If it doesn't include unintential examples, then the Trope Namer would have to go. IIRC, poor Scrappy actually saved Scooby Doo before people started hating on him.
I'm sure it includes unintentional examples. The question is whether it also includes intentional examples - characters that were meant to be hated by the audience.
Rabid Fujoshi
Yes, villains for example. You are SUPPOSED to dislike villains. That's there purpose so you feel good when they are defeated.
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
The future of warfare in UC.
Scrappy, being an audience reaction trope, can include either. It doesn't really matter whether you set out to provoke the reaction or not; people reacted.
Nous restons ici.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I'm sure that most villains aren't supposed to be annoying.
edited 6th Aug '11 8:30:12 PM by nuclearneo577
I see the Awesomeness.
Noir, have you never heard of Affably Evil? Don't think you're supposed to hate those guys.
Fight smart, not fair.
Pretty sure that a villian as The Scrappy would be in comparison to other villains of a work - for example, when you've got a dozen WellIntentionedExtremists and a hefty dose of Blue-and-Orange Morality, a Card-Carrying Villain's apt to be hated.
edited 6th Aug '11 9:03:29 PM by BioTube
The future of warfare in UC.
Serious question: was this even an appropriate reason to open a TRS thread? It seems more like something that should be discussed in Trope Talk and result in a TRS if a conclusion is reached and there's something seriously wrong. If a conclusion is reached that just requires removing a few examples then you might as well do it yourself.
Nous restons ici.
Rabid Fujoshi
@Deboss, don't belittle me without any provocation, it's insulting, and I was speaking generally. There are many types of villain course there are a few exceptions.
But there's a difference between a character being an effective character, and being an ineffective character. A Scrappy is an ineffective character. You are supposed to like them, but you hate them. But if the character's purpose is to be hated, and they are hated, then they are an Effective Character.
We'd need an example check to make sure if there is actually abuse.
edited 6th Aug '11 10:27:48 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
I see the Awesomeness.
One of the problems with asking about what you're supposed to feel based on authorial intent, is that it has to be backed up with Word of God.
Fight smart, not fair.
There is a difference between hating a character because they are the bad guys and hating a character based on conception. Complete Monster is not a fandom-based trope.
There is also They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste, where such a reaction by the audience was intentional only to throw a curveball at them later on. Writers may try to introduce a Scrappy only to rescue them from the scrappy heap, truthfully if they pull it off it is often very satisfying to see a character you dislike grow into a likeable and useful character.
You're right - I didn't think about it until after I posted, but this thread is meant to clarify an ambigious aspect of the trope, not to fix any problems - I don't know yet if those exist. Although it is probably getting more responses from being posted in TRS...
Specifically The Scrappy should be a character the audience dislikes because they feel their inclusion detracts from the quality of the work, rather than because they are a generally despicable person. That's how I've always read it, at any rate.
Conceivably these concepts could overlap, but I think that would be somewhat rare. A character you get angry with is engaging. A character that causes you to get angry with the writers is exactly the opposite.
edited 6th Aug '11 11:27:43 PM by Tyoria
A scrappy is just a character hated by fans. Heck the laconic page for this does not say anything about intention.
edited 7th Aug '11 4:40:15 AM by KSonik
Derived from something I brought up in the EnsembleDarkhorse thread.
Is The Scrappy supposed to be limited only to characters whose hatred by the audience was unintentional, or is it the more general "widely hated character" that I've always assumed it to be? It's listed on Unexpected Reactions to This Index, but the actual description doesn't seem to go either way, and some of the character tropes that commonly cause Scrappies are meant to be disliked, such as Smug Snake and Dirty Coward. So the question is, what is The Scrappy being used as currently, and what should it be defined as?