Character Perception Evolution cleanup and maintenance

Yeah cut. I have no idea what this is saying. It's just weirdly written.

Also casting men as women has never been a consistent structural issue in the same way casting white people as people of colour has been unless you want to run back to the Elizabethan era

I would not be against into cutting what was said on the words given. So I would not abject into doing that action just by reading what is said.

Edited by Echidna on Feb 10th 2024 at 12:45:47 PM

Cut that.

It's dealt with.

I found this entry on YMMV.The Flash 2014:

• Barry Allen himself was originally very well-liked due to being an Adorkable All-Loving Hero who many felt was more likable and charming than the Arrowverse's main protagonist, Oliver Queen. However, he grew into one of the franchise's most polarizing characters due to suffering from Flanderization in later seasons, making him overly reliant on his team and prone to making reckless and questionable decisions, with the fanbase even mockingly referring to him as "Jobber Flash". Yet former fans begin to soften up to him again with the DCEU's version of Barry Allen being even more divisive in no small part due to Ezra Miller's performance (as well as controversies surrounding them), which led fans to renew praise on Grant Gustin's performance as the titular character, with some even hoping that he could replace Miller as the Flash in a future film.

Okay maybe I missed it but I have never seen a change in perception of the character. He was popular all the way through and for that matter most of the complaints I have found was about the writing with most still liking the character even at the shows worst.

I found this on CharacterPerceptionEvolution.Video Games:

• Another thing that helped change the perception of the Quarians was the Covid-19 Pandemic. With the widespread risk of infection, face-mask enforcement, sanitation concerns, and perpetual lockdowns that came about during the pandemic in the early 2020s, a lot of of gamers note how the plight of the quarians greatly mirrors what happened in the real world. On a more humorous side, during & after the pandemic, players have joked that of course the quarians would be catty and paranoid about everything.

IIRC, we cut an example about a germophobic character who was said to be seen in a more positive light due to the pandemic. Should we cut this bullet too?

It doesn't even seem relevant to the trope. There's nothing about how audience perception of them has changed, just a Covid shoehorn.

It's a rambling paragraph that can't come to a point, you can cut it.

This is a question for Star Wars fans probably more versed in the fandom than me but could the Imperial Remnant in the original Star Wars Expanded Universe be seen as an example of more critical Character Perception Evolution?

I don't participate much in SW fandom discourse because of how toxic it is but I remember that people actually liked the idea of "the Empire turning over a new leaf and slowly becoming less evil" in the past but there in general a consensus that the idea of a Fascist empire liberalizing has become MUCH more controversial nowadays. I have heard from a lot of sources that the Legends expanded universe was wrong to have done what they did.

I have a few suspicions as to why this is the case, all of which involve real-world politics and potentially historigraphy, but it is tied to why there is more suspicion around say people having Misaimed Fandom to far-right coded regimes in fiction or even taking the Rooting for the Empire view of them nowadays. On the other hand, I have heard that the idea of the Galactic Empire liberalizing being controversial even back in the day, but a case could be made that it had more to do with how the EU did a Happy Ending Override on the franchise even before the sequels(which had the Remnant stay evil to the bitter end as the First Order) did their own undermining of the franchise's "happy ending".

Edited by xie323 on Apr 25th 2024 at 6:45:22 AM

This got added Dracula?

• As Jonathan is being seen in a more positive light, the title character is being seen less and less positively as he was in decades past. Before Dracula Daily kicked off, he was seen as a representation of sexual liberation, and a better character against the 'repressed' main male characters. Now, especially on Tumblr, he is seen much more as a sexual predator/rapist and a serial killer. The interpretation that Dracula represents sexual liberation for Mina is frequently mocked and critiqued, with people pointing out that equating Dracula (who is presented as a rapist in the original novel) with sexual liberation is full of Unfortunate Implications, not to mention invalidating the experiences of sexual assault/rape victims. Adaptations have increasingly made Dracula a tragic, romantic, even heroic figure, where going back to the original novel shows him as a thoroughly vile monster.

I really contest this. This feels like weird recency bias as Dracula adaptations have always swung bwteen depicting him as a total monster or sympathetic.

I'm sure that entry was brought up before and consensus was to cut.

The Dracula entry feels like Alternate Character Interpretation, since objectively, the role of Dracula has been framed as liberator or monster depending on the work.

Heh, even post-Me Too!, treating Dracula's original depiction at face value is not a given. Yes, he is a vile monster in the original novel. But many of the same people who are more aware of sexual abuse are also more aware of some uncomfortable racial/colonial undertones in the original novel (i.e. clean-cut, rational English heroes vs. a demonized "foreigner" and exoticized Eastern European), and they have no problem with works that make Jonathan into a prick and Dracula into a sympathetic romantic god.

So, ultra-recent culture wars have not really ended the way Dracula can go from monster to romantic ideal and back again.

Edited by renenarciso2 on Apr 18th 2024 at 10:08:23 AM

Dracula going back and forth on being completely evil or an anti-hero is Adaptational Heroism, Adaptational Consent, and/or Adaptation Displacement depending on the work.

I think the central question here is: was the original Dracula ever widely seen as a symbol of sexual liberation?

No, not really. The first image that always comes to mind regarding Dracula as a sex symbol is Bela Lugosi. Clean-shaven, slick hair, nice suit, and a distinct Hungarian accent. That is what people think of Dracula.

But go to media prior to Universal's Dracula, and you'll find that Dracula was often depicted as a very ugly and monstrous creature. Count Orlok comes into mind.

I would wager more people are familiar with the adaptations, than the original book. It is fair to say that the popular image of Dracula is of a suave seducer. There has been some pushback on that from people who have read the book, and that's worth acknowledging, but I wouldn't say that's the majority opinion.

I'll cut it than citing this thread

I found this on YMMV.Phineas And Ferb:

• Character Perception Evolution: Candace was once the show's most polarizing character, especially among kids, thanks to her compulsive desire to "bust" her brothers regardless of what they're doing, her crush on Jeremy coming across as a borderline obsession, her questionable treatment of Stacy, and her generally acting like a stereotypical teenage brat. However, later episodes would show her softer side by showing she does genuinely care about her brothers, have her become a better friend to Stacy, and tone down some of her more negative traits. In addition to this, viewers who watched the show as kids have since grown up and realized that she actually had a point in that Phineas and Ferb's crazy inventions could end up hurting someone or themselves (even if she is a bit of a jerk about it), as well as sympathized with her over the fact that she's constantly made to look like an idiot and be berated by her own mother, making it understandable she developed an obsession with trying to bust her brothers. All these factors served to make Candace a fan favorite.

Okay I am going to be honest. I have no idea what this entry is on about. Candace has always been one of the most popular characters and for the exact reasons this entry says developed later. Like fans have always thought exactly that. No perception has changed really.

Have they? I remember finding her kind of annoying as a kid.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 2:05:45 PM

Uh hard to say? Her and doofenshmertz were bascially the shows actual main characters at the end. But I truly dont think that was intended for either of them at least at the beginning

Would the portrayal of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game be an example? I remember it receiving widespread praise at first and becoming more polarizing over time.

That's more Condemned by History or Fair for Its Day.

Here's one I found under Live-Action Television:

• When Scrubs first began airing in the early 2000s, protagonist John "J.D." Dorian was near-universally viewed as a likeable and relatable character with a strong foundation of underdog sympathy; he was also considered fairly groundbreaking at the time, being an early example of a sitcom protagonist who was openly and proudly nerdy and unafraid to subvert traditional ideals of masculinity—while also having an active love life. But as cultural perceptions of geeks and nerds have shifted over the years, it's come to be much more widely acknowledged that men with nerdy interests (and those with superficially "feminine" tendencies) can be just as guilty of toxic masculinity as stereotypical "Alpha Males", meaning that modern viewers are a lot less likely to see J.D. as an underdog by default. Partly due to this, Scrubs fans are now much more willing to acknowledge the character's negative traits, particularly concerning his relationships with women. Considering the many morally questionable things that he did over the course of the show's run (e.g. abusing his authority to torment Keith out of jealousy over his relationship with Elliot, knowingly sleeping with Elliot while she and Sean were dating, and telling the mother of his child that he didn't love her while she was giving birth), he's now widely seen as a well-meaning but deeply flawed anti-hero who occasionally uses his timid personality to get away with treating other people horribly. Although plenty of people still find him entertaining to watch, he's a far cry from the universally loved hero that he was when the show began.

I have two issues with this example:

1. Praising JD for not being traditionally masculine seems more like a recent perspective, though I admit I don't know how critics reacted to the character when the show first aired.

2. The entry acts as if just recently JD has been criticized for his behavior, but there were fans who took issue with the character when the show was still airing. The show even acknowledged his flaws at one point. So I don't think he was ever a universally loved hero.