Moral Event Horizon cleanup

The movie villain was also incredibly unhinged. I don't think I can in good conscience let someone that mentally unstable (plus he thought he was doing the right thing as it would help the planet) count as having crossed the MEH. As for Warrior Cats' Ashfur, I feel since Brambleclaw/star's imposter is heavily implied to be him coming back from the dead, he'll likely count in the next book when his identity is revealed having started a war between all five clans, killed several cats off, and exiled others.

Eh, I stopped reading halfway into Omen Of The Stars, so I wouldn't really know about any of that. Books got too weird for me.

Anyway, I can't definitively say either way in regards to The Simpsons, in part because I'm taking this to TRS in the future so we can hammer down the actual standards of MEH- nobody seems to agree on what they are.

Well regardless, I think this can go from Guess who's coming to Criticize Dinner.

• The chefs deciding to assassinate Homer to get back at giving them bad reviews, endangering their businesses. One of them actually asks if that's not going too far only for Captain McCallister to talk for the rest by pointing to a spot on the wall of his restaurant reserved for Homer's head.
• In a truly dark Continuity Nod to the episode "The PTA Disbands", Principal Skinner refuses to tell Uter's parents where their son is (left behind in a field trip and the last we see of him about to be pummeled mercilessly by a bunch of park actors) even when they make clear that (In-Universe) Uter has been missing for so long that they believe him to be dead and only want closure. It makes Skinner's actions in the previous episode (praise the fact that he had the student slips to cover his ass) a hell of a lot worse. The fact that Uter has been seen in other episodes but Skinner shows him hatred because the kid is a Funny Foreigner does not helps.

Both of these are played for laughs. And McCallister is no bigger of a jerkass than the townsfolk in The Boys of Bummer which I'm not saying driving a kid to suicide is okay, but it's nowhere near as bad as some people say it is, if anything the REAL MEH crosser would be the writer, for writing such a meanspirited SeasonalRot episode.

And if Skinner is going for the PTA disbands, then he has to go here as well.

Edited by Klavice on Sep 6th 2020 at 3:07:18 AM

Writing a bad episode, the most henious of crimes.

I was joking. I don't believe anyone in Real Life should count but considering someone literally showed Bubble Bass burping in Spongebob and Patrick's faces as a MEH crossing... yeah...

I know, I was kind of joking along too. I should've made that more clear.

You guys know the guy who runs hotdiggetydemon? He apparently crossed the MEH in one of his episodes

• Moral Event Horizon: Max crosses it in "TOP 10 REASONS THE GRINCH IS BULLSHIT" by outright saying Burnbot has no soul because she's an old CRT television whose only purpose is to provide visuals and generate insults. This causes her to leave in disgust (despite not having any visible extremities).

Is this even a MEH? Seems incredibly misusing of the trope

Since when was insulting someone crossing the Moral Event fucking Horizon?

This is the guy behind fucking PONY.MOV, and yet insulting an anthropomorphic television is treated as the most amoral and offensive thing that's ever happened in his work.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 7th 2020 at 9:23:33 AM

Yeah I know it's ridiculous. Which is why I'm cutting it

Eh, see my wick check.^note and feel free to contribute Some of the ones I found are even worse in that "real person doing thing" regard- I haven't cut them yet because I need the wicks.

DethroningMoment.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic:

• Threedogs 123: For me, it's what they do to Cozy Glow, turning a child into stone. So many adults were given a second chance despite also doing awful things, including a mare who enslaved a village and tried to alter the past despite seeing it could result in the apocalypse, a mare who betrayed her country and lead an invasion on it, personally turning three of the princesses to stone and imprisoning civilians in cages, and a reality warping being who turned the land into a Crapsack World. All of them far more powerful than a simple child. Even a trio of evil creatures who tried to conquer the world and never actually reformed were allowed to walk around free after their defeat. Yet a child gets imprisoned in Tartarus presumably for life and later turned into stone presumably for all eternity. Nobody ever bothered with a more normal prison with an explicitly not lifelong sentence even in the season 8 finale. They gave her a fucking life sentence instead of anything else. Yet the sirens were allowed to run free. No wonder so many people were pissed about the season 8 finale. The writers had a chance to fix this in season 9, and instead they made it even worse. She was already serving her stupidly harsh sentence in Tartarus before being forcefully broken out and railroaded into committing more crimes with the end result of being given an even harsher sentence suggested by the person who broke her out in the first place, who is allowed to run free. What a horrible miscarriage of justice. Again, we have no reason to believe that it won't be permanent. I don't care what anyone else says, as far as I'm concerned, all the heroes have crossed the Moral Event Horizon by virtue of the fact that none of them objected to this. This ruined the entire series for me, and the fact that so many people say she deserved it disgusts me. I only hope that the comics or Word of God confirm that she will not necessarily have to stay in stone for all eternity.

I previously deleted the MEH entry as unintentional so misuse (last I heard Darth Wiki pages like Dethroning, while looser in restrictions, still have to use tropes correctly). They added it back citing "I stated that I merely view it as a MEH personally regardless of intent or what anyone says. Also, it's a subjective trope. In personal Moment entries like this where a person is strictly giving their opinion, you are not allowed to edit their entries. I am very passionate about my opinions, and will become unhappy at even the most minute form of censorship. If you (or anyone else for that matter, even if they are a mod or admin) tries to prevent me from expressing my anger at the characters here again, I will start a forum in ATT just to try and defend my desire to keep this as is. You can take it up there if you want, but I think it would be easier to just ignore a purely opinion based entry."

Should I re-cut or what?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Sep 10th 2020 at 3:47:00 AM

Just let it be for now. Remember, we have the TRS thread to worry about; we can address this if we have to later.

They do need to be made aware that YMMV examples have objective criteria, though.

This is one of my biggest problems with the brony fandom.

"Ugh! Did you redeem this character AGAIN! That is so cliche!"

Then when the epilogue happens...

"Why didn't you redeem Cozy Glow?!"

It's a bit of a weird yet disturbing double standard that basically is a big middle finger to the staff who are trying to listen to you people! They are the ones that said they hated villain redemption and said Starlight and Discord did not deserve to be redeemed. Had they keep quiet, Cozy would have been redeemed like everyone else. So no, it's not a MEH for anyone.

Dethroning Moment of Suck is a very negative thing anyway as it just leads to people bitching and moaning about little things in their previously favourite show, game, manga, webshow, etcetera. I think if we took Fetish Fuel off, we should probably get rid of D Mo S too. Too much negativity.

Also saying the protagonists crossed it for doing their job, is even worse.

Yeah, do you or do you not want characters to be redeemed?

Cozy Glow did some pretty bad shit, being an Enfant Terrible.

Edited by PurpleEyedGuma on Sep 11th 2020 at 4:15:06 AM

The Nostalgia Critic apparently has Moral Event Horizons despite the fact that he's just an online Youtuber who reviews movies

• Hyper Fangirl proves how completely far gone she is in "Princess Diaries 2", by breaking into Critic's house, kidnapping him, and forcing him to love her via gun-point, threats and desperately-invoked Stockholm Syndrome. And when both he and her hitman tell her that she's got to stop this, she has a Villainous Breakdown. Even Tamara thought she was scary.
• Maven's "Monster Mash" review had Critic (offscreen) beat a little girl to death for mistaking him as the Nerd, which was the last nail in the coffin for his Papa Wolf/Friend to All Children redeeming quality.
• The Analysts gaslighting Hyper in The Phantom of the Opera (2004), making them go from straw characters to fandom really wishing Devil Boner would confront them.
• The Nostalgia Critic crossed it when he killed an entire family during his review of 8 Crazy Nights just because their poor sense of humor and annoying laughter got on his nerves.

Isnt this missue of the trope?

I brought those up a while ago and I could've swore I cut them. Guess I overlooked them in the rest of my cleanup effort.

For the record: the show does have a plot (to some extent) so there are fictional characters who could hypothetically cross the MEH. The problem is none of those are taken seriously or considered permanent. The only one who could possibly stay is Hyper Fangirl, as the kidnapping was portrayed as her most horrible act and the peak of her insanity, but she no longer is an antagonist after a while so it's not "irredeemable."

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 15th 2020 at 9:40:21 AM

Want me to cut it for you?

Nah, I can do it. It's my favorite page to clean up.

I'll just cut all the examples. The silly tone of the show makes it hard to find a true crosser of the MEH.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 15th 2020 at 10:54:58 AM

The reason people like me (very rightfully, which I do not see as my opinion but rather an objective fact that many people are unable to see) are absolutely furious about what they did to Cozy Glow despite the fact that we were sick of redemptions is NOT because we were hypocritically mad that she wasn't redeemed. It is because of the absurdly harsh way she was punished when looking at the big picture (again, I consider this an objective fact people are unable to see the same way I view people who think the Earth is flat). Many adults on the show committed actions just as bad or worse and were given full pardons or in the case of the sirens were just allowed to run free still evil with no chains attached, yet a child gets turned to stone presumably for all eternity instead of being given a normal prison sentence with the possibility of parole (not Tartarus, a normal prison like the one in Appleoosa). It has nothing to do with her not being redeemed, although I will say that if they were trying to listen to the people sick of redemptions it was a crummy idea to make their Beyond Redemption one a child in the first place when they should have used an adult. Also, I'm well aware that YMMV items still need to meet some objectives, I was just saying that in a personal moment entry like Dethroning, we are allowed to use any potholes we want because it's based 100% on the opinion of whoever writes it, meaning you can use the Dude, Not Funny! pothole just to refer to something you found in poor taste even though that's NOT how that trope is supposed to be used. On a gush or Dethroning entry, "What goes where" does not apply and the ROCEJ has no real authority other than to prevent outright hate speech. I know this is a bit off topic but I felt that it had to be pointed out because that's a huge issue I've seen not just with MEH, but with potholed tropes in general: people deleting them from Dethroning Moment entries. That's a big no no. It's against the rules to edit someone else's gush or Dethroning entries without consulting or at least notifying them. From now on, we should make sure to NOT delete MEH potholes from dethroning entries while doing this MEH cleanup, and if any have already been deleted from Dethroning entries, they should be restored. Dethroning entries are one of the few things where pothole objectivity should not apply. They exist as a playground for tropers to run their opinions free with few restrictions and complain to their heart's content.

Also, I disagree with cutting the NC entries because I have seen MANY Designated Heroes be said to have crossed MEH even if the work itself treats them otherwise. For example, in the YMMV section of Alfie's Home, Uncle Pete is listed as having crossed the MEH by molesting Alfie even though the work itself treats him as being redeemable and he's forgiven at the end. This argument that a character can never cross it if they are ultimately not permanently treated as such afterwards needs to be addressed because of situations like this where a character SHOULD be over the line but the story doesn't act like it. We cut the NC entry about him murdering an entire family because the narrative doesn't treat him like he crossed it. Does that mean that we have to cut entries where people commit child molestation for the same reason?

Sorry if I sound unfriendly, but the truth isn't always easy and has to be made as blunt as possible, and I think you guys will find I do have valid points that needed to be addressed. I admit I could have been a bit more friendly with my language, but broader strokes paint the fence faster and I really just want to help out in the long run. I needed to get my points across. I also felt the need to explain why I wrote my entry the way I did when I pottholed this trope I hope I can be of more help from here on out.

Edited by Threedogs123 on Sep 17th 2020 at 5:29:46 AM

I'm, uh, not sure why you're using homophobic propaganda as an example here

Another example is Griffin from Red Zone Cuba. He's a great example of a character that crossed it despite the work acting otherwise.

Trying to say that a guy who killed an entire family didn't go over the horizon is... rather unnerving. I know that this is fiction, but still, saying people who did things like that did not deserve to have people saying they HAVE gone over it would be EXTREMELY borderline offensive if it happened in real life, and I say that fictional characters should still be held to the same standard when determining if they crossed it.

Edited by Threedogs123 on Sep 17th 2020 at 5:39:46 AM

Can we, uh, not argue about the definition of MEH please? I'm working on a wick check for it because literally nobody actually knows what it's supposed to mean. Let us worry about it later.

In that case people shouldn't be deleting entries until than. Should the Channel Awesome entries be restored until than?

We should not be evaluating the MEH by going "would this be unforgivable if it happened in real life", especially not characters from the skits in a review show where pretty much everything is played for laughs