Misused: Creators Pet

Found this entry on the YMMV subpage of Game of Thrones

• Ramsay Bolton quickly became this, as well thanks to Adaptation Expansion. His extended torture of Theon happened offscreen in the books but was shown in the series to give Alfie Allen something to do. Soon after he started to dominate plotlines and the universe seemed to conspire to make him come out on top, despite his Stupid Evil tendencies. He ended up derailing Stannis's entire war effort with just one sneaky midnight raid on his camp with just twenty people, and proceeded to beat the rest in a Curb-Stomp Battle. And then next season he easily kills his father to become Lord of Winterfell, setting him up as the Big Bad of the Northern storyline. Sure enough, add Ramsay is the most despicable person in this Crapsack World and everything meant to make him unlikable works with precision, while also making his eventual and painful death cathartic to viewers.

Thing is, Ramsay is more of a Base-Breaking Character rather than The Scrappy and he's listed under tropes like Love to Hate and Draco in Leather Pants so should he be cut? Thanks.

Yes, cut as CP only applies to minor characters getting disproportionate favoritism. He's one of the main villains so too big a role.

Speaking of, from YMMV.The Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe:

• Creator's Pet: The plot runs on the fact that Garth Ennis hates superheroes and loves Punisher; even on his best day Castle would never be able to take out a fraction of the heroes and villains he does here. For instance, Spider-Man, Frank's first kill, is strong enough to flip train cars with a finger flick, fast enough to somersault around lightning bolts, and skilled enough in hand-to-hand to go toe-to-toe with Captain America. That's not even taking into account his Spider-Sense, which would warn him of any hidden danger and make it nearly impossible for a normal human like Frank to touch him, let alone kill him.^note Though to be fair, it's not like earlier writers haven't dampened, tweaked, or outright ignored the Spider-Sense whenever convenient; Gerry Conway's famous run ended on an arc where Peter's own science teacher masqueraded under his nose as a supervillain for weeks, with the flimsy Hand Wave that the Spider-Sense didn't go off because Peter considered the teacher a friend.

I'd cut as main character, but as the Punisher is a secondary character in the Marvel Universe might he count if made a major character in this story due to such?

Found in Other Media:

• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Parker Cerise. Not only is he the only family member Chloe trusts, but he gets away with a lot of questionable actions in Arc 1 (like, for example, trying to smash Yeardley's head with a bat). He is the one family member to never get calling outs, and the story almost always takes his side when he's the one calling people out. Despite being five, he accomplishes several major events in Arc 1 that could have easily been done by older and more reasonable characters like Professor Cerise and Trip. Even as he turned into an antagonist in Arc 2, many characters would defend him to some degree or another (particularly his parents), and his court scene in the aftermath still has him able to call out people and make them feel responsible even after everything he did, and few characters if any enforce the reminder that, five year old or not, he is still one of the worst people in this story. Author commentary from a chapter where Delia does call him out even suggests doing that was a struggle. Future works by Green continue to prominently use Parker, little changed from his characterization in Blossoming Trail, and when one of the co-writers attempted to give a Parker an ending where Ash and Goh got Parker to admit he was wrong, Green flipped out and wrote a "canon" ending where Ash and Goh trying to do this gets them mentally violated and forced to apologize to Parker and put in an asylum, and only took it down following immense backlash from pretty much everyone who saw said 'canon' ending.

Parker seems to be both a major character throughout the story throughout the story from what I've read throughout the site, and the entry is super-complainy to boot.

Side note, just about every time I see the kid mentioned on this site, it's in a negative context. Is he really that insufferable, or does someone just have it out for him?

Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 14th 2022 at 8:51:40 AM

The entire fic (fic series? I don't even know) seems to be a drama singularity, for reasons I don't understand and can't bring myself to care about. It's constantly cropping up as the subject of edit wars and so forth.

Parker can be cut then. I intend to cut Punisher as besides the title character he's too popular to count outside this work. Any objections?

Axed.

On YMMV.Spongebob Square Pants

• Creator's Pet: While Bubble Bass still has plenty of fans, there are some who believe that he's become one for Vincent Waller starting with Season 11. Not only has Bubble Bass gotten a whole bevy of episodes dedicated to him, when he had only received two modest appearances back in Season 1, but he's often shoehorned into episodes that he otherwise has no impact on, all for the sake of providing a gross-out joke. ("Bottle Burglars" and "Goons on the Moon" come to mind)

I don't really frequent the SpongeBob community all that often, so I don't have the best grasp on how the fandom sees him, but I think the fact that Bubble Bass still has plenty of fans automatically invalidates him of being a Creator's Pet, since a Creator's Pet needs to be The Scrappy.

Also, I could be wrong, but I don't recall anyone really hating Bubble Bass and his increased presence. If anything, I think most enjoy seeing him back based on what I can gather.

Edited by Tylerbear12 on Aug 15th 2022 at 3:44:20 AM

Yeah, I thought people liked Bubble Bass.

If it's as bad and prone to edit warring as you say, would it warrant a separate cleanup thread like what we have for Starfleet is Magic?

So what should we do about the Bubble Bass entry?

Cut, I guess? There's no evidence that suggests anyone hates him.

From World of Warcraft:

• Lead quest designer Dave "Fargo" Kosak's pet seems to be Sylvanas Windrunner. From Cataclysm on, she begins using increasingly immoral means to accomplish her goals; not to mention her Forsaken had massive atrocities involving slavery, mass murder, vivisection and genocide right at Vanilla.^note  Which depending on who ask are ensuring the Forsaken's security and prosperity or just increasing her own power. She never really experiences much in the way of defeats and the setbacks she does experience are easily overcome. And despite her track record of forcibly raising the dead to serve her, using the plague whenever she encounters resistance, and clearly not feeling a shred of remorse for the lives she ended or ruined, in Legion she's named the Warchief of the Horde over several better candidates. Vol'jin even hangs a lampshade on how many won't understand why she deserves even more authority and power after everything she's done. This get much worse from Battle for Azeroth onward: She strutted around the expansion doing increasingly evil acts and being a Hate Sink in general, yet managed to get the last laugh on everyone. She curb-stomped ''Saurfang'' and the Lich King with pretty much zero effort.

• Sylvanas Windrunner, to the point where her survival and continued focus on her has thrown any kind of sensical plot and writing to the wind. The main focus of Battle for Azeroth, the plot of which was panned, Blizzard doubled down and made yet another expansion focusing on her with Shadowlands. It doesn't matter if the plot makes no sense, if the writing is awful, so long as Sylvanas survives. It reached a point where Blizzard tried to Heel–Face Turn her despite her unspeakable atrocities because she was abruptly and conveniently revealed to be missing half of her soul, allowing her to rejoin the heroes without any kind of consequences or retribution whatsoever when she got her "good" half back.

First of all, two entries describing the same character. Second of all, the secocnd entry is written in a extremely complain-y way. Second of all, is Sylvanas really a Creator's Pet?

First entry, which deals with mostly pre-BFA Sylvanas. Back before BFA she isn't totally hated, there were quite a bit of players that did like her. After BFA her characterization's popularity took a nosedive for the worst but honestly....

I still don't think she is a Creator's Pet. For the second entry, there is compelling evidence that she's actually a Creator's Pest for the offending party when we look into just who wrote the storylines that lead to the playerbase mass turning on her.

While Sylvanas' reputation has taken a dive for the worst after Legion(generally seen as the "last good point of WoW"), from what we know about the process of her characterization, can she really be seen as a creator's pet?

There is compelling evidence that what happened with Sylvanas was less the Blizz writing team forcing people to sympathize with a extremely evil character regardless of how much she didn't deserve sympathy at all and more internal sabotage from a rogue member of the writing team.

Basically there's open statements from disgrunted lore devs and those close to Blizzard that the leader of the writing team went rogue. This writer forced through a narrative depicting Sylvanas as a Griffith-style villain that "is totally evil and anyone who thinks she did nothing wrong are deluded fools strapping her in a leather dress". The other devs, they completely dissented and basically tried to stop him but they were not able to and were left with a plot that could not really be salvaged because how the situation pushed Blizzard into a narrative corner that any sort of non-controversial "next step" would require Sylvanas being written out of the story completely one way or another.

I say "were left with" because the guy quickly resigned after Shadowlands plot beats were formented. Especially since expansions are planned 1-2 years in advance.

I should note that the head writer in question, he often takes the most negative interpretations of Sylvanas' character arc(namely he believes that Sylvanas chose to benefit from the Wrathgate incident and may have wrote the more openly villainous actions of her character).

Hell, the Sylvanas novel and the post 9.2 raid story content are generally seen, at least if the big name Warcraft youtubers are to go by, "the writing team doing what they could with a plot that has been completely butchered to smithereens by the rogue dev and the own mistakes of the current writing team to the point it couldn't be salvaged".

There are issues from the other Warcraft-related entries for Creator's Pet on the WoW YMMV page I will need to deal with, but not now.

Edited by xie323 on Sep 6th 2022 at 6:41:31 AM

CreatorsPet.Web Original could use a deep cleaning for both complaining and natter, but here's some parts that I picked out:

Meggy is a major character and doesn't count, Ted seems like a major character as well, I think Janina is valid, I don't know about the others.

Now for the other World of Warcraft entries in WOW's YMMV page:

• Creator's Pet:
  • Many in the playerbase grew to dislike Garrosh as he rose in prominence during the events of Wrath of the Lich King, and when it was announced that he would replace well-loved Thrall as the Warchief of the Horde in Cataclysm fan response was pretty predictable. Now there are many questgiving Non Player Characters who will praise Garrosh for his bellicose manner and warmongering foreign policies. That there are a few NPCs who will express concern about this gives fans a few straws to cling to.
  • Thrall himself fell victim to this to some extent, as Cataclysm marched on. Even some of his diehard fans started to get tired of his being the anointed chosen one in every situation, whether it makes sense to the plot or not. Being the lead writer's admitted favorite character isn't helping.
  • Several of Richard Knaak's characters.
    • Rhonin: He becomes leader of the Kirin Tor over several better candidates. He marries one of the Windrunner sisters and gets to be connected to that famous high elven family. He gets to travel back in time and fight the Burning Legion. Though the backlash over him may be why he was Killed Off for Real in Tides of War, which ironically made more people like him.
    • Jarod Shadowsong: Some see him as being shoe-horned into the setting in the Warcraft novel Wolfheart. He's Maiev's brother, Shandris' love interest, friend to every major Night Elf character and a military commander whose skill is great. He also gets no lore between the War of the Ancients and the Wolfheart novel but in the latter he's welcomed back with open arms after several thousand years of isolation, implying he spent several thousand years resting on his laurels yet is still held in high esteem in the Night Elves meritocratic society. Supporters state that he made it clear he only did what he thought was necessary and just wanted to live in peace after helping to save the world, and again, he was a major factor in saving Azeroth back then and many night elves remember him for that, like Malfurion and Tyrande. Detractors point out how his absence in Warcraft III seems to indicate he didn't consider the return of Burning Legion enough to get him to take up his sword again even though they're the reason he took up his sword the first time, not to mention how Furion and Tyrande remain on top of Night Elf society by continuously proving themselves the best. This makes it look like Jarod, despite his often-toted abilites, just retreated to a private home and stayed there while everyone else did the hard work rebuilding Night Elf society and fighting the Burning Legion again.
  • Varian Wrynn ever since Cataclysm. Back in Wrath, he was portrayed as an impulsive hothead who would rather let an Old God overrun a continent than work with the Horde, and tried reigniting a world war in the middle of the Undercity by attacking Thrall. One expansion and a rather coldly received book (Wolfheart) later, and he's basically one of the most measured and respected world leaders (in-game) there is, and suddenly the whole Alliance revolves around him. People on both sides were not pleased. Then he dies in Legion in perhaps the most epic way he could have gone out just to cement it, though most players would argue that's hardly a bad thing.
  • Anduin Wrynn as well. He went from placeholder boy-king in Wrath to somehow a Messianic Archetype in Cataclysm and especially in Mists. Not only that, but thanks to Velen's short story, he's prophesied to be the savior of the Warcraft metastory in its entirety as the leader of the "Army of Light." He makes Go'el seem tame. He's also the person you're following around as an Alliance character for much of Mists. It really annoyed the fanbase, seeing that he took up a lion's share of the narrative focus that could have been spent on other people. Although he is more of a Base-Breaking Character because the fanbase consider his relationship with Wrathion, an Ensemble Dark Horse, to be well-written in all of their appearances and easily brings out the most interesting aspect of both characters.
  • Illidan Stormrage, as of Legion. Much of his story feels a lot like a Fix Fic /Author's Saving Throw and to be fair it does rely on several retcons. People who only know the lore from the game are forced into long, boring questlines (At the beginning of one in Black Rook Hold you're literally forced to stand around for ten minutes while various characters talk about how good Illidan is, with no way to skip it or get on with the quest). It comes across as trying to 'prove' that Illidan was a Good Boy All Along and everything he did (murdering all the Moon Guard, in this case) was for the best and he's really cool and doesn't afraid of anyone. Even Illidan's rejection and killing of Xe'ra after all the trouble she went through to help restore his soul to his body — forcing the Light on him aside — comes off as if some writers thought a virtuous Light Illidan would be weak or undesirable and the Light-hating edgelord Illidan would be wonderful.
  • Both factions have been accused of this through the game's run, as covered under Broken Base above.

Varian, Illidan, Anduin, and Thrall all have sizable fanbases. Garrosh was ultimately intended to be a villain after Wrath of the Lich King(the quests in Cataclysm painting him in a good light were done by writers not aware of the overarching character arc with him) so I don't think he is meant to be a Creator's Pet.

Both Alliance and Horde as factions have their fans—it's a MMO after all.

Rhonin's characters could qualify through.

Just deleted the following examples from X-Men:

Let me know if any of them should be restored.

The same entry for Annie was in a couple of other places as well. I've rewritten them and moved one to YMMV.Uncanny X Men Chuck Austen, which is the appropriate work to list it against.

On YMMV.Harry Potter

• Creator's Pet: In the films, Hermione. Chris Columbus admitted to loving her, as well as some of the other producers of the films. This extended to most of the films giving Hermione things that she didn't do in the books to make her seem more awesome, often at Ron's expense. In the first film, it was understandable, since they cut her scene when her, Harry, and Ron are going to get to the Philosopher's Stone and felt the need to beef up her parts in scenes to make up for it. However, even with later films not needing to do similar things, they still felt the need to do so, which resulted in the need to give Ron more early involvement by giving him some of the things she did in Deathly Hallows so the audience wouldn't think he was just a bumbling sidekick to Harry before they have their falling out part way through Part 1. The only films she, seemingly, didn't have beefed-up parts in were Goblet of Fire and Half-Blood Prince.

I don't think Hermione can really qualify for this, as she is not hated enough to qualify and has a large fandom behind her. At worst, she is a Base-Breaking Character who divides the fandom, but definitely not what I would call a scrappy.

I also don't recall her being shilled either. Sure, she gets more focus, but that isn't necessarily the same as her being shilled by the other characters.

Edited by Tylerbear12 on Jan 22nd 2023 at 9:38:54 AM

She's a major character, too, so she's an auto-pull.

I'm confused by the idea major characters don't qualify Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation was the former Trope Namer and is still listed as an example. If Major characters are ineligible shouldn't Wesley be removed since Will Wheaton was billed as a member of the main cast during the first 3 Seasons? (and not in a case of being an Advertised Extra)

hello?

Yeahhh, I see no reason why it can't be a major character.

We might need a trope talk thread (or some mod input) on this because this thread's been operating under that assumption for quite a while now.

I'm just wondering where the idea came from, since nothing on the trope page indicates it's exclusive to minor characters. Even The Scrappy allows major characters under certain circumstances.

Agreed there are several instances of main characters who have received accusations of being Creator's Pet that I feel this arbitrary rule is prevented (at the top of my head Paul, Greninja, Lillie and Goh from Pokemon come to mind as characters who have had that designation thrown at them)

The idea (I think) is that if you dislike a major character (especially a main character), then you most likely don't actually like the work. I think that ignores that you can despise a main character while still enjoying other aspects of the story, and feel it's worth it to suffer through moments with the annoying main character.