Removing complaining, bashing and other negativity from the wiki

Heroes in Crisis is earning a lot of controversy, perhaps intentionally, but the YMMV page is full of complaints and negative comments about the story. Observe...

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy:
  • The event's high body count and DC's downright gleeful use of Tonight, Someone Dies in advertising materials have drawn comparisons to Ultimatum.
  • Readers are finding it extremely difficult to see this series as exploring PTSD in a meaningful way when Tom King is failing to do so in absolutely every way possible. We only learn of the respective issues the characters are dealing with after they've been killed, making it seem pointless since we know they're dead. In the case of Wally West, as mentioned in Unintentionally Sympathetic below, the comic is going out of its way to portray Wally in the wrong for wanting his family back, despite actual evidence that their absence in the universe can and should be undone. It's hard to take the story seriously when it goes so far out of its way to demonize Wally it implies he accidentally caused the Sanctuary massacre and is responsible for all the deaths, including one of his best friends.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Fans have agreed Tom King wanting to do a serious story about superheros and PTSD was admirable. The problem is, the story he's given them is just another Crisis Crossover involving multiple beloved characters getting killed for shock value or having their backstories and characterizations ruined for plot convenience, while the living characters take turns holding the Idiot Ball.
• Internet Backdraft:
  • Ignoring the fact the storyline is drawing parallels to Identity Crisis and thus, its many controversial aspects, but the tease that Wally West would die during the storyline had fans agitated and angry, but they at least assumed that, given his recent history and the fact we only just got him back, people didn't think DC would really be that dumb. As of the first issue, turns out they really were that dumb after all. What doesn't help matters is that Wally was supposed to be getting pushed as the centre of Rebirth's mystery Myth Arc, but has been sidelined by filler stories and Executive Meddling.
  • The psych files referring to Booster Gold as "sociopathic" have not gone over well with his fans to say the least.
    • To say nothing of the idea in another one of the psych files that Clark Kent created the Superman persona because of his fear of loss and insecurity.
  • The unnecessary retcon of Arsenal's drug abuse where he says he started out abusing prescribed pain medication from multiple doctors before he switched to heroin after learning he damaged his kidneys hasn't sat well with Roy's fans because they feel King has watered down the original reason (Roy doing heroin because of depression from Green Arrow's Parental Neglect). Roy's funeral in Green Arrow ignores all of this and sticks to the heroin addiction with no mention of any pain killers.
    • Which is nothing compared to how pissed off people became when he got killed off alongside Wally. This is especially frustrating because DC spent the entirety of the New 52 and Rebirth doing nothing with Roy except having him hang out with Jason Todd when he wasn't being reminded of how he was a recovered alcoholic and drug addict. What makes it even more of a sore spot is that in all this time, DC still refused to bring back his daughter Lian and make him a dad again.
  • Poison Ivy's death has had fans accusing DC of homophobia in regards to killing off one of their highest profile queer characters for shock value and to gain a reaction out of Harley Quinn. What created even more of a sore spot out of it is how Ivy's death is confirmed as a joke while Booster Gold is rambling to Barry Allen about he may or may not have killed everyone in Sanctuary (including Wally West) while Skeets is trying to make him shut up.
  • The fact that in issue two Harley Quinn was able to (casually) overpower Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman simultaneously has received a lot of criticism, especially since it plays very fast and loose with continuity, such as kryptonite supposedly being bright enough to be a flashbang and Superman and Wonder Woman outright forgetting they have superspeed. It's drawn comparisons to the Deathstroke fight scene from Identity Crisis, another infamous fight scene starring a villain that DC were pushing at the time. Things got even worse in Issue 3 where Harley apparently kills Wally West.
  • Fans of the Titans are increasingly loathing this series when it became clear DC was using the Titans as more C-List Fodder, since the body count includes Arsenal, Wally West, Hotspot, Lagoon Boy, Red Devil, and it's implied the count includes Solstice, Gnarrk, and the Protector. Red Devil's death in particular has fans blaming Dan Didio for using this book to get rid of characters he hates, since he's been vocal on how much he hates Eddie Bloomberg.
  • And then the cover for issue 7 got leaked revealing Poison Ivy is most likely dead and possibly murdered by Wally West which just made people even more ticked off. It didn't exactly help that her corpse was in a vaguely sexual pose. Even when DC claimed the leaked cover wasn't a finalized version and it got changed, this did little to quell the complaints fans had since Ivy's still dead and being used as a plot device and Wally is still likely to be responsible. Especially considering all they did was change the coloring, but kept the pose that was causing the problem in the first place. It's the equivalent of placing a drywood board over a pot hole.
  • Clay Mann's artwork has been increasingly derided thanks to the gratuitous sexy poses he sticks multiple female characters in for entirely inappropriate situations. Aside from the problems with the seventh issue's cover mentioned above, there was Lois Lane posing in a doorway wearing panties and a tight shirt as she discusses with Clark if she should run the Sanctuary story, Batgirl's confession scene where she not only looks dead inside but is given comically large boobs before showing off her bullet scars from when the Joker shot her, to the Shining Knight's random cameo in issue 5 where Sir Ystin is given a very prominent ass and boobs despite canonically being flat chested. The vacant, almost lifeless expressions Mann's given for a lot of the female characters plus Ivy's objectified corpse on the #7 cover have gotten fans joking/asking if he's some closeted necrophiliac.
    • The portrayal of Shining Knight especially has pissed fans off on the grounds Sir Ystin is canonically considered intersexed/nonbinary and prefers to go by "They/them" or "He/him" pronouns. Coupled with the fact, even with Ystin's back turned to the reader you can still see visible boobs and a prominent ass, fans cried Ystin is being deliberately misgendered for the sake of sexualization. That one page was enough for fans to fear the upcoming project Tom King claimed was being hinted at in the fifth issue would focus on Shining Knight and are praying it's about anyone but Ystin.
  • While not as severe as the other complaints, some fans felt King's Retcon of turning minor Titan and anti-drug advocate the Protector into a massive Hypocrite by way of admitting he's an addict to multiple drugs was just mean for the sake of being mean, since it has little to do with the ongoing plot and the Protector has only ever been a minor character for decades. The needlessly cruel Cerebus Retcon on his motivations has only inflamed the hatred Titans fans have developed for this series alongside all the other Titans who've been victimized.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Given the fact that Wally West struggled with depression for much of his run as The Flash (to say nothing of what he's gone through since Flashpoint, or the effect his Abusive Parents had on him), a comic that looks at mental health in superheroes would've been a great way to explore his character. Instead they Dropped a Bridge on Him off-panel in the first issue. Making matters even more infuriating, the Flash issue that had Wally heading off to Sanctuary advised fans to read that to see his story continued, which in light of how its 'continued', almost feels like a taunt. It doesn't help that issues 3 and 5 have implied Wally may be the killer.
  • Likewise, Roy Harper's struggles with depression and his past addiction aren't handled with any nuance or depth. Roy's suffered from some pretty bad abandonment issues (losing his birth father, having no clue who his mom is, being shunned by his adopted community before his loving foster dad died, and then getting neglected by Green Arrow) which caused his depression and led to his experimentation with drugs before getting addicted to heroin. Instead, Tom King completely ignores all that and changes Roy to a prescription addict who got hooked because of injuries he got as a superhero, but then switched to heroin because he either damaged his kidneys or feared he would. This makes it incredibly difficult to take Roy's interview session seriously because of how blatantly it ignored his backstory. It's especially frustrating because the session appears one page after his corpse is found.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • When the story was announced, many fans were excited to see mental health be addressed more in-depth in a superhero book, and loved the idea of the Sanctuary. Then it turned into a massacre where said traumatized heroes were slaughtered off-panel, completely wasting the potential of that concept.
  • The execution of Sanctuary itself has wasted the potential the concept held. A center for superheroes and villains to address their problems in a safe environment sounds like a good idea. Only Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman set up the place to be monitored entirely by robots, with its only "Therapist" a computer program containing their best respective qualities. Added into this is how its virtual reality chambers are used mainly for the characters to relive their respective traumas in an effort to face them, when it's clearly shown through Lagoon Boy and Wally West that doing so over and over again is not healthy.
  • Broadly speaking, most of the casualties had ongoing storylines or facets to their characters that could have been used for more than inflating the body count. The private sessions tend to underscore this point.
  • Sanctuary's existence, and the heroes' reliance on its healing capabilities, get introduced in the same issue that they're shown to have a catastrophic failure. Even the posthumous reveals of the personal sessions do little more than remind the reader that Sanctuary had no build up, and to pad out the mystery of the killer.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The third issue shows Wally West using Sanctuary's "Chamber" technology to create holograms of Linda Park and their kids, Jai and Iris West, before Linda's memories of them were destroyed and the twins were erased by Flashpoint. The issue is clearly attempting to show Wally in a negative light for wanting them back so much, to the point it's implied he may or may not have accidentally wrecked Sanctuary's computer and caused the massacre in an attempt to get the twins back in some way. However, many readers felt Wally desiring to get his family back is an entirely understandable thing considering how important they were to him, considering Linda still exists and simply doesn't remember Wally, and since Zoom flat out told Wally his children were somewhere in the universe. The readers, especially Flash fans and fans of the West Family, do not appreciate how Linda and the twins are being used to demonize Wally after spending years hollering at DC to bring them back into Wally's life. This is especially frustrating because Wally has been shown evidence that his family being gone are one of the indicators why the DC Universe has been damaged, so he's being made out as a villain for trying to fix what needs to be repaired.

I would like to remind everyone here that 1) TV Tropes is not meant to replicate the reading experience and 2) TV Tropes is not the place to express negativity towards a work of art, outside from reviews. I understand not everyone is happy with this story arc but there has to be a limit on how much negativity a website like ours can allow before it becomes a vehicle for hatred.

I dont think your allowed to remove an example just because you personally dislike it on a ymmv page. Its called ymmv for a reason. People are allowed to have different opnions than you and you haven't really pointed out why any of these are inaccurate.

I also have to ask. If a work is hugely disliked. Is their any reason, we need to patrol a ymmv page and wipe out any negative opnions even if their accurate. Its fine to remove misuses and keep it of the main pages but the ymmv pages seem like an overreach. That's not fair to anyone who reads a work's ymmv page as it does not give them the accurate picture either.

Edited by miraculous on Feb 25th 2019 at 10:23:00 AM

There's still a lot of complaining on Anime.Romance Of The Three Kingdoms, which I brought up earlier but was ignored. Also, the page quote, caption, and stinger on Miracle Star are all from the episode of The Amazing World of Gumball mocking it.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms page looks like someone's trying to write a review in the main page. Could definitely use a more neutral revision.

Most of the entries look zero-context, too.

Edited by bookworm11 on Feb 25th 2019 at 4:01:15 AM

I'd at least ditch the image caption on Miracle Star. The caption makes no sense unless you've seen that episode of The Amazing World of Gumball, which I haven't.

~miraculous, there's a fine line to tread between critical opinion and Complaining About Shows You Don't Like. This thread is devoted to resolving the latter.

You're welcome to contribute to this thread if you feel that something is being unjustly cast as said complaining, but the thread's essential purpose is valid.

Edited by nombretomado on Feb 25th 2019 at 5:59:07 AM

Oh no I wasn't saying stop with removing misuse or shoehorns that's definitely not what I was saying. I was just asking if any of these are actually genunily inaccurate or being forced and shoehorned. I'd lose the Internet Backdraft section though barring citatations due to being an eyesore though.

Does anyone else feel like some of the Frozen Headscratchers go into complaining territory? Not all, but a few come across more like "Why did this character do this thing when it's so obviously stupid and wrong?" than actual confusion. (Like the ones about Anna telling Elsa about the Endless Winter, Elsa cutting off trade with Weselton, and a couple about the trolls.)

From Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

It doesn't feel like a backdraft to me. Just sounds like a bunch of headscratching at worst.

I think Wattpad and it's YMMV page, might need a look at, since they come off as a bit complainy. I also have to question if we should have a page for Wattpad since it's mainly a place that has works and creators, rather than being a work or a creator.

Found this on Designated Villain:

• Karen Traviss seems determined to do this to Dr. Catherine Halsey in her Halo novels Glasslands, The Thursday War, and Mortal Dictata (prequels to Halo 4), putting the blame for the SPARTAN-II program's shadier aspects (primarily the kidnapping of six year old children) squarely on Halsey's shoulders. Almost everyone suddenly starts seeing Halsey as a monster who shouldn't be allowed to live. The specific act that earns the hate is the flash-cloning of the kidnapped children in order to convince the parents that the kids aren't really missing. The clones fall ill, with most dying a few months later. The head of ONI, Admiral Margaret Parangosky, personally blames Halsey for this. The kicker is, nothing happens in ONI without Parangosky's say-so, so there's no way she could not have known about the flash-cloning beforehand, especially since it hardly could have been accomplished by Halsey alone (indeed, previous sources implied that the flash-cloning was done with ONI's full approval). Nobody seems to consider that making parents think their kids are dead may be more merciful than living with the constant fear that their child was kidnapped (and additionally, Traviss even conveniently forgets that the flash-cloning was done precisely to stop people from asking further questions). Another argument is that the SPARTAN-II program was started many years before the war with the Covenant, so there's no justification for it. However, the Insurrectionists who plagued UNSC for years did so using terrorist tactics far beyond anything we've seen so far in real life, like using suicide bombers armed with nukes (the Insurrectionist nuking of the Haven arcology, mentioned in Halsey's own journal, killed two million civilians and injured 8.3 million more). While Halsey's actions may be seen as deplorable, there were reasons why she took them, and it's fairly clear that the moral culpability rests on ONI as a whole (which, to its credit, Mortal Dictata does touch a tiny bit on). Worse, the author shows no sympathy for Halsey, even when it's revealed that she cries herself to sleep every night with the name of her dead daughter (Miranda Keyes) on her lips.

I'm not familiar enough with the work to comment on this, and obviously Designated Villain is a mostly negative Audience Reaction so some negativity is inevitable, but I want to draw attention to the first sentence, which reads like it's specifically attacking the book's author.

(The example also a nigh-impenetrable Wall of Text, but that's not what this cleanup thread is about).

I've seen Karen Traviss being described unfavourably on other pages unrelated to the Halo novels, so this is almost certainly a case of Creator Bashing.

Honestly, a lot of Traviss' work should probably get checked. I'm mostly familiar with her Star Wars Legends work, but she seems to have a pretty large hatedom and whether her work is good or not is a very divisive issue among fans. From what I've seen, similar is true for some of the other franchises she writes for as well.

I can try to get started on the star wars end of that, but I'm in the middle of another large project on the wiki atm, which has gotten sidetracked by real life, so I'm not sure when I could actually get going.

Edit: Ninja'd

Edited by Ashfire on Mar 1st 2019 at 4:13:52 AM

I didn't look at it originally because I didn't know she was so controversial, but Karen Traviss' own page was almost certainly written by one of her haters.

Reading that creator page... oof.

I'm actually fairly neutral on her myself- I enjoy her willingness to explore areas and perspectives on the star wars cannon that other writers haven't really gotten into, but I find she does occasionally suffer from Writer on Board and might have a bit of an ego (although I'm never clear if the one incident everyone likes to cite was supposed to be a joke that got taken out of context or not... creator drama is something I tend to stay away from)

But that page makes it sound like she's universally hated, when, at least in the experiences I've had, its a very divided issue, approaching Broken Base levels.

YMMV.Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny

• Americans Hate Tingle: A number of American Gundam fans (the UC fans in particular) really, really loathe this series, declaring SEED Destiny to be the worst Gundam series ever made prior to AGE. Why? Because of Kira's Hostile Show Takeover.
  • Kira was a Base-Breaking Character in the original SEED, but by Destiny the West had given up on him and he's lost almost all his defenders. And there's what he did to Stella in Episode 32.
    • His popularity took a nosedive in late 2018, when a Japanese poll on the top most hated characters in the Gundam franchise was conducted and Kira was on the Number 1 spot. The reason specified? He "stole" Flay from his friend Sai of all reasons back in SEED instead of the usual detracting points about him.
  • Like SEED, Lacus is unpopular in the west even though she's one of the most popular characters in Japan.
  • The reaction in Japan wasn't quite as strong, but even so, the show seems to have as many vocal detractors as fans in Japan. For reference. A lot of this can be attributed to Shinn's demotion, since characters of his type tend to be better received in Japan than in the West.

The first bullet needs to explain that it's popular in Japan, Can the bottom bullet count since it explains it's merely controversial there?

Kira, I'm cutting "And there's what he did to Stella in Episode 32." since it was justified in context and something he regretted despite being necessary, unless it explains why he's Unintentionally Unsympathetic. The entry stands without that point.

I'm also removing the poll since 1. being hated in Japan is not this, 2. it only applies to the previous series, why was it not a problem there, or even when Destiny was most hated over 10 years ago? 3. the pole reeks of Hate Dumb (it's was a minor part of his character and story, ignores that FLAY manipulated him into it, and the rest of the hated are hated as villains suggesting it doesn't distinguish hate as popularity, I'm not even sure those who voted stated why they hate him and if the video's reasoning is inference). I removed Kira's The Scrappy entry per Scrappy Cleanup thread since we can't tell if this one pole is indicative of the whole fandom.

The same could be said for YMMV.Gundam Build Divers, too.

The caption and especially quote on Daikatana are very negative.

I agree. I also think keeping the Stephen Hawking joke is in poor taste now that he's dead

Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 2nd 2019 at 12:47:04 PM

Stephen Hawking died???

Yeah, he's been dead for almost a year now.

Cut the quote and replaced the image caption with the game's infamous tagline.

WesternAnimation.The Christmas Tree has a caption referring to the work's quality, not the work itself.

I'm also rewriting Laconic.The Christmas Tree to remove this:

"An extremely bad Christmas special filled with terrible voice actors, horrendous animation, and tons of Narm."

I think the Laconic can just be added to the Cut List. Someone wanting to do it properly can start from scratch if that's done.

I already took care of replacing the laconic.