Complaining: The Scrappy

I am already aware of the cleanup thread for this trope, but tropers will still add back deleted examples. Most of the examples are also shoehorning and indeed, complaining about characters they don't like.

I think the trope shouldn't have any examples because although the characters do have a lot of haters, it still violates the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment since not everybody hates the character.

edited 25th May '13 8:58:47 AM by MsCC93

Hmm, while I could consider an example cut worthy of discussion, I doubt that there is enough of an argument here.

Looking through the examples, there's a lot of them that are simply "a character I dislike (and I'll claim lots of people agree with me)" - and several of them with natter from other editors that don't dislike that particular character. That's certainly problematic.

I also have trouble distinguishing this trope from Creator's Pet and the Cousin Oliver. Hm, I think we need some discussion on the subject.

We could consider locking the page so that examples could only be added by request. That would prevent complaining and adding characters that a troper dislikes, but not really a scrappy.

edited 25th May '13 11:09:56 AM by Rethkir

But do we have a clear definition here? The trope appears to be defined as "character that somebody dislikes". And by "trope" I mean "YMMV page", of course.

Creator's Pet is a subtrope with defined characteristics, namely that it needs creator favoritism. Cousin Oliver has nothing to do with audience hate and I honestly have no idea why it's being mentioned here.

@4 would work as well.

Also fixed the tag.

Well, Cousin Oliver is a certain kind of character added to a show at a later date, that often ends up widely disliked; that page points out that such characters are usually The Scrappy and a Jump the Shark moment.

Scrappy-the-character is a Cousin Oliver, except that he wasn't widely disliked (he was loved by the audience to the point where he got his own spin-off show). For a major part of the Scooby Doo Show's running time, Scrappy-the-character was certainly not an example of Scrappy-the-trope.

The audience tangent in Cousin Oliver is just that - a tangent. In fact, I would not mind redacting it.

Also, if you want to rename The Scrappy, you may want to consider the 48000 inbounds.

Yeah, I know, Tropes Of Legend and all that. Still, we did end up renaming The Libby and The Dumbledore, and it doesn't help that the Trope Namer has for several years not been an example of his own trope, nor that "scrappy" is an established term for a determined or fight-happy character.

...I'm not saying that we should rename, but I am saying there's a long-standing problem here that we need to find a solution for, and I don't think that any solution should be a priori off the table. I'm not convinced that simply locking the page is the best option here (for starters, that doesn't stop people adding examples on work pages).

OK, so the problem cited by the OP can be fixed by either locking the subpages or cutting the examples (or abandoning any attempt at restricting the examples, but that's hardly the best approach).

I am not sure how a rename would help the misuse anywhere, though. Plus, it's helped by the "scrappy = scrap" pun.

Well, in this case, a solution is turn The Scrappy Flame Bait. This is a subtrope to Hatedom, after all.

edited 25th May '13 10:34:14 AM by MagBas

So you want an Example Sectionectomy? Wouldn't be a bad idea, but I think locking the page and then adding in examples via request would work too.

Essentially, treating it like we do with Complete Monster?

edited 25th May '13 12:11:06 PM by AnotherDuck

I agree with Mag Bas, and Another Duck. I do think that the trope should be listed as Flame Bait, and it should be locked or the examples should be removed

edited 25th May '13 12:17:07 PM by MsCC93

I'm definitely in favor of removing the examples; there are simply too many of them that are just "character that some troper dislikes".

Tell me about it. Does anyone agree with these choices for the crowner?:

1. Make The Scrappy an example less page and list it as Flame Bait.
2. Lock all subpages and clean up the examples.

Frankly I don't see why or how locking it and its subpages is going to accomplish anything.

Now that I looked at the inbounds, I have to say no to cutting the subpages. They mostly have large inbound numbers.

What's that supposed to mean?

That we replace the pages with redirects instead of cutting them outright.

No, it's supposed to mean that some people come here for the examples. Thus it may be logical to keep them.

How about we just keep the examples, get rid of the natter, complaining etc., and keep the page locked to avoid people posting personal scrappies?

I dunno...that would be hard. Should we just make a crowner?

I mostly agree, although I am not 100% decided on whether "personal scrappies" are supposed to stay away.