Misused: Creators Pet

Even Rhonin still wouldn't qualify, considering that he was killed off and a number of people were saddened when it happened.

Regarding Divis Mal, from Aberrant: I was actually the one who wrote that description of him, but I write it four years ago for Canon Sue / Villain Sue, back before those were no-examples-please tropes. I'm not sure why someone repurposed it to Character Shilling, and I'm not sure he necessarily fits that trope. Still, I'll give my thoughts, since there's one point in particular that might be relevant for other examples.

I think that at least as far as Character Focus goes, it has to be judged in the context of a tabletop game - I feel there's a different standard for this in those, because most of the time, in a tabletop RPG, the NP Cs aren't supposed to be the main focus.

Just as an example, probably the most infamous: There's this module for Aberrant where this big event is going down, and it's presented as the players being involved. Only... they aren't, not at all. It's decided by a big fight over a lake where Divis Mal defeats and depowers his main rival with contemptuous ease, in a scene clearly intended to convey how Divis Mal is beyond him in every way (not just power, but simply a superior order of being who understands society and the world on a deeper level, etc etc etc.)

In a normal story, that would maybe rub some people the wrong way, but wouldn't necessarily be this trope (because you'd expect a main character to resolve things.) In a tabletop game, though, it is extremely unusual for an NPC to completely resolve the central plotline like that while the players stand around and watch; it's probably a big part of the reason why a lot of people in the fanbase still have a bad taste in their mouth about him.

I'm not sure he hits the Character Shilling requirement, though. He *probably* does, but I'd have to go check.

Regarding the scrappy status, that's hard to show, but you can see some discussion of him (and why people view him the way they do) here: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?472876-Aberrant-Divis-Mal-why-so-broken

I'm not sure that he qualifies for Character Shilling, but I do think the Character Focus clause applies in the sense that he gets vastly more focus than you'd expect a character in his role and in that medium to get (and while the "to the determent of the game" bit is subjective, take a look at that thread I linked; a lot of people go into details on the problems it caused.)

edited 29th Nov '16 4:09:15 PM by Aquillion

So should the whole World of Warcraft section be nuked?

I'm going to go with "probably". Most of it should definitely go, though. I'm not that involved in the community to know exactly.

I'd say so - as I said, I don't think the fandom, by its nature, is capable of forming the consensus necessary for a character to qualify. And the examples that do come close don't have the creator doubling down on pushing the character in the face of fan hate.

edited 1st Dec '16 2:55:52 PM by nrjxll

I actually am active in the game/community and would agree, but I wanted input before making an edit that large.

to cut the whole section, for the reasons summed up by nrjxll.

I find ~nrjxll's argument persuasive, even though I don't play that game.

edited 2nd Dec '16 9:28:47 AM by Madrugada

Would removing that many examples require mod approval? (I've never made an actual edit before.)

Nope. Just provide a good edit reason and link back to this discussion.

The link is really important in this case. The edit reason can be "per this discussion in TRS (link)"

Here, use thiis url for the link. It's the beginning of the discussion of Warcraft: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1341554362019735300&page=28#688

edited 2nd Dec '16 6:33:06 PM by Madrugada

Thanks! I've already taken the edit-chainsaw to that page.

This was recently added to YMMV.Inhumans VSXMEN:

• Creator's Pet: The Inhumans. They are treated as the more heroic of the two teams despite the X-Men having far more to lose from the conflict, their consistently high promotion compared to the X-Men including a major event focused around them and the fact that Marvel has the movie rights to the Inhumans while the X-Men's rights are owned by Fox. This was not helped when Marvel released a video which more or less confirmed who was favored by the staff while the fans mostly have grown sick of the "It's their culture" excuse.

Well, they're a group, so they don't qualify. They're also not The Scrappy, so they don't qualify.

How come they don't qualify as a group?

Can you argue that every single member of the group is The Scrappy, Creator's Favorite, shilled by other characters, and get an unreasonable amount of focus?

Individually? No. As a group, and within the contest of the story, probably. One could argue that Marvel does want to push the Inhumans, as a franchise, to replace the X-Men due to copyrights issues — and while the push seems to be reverting a bit, this still lasted for several years, and the video that was linked under the entry that was deleted from the YMMV page, showed the writers for the event talking about how they favored the Inhumans and hoped the fans would to. They're basically The Poochie.

Conversely, Marvel, in order to increase the popularity of the Inhumans, decided to screw the X-men. Merchandise has been reduced. They've been removed from anniversary posters. The comics have been about wiping them out completely, et al.

Here's a couple of videos discussing those points, from the legal fights regarding the X-men and the rise of the Inhumans as a subtitute to why comic readers are against the perception of Marvel pushing the Inhumans as the designated heroes as intended by the writers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8KN-r9svlc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyK58uMo3ks

So yeah, IMO, Marvel, for all intents and purposes, is pushing the Inhumans, as a group/franchise, as their Pet — given the context of the story and the real life circumstances that surround that work — which is why, the YMMV entry was about the Inhumans as a group and not about the individuals.

edited 23rd Dec '16 8:46:58 PM by Klaudandus

Marvel pushing the Inhumans as their copyright-friendly alternative to the X-Men is almost certainly a thing, but what's less certain is whether Creator's Pet is the right trope to cover that thing (if a trope should be doing so at all).

Maybe Character Shilling?

Character Shilling

I thought that didn't allow examples?

How can something you describe as a franchise get an unreasonable amount of focus? Main characters are automatically disqualified for that reason, as they should have the most focus. You're also saying that a group that were pushed for years has practically no fans and only haters. And linked to a video where one guy said he loved them.

From your own arguments, no, they don't qualify.

The reason why some fans, included myself, think its character shilling is because in order to prop up the inhumans, marvel tore down the x-men

it's one thing to put focus on a franchise, it's another to do so at the explicit expense of another one — which is what people are against.

Yeah, but that's still not Creator's Pet. If the characters in question are intended to be the main characters of their series/franchise/whatever, they cannot receive undue Character Focus, which means they can't qualify as a CP.