The Scrappy Cleanup

TheScrappy.Sonic The Hedgehog:

• The Duke of Soleanna is even less liked. For all Elise's flaws, especially her questionable relationship with Sonic and complete passiveness; she does at least have some redeeming characteristics^note Frequently-mentioned ones being her fairly interesting backstory, her two levels with Sonic — Dusty Desert and Tropical Jungle — being a bit more polished and fun to do than his slower and clunkier normal ones, and a solid vocal performance by Lacey Chabert. and thus a few fans and acknowledgments here and there. The Duke doesn't even have those going for him; being a selfish, thoughtless man who not only caused the events of the game by tampering with a force — namely Solaris — well beyond his control for seemingly no reason and got his own scientists needlessly killed in the process, but then sealed the Mad God inside his own child^note Who was seven years old at the time. and foisted a near-impossible task on her^note Not ever crying, no matter what happens. in his final moments to keep it sealed. Said God, for the record, being what he needlessly released in the first place, and then sealed inside Elise to basically have her clean up his own mess. If all of that wasn't bad enough already, he's also the voice of the Hint Rings; thus being yet another source of perpetual unwanted in-game assistance in the franchise.

Half of the entry is factually incorrect. He did have reason for tampering with Solaris (using their time powers to save his wife and other well intentioned uses). And his sealing them in his daughter was the only was to prevent them from destroying the space-time continuum (while the experiments that resulted in this were stupid, in the aftermath there were no other options presented).

Do we delete/rework the incorrect parts or what?

Speaking of Sonic, Space Protagonist just removed Chris's entry on YMMV.Sonic X with the reasoning "No offense (and I know I'm going to get a LOT of hate for this) but I'm pretty sure a character can't be a full on scrappy if they were rescued from the heap."

I think that's correct, actually. If a character is Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, their example should be moved to that trope.

Here's the example in question:

• The Scrappy: Chris Thorndyke is hated by Sonic fans for being a one-man Spotlight-Stealing Squad in the first two seasons, as he intrudes on the roles of certain characters during arcs based on Sonic games that were moments that allowed the characters to show their Hidden Depths, and for constantly taking up most of the screen time in the episodes at the expense of Sonic and his friends despite him not being the titular character or having any traits to justify that amount. Fans also found Chris to be an unrelatable character given his wealthy life style and successful family members that pretty much contradict his Audience Surrogate status, as well as his forced Lonely Rich Kid status that makes him look more like an Informed Loner. He also had criticism relating to his dependency on Sonic, which was unfortunately so bad to the point where he kept Sonic from returning home to stop their worlds from being frozen in time.

Chris is rescued in the third season while this entry refers specifically to the first two seasons. I believe there was a lot of discussion on this at one point and it was deemed for him to remain.

Yeah, I've talked in the past about how I think it's problematic how our approach to YMMV tropes seems to want to permanently 'freeze' one reaction, even though people's minds can and do change over time. If a character is Rescued from the Scrappy Heap they must by definition have been The Scrappy at one point.

I would say keep the entry for Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and cut the corresponding entry for The Scrappy, but only because the former should have context on why the character was a Scrappy to begin with. It shouldn't need to rely on a separate example for The Scrappy. Plus that's just the standard for subtropes - if you can put it in the specific subtrope, you don't need to list it under the supertrope.

Oh, well if it's a Broken Base type deal then I think both entries could stay. It's called YMMV for a reason. Unless we mention in the Rescued entry how it's not a unanimous opinion, IDK.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 11th 2021 at 2:02:44 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Honestly, many fans still do hate Chris. I'd hate to see that entry go.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

Was it ever discussed that Jerks Are Worse Than Villains can go on the Scrappy Index? I'm pretty sure a lot of jerks that are hated more than villains are more Hate Sinks than Scrappies.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jan 13th 2021 at 2:43:20 PM

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

As the page description describes, many of these examples were not intended to be hated to that degree, at least not more than the antagonist of the story. I think it's fine to put it on Scrappy Index. It probably fits there better than Cheese Strategy.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I interpret it as Rescued from the Scrappy Heap being like a Super-Trope to The Scrappy (well, it's not really, but it's a similar concept). There's little point in listing an example about how a character is hated, when there's also an example about how that character used to be hated, but isn't anymore.

The info from The Scrappy should be integrated into the Rescued example.

Subtrope, you mean. Scrappy is the Supertrope.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Yeah, silly mistake there.

TierInducedScrappy.Super Smash Bros has major problems with Walls of Text and Walkthrough Mode. Typical example:

• Incineroar is considered a low tier and sees little serious play compared to most of the roster, having similar problems to as Ganon in that he's a bit too much of a Mighty Glacier to be worth playing over most of the cast. While on paper, his moveset is absolutely incredible, with many fast, high utility, and powerful moves in his arsenal, in practice, Incineroar flops horrendously due to having very bad mobility, including the dubious honor of being the slowest character on the ground in the game and one of the slowest characters in the series, being only 0.02 units faster than Brawl Ganondorf, resulting in a poor matchup spread due to being combo food and easy to gimp when coupled with his poor recovery. Due to said terrible mobility, many characters can just camp him out in some way and not have to do much fighting themselves because Incineroar cannot catch up to them before they retreat and reset to neutral. In addition, Revenge, which is a frame 3 counter that significantly increases his damage and knockback, loses time when attacks don't connect and the effect goes away entirely if he is thrown. It also goes down naturally, leading players to camp him even harder than usual until it runs out. Incineroar's knockback on his moves are also heavily based on base knockback, not knockback growth, which means he has trouble killing more than you would think, especially if the opponent is center-stage where it's unlikely any of his moves will kill other than up throw, up-smash or forward smash at higher percents. In addition, some of those kill moves also are much more greatly affected by DI such as forward smash due to the angle they get sent at, meaning if DI'd correctly the move wouldn't kill despite the knockback actually being higher than Ganondorf's forward smash. While he did get some buffs, including patch 8.0.0 making Revenge stronger and making him more of a grappler by increasing how fast his grabs are, most of those never really fixed his actual problems in his overall design, causing him to still be considered bad even after a year and a half after the game's release.

I'm back!

From YMMV.A Bugs Life:

• The Scrappy: P. T. Flea. He's a Jerkass and somewhat of a Mean Boss to the circus bugs (a throwaway line implies that he doesn't pay them). The film does try to redeem him and make him more likable, but his sole act of heroism in the movie, aside from allowing the ants to put Hopper into his circus cannon and looking on with a warm smile, is lighting the fake bird on fire during the climax after the bird appeared to have brutally attacked Manny, which is severely undermined by the fact that not only did he unintentionally ruin the ants' plan completely, he only did it out of revenge for his magic act being ruined. Despite all this, the circus bugs are still willing to return to him at the end of the movie. While the film does have him offer the ants jobs in his circus and he is seen crying Tears of Joy as he leaves the island in the end, these brief Pet the Dog moments were not enough to redeem him in the eyes of some less forgiving audiences.

From what I understand, people generally his comedic moments.

TheScrappy.Sonic The Hedgehog

• Shadow is often not considered a Scrappy on this page, and is often removed when added in, as he's much more of a Base-Breaking Character. However, one dares you to find a single person who is happy with his IDW incarnation, who is much more (if not universally) despised. IDW!Shadow takes his arrogance and strength and turns it up to 11, turning him into a bullheaded Diet Vegeta who throws aside any actual heroics or even common sense to just run up and punch things in the face. The nadir of this radical shift is during the Zombot arc - Ian Flynn has gone on record stating he wanted Shadow to remove his Inhibitor Rings in a crowd of Zombots, only for the increased power to not work. But he was shut down by Sega, as their new mandates on Shadow strictly require him to be this arrogant rival to Sonic and little else. Result? He charges into a crowd of Zombots, refuses to retreat, and got infected. The Ultimate Lifeform, everybody.
  • IDW Shadow is, at least, more the community hating SEGA for his actions and not the character himself. The way Shadow is written in the comics simply goes against how he was set up and used for most of his history; Issue 36 of the comics, for example, has him refuse to help Sonic save people in an avalanche, because he wanted to punch Starline (who admittedly has Tails and Rouge hostage) in the face. Even Sonic calls him out on this.

This was added with the edit reason of "I know IDW!Shadow is probably going to get removed again, but come on. Sega did him DIRTY in that comic, it's well beyond "Base Breaking" for once." Any objections to cutting since they seem aware it's misuse (since it's hating his handling not his character)? Or what?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jan 20th 2021 at 12:23:20 PM

A Scrappy needs to be hated franchise wide if he/she/they are in multiple works across a franchise.

You can't list Erika for example from the Pokémon anime for two reasons:

1. Americans Hate Tingle and 2. She isn't hated in game as well.

As the rules state, a Scrappy must be hated universally, or consistently hated. Which Shadow is not.

From the Dark (2017) page:

• The Scrappy: Hannah. She spends most of her time plotting revenge against Ulrich because he rejects her for Katharina in two time periods. She also is a false friend to Katharina, blames her false rape accusation against Ulrich on the already bullied Regina, blackmails Aleksander, and constantly lies to everyone including the police for her own selfish reasons. She becomes more and more unlikable until the fanbase seems to universally loathe her, which is a surprising feat considering the flawed nature of most characters in Dark. It was first implied by Season 2 that Hannah would go through a redemption following some callouts from Jonas...only for her to agree with his belief that she doesn't need no one due to her selfish reasons, going back to 1954, leaving Ulrich in the institution and deciding to leave her present day life and start anew in the past. It's gotten to the point where fans just want her dead considering how unlikable and unbearable she is, which was fitting when she afterwards was strangled by Adam.

This example has already been deleted several times on the grounds that Hannah is an intentionally unlikable character and the show doesn't make excuses for her awful behavior, but certain users keep re-adding it despite these objections. It would be great to get some other opinions from this thread before the whole thing escalates into an Edit War.

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

I feel like that might be a notable audience reaction, just not The Scrappy. Could that fall under They Changed It, Now It Sucks!?

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jan 20th 2021 at 1:16:53 PM

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

Indeed. I added Shadow's portrayal under They Changed It, Now It Sucks! on the comic's YMMV page about a month ago.

<(0_0<) <(0_0)> (>0_0)> KIRBY DANCE

@Klavice

The first reason is valid and all, but I don't see how not being a Scrappy in the games makes sense for why she couldn't be listed as one in the anime. Being a Scrappy within a particular adaptation is fair game.

Yeah, I think that if a certain adaptation of a character is consistently hated, that can count even if there are other versions that don't have the traits that make them hated. The IDW comics are their own work that are sufficiently separate from the games, and the characters in that comic can be seen as being different from their game-selves.

I think the point of the rule is to stop examples that are merely complaining about how the character was handled in a sequel.

Reposting:

From YMMV.A Bugs Life:

• The Scrappy: P. T. Flea. He's a Jerkass and somewhat of a Mean Boss to the circus bugs (a throwaway line implies that he doesn't pay them). The film does try to redeem him and make him more likable, but his sole act of heroism in the movie, aside from allowing the ants to put Hopper into his circus cannon and looking on with a warm smile, is lighting the fake bird on fire during the climax after the bird appeared to have brutally attacked Manny, which is severely undermined by the fact that not only did he unintentionally ruin the ants' plan completely, he only did it out of revenge for his magic act being ruined. Despite all this, the circus bugs are still willing to return to him at the end of the movie. While the film does have him offer the ants jobs in his circus and he is seen crying Tears of Joy as he leaves the island in the end, these brief Pet the Dog moments were not enough to redeem him in the eyes of some less forgiving audiences.

From what I understand, people generally his comedic moments and I don't really see many who vehemently dislike him.

Agreed. It doesn't seem like that character is actually hated by a substantial part of the fandom, and as already mentioned in the example, he does have some genuine moments of kindness and heroism.

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

The Scrappy.Super Mario Bros.:

• Super Mario Sunshine: The Blue Coin Merchant gets this for being the face of the game's most infamous Scrappy Mechanic, the Blue Coins. Finding them is already enough of a nightmare if you don't know where to look, but then there's the fact that he's essentially hoarding an entire fifth of all Shine Sprites, which Isle Delfino's inhabitants need to survive, just to make a profit off of some already hard to find currency.

If Fluzzard was previously cut from the page just for being the face of a Scrappy Mechanic, wouldn't the same apply to this character too?

People never even talk about the Blue Coin Merchant so yeah

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?