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Misused: Renaming"The Scrappy"

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GhostHouse Since: Sep, 2016
#1: Oct 13th 2016 at 4:59:24 PM

Changing The Name “The Scrappy”

  • Misuse.
    • First of all, I was browsing through some old Scooby-Doo shows, and it seems that EVERY time someone mentions Scrappy, they feel an urge to link his name to the trope, even when the context is inappropriate. I fixed a few of these earlier today, but I am quite certain there are multiple more out there, and if this confusion continues, more to come.
For Example: The opening summary for Scooby-Doo Meets The Boo Brothers: (Prefix)
"Scooby-Doo, Shaggy and {The Scrappy Scrappy-Doo} head down south to the Beauregard Mansion. The owner of the plantation, Colonel Beauregard, has passed away, and left everything to Shaggy."
Now what the heck does Scrappy accompanying Shaggy and Scooby to Shaggy’s deceased Uncle’s plantation have anything to do with Scrappy being disliked by the fans? Certainly haters would have complained, but...really now, what DOES it have anything to do with the page? The YMMV page even lists Scrappy as rescued from the Scrappy Heap. Anyone who contests can go there as well. We might be able to pass this off a simple mistake made by someone who wasn’t quite sure about the trope, but the mistake repeats itself. Oh, and take this example from the YMMV Of Scooby Doo and The Reluctant Werewolf: “The Scrappy: Guess. In fairness, Hanna-Barbera had toned down his personality a lot by this time, and he spends most of the plot actually doing useful stuff, though it still wasn't enough to save him from the scrap(py)-heap.” What’s wrong with this? Well, basically the person doesn’t list why Scrappy’s hated, in fact does quite the opposite, saying that he was quite toned down and served a purpose throughout the course of the plot. This might qualify for a different trope entirely, until the person quickly explains that, “Oh, he’s still hated, so it counts!” So the troper is saying, to put it simply: “OK, Scrappy isn’t really that bad at all here, but people don’t like him, and he is the trope namer, and he is in this movie, so, I guess I’ll put this here.” So basically what I’ve been noticing is that people are mistaking the trope for the actual character. A lot. Which is kind of a big troping no-no. Again, this is why naming tropes after characters is discouraged. The point is, a misunderstanding like this has potential for causing problems which damage the wiki as a whole.

2. Very misleading: If you head over to the Western Animation, it says, “The Original Scrappy in his native environment” Which implies that Scrappy was the first despised cartoon character ever to be created EVER. That of course, is not the case, media has existed far before Scrappy’s creation, and as long as fictional characters exist, some are bound to be less liked then others. Not to mention the same page also mentions that Flim-Flam was more of a Scrappy then the ACTUAL Scrappy.

3. Bad Reputation. What I’m saying is that on other websites, I have seen posters complaining about the choice of name for this very trope. I have seen other sitegoers spreading the word about “This site called tvtropes that hates scrappy” and other similar messages, and not in a positive manner. Is that really the image you want?

4. And lastly, the page gets more and more edits and well known, it becomes less and less of a trope and more...like a place to rant about those characters that appears to be unliked by everyone. People, please. You have forums for that. All in all, I feel that that in order for this page to succeed, it’s going to need it’s title to be made more neutral and more explanatory, such as the “Fan-Unfavorite” This is already an alternate title, and I think that we should, for the benefit of the wiki, change it to that as the official title. Thank You.

edited 13th Oct '16 5:02:31 PM by GhostHouse

Berrenta MOD Bejeweled (she/her) (Ten years in the joint) Relationship Status: I made a point to burn all of the photographs
Bejeweled (she/her)
#2: Oct 13th 2016 at 6:00:46 PM

Two things:

  1. We have a Projects thread dedicated to clean up this trope.
  2. You did not present a viable reason to rename.

Thus, declining this thread.

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