously mistranslated a lot of Japanese-only works to try to rewrite authorial intent to make their ship look more "canon". If any bit of that entry is to be kept it should be tossed onto a Ship-to-Ship Combat entry instead since it's not really about the characters but the ships and Die for Our Ship happening.

Edited by PhiSat on Jan 30th 2024 at 1:11:46 PM

I question this entry for a few reasons

• Gravity Falls: Mabel Pines was initially well-liked when the show first started, due to her Adorkable personality, being a hilarious foil to Dipper, and for being a Fountain of Memes. However, starting late season 1, she became more and more of a Base-Breaking Character due to her tendency to tease Dipper for his crush on Wendy when she can barely go five episodes without getting a new crush, how Dipper is often expected to make sacrifices for her when she rarely returns the favor, and for inadvertently helping Bill break free and causing Weirdmageddon. What doesn't help matters is that she mostly never faces any negative consequences for her mistakes or Jerkass Balls. However, in the years since the show ended other fans have examined this perception and found it to be exaggerated, leading to a backlash against the backlash. Mabel's defenders point to times where she does face negative consequences for her actions, bring up times when her better side is on display, and say she's far from the only character to have serious flaws and/or less-than-stellar moments. In addition, after Star vs. the Forces of Evil's widely-derided series finale, which had Star destroy all magic in a way that made many viewers see it as an Inferred Holocaust, some who had criticized Mabel in the past warmed up to her and acknowledged that, for all her flaws, she at least didn't commit genocide. As a result, Mabel is one of the most severely polarizing characters in the entire show

—————-11

While Mabel is definitely divisive I don’t know how much of her actions in early episodes are tainted as a result. Also to me the Star vs comparison feels like a stretch

Mabel's early episode actions may be tainted on rewatch, but I don't think they'd be all that worse in hindsight. That Star Vs. paragraph should be cut though- it's completely irrelevant, since to my knowledge the shows have nothing in common besides "made by disney".

So delete the whole entry or just the comparisons to Star Butterfly?

Edited by Mariofan99 on Jan 31st 2024 at 5:14:09 AM

@PhiSat To be honest I had doubts about that entry with Aerith and the Love Triangle Debate when I wrote it, through more on the basis of the subject being flame baity than anything else. I only because I talked with someone that is a bit of an expert in the fandom whether that constitutes CPE before we had a cleanup and things were much less curated.

I think it may well be a situation where there wasn't any actual CPE, but discourse was dominated by extreme bad faith actors on both sides and there was people calling this out even back then, and it has only gotten more prevelent because of advances in social media. For instance, thelifestream.net, which was a sort of breeding ground for extreme Cloti viewpoints, was called out even back then for claiming that HA-Highwind Sex=canon and one of the people making that claim had to apologize. And even if there was a legit perception shift it is less character perception evolution and more ship perception evolution.

In hindsight some of this could legitimately be moved to Ship-to-Ship Combat(it already kinda is in that thread to be honest).

Edited by xie323 on Jan 31st 2024 at 8:00:29 AM

Just the Star Butterfly part for now. The entry itself is valid.

I recall it being said Character Perception Evolution can be caused by fanworks, I can think of several instances of Pokmon species gaining a better reputation among fans because of internet celebrities using them. Let me know if any of these caused a big enough shift to warrant inclusion on the list:

• The Hoppip line was genuinely overlooked but around the late 2000s and early 2010s they gained a boost in popularity thanks to Hoppip being a Running Gag in The Jwittz's early videos becoming a Memetic Troll in the process, along with people realizing Jumpluff had versatility in low tier competitive play
• The Oddish line seemed to gain popularity after ProJared did a Nuzlocke of FireRed with his Vileplume "Nuptup" going on to be the MVP and a Memetic Badass
• Pacherisu was seen as at best another unremarkable Pika-clone special until Se Jun Park used one to win the 2014 VGC World Championships showing its bulk and electric typing made it a good choice for doubles
• While the line had been getting Critical Backlash for a few years by this point, Trubish and Garbodor seemed to stop being the poster children for bad Pokemon designs and gained genuine fans after Chuggaaconroy used them in his Let's Play of Pokémon White.

Edited by Mariofan99 on Feb 4th 2024 at 12:24:13 PM

I know that the Pachirisu one is at least true. I don't know about the others. The Trubbish line for example I think got saved not by Chugga but from the pendulum swinging back in favor of Gen 5 as the audience aged and became dominant online. Oddish doesn't even explain it being disliked first, and Hoppip... I don't know if Jwitz actually had that much influence but I became a fan of these creators rather late

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 4th 2024 at 12:27:47 PM

Yeah, I'm not exactly super knowledgable about the Pokemon fandom, but I'm not sure if mentioning Chuggaaconroy in the Trubbish/Garbodor entry is really a good idea or all that necessary, especially in light of recent controversies.

Yeah thinking about it Jared and Jwittz fandoms aren’t that vocal espically these days. So the Pacherisu entry is fine, and rewrite the Garbodor entry to remove mention of Chugga?

I think the Garbodor one is focused on the wrong thing entirely. They (along with the Vanillish line) were given a more favorable view because gen 5 fans became prominent, not because of a specific creator.

ProJared is mentioned in the Oddish entry, so I don't see that as a big issue to mention a well-known Let's Player influencing perception regardless of controversies (because let's face it, it's an inevitability).

The thing to keep in mind would be if the franchise or mainstream media took notice of evolving perception. We know that Ash went from the biggest Memetic Loser to the biggest icon of Pokémon thanks to articles talking about Ash before and after his first League victory (and later his victory at the World Championship).

For Oddish, I think a case can be made given that Pokémon: Path to the Peak used Oddish as Ava's main Pokémon companion. It's quite odd for Oddish to suddenly have prominence given that it has no real presence in the anime (unlike Psyduck, Togepi, or Piplup), so there may have been a shift in perception of this Pokémon. We just need to know what Oddish's reception was back in Gen I.

Edited by Shadao on Feb 4th 2024 at 9:53:33 AM

I found these on the Western Animation subpage under Bojack Horseman:

• Todd's asexuality also become a bit contentious after the show concluded, with some arguing that it was an unnecessary retcon to his character (as he was shown to be romantically interested in a woman in season 1 and only didn't end up seeing her because of her gangster father forbidding it) and that Todd's storyline embodied too many negative aspects of being asexual with him ultimately not being able to connect with the female Ace character he comes across.
• Diane being voiced by a white woman instead of an Asian actress also underwent some criticism midway through the show's run when it wasn't seen as a big deal when the show first came out. Raphael Bob-Waksberg even expressed regret for this saying he wish he'd done things differently and had gotten an actual Asian voice-actor to voice her (he also regretted having the only Latino characters in season one being gang stereotypes).

Do these feel shoehorned to anyone else?

Agreed. They're less about the characters and more meta writing complaints, especially the second bullet.

I also found this under Bob's Burgers:

• Plus the fact that she and Linda are voiced by a male voice-actor (who does not sound remotely feminine which can make their dialogue painful to listen to at times)has undergone a criticism in recent years as some fans of the show feel like it was completely unnecessary and made it difficult to take both of them seriously as characters for how incredibly distracting their voices can be at times and that it needlessly took away potential roles for female voice-actors for no good reason(with some fans saying that in the wake of black characters like Carl and Dr Hibbert from The Simpsons no longer being voiced by white voice-actors as a result of the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests that this show should've taken that opportunity to recast Tina and Linda's voices as well and have them voiced by actual women)with many agreeing that if the show had come out later in The New '10s or The New '20s that the idea of two of the main female characters both being voiced by a male would've been nowhere near as accepted as it was back in 2009.

My stance is that none of these bullets fit the trope and they should all be removed. What say you?