Removing complaining, bashing and other negativity from the wiki

Found this tweet

Ehhhhhhh, as much as I think he's being pointlessly dickish there ^note as mentioned, people liked Chloe because he was humanizing her and were upset because he pulled a 180 and then mocked them for it, so it feels like he's purposefully making a strawman out of what actually went down, I'd be just as bad-faith if I rejected it based on my own personal feelings. I guess Astruc doesn't hate her... he's just really bad at handling the discourse.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 16th 2022 at 6:27:54 AM

I had been putting off this one for a few months already, but I feel I can't really ignore it anymore... Can someone help me take a look and cleaning up the YMMV page for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? It's frikkin massive, and it seems like it was almost entirely written by a guy who has some hang-ups with Alan Moore and the way he wrote some characters. Not only does he keep repeating himself over and over again, he goes in off-topic rambles about how something he did is sexist/ableist/how it doesn't take into account sensibilities for the era/etc.

The comicbook section is over 44,000 characters, most of which is rambling against the comicbook. I can help with some clean-up, but I would like some consensus before nuking most of the entries from orbit.

Edited by Edgar81539 on Sep 16th 2022 at 5:35:46 AM

Any entries in particular that concerns you? It's easier to do it in piece-meal rather than "this whole page is bad".

I should note though that many people have added onto that page, so I wouldn't attribute it to some mystery Moore-hater unless there are specific examples added by a single person.

The Shallow Parody and Broken Base entries in particular. I mentioned that because some Wall of Text entries have been cropping up for other works which mention TLOEG and seem to share the same hang-up about the way Alan Moore handled some characters. Copypasting the first "entry".

• Shallow Parody: Alan Moore and O'Neill claim that their Deconstructive Parody of older works is based on being Truer to the Text, and while that claim is valid to an extent that the Unbuilt Trope of many of their sources and targets are either forgotten or mentioned in Older Than They Think, many of their targets and satires seem to be based on shallow impressions, strawman arguments, inconsistent standards, and poor premises:
  • Series lead Mina Harker is one who attracts a lot of this criticism. There are some implications in this interview that Moore saw Mina Harker as a token stock badass female to add to the cast and doesn't understand the themes of Dracula at all. For all the issues that made it Fair for Its Day, Dracula is about a monster that "can't love" trying to destroy a group of True Companions who are unquestionably loyal and devoted to each other—in particular the uncompromisingly devoted Harker couple, who are utterly in love with and admiring of each other and work hard to be mutually supportive in each's various individual endeavors as well as be strong for each other in all their traumas throughout the novel, both as lovers and as life partners. That Moore's take on a supposed Truer to the Text Deconstructive Parody of Dracula's characters results in Moore's Mina having such a derogatory attitude towards (and negative history with) Moore's Jonathan shows either that Moore doesn't value the optimistic themes of Dracula about love and companionship or that he didn't understand them well enough to deconstruct what was actually in the text and, far from making his usage of them Truer to the Text, instead just painted his own Author Tract over the characters. The only other options are that he didn't actually read the novel or was biased by other adaptations that also drop much of these original themes in favor of adding themes about sexual liberation vs. conformity; Moore seems to understand Mina and Jonathan only as "assertive female with Victorian husband" and made his own assumptions about their characters from that stereotype. In the interview, Moore seems to have accidentally reinforced the idea that Mina in particular is a Shallow Parody of the character from Dracula, as he talks about her as if she was a generic female character interchangeable with Irene Adler, whose name he can't even remember, and openly says his decision to consider including either character was based on the team needing "a woman." Moore claims to have chosen Mina instead of Irene because he thought Irene Adler was too obscure, but for all the personality traits Moore's Mina has in common with Bram Stoker's, some think Moore might as well have picked Irene anyways.
  • When it comes to Allan Quartermain there is criticism too. In his original form he was a Great White Hunter who used drugs for the purpose of vision quests, and wasn't always a straight and confident hero, especially after certain tragic events that shook him (namely the deaths of his family and allies). Here in this comic the barely functional on-and-off-the-wagon Quatermain is just as much Moore's invention as everything he accuses Hollywood of doing to soften him and others of his kind up.
  • Captain Nemo, despite playing some cool parts to the story, has quite a lot of qualities that don't fit the way Jules Verne wrote him. Needless to say while it was true Verne made him Indian, Nemo's design and gimmick of the Nautilus was never supposed to be Indian-themed. It was an entire plot point that Nemo wanted to break away from the nations of the land. His captives aren't able to tell for sure what nationality Nemo is because it's all a unique design and everyone on this ship speaks their own Conlang. On top of that, Nemo was very clearly anti-British Empire. The idea that he would bother to assist them on something that at best was a local London dispute seems rapidly out of character. Even after his Villainous Breakdown Nemo still wanted out of normal humanity on The Mysterious Island. Nemo in this comic also seems to very much dislike collateral damage from the British government's plan to end the Martian invasion, which is also rather odd given that in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, he found no problem sinking any ships with the flag on it, regardless of who was on board. His Villainous Breakdown wasn't even over that, as much as the fact he wasn't that much different from the Empire. Moore seems to have him leave out of disgust for the Empire. Though book Nemo doesn't really seem like he would have even gotten involved in such a plot.
  • As a minor example Pollyanna gets used for a joke based on the very trope named after her. Here, even being raped by an invisible man is not enough to rock Pollyanna's glad game. Per the original book, Pollyanna has some Stepford Smiler elements which, while making her still an optimist, can break in really traumatic situations, making it rather out of character that she'd keep it up after Griffin's attack.
  • Another student at Miss Coote's, Becky Randall from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm also presented for a quick throwaway reference to having been knocked up the Invisible Man. League!Rebecca is written as a blonde hick in steep contrast to the Brainy Brunette of her source material.
  • We can also talk about The Island of Doctor Moreau. Doctor Moreau of the book was not a geneticist, a field that wasn't even recognized back then. Moreau's beast men were merely given proto-plastic surgery. Moore's version seems to be able to splice two microscopic pathogens together, something someone of the book!Moreau's abilities couldn't do. As well, the Beast men of Moore's work are loaded with parodies of various comic characters, but none of them really resemble book!Moreau's process, and Moreau's actual book creatures are Adapted Out.
  • Likewise the boys from Greyfriars we see in the League pages are far removed from their heroic sources. Big Brother's government and Harry Lime's M are shown to have way more prejudices than their childhood selves. Moore seems to miss the fact that the Famous Five were written as being rather against racism and sometimes willingly defending minorities, even if some Values Dissonance went into how they said it. Perhaps most confusingly one of the Famous Five was a minority character himself. While portrayed with broken English, none of the other four ever thought any less of him for it. This character doesn't appear in the League books at all. Some would contend linking Greyfriars to 1984 is appropriate due to Orwell's concern over the popularity of their stories, but even then there seems to be a disconnect, as a lot of his concern was over Billy Bunter, who was a Spotlight-Stealing Squad to the Famous Five who was the major attraction of the series for most of its run. It was Bunter who showed much more prejudicial attitudes and Dirty Coward backstabbing. Had Moore written Billy Bunter becoming Big Brother and forming his own inner circle that lead to Ingsoc, a lot more people would have followed along rather than what can't be seen as anything but major changes to Wharton and Cherry.
  • Ayesha from She gets her cruelty taken up to eleven like many characters here, but in a way that outright breaks her characterization. In She it is her genuine love for Leo Vincey that drives her Character Development, especially within the sequel. Moore has Ayesha dispose of Vincey without any care at all for both him and the book's sequel.
    • In River of Ghosts we get several parodies that make some sense on their own but make little sense when added together. In Haggard's She series, reincarnation is a heavily relied-on plot device. Moore chose to connect her supposed reincarnation to the plot of The Boys from Brazil, which was instead about clones. As if this wasn't already a problem, Moore connected both of these to The Stepford Wives, which is probably an even more confusing fit given that in that novel it's a major point that Stepford attracts men with the specific skills needed to create their robots and everyone in town is directly involved. In the League universe they seemingly just get their robot wives from this same conspiracy that created clones of Hynkel and Ayesha, which somehow aren't robots?
    • Notwithstaning Moore's handling of the Flame of Kor, which in the source was a flame that one was only allowed into once it made them immortal and free of aging of the flesh. But Harry Potter's lower wand or Janni's sword somehow defeat those immortals, when in the books the only thing that could kill Ayesha was stepping into the flame for a second time.
  • Can one take James Bond and give it some deconstruction? Absolutely. Could there be humor in Moore's take? Yes. But does that mean there's nothing compelling about his films or the original book or espionage fiction which Moore sees as possessing disagreeable political subtext? That last part is dubious, especially since Moore's focus on his Bond satire is Fleming!Bond, with Roger Moore and Daniel Craig as minor characters. Missing is On Her Majesty's Secret Service which many consider an excellent film, and a very successful and convincing attempt at humanizing Bond. Let alone remembering how Ian Fleming's Bond himself grew as the book series continued. There is also the other aesthetic qualities such as the action, gadgets, and set design which Moore mocks as impractical, but which others would see as Narm Charm of the kind Moore celebrates elsewhere and is surely no less practical than the Science Hero set-up of Captain Nemo and others, which Moore plays straight and seems to romanticize by comparison.
  • Bulldog Drummond in this issue ties into the Never Live It Down example above. One major thing the League version of him gets rather confused on lies in the name. Book Drummond is ex-military with a six-foot frame and a stocky build, making the Bulldog comparison accurate to both his attitude and look. The version in the League has seemingly picked up a much more exaggerated muscle-man look than his original version that wrecks half of the original joke. Ironically Drummond had been given Adaptational Attractiveness in film before to be played by Ronald Colman. Neither Colman or O'Neill's artwork would lead you to read "bulldog" as well as H. C. McNeile's writing.
  • Then there's the Golliwog. Moore had originally defended his inclusion by stating he was going to pull him from Florence Kate Upton's source book rather than the more-remembered Uncle Tomfoolery minstrel use of the character, which seemed divisive but somewhat understandable for deconstruction. But Moore then proceeded to graft an origin story onto him that was practically a slave narrative, thus making Moore's original point seem rather shallow in itself. As it turns out, people upset with him as a caricature of a black person were just as upset with Moore's transformation of him into a space version of a black person.^note To say this character's history is debated is an understatement. Moore, according to his interview, is clearly of the position that Upton is the full-on creator of the Golliwog and the manufacture of toys of him only comes after Upton's books. Others frame that Upton had found a minstrel toy to use as the base for her fictional character without knowing anything more about said toy. See the Headscratchers page if primary sourcing can clarify.
  • Moore's attack on Harry Potter hits on a lot of points to look at separately.
    • In the first there's the treatment of the character Harry Potter himself. Moore used the few elements that his version was Truer to the Text than the film franchise, but given how much Moore has added Character Exaggeration to Harry, it seems rather moot. Harry had issues he had to address over his own fame and whether he was nothing more than a pawn, but within the source he used that to grow. In League, Harry simply became a magical school shooter.
    • The very basis of Haddo's plan within the League narrative also requires heavy Adaptation Deviation to Harry Potter. What's even more problematic is that it requires similar deviation to Aleister Crowley's Moonchild. Moore uses the comic to weld the two narratives in ways that don't really make any sense in either source. Given that the Moonchild is supposed to be purposefully conceived in a certain way, which would require his book backstory to have all been an elaborate ruse, making the wizarding war of Harry Potter's story not real. Yet what exactly happened to the magician's war from the plot on Moonchild? Moore makes no attempt to conflate those plot points even when it seems the easiest thing to connect Moonchild to Harry Potter.
    • There is also contention because book!Harry does worry that he is just a pawn in someone else's chess game. But Alan Moore chose to make the person setting this up Voldemort (possessed by Oliver Haddo). Many have pointed out that Albus Dumbledore would have actually made more sense in this role given that in the source he was The Chessmaster who used Harry Potter as a part of his own grand plan. This is made even worse when Moore made Voldemort a teacher and then headmaster, which never happened in the books but was true for Dumbledore.
    • Next there's the outside criticism of Harry Potter's franchise. Firstly Moore seems to have based criticism on seeing Harry Potter as representing the summit of modern franchise blockbusters and a stagnant culture that creates nothing new but merely keeps regurgitating and extending stories indefinitely. Many point out that Harry Potter is an original creation developed by an individual rather than a huge publishing corporation in the late-nineties with a set number of installments from the first novel which was made into a series of films that hadn't been remade or had artificial sequel/prequels attached at the time of Moore's writing. Thus, it seems to be stretching things to make him somehow the embodiment of everything wrong with modern franchise culture.
    • The argument in Century that the 21st Century is culturally stagnant or in decline since The '70s ruffled many feathers because it basically comes across as the view of someone writing off the entire millennial generation in comparison to the '60s and the Victorian Era. The criticism of 21st-century popular culture is undercut by the fact that in setting up Harry Potter as a strawman villain, the heroes Moore chooses to oppose him are Mina, Orlando, Alan Quatermain, and Mary Poppins, all from an older era rather than say another figure from contemporary times that Moore might favor. Literary heroes and villains from this period were rather few and far between in the Century volume, when by comparison his Victorian-era volumes were loaded with major players and smaller names for added background.
  • Tom Swift is yet another example to appear in both lists because as mentioned in Never Live It Down, Moore clearly personified him as a greedy American concept of using super-cool technology for his own selfish desires. As witnessed in his Dodgem Logic essay he finds that real-life company Axon drawing inspiration for the taser from Tom Swift as evidence of this. Tom's heroic tendencies are pretty much tasered out of him to make this new characterization work. It feels like Moore has painted Tom Swift into a corner based on Moore's own opinions rather than anything in the character's books.
    • There were also complaints about Moore's handling of Nemo versus Edisonade kids like Tom Swift. Nemo does spout racial prejudices as much as them but is still presented as very heroic, and the termination of his involvement with the British Empire as a moral choice, as detailed above, whereas the Edisonade heroes are handled with a more outright amoral slant. Moore has seemingly assumed that Nemo deserved a kid-gloves treatment because Jules Verne was giving us an example of Don't Do This Cool Thing with Nemo, while the Edisonade kids were being treated as outright heroic, which can come off as hypocritical because on their inventions alone many real-life inventors found inspiration in the stories of Captain Nemo and Tom Swift alike, regardless how their narratives positioned them.
  • Moore also took Olimpia from E. T. A. Hoffmann's story The Sandman (1816) and is characterized as something far off from Hoffmann's story. Olimpia in the original tale was a barely-passable doll that could only say "Ah Ah" and was destroyed in the end. Moore's version practically makes her a fully-functional robot capable of thoughts and living a romantic life with Frankenstein's Monster, even helping make other monsters. Moore also tries to rationalize Victor Frankenstein as somehow being inspired by Spallanzani's work, despite the creations of Frankenstein's monster and Olimpia having literally nothing in common other than making some kind of new person.

Edited by Edgar81539 on Sep 16th 2022 at 5:54:07 AM

...honestly I agree with a lot of that, and a fair amount of what I don't is characters that I simply don't know enough about to say anything at all, which is kind of ominous. I think Moore (and time) has done a fair number on his Creator Worship - hence the observation that the page is the work of many editors rather than some kind of single-issue wonk with a hate-on for the comic.

Edited by nrjxll on Sep 16th 2022 at 7:55:15 AM

I can personally agree with a wall of text (and I have agreed with many), but the issues can possibly be condensed in a single paragraph instead of what the page currently is. Much like One More Day, I personally think the story is trash, but TV Tropes is not supposed to be a place to write essays detailing our grievances about a story, at least not the YMMV pages.

I ain't reading all that. Regardless of whether or not any of it is valid or complaining it needs a serious trim.

I agree with Edgar 81539 and Sponge Bat 1, the entry is a mammoth Wall of Text with poor indentation that, at the very least, needs to be chopped down.

I noticed this under The Wizard of Oz She (Margaret Hamilton) later was going to appear in an episode of Sesame Street as the Wicked Witch.

The general plot would've been a flipping of the movie, where a tornado sends her from Oz to Manhattan. Just as Dorothy made new friends, she would meet various Muppets, who would actually try to befriend her in order to help her turn good.

Except for Oscar, who loves that he finally found someone as mean spirited as himself.

But between Hamilton's advanced age and delays caused by Congress cutting PBS's funding, the episode never got made.

All that exists is a still frame of her in costume sitting next to Oscar's trashcan.

Just think about that, Decades before anyone else thought of it, Sesame Street was actively trying to give the Wicked Witch of the West a Heel–Face Turn.

And not in the [[Theatre/Wicked revisionist "oh, she was just good all along" kind of way.]] Through compassion and empathy.

Mostly because it seems like the final line was added by someone who didn't like the Wicked Musical

I can see some entries that can be trimmed down (and given proper indentation), but there are also a lot that amount to "it's not like the original", which doesn't belong under Shallow Parody. Like this:

I don't recall him being termed a geneticist, and splicing two unicellular organisms together seems a logical extension of surgery from the perspective of the time.

Edited by Reymma on Sep 17th 2022 at 3:41:53 PM

This is from Shallow Parody:

• The episode "Malleus Maleficarum" of Supernatural is often assumed to be a Take That! to Charmed. If so, it's a very shallow one indeed, since the only similarity is that it includes a coven of three witches who are petty and self-involved (which is a criticism that could be applied to the Halliwells, though even there they went about it differently than the witches in the episode. The common fandom complaint against the Halliwells is that they frequently ignored their power and duty as witches in favour of obsessing over their mundane personal lives and careers, while the witches in "Malleus Maleficarum" have chosen to become witches solely to improve their personal lives and careers). Even so, the criticisms that the Halliwells shirk their duties are criticised in-universe and form a large part of the final season's conflict (with the finale affirming that they kept fighting demons for the rest of their lives, while training the next generation to take over).

The example starts off by saying that people assume that that episode is a Take That!, which means that it isn't clear if the episode is a parody or not.

Yeah, if it's assumed and never outright stated by the creators, it can be gotten rid of.

That's why I asked for help, I have read some of the books there, like those of Verne and Dracula, but stuff like "The Island of Dr Moreau" I haven't, so I would like any deletions to have genuine arguments. Thanks for the feedback. Anyone else? Please and thank you

I removed a bad Harsher in Hindsight example from The Prince (2021) and found this:

• Shallow Parody: The show’s portrayal of the British Royal Family bears very little resemblance to reality to the point it is debatable that it even IS parody.
  • So little is publicly known about the Royal Children's personal lives and personalities that there is almost nothing the show can actually parody about them. The way they're presented in the series (George as an snarky, entitled snob who acts more like a middle-aged gay man from Los Angeles than a British child, Charlotte as a child spy for Russia...for no given reason, and Louis as a gruff working-class football hooligan…again for no given reason) is completely invented by the writers and is heavily derivative of tropes already done to death by other adult animated sitcoms, particularly Family Guy.
  • Queen Elizabeth II is depicted as a grumpy, rude, spoiled, and cruel old lady with a short fuse and a sailor mouth, and treats everyone around her like dirt, even if they are her own family. The real Queen was actually very kind, friendly, polite, and cheerful with an iconic smile, though she did have shades of shyness. She also preferred not to use such crude language (though she at times used more informal words such as "yeah" instead of "yes"), compared to her late husband Prince Philip, and treated everyone around her with utmost respect and kindness.
  • Prince Charles is presented as a wimpy momma's boy constantly trying to suck up to his mother to get her affection and approval, never to any avail, and is constantly bitter about wanting to become king. In real life, Elizabeth and Charles had a very close relationship, but this portrayal is far more rooted in reality than anything else on this list. Prince Charles had to wait longer than any heir apparent in British history to take the throne, and jokes about him being an impatient momma's boy was a joke told for decades among UK culture. The show adds nothing absolutely new to this dynamic.
  • Camilla is essentially always being beaten down by the family, especially the queen, with nobody liking her or wanting her around, and her never speaking (with one exception). In real life, the relationship the Royal Family has had with Camilla is mostly unknown, but because many outside the family considered her a far worse future queen consort than Princess Diana (who is only mentioned ONCE in passing in this show), many assume her relationship with the family is just as bad. However, shortly before she died, Queen Elizabeth said Camilla will have the title of Queen Consort and not Princess Consort (a deal originally made out of respect for Diana), so the blood between them could not have been THAT bad.
  • Prince William and Catherine are depicted as being miserable in their marriage, with Catherine even plotting at one point to divorce her husband, and being extremely distant parents, almost never talking or interacting with their children. The real William and Kate are famously Happily Married and are loving, involved parents in their children's lives.
  • Prince Harry is presented as an extremely sheltered manchild who can barely function in the real world after leaving his affluent home. The real Prince Harry is a commissioned military officer and helicopter pilot who did two tours of duty in Afghanistan.
  • Continuing from above, Meghan Markle, along with Harry, are depicted as a penniless couple in Los Angeles (or as George asserts, actually in Fairfax, even though that still is part of Los Angeles, and obviously a small British child will have extensive knowledge of Los Angeles geography), desperate for money and having to get demeaning jobs when Meghan's acting career goes down the drain. The real Meghan Markle officially quit acting after marrying Harry, they moved to Santa Barbara, and they are very comfortable and work heavily in charity work, publishing, and public activism.
  • The family all lives together in Buckingham Palace. This was likely done for simplicity and The Law of Conservation of Detail. In reality, only the Queen and Prince Philip lived at Buckingham Palace once their children grew old enough. Since Charles and William are adults with families, they live separately in various royal residences throughout London. Since Charles is now king, he has moved into Buckingham Palace.
  • This show is implied to take place in a world where Charles has no siblings. None of Charles's younger siblings (Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward) or their families are never mentioned or alluded to once. Given Andrew's sexual proclivities and his sex trafficking charges at the time, it feels like untapped ground.

It's a bit long and it feels to me like it's just complaining.

It's targeting a real group of people, so shouldn't it be satire rather than parody?

I don't think most people know the difference.

Only the first paragraph feels necessary. We don't need all the details because the lack of specific care for real-life details is enough. The rest can go into various adaptation or historical X upgrade tropes. It also sounds like it's taking things at way too face value, like a small child knowing stuff about geography sounds like that's the point of the joke.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 17th 2022 at 8:38:21 AM

"the show made a joke based on a popular joke at the time"

wow that has never happened before sitcoms are always completely original

I think this example in The Simpsons S 15 E 15 Co Dependents Day is misuse for complaining sake, but i want to bring it here first.

yeaaah, that feels pretty snarky.

Found this on the Anime & Manga page for Freudian Excuse. Area of focus has been shaded.

Every major antagonist in Beastars has one (well, every major antagonist that has a name anyway). Special mention, however, goes to the final main antagonist Melon, because originally the whole point of his character was supposed to be that he doesn't have one. He was supposed to teach Legosi that not everyone has a valid justification for doing bad things and transition the story into darker, more action-heavy story lines. Then the author was forced to rush the end of the manga by her editors and Melon got upgraded from mid-boss to final boss so he got one of these. He was given a backstory where he had to provide for a mentally ill mother from a very young age, and also said mother ate his father. Or so she thinks anyway. He's actually fine and bailed on her and her unborn child. Don't question how she came to believe she ate him alive. The story doesn't bother explaining. No one ever accused the last 20 chapters of Beastars of being particularly well-written.

Does this count as complaining?

Edited by WiryAiluropodine on Sep 19th 2022 at 3:20:12 AM

Yes.

(Though TBF it is indeed very difficult to imagine how you trick someone into thinking they ate you.)

I would cut it, if the character is mentally ill, delusions could easily explain that particular belief.

Uhm. About the Accentuate the Negative page. There's this entry about VG developers. First, I apologize that before my latest suspension, I used to edit on this.

• Game developers and publishers. If they make a poorly received game, they must make five more good games before people forget about it... And even then they're lucky if they do. And GOD help these developers and publishers if they got caught in a negative controversy. The fandom will define them on those controversies or negative things more than whatever good things they do, and act like they do it because they 'care about the industry that these companies are destroying'. (Note: these tends to be mostly from the West due to some Values Dissonance, the Eastern part of the world tends to be more chill (though not completely silent about it) about developer mishaps.)
  • Electronic Arts gets this the worst amongst other companies^{How bad?} As of current, they're unoffically dubbed 'the most evil video game company ever', and no matter how many bad controversies other companies are having (see below), EA is still the unofficial title holder.. They have a lot of terrible things... But a couple of things they actually funded and saw great interest in are completely forgotten and they go un-credited for. For example, did you know some of Origin's later games (like Ultima Online) were only possible with their financial support? Or that when a couple of studios who co-developed a game pitched an idea to them, they suggested making it a sequel to another well-received game, and the result was a Sacred Cow? What game was that, you might ask? System Shock 2. And despite being known to have killed Command & Conquer franchise, for its remastered version, EA actually went out of their way to re-gather the original crews of Westwood Studios (that they shut down) and had them recreate the magic of the retro game experience as faithfully as possible, resulting a surprisingly praised remaster of some of the classic titles. And you can probably count with your hands on how many people actually acknowledge that EA can do good things at times, the rest chose to just remember their other terrible things.
  • Silicon Knights get this to a smaller scale, though they still exemplify this trope beautifully. Essentially, after they took years to make Too Human, a game that ended up as, not bad, not cap, just So Okay, It's Average. Then, their next game project X-Men: Destiny was announced, and about three quarters of any discussion was over exaggerations about the game was instead about how SK are incompetent idiots who take too long to make crap games and that Too Human was shit and therefore so will Destiny be, while the remaining quarter was split between actual talk about the game, and people having to point out SK have made decent, if few, games in the past, and that Too Human wasn't that bad. The game itself ended up being released on time, to mediocre reviews, though official forums seemed to think it was decent, if short and not very groundbreaking.
  • Konami gets this a lot, particularly in the West where they've received massive Memetic Loser status. It would be easier to count how many people in the West still appreciate what they produce today. Since their shifting away from console games, Western fans tend to lash out at anything bad or controversial they do (their scruffs with Hideo Kojima and their meddling with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain being two major examples) and cite those things as examples of "Konami doesn't make games anymore, they're a gambling and mobage company now!", in spite of Konami continuing to produce well-received arcade games (just ask any fan of current arcade Rhythm Games). When Bombergirl, an actual arcade game and not a pachinko or other gambling-related spinoff, was unveiled at JAEPO 2017, it was singled out as "more proof that Konami only ever does bad things now" while the rest of the arcade games Konami showed at that event were largely ignored by Western fans. Notably, Bombergirl and Konami pachinko games are Japan-only, but it doesn't stop Western fans from complaining about games that they don't play. Additionally, Konami has been taking care of their game franchises that somehow never left Japan, such as Live Powerful Pro Baseball and a leftover from Hudsonsoft: Momotaro Densetsu. The two titles actually topped the charts of Japanese gaming and the latter actually won a Japanese award. Of course, as far as the Western community goes, it's like they don't exist at all.
  • Blizzard Entertainment. Ever since the merger with Activision, fans are a lot more willing to point out at how many times they screwed up (or emulating Activision's strategy of being profit-driven) rather than how many times they pleased their fanbase. And it certainly didn't help that at the tail end of The New '10s, they piled up a lot of negativity such as Diablo Immortal and most damningly, the incident where they banned Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft pro player Blitzchung for making a political statement that wouldn't go well with their Chinese shareholders. And further not helping their case was the disastrous remake of their classic game in form of Warcraft III Reforged that happened right afterwards to start the year of 2021. Going to the year 2021, it's getting a little harder to look at or enjoy Blizzard-related products without people reminding you about their aforementioned fails and how much they have fallen from their throne of one of the best Western video game developers, which was topped by an extremely serious workplace abuse scandal that drove a female worker to suicide. Even if there's a slight hope with the buyout by Microsoft (which has enjoyed a better situation in the 2020's thanks to certain figures like Phil Spencer), less people are going to talk about how Microsoft can fix the situation and make the lives of the workers better (or bring back the prestige of the franchises that has fallen due to the tons of controversies), but more about 'How much more Blizzard are going to screw themselves up further until they're completely owned by Microsoft'.

Now here's the problem. This is, without a doubt, a gigantic Wall of Text. But how much of these were fitting the trope? (Are we also supposed to mention their positives?) If the decision is to trim it instead of nuke it, how do you propose we do it while keeping the negatives as minimum as possible? Because I've got a gut feeling that this can be used as a mini-Fallen Creator page (as in, turning it into a List of Transgressions), considering company-bashing these days is an all time high and memetic action.

Any suggestions on how to proceed with this?

Edited by ChrisX on Sep 20th 2022 at 2:36:31 AM