Not Tropeworthy: Fan Favorite

About 10/27/14, the trope Fan Favorite came into being, apparently without a YKTTW or any other identifying reason for existence.

For awhile, Ensemble Dark Horse struggled with relevancy. Eventually it became a hard-and-fast rule: minor characters only.

I can't see why Fan Favorite should exist. How is it relevant if a character designed to popular, is in fact popular? There's no holding this one back, either: since it's YMMV, if I feel like this character is well-beloved by fans, there's little in the way of argument, and it's ripe for accruing the same issue that Ensemble Darkhorse had, which was acquiring characters as a badge of merit: if your favorite character wasn't on there, they had to be added immediately, since you loved them best.

I just don't see the merit in this trope. Why should TV Tropes list every possible liked character? Is it necessary to say "Batman is the Fan Favorite of the Batman universe?" At least with Ensemble Darkhorse, it's a point of interest regarding fan relation to works.

edited 1st Jan '15 7:08:09 PM by helterskelter

This was discussed in the YKTTW Crash Rescue, but the thread moved on. Imma open this.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Well, The Scrappy has similar issues, only switching the word "popular" by "unpopular", and is considered tropeworthy.

edited 2nd Jan '15 4:11:24 AM by MagBas

This looks like a decaffeinated version of Gushing About Characters You Like. When I see the phrase Fan Favorite my mind jumps to how it is used in reality shows: someone who the fans vote as their favorite and they get some sort of prize.

Fan Favourite in that case is an objective trope and quite tropable if we want to repurpose this to the reality TV version.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

But under this name, I guarantee you it'll be wicked and potholed as "fictional character whom the fans like."

Mag Bas, comparisons with The Scrappy are fair, but in the case of The Scrappy, it is about characters who are meant to be liked being reviled near-unanimously. It's at least somewhat notable that fans at large seem to dislike a character who was intended to be likeable, and why they do.

But main characters being popular is just a given. It's like having a trope for shipping the Official Couple, instead of another. Or wanting the heroes to win, instead of the bad guys. We have a number of tropes that are about fan reaction subverting expectations. But fan reaction falling totally in line in a completely unremarkable way? I don't see it.

edited 2nd Jan '15 8:18:21 PM by helterskelter

Where did you get that "Has to be intended to be liked" part? That's not true. Sure, it makes sense but its not actually what the trope is about at all.

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Honestly, the only thing protecting The Scrappy is Grandfather Clause. It's simply been around too long and accumulated too many inbounds. There's no other reason. If it were proposed in YKTTW today, it would be shot down immediately as a useless complaining page. It's an artifact of TV Tropes' past.

Fan Favorite isn't fortunate enough to have that kind of seniority. It's a recently-created page. It has only 8 inbounds. Therefore, we have nothing valuable to lose by putting it out of its misery.

If kept as a trope, it would probably need a maintenance thread like The Scrappy.

I would also say it's only notable if one character is significantly more popular than all others. Maybe a pair if they share the popularity (such as a shipping couple), but not if they compete for the popularity.

I'm very dubious about large entries like the Yu-Gi-Oh! and Street Fighter ones.

Characters like Wolverine, Kurumi, Snoopy, and the Genie are much more clear examples. Interestingly, all of them aside from the Genie are Ensemble Darkhorses.

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How about simply redirecting Fan Favorite to Ensemble Dark Horse? I'd expect a lot more people to be familiar with the former term.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Except Ensemble Dark Horse already gets a ridiculous amount of misuse as-is. That will make it worse.

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And they're not actually the same either. Fan Favorite wouldn't require a character to be hugely popular relative to her prominence in the work, so a redirect like that would probably add a ton of misuse.

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Honestly, I think that this trope is really broad, which adds to the confusion. Perhaps we could narrow it down to characters whom most fans like a lot?

Somebody once told me the world was macaroni, I took a bite out of a tree

We already have a page about fan favorites don't we? Actually a few of them.

That's why he wants you to have the money. Not so you can buy 14 Cadillacs but so you can help build up the wastes

Those aren't the same tropes.

• Face is basically a good guy. Popularity isn't in the definition.
• Wild Card is a character with no set or ambiguous allegiance. Again, popularity doesn't factor into it.
• Draco in Leather Pants is a subtrope for the wider meaning of Fan Favourite, where a villain's villainous traits are glossed over to create a more ideal character.
• Rooting for the Empire isn't exactly subtrope of Fan Favourite, but related, as it's mainly about factions rather than characters (although I think it doesn't exclude characters), where the people want the villains to win rather than the heroes. However, wanting someone to win isn't the same as having that character or faction as your favourite. Villains can often be favourite characters, but you might not want them to win (since that would often involve bad stuff like the end of the world), and likewise, just because you don't want the hero to win doesn't mean you don't like her as a character.

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EDIT: sorry, thought that was a link to The Face, not Baby Face.

edited 3rd Jan '15 3:04:59 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

So rooting for the empire is out, it stands for the other three.

edited 3rd Jan '15 3:36:55 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

That's why he wants you to have the money. Not so you can buy 14 Cadillacs but so you can help build up the wastes

I've always seen the wrestling tropes as what the management want the wrestler to be seen as, rather than what the audience actually thinks (and the management is usually quick enough to follow crowd reactions). If those tropes are about fan reactions, they should be YMMV, which they aren't.

However, the trope linked is Wild Card, not "Tweener". The latter seems to be misuse to me, going by the wrestling entry. But as written it's not a trope, just a generic example.

And as I said, rooting for someone to win isn't the same as that character being a fan favourite. Sometimes you just don't care, but hate the other side.

One idea could be to remake Fan Favourite into an index of various tropes relating to it.

edited 3rd Jan '15 4:08:18 PM by AnotherDuck

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With wrestling, the crowd reactions are part of the show, and part of what is shown when it's broadcast. They are often worked into the story lines. That's why for Wrestling, and only for Wrestling, we allow the audience at the match to be considered objective, though the audience at home is still subjective.

As a medium, it has a different interaction with it's audience than most. It's sort of audience participation.

edited 3rd Jan '15 4:13:41 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Aegis P, main protagonist characters are almost always intended to be liked. That's the given defense of Ensemble Dark Horse— a minor character being as popular as a main character is relatively interesting and notable.

In any case, I like the idea of making it an Index. We have Sliding Scale of Character Appreciation, but it's a bit messy, and a bit strange as an index.

The problem with trying to narrow the scope of this trope is, at the very first, it's name. It will always accrue misuse. And even renamed, it's assuredly going to be used poorly. It'll have to be a YMMV trope, and since YMMV is basically personal opinion I presume it will devolve into misuse rather quickly, unless someone curates the page.

I can see why it would be interesting to note special cases like Wolverine, who became so popular they helped inspire an age of comic books and came to dominate the entire book, but that sort of represents itself in Spotlight-Stealing Squad.

edited 3rd Jan '15 6:16:27 PM by helterskelter

No, you misunderstood me.

I meant The Scrappy trope. Not another one. It doesnt have the "Intended to be liked" stuff you claim it to have.

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It doesn't seem to explicitly say it. I'd argue that is the implication of it—consider that Hate Sink exists for characters that are meant to be disliked and is not YMMV, and that the description points out that The Scrappy is an unintended side effect. At the very least, no one is meant to dislike the character. At the most, they are meant to be neutral towards them.

The point remains: almost all main characters are meant to be likeable/popular.

No, that's you twisting the trope to mean what you want to mean.

I do see why you think that way though. The Scrappy seems to be a WAY too negative and flamebaity trope and IT REALLY does need some limitations to avoid misuse. But that's because its a trope that has existed since TV Tropes inception. It just "Character The Fanbase hates". Regarless of if there are other more fitting tropes like Hate Sink and stuff.

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I do think what might be interesting to note would be... how do I put it, a "designed Ensemble Dark Horse."

A character that the creators really wanted or expected everyone to like, thus pushed them a bit harder. Like Rocket Raccoon from Guardians Of The Galaxy. Not an ED since he's a main character, but he was at the forefront of the marketing blitz. Or Zoroark from Pokemon Black And White who was an attempt to make the Ensemble Dark Horse status of Lucario strike twice.

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