Needs Help: Creators Pest

OP by Ferot Dreadnaught

ATT recommended taking this to TRS as the issue on if it allows creators bashing character they don't like from outside their own works, or if they're enjoying/bashing those characters in their work/being separate from the canon characters they dislike disqualifies, or if non-OC fanwork characters are disqualified despite many licensed works doing such bashing/"fixing", has been repeatedly brought up but went nowhere.

Results for (Wick Check)

Out of 50/50 total wicks...''

• 27/50 (54%) Dislikes working with/removing the character
• 7/50 (14%) Bashing or "fixing" the character
• 16/50 (32%) ZCE/other (Issue of lacking citation and unclearness on the kind of hate to quality as Creator Pest)'''

Analysis:

A majority of the use is about them disliking working with the characters as opposed to bashing/"fixing" them to their liking. Most possible misuse stems from examples not being cited.

Proposed Solutions:

I'd redefine as them not liking the process of working with the characters in their work rather than disking the character in the source material. This would prevent the issue of keeping characters they enjoy bashing. If so consider renaming (possibility "Disliked working With The Character") which would potentially curb misuse of united examples.

Other possibilities include allowing any creator confined hate even to those outside their work (how to keep from condoning character bashing will be discussed), or only allowing it to the character in their own work.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Pinging ~Ferot Dreadnaught

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

So... Most of the wicks are correct use? Looks like a cleanup only, methinks. Unless I'm missing something here.

Edited by PhiSat on Feb 25th 2024 at 9:46:48 AM

Oissu!

Exactly what said. And looking through the wick check, the misuse seems to be even milder than it actually is. A few from the second folder ("Bashing or "fixing" the character"):

• Characters.Yu Yu Hakusho Supporting Cast: In the beginning she played a more active role in helping Yusuke come back to life. Not soon after she gets shoehorned to the side, ends up cleaning after Yusuke’s mess and being Locked Out of the Loop about most spiritual matters. It doesn’t help that Togashi himself said that hedid not like Keiko all that much, and admitted that he primarily created her to be a character that Yusuke can emote to. Not regret how they turned out such, fixed them by reducing her prominence.

The pothole here isn't really necessary, but I don't see how this is misuse: despite the lack of context, it clearly states the creator simply didn't like the character. (That said, the Trivia page for this work doesn't have a Creator's Pest entry.)

• TheScrappy.Web Videos: The Meditation Guy from The Uncanny Valley for his reedy voice, being the standard New Age Take That!, and always interrupting The Webmaster's cool moments. It even became a Creator's Pest for Rob after the series' release. Luckily, Diamanda Hagan made him, Nash and the Critic explode, and watched them burn in hell for a while before reversing time.

This is largely contextless, but Trivia.The Uncanny Valley has a Creator's Pest entry that states that the character in question is indeed such.

---

While we can debate on the validity of fan work entries involving canon characters, I don't see why adaptations/"adapted" characters should not count. The circumstances are much different than fan works: obviously they're much more "official", but due to such, there's much more restraint placed upon the author. With a fan work, the author can bring in whichever canon characters they want and do whatever with them, but with something more professional (such as a comic or a film adaptation), the author can be forced to work with these characters, which can thus result in a Creator's Pest. Take the Justice Society of America example on the wick check, for instance (pothole highlighted):

• Author's Saving Throw: Cross-franchise example, but prior to joining the JSA book, Jesse Quick was, until recently beforehand, part of the Titans (1999); under writer Devin Grayson, she was set up to be The Lancer and protege to team leader Nightwing and was an Ensemble Dark Horse. Until, the creative team changed and writer Jay Faerber took over, who for some reason just didn't like her^note per his own claim, he saw her as the 'outsider' of the team who didn't fit with the others, and she suddenly became moody, impulsive, and a Butt-Monkey who ended up in an adulterous affair with her mother's fiance which indirectly got him killed. Fans of her character, from both Grayson's run and her previvous role in The Flash, were not amused by how she was treated, so in the pages of Flash, Geoff Johns (also the writer of JSA), had Jesse give up her powers in a Heroic Sacrifice, quit her job, join the JSA as a business manager, and then as a supporting character here got re-railed, and then get serious Character Development as she took over her mother's legacy and found love in Hourman II. While some Flash fans weren't happy about her codename change (she later reverted back anyway) and shippers didn't like how out of nowhere her and Rick's marriage was, the sudden improvement to her treatment allowed that chapter with the Titans to easily fall into discontinuity.

Jay Faerber did not choose to bring in Jesse Quick; he was thrown into his hands when he assumed control. He could not choose to put him in or not (like in a fan work); he was part of what he was given and he was forced to make use of him.

back lol

The OP proposal:

From the Creator's Pest description:

... That's already how it's defined?

I assume the question intended to be if Creator's Pest allows character bashing or not.

Edited by Amonimus on Feb 26th 2024 at 12:37:11 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Relevant Trope Talk thread, if you want to see some of the thinking that went into the creation of this thread beyond the linked ATT.

Seems like what mainly needs to be resolved here is whenever canon characters in fan works count.

I was originally going to say no at large; as I (and others) have already detailed, fan works are almost never for-profit and have much more freedom than something more professional. An author can bring a character into their fanfic simply to make them suffer because they dislike them; the same does not apply to an author assuming control of another’s work along with character they do not like.

However, having read through the Trope Talk thread, I have my doubts. While I’m largely unfamiliar with fanfiction, there may be instances in which authors are obligated in some sense to make use of certain characters they dislike. For instance, say Alice and Bob are siblings in a TV series. A fanfic author likes Alice, but does not like Bob. However, the two are tightly-bound in the original work. Resultingly, the author is required to write about Bob—despite their dislike of him—because they want to write about Alice. This could arguably also apply to works with group casts. If a video game is lead by a party of five, and a fanfic author dislikes one, they may feel obligated to write about them nonetheless as they’re bound to a larger group.

There’s plenty of instances that certainly don’t count; if an author brings in Charlie just to have him fall off a cliff and get eaten by a pack of bears, that’s just a Revenge Fic. But in spite of the ambiguity, I do think there’s some fan work examples involving canon characters that are valid under the current definition.

back lol

I've said my thoughts on this before.

• It's Trivia already and the criteria is pretty objective: work creator does not like character in their own work. One of my personal favorites being Yomu Mishima's noted dislike of the Little Sister Heroine trope, hence why younger sisters in his Light Novel series are frequently antagonists—which backfired on him with Trapped in a Dating Sim to the point of him getting stuck writing Marie her own Spin-Off.
• Speaking as a fanfic writer myself, the only real difference between a fanfic and a licensed work is that a fanfic writer isn't getting paid. We can still dislike canon characters that we think we need to use in order to produce the story, and we don't have to actively bash them in-story. ETA: Also yeah, like this said, bringing the canon character in just to bash them is Revenge Fic.

Edited by StarSword on Feb 26th 2024 at 9:57:23 AM

The trope to me is

• A creator dislikes the production involving a specific character

There may be a question if the trope is also

• A creator dislikes the character they're working with

which to me is yes and is a bit of Distinction Without a Difference as reasons for not liking a character can wary.

To break down the OP:

• if it allows creators bashing character they don't like from outside their own works
• or if they're enjoying/bashing those characters in their work/being separate from the canon characters they dislike
• or if non-OC fanwork characters are disqualified despite many licensed works doing such bashing/"fixing"

These sounds like a creator's personal opinion and not noteworthy if it's not something they were involved with. The second one can also fit Armed with Canon and Revenge Fic if they insert bashing into writing to make a character suffer/unsympathetic.

Maybe the OP can explain in detail what the issue with the trope is.

Edited by Amonimus on Feb 26th 2024 at 6:08:56 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

~Ferot_Dreadnaught has an underscore in their username. Pinging them with the underscore to see if that works.

This is Idol Tap. (My Troper Wall)

Yeah, a canon character in fan works getting bashed is Revenge Fic or Ron the Death Eater. A creator derailing a character they hated after getting control of a property that wasn't initially theirs seems like Armed with Canon.

Oissu!

Need to draw a distinction here between Revenge Fic and Ron the Death Eater for clarity's sake. The latter is an Audience Reaction that goes on the source material's page to describe general fandom trends. Revenge Fic and Armed with Canon are the ones that can potentially be paired with Creator's Pest on a derivative work's example list.

Edited by StarSword on Feb 26th 2024 at 5:56:53 AM

I wasn't suggesting adding Ron the Death Eater to Creator's Pest description. I know Ron the Death Eater is a bigger fandom trend than a single Revenge Fic.

Oissu!

Cool, just making sure we're all on the same page.

Anyway yeah, I don't think much more than a wick cleanup needs to be done here.

Just to check, Revenge Fic is about bashing the character (or does it have to be the main focus of the fic?), but Creator's Pest is not liking working with the character, so non-OC fanwork characters are exempt because fanworks don't have the limits that force the inclusion of characters audiences don't like in the sense of Pest as opposed to bashing?

Want to be sure we're on the same page about that.

Uh, no, we seem to all think fan works shouldn't be excluded from Creator's Pest, because actively writing a fic to denigrate a canon character ≠ just not liking the character.

Let me rephrase that to nearly everyone who had posted so far thought so.

Edited by StarSword on Feb 26th 2024 at 11:57:07 AM

There isn't consensus there, though. Plenty of people think that fanfics should be excluded. I still do; I'm a fanfic writer myself and I'm well aware that I can simply choose to not include characters I dislike (and I do so already). It genuinely feels different to me to lump fanfic writers as "creators" in the same way as the legitimate creators of those characters, because fanfic writers are more detached and don't have to include every aspect of a work in their own story.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

There may be cases

• Fan comic is hard to draw
• A character they generally didn't support gets positive comments

but that's all I can think for bow because it's hard to have a Creator's Pest when you're also the sole producer.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

But not impossible. You can get into situations where you need a certain character niche to develop the story the way you want, and that niche happens to already be occupied by a canon character you don't like. I can vouch.

Yeah, example popping up for me of character disliking their own wholecloth creation was Greg Farshtey of BIONICLE who came to dislike Lewa, Matau, and others who speak in "treespeak" — this orignal form of odd syntax rooted in the culture those characters are a part of — because he started finding it really annoying to have to write for, and would come up with reasons to not use it, including just focusing on entirely different characters who don't use treespeak.

But back to the broader subject at hand of what should count for the trope, I'm open to including cases of "original characters that fanwork creators include but otherwise don't like working with", as I think there's enough room to allow cases of reluctant usages that aren't just specifically making a fic with intent of burying the character further as a form of wish fulfillment — that just sounds like one extremely particular potential reason out of many. It's also just much more informative than those misuse cases of "includes character with specific intent to 'fix' them" ("fix" in this wick check simply being "active exclusion"), which which feels like an entirely separate concept more along the lines of Demoted to Extra or Adapted Out and stuff.

Edited by number9robotic on Feb 26th 2024 at 11:24:56 AM

Thanks for playing King's Quest V!

I dunno, I feel like there is a difference between a creator disliking a character from an already-established work that they are adding to (officially or otherwise), and a creator disliking a character they themselves created, which is far more notable because we expect a creator to like the characters they make.

One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.

Some fanwork examples.

• Codex Equus: BrutalityInc dislikes Chrysalis viewing her as one-dimentinally evil (a trope he dislikes such his works treat them with scorn or rewrite to be more nuanced) idiot who's only effective when the heroes were made more idiotic or inept. It's only due to her (he thinks undeserved due to canon failing to show what they praise) popularity with fans and writers that he includes her as is, limits bashing, gives her praise when due, and leaves her competence open to interpretation in-universe and out. But the reason they wrote the Changeling Court entries, and thus the main basis of the whole Codexverse, was to expand on the Changelings civilization in order to marginalize Chrysalis. This was deleted as a non-OC, despite it not being about bashing characters they don't like and why they're "forced" to include them despite their dislike. Would they count if they were an OC? Or not since they were free to remove them to the extent they did?
• * The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum: Due to the increasing hostility between the lead author, Redskin, and the co-authors in the later chapters of the story, the co-authors had grown to hate the lead human character, Marcus Renee, especially DoctorFluffy and JedR. It got even worse due to his abrasive personality, as well as how the narrative kept glossing over his flaws, but the moment that Marcus reached the point of no return for them was when the lead author intended to have Marcus kill a pregnant woman and face no consequences for it. It was because of this that when the team decided to cut ties with Redskin and reboot the story into Spectrum, they decided to have Marcus Adapted Out and replaced him with the Suspiciously Similar Substitute Alexander Reiner, who had most of Marcus’ worst traits toned down. Valid as an OC and about production circumstances, working with others, forcing the characters inclusion despite their dislike. But would it change anything if this was over the handling of a non-OC? Or does he not count as fanworks lack of restrictions meant they removed him as soon as his problems hit breaking point?

Snoke from The Last Jedi was hated by the director, and so portrayed unflatteringly and killed off. Would this not be considered bashing if a non-OC in a fanwork. And it doesn't sound like they had the creative restraints/pushback that separates licensed and fanworks.

It seems if we disallow bashing than fanwork examples are functionally identical to Creator Backlash.

Thoughts on those?

(ninja'd, was responding to Master N's post)

So to lay it out, the question is: there anything substantial about that separation between "creator dislikes a original character they made" and "fanwork creator dislikes a character they have to adapt" that warrants distinguishing, or do they both fall under the already-established, encompassing idea of Creator's Pest?

Me, I'd say yes, they both fall under the same umbrella. Aside from the distinction between an original work and a derivative fanworks, I'd say they still keep the same spirit of "I'd rather not be working with this character in the stories I want to tell", and even for fanfic writers, their fanworks are functionally original stories, just with already-established characters and mythos — if we have to distinguish that, then we have a problem with say, Comic Books with decades-old shared universes where characters are passed around writers like trading cards.

Edited by number9robotic on Feb 27th 2024 at 10:25:00 AM

Thanks for playing King's Quest V!