Base Breaking Character Cleanup

Cutting this from Ashita no Joe for not providing context: Joe, of course.

Should this other example go or stay?: The Slum Town kids, due to taking up a lot of screen time in the first anime series for mere comic relief characters and for screaming a lot. Others like them however. The second anime don't show them that much, luckily.

Cutting from Watchmen for not providing context: Dr. Manhattan became this for killing Rorschach.

Should this other example go or stay?: The Comedian is either a Jerk Ass Woobie or a sick bastard that deserved to die.

Edited by MasterJoseph on Nov 2nd 2018 at 8:35:14 AM

Slum Town kids sounds like a group to me, so cut.

What about the comedian?

Also do these examples have enough context?:

• Bomberman:
  • Pretty Bomber (aka Cute Pink)... adorably cute, moe girl or an utterly annoying Spoiled Brat? Take your pick.
  • Belmont, Vic Viper, and Pyramid Head Bomber from R are either adorable tributes to Konami's other I Ps and showing the fans they haven't been forgotten, or a horrible Take That! to people who want these very series to have another game and is just rubbing it in that they may not get continued.
• XxxHolic: Watanuki was at first this due to how irritable and histrionic he is. Some found it funny and endearing, while other saw him as annoying and unsympathetic. After his Character Development, however, the fandom got unanimous about him.
• X1999: Kamui at first due to being a Jerkass who avoids contact with anybody. It should be noted that Yuzuriha and Sorata actually understand why he acts like that and Hinoto even reveals that he could actually destroy mankind depending on his development despite her visions of Kamui as messiah figure. Kamui finally becomes more likable when opening up to Kotori.

Edited by MasterJoseph on Nov 5th 2018 at 12:39:26 PM

This was recently added to Incineroar's entry in the Base-Breaking Character folder on BrokenBase.Pokemon Sun And Moon:

The base only broke further when it was announced that it would be the final pick for the base roster of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with a vocal group preferring it to be either Decidueye or Primarina.

Should I remove this part of the entry since Incineroar's announcement for Smash Bros. is too recent?

Edited by ADrago on Nov 9th 2018 at 11:35:07 AM

Yes.

From YMMV.Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Ken Oyanagi, or RPS/Janken Kid, is either regarded as a character with a really cool fight of a suitably JoJo's Absurdly High-Stakes Game of rock-paper-scissors or he's seen as an annoying filler character who came after the more plot driven and interesting fights with Kira and his father. Not helping matters is that unlike many other one-off characters, Ken never makes a return after his arc.
  • Shigekiyo Yangu is widely divisive among the fandom. Whether its his unappealing and admittedly grotesque character design, greediness, or refusing to listen to any of Josuke and Okuyasu's propositions. There are, however, plenty of people who consider him Ugly Cute, and are mindful of the fact that he's a middle schooler several years younger than them. People also argue that he is right about Harvest doing most of the legwork, love Harvest for its design, abilities, and his extremely clever usage of it, enjoy him for his flaws as a character and working to overcome them in his brief screentime, and shed tears at his attempts at heroism, genuine love and feelings of protection for his unseen parents, and brutal murder at the hands of Kira.
  • Yukako. While she is considered a Fountain of Expies for many Yandere character, there are some people who feel like she's a huge Karma Houdini. She tried to light a classmate on fire for telling Koichi to take out the garbage and then abducted him, and the worst she got was her hair turning white, which wasn't even permanent. While Hazamada and Yuya were Easily Forgiven, they were at least given a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that landed them in the hospital. Making matters worse was that she actually got to be with Koichi in the end, so Stockholm Syndrome is in full effect.
  • Rohan turned into one. While he's no doubt an Ensemble Dark Horse, there are some who dislike him for being a Jerkass to Josuke for no reason and Heaven's Door being a Story Breaking Power in some areas. There are some that accuse him of being a Creator's Pet due to him being the only Part 4 character to frequently get Wolverine Publicity.

First of all, Yukako and Rohan are both listed as Ensemble Dark Horses (Rohan's even explicitly mentions being one) which should disqualify them. Rohan in particular is one of the most popular characters in the entire series, and the entry also contains a link to Creator's Pet despite not meeting all of the four criteria.

Ken Oyanagi is a minor character who only shows up in one episode. Even if some people do like him and others dislike him, I'd bet that very few of them LOVE him or detest him since his role is so small that you don't get much time to grow attached or get annoyed by his presence (as the entry helpfully mentions, he never shows up again after his arc).

Shigechi is possibly a valid example, as he is often considered one of the worst characters in the franchise, but also has a good number of fans and defenders (including myself).

Found this on Final Fantasy V: A mild case with Bartz, who's never really been actively disliked by many fans, but a common complaint is that he's bland and doesn't get much of a character arc beyond discovering the truth of his father's origins, with some feeling that Faris would have been a better main character, seeing how she's the one goes through the most development. However, Bartz also has plenty who like him for his perky, upbeat attitude.

Also, what about the examples on my last post.

To "mildly" split a fanbase into two opposing camps is an oxymoron. If there aren't strong feelings from both sides of the argument, it's misuse.

For your last post:

• Pretty Bomber is pretty much a Zero-Context Example. It says that she has positive and negative traits, but doesn't really delve into how the fanbase actually feels about her.
• The tribute characters seem like it would only be a minority that actually hates them.
• Watanuki says that he ended up loved, meaning it isn't a sustained conflict.
• Kamui has the same issue as Watanuki.

I'd say cut all of them.

That sounds like a mild case of misuse with a side of Weasel Words. Oops, did I say "mild"? What's the other thing? Severe? That's right. I meant severe.

Cut, set on fire, load ashes into rocket, fire rocket into the sun.

Edited by HighCrate on Nov 28th 2018 at 6:36:30 AM

Already took care of business.

BaseBreakingCharacter.Arrow has many dubious examples:

• Thea: The entry mainly focus how she's been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Laurel: I think she's a keeper and she was indeed very divisive in the earlier seasons.
• Barry Allen: This is basically about the announcement of the casting of Grant Gustin. The Flash is now on its fifth season. Cut
• Count Vertigo: While he's indeed divisive, he's a minor and inconsequential villain who appears in three episodes. That and the entry is mostly complaining about him not being like his comic counterpart.
• Slade: The entry outright says that he's an example but only to a portion of the fanbase. The comic fans who dislike the changes from the comics even thought it has been long established that Arrow wasn't a faithful adaptation. Overal, he's one the most popular Big Bads of the show.
• Roy and Sara: Just complaining. The entry outright says that they are "well-liked" in general. Besides, Sara is a massive Breakout Character who now leads her own show.
• Felicity: I think she's a keeper. She's indeed now the single most contentious character thought her haters are the most vocals.
• Malcolm Merlyn: I think he might be a keeper but this entry needs a rewritte. The second point is a complaining is knee-jerk reaction to season 3 finale.
• Ray Palmer: Just complaining with no elaboration on the positive side. I think Ray has been mostly Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in Legends of Tomorrow.

I'm already tired. I'll do the rest later.

Edited by Silverblade2 on Dec 2nd 2018 at 2:51:10 PM

From YMMV.Kirby Star Allies, regarding Morpho Knight and Hyness. Do note that Hyness is also listed under Ensemble Dark Horse on the same page, and that the mode that most of his entry is referring to was released last month.

• Morpho Knight. Some like his design and reference to Meta Knight's beta design, while others dislike him for being a disappointing finale to Guest Star ??? Mode, as well as replacing Galacta Knight in a rather insulting fashion.
• Hyness, especially in regards to the good ending to Heroes in Another Dimension. Some people thought he got off way too easily for what he's done, others think he deserves a second chance, and a third party thinks he's been Brainwashed For The Greater Good (like many characters that get hit with the Friend Heart) rather than actually redeemed.

"Even Lillie gets a lot of this treatment. Her fans find her to be one of the best characters in the game, and possibly even rivaling N as one of the most developed characters in the series. Her detractors, on the other hand, find her to be a bland, overrated character that overshadows the protagonists (this is also connected to game's controversial increased focus on story, as the majority of the story is about her and her family and a group of her detractors accusing her of being a Purity Sue because of this). Her newfound confidence after her Significant Wardrobe Shift is especially controversial; many fans find it to be well-done and endearing, while her detractors either find it overly Narm-y and annoying Personality-wise, people either think she's an adorable, interesting and tragic character, or find her too bland and generic, being made of traits that make her appealing to the audience, rather than making her an interesting and rounded character."

From what I've seen of the Pokemon fandom, Lillie is actually one of the more popular characters. Like about as popular as N for her Friend to All Living Things demeanor and kind attitude. Plus the fact she's not actually a rival and her family is also quite popular kind of makes me doubt her being a BBC. I'd say Lillie's haters are a Vocal Minority than actually making her a Base-Breaking Character.

Edited by Klavice on Dec 30th 2018 at 7:55:40 AM

I've always found that Lillie example to be dubious since she's one of the most popular human characters in the Pokemon series, and she's topped a Japanese popularity poll◊. Her detractors seem more like a Vocal Minority, so the entry should be cut.

Edited by ADrago on Dec 31st 2018 at 8:50:38 AM

From YMMV.Goodnight Punpun:

• Aiko. A lot of people dislike her due to Punpun's obsession with her severely screwing him up, making her the catalyst for a lot of his poor decisions and darker moments, even if she didn't want that to happen. However, some find her an incredibly tragic Woobie due to her past. Thus, Aiko gets a considerable amount of focus in fanworks despite her mixed reception.

Admittedly, it's hard to come across fans of the series, but I've never noticed Aiko get any hate. She always seemed like the most popular character.

Maybe they got her anime and game selves mixed up. I'd argue her anime counterpart is the Base Breaking Character, but the game version is not.

Bringing up these examples from Sonic Forces:

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Custom Hero avatar, as some think this is appealing towards more questionable parts of the Sonic fanbase, as well as leading the Modern and Classic Sonics to be less refined in design due to falling back into the Adventure series motto of unwanted multiple playstyles. On the flipside, others acknowledge that with other franchises out there such as Dragon Ball Xenoverse gaining large amounts of popularity for being able to make your own custom character, combined with Sonic Forces being designed with this in mind from the start, it could have some interesting potential alongside their Wispon gadget weapons varying up gameplay. There's also the selection of Avatar species: all but one of them are mammals, with some also calling the inclusion of both a Dog and a Wolf redundant.
  • Due to the series' change in tone since Sonic Colors, people have been split down the middle with Sonic's ramped-up personality. Some people think he's an obnoxious joke machine who never takes anything seriously, the breaking point being when Sonic , after supposedly being "captured" and "tortured" for six months, just acts as if everything merely inconveniences him and jokes around with Infinite, compared to before when despite still cracking jokes and constantly showboating, still understood when things were serious. Others prefer his jokey attitude as a reminder of the Saturday morning cartoons, and don't mind his humor at all, to the point of preferring it over failed attempts at being serious.
  • Infinite was already stirring fans up between two camps of acceptance for trying something new, and bile hatred for what looked like a severely edgy-looking foe when Shadow was already part of the bad guy roster. Ironically, he's both loved and hated for similar reasons. One side loves his Dark Is Evil design, his metal theme song, the fact Liam O'Brien is voicing him, and just his overall "holier than thou" attitude throughout the entire game. The opposition, however, find those very same elements excessively trite and see him as a tryhard edgy OC, not unlike those which most younger Sonic fans create themselves, and those very same elements were why Shadow was this trope for so many years. This only got worse when his backstory was revealed in Episode Shadow and the prequel comics. He was just a mercenary squad captain and aligned himself with Eggman, but went insane after he lost a fight to Shadow to become who he is. People are split on either finding him sympathetic despite his actions or finding the shift abrupt and laughably pathetic.
  • Zavok being one of the villains of the game. Those who cannot stand Sonic Lost World and/or the Deadly Six aren't too thrilled to see him again, while others see this as a chance to redeem the character and flesh out his personality. And then there are those who are glad that it's just him alone and not some of the sillier members of the Six, as they would clash with the Darker and Edgier tone of the story. Though The Reveal that it's not the real Zavok kinda renders this moot... or makes the problem worse, depending on who you ask. The fact that he gets a boss fight over other favourites like Shadow or Chaos is also very contested.

Ah... We're talking about the freaking Sonic fanbase that wan't agree with anything... at best Infinite and the Hero avatar could count but even then I'm not sure.

Edited by Silverblade2 on Jan 10th 2019 at 3:28:42 PM

I believe this needs a clean-up — Marvel Cinematic Universe:

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Loki. Originally an Ensemble Dark Horse and considered one of the best, if not the best villain the MCU has to offer prior to Phase Three, over time he's moved into this trope. While his fans welcome the increase in focus on him, others have grown to consider Loki a Draco in Leather Pants, highly overrated by his fangirls, or a Spotlight-Stealing Squad who appears at the expense of characters who needed more the screentime and development.
  • Agent Coulson, to a lesser extent. He was an Ensemble Darkhorse like Loki in Avengers, and his fans campaigned to save him and get him his own show. Fans who didn't like him, however, now see him as an overhyped boring everyman who gets given promotion in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. above canon comic book agents and other, more interesting Canon Foreigners.
  • Tony Stark is the most prominent figure in the MCU for obvious reasons, and his portrayal in the films is widely credited with turning Iron Man into a beloved character and rescuing him from the Scrappy Heap the comics had dug him into. However, over time he's become disliked by a significant portion of the fandom, especially comics fans, for being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad and who has a tendency to Kick the Dog due to his abrasive personality. He's also received a lot of flak for the fact that in some of the films, he plays parts of varying significance in creating the conflict in the first place and rarely acknowledges it or tries to change his Control Freak tendencies so it never happens again.
  • Many fans are unhappy that Hawkeye is a Happily Married man with kids living on a farm (similar to his Ultimates incarnation) rather than a divorced schmuck living in an apartment with a dog, or that he's not romantically with either Black Widow or Mockingbird, as well as resenting his Ultimates-inspired backstory of being a SHIELD agent with a dark black outfit rather than a former circus performer with a purple/blue outfit. On the other hand quite a few enjoy these changes to his character, thinking it fills a missing niche among the Avengers and makes him much more interesting than if they kept him comics-accurate.
  • Jessica Jones is either one of the strongest and most sympathetic female protagonists seen in years, a pointlessly hostile Jerkass who arguably does more damage to her life of her own free will than she ever did under Kilgrave's control and dampens the viewers' sympathy, or a damaged wreck of a person who keeps ruining her own life in a way that's uncomfortable to watch because of her trauma from Kilgrave's control. Some viewers even held the first and third view but gradually shifted to the second due to the Arc Fatigue of the series dragging out Jessica's character development.
  • Darcy Lewis is very polarizing. Either she's one of the funniest MCU characters or she's downright annoying, with some comparing her to Jar Jar Binks or even Scrappy Doo.
  • Wanda Maximoff. Her detractors argue that even if she is just a kid who's not fully responsible for her actions, those actions still directly led to the Hulk going on a rampage and Tony creating Ultron, thus killing hundreds of people, including her own brother and setting off Zemo. They believe that her reasons for trying to kill Tony are spurious at best, that she never accepted proper blame for her part in Ultron's creation, and that her membership in the New Avengers makes her a galling Karma Houdini, especially considering how much flak is given to Loki and Tony in-universe over less. Her defenders on the other hand consider her a Jerkass Woobie who suffered quite a lot, and is justified in her revenge. They believe that the death of her brother at Ultron's hands was karmic enough for her involvement with Ultron, and that her Heel–Face Turn and subsequent work as a member of the New Avengers are redemption enough for her past actions.
  • Steve Rogers. While the writers deliberately set out to show his less flattering side in Civil War, his actions there have caused some fans to turn against him altogether, due to protecting Bucky out of selfishness and willing to tear the Avengers apart in the process, knowing the truth that Howard and Maria Stark were killed by HYDRA since Winter Soldier, and harboring the secret the whole time. Some also argue that his reasoning for not signing the Sokovia Accords in Civil War makes him a hypocrite after his stance in Winter Soldier where his arc was based on his disgust with the lack of accountability and oversight within SHIELD that allowed HYDRA to infiltrate in the first place. Other fans argue that Steve didn't know for certain that Bucky was behind the deaths of Tony's parents, and therefore was hiding nothing, that he's no more complicit than Tony in splitting the Avengers, and that his portrayal here is perfectly consistent with his stance in Winter Soldier as someone opposed to regulatory overreach, especially it turned out the regulators there turned out to be evil, and that he has a history of meaning well but being someone who doesn't think things through before taking action.

There is no "long-term, sustained, vicious conflict" with "two vocal, almost equally sized factions" in regards to Loki, Agent Coulson, Tony Stark, Hawkeye, Jessica Jones, Wanda Maximoff or Steve Rogers. Granted, they all have their Vocal Minority hating them, but generally all of them are well-loved by most fans.

I'd keep Darcy Lewis example and cut all the rest. The Mandarin is also probably worth adding though, he's been very polarizing as well.

Edited by Asherinka on Jan 13th 2019 at 1:20:32 PM

Hmmm, it's difficult to tell, but honestly I'd keep Steve and Tony. Since Civil War, the discussions got extremely heated. Just looking at any random youtube video with the two in a conflict produces many, many arguments over the two.

And I think that was kinda the point of the movie too.

Steve vs. Tony is not brought up a lot since Infinity War. Even then, "disagreeing" with a character does not equate to "hate."

So it's been 4 days, any chance I could any more thoughts regarding the examples I brought up above? x5.

Gotta second this. Civil War by design encouraged fans to side with one or the other, and so a lot of them did - but siding with one doesn't mean hating the other. I haven't seen that virtually anywhere (especially noteworthy when this was not what I saw with the original comics).

About the MCU entry: Yeah, I agree, the only character listed here that fits the description of a Base-Breaking Character here is Darcy. The others are imo generally too well received, there isn't a large enough part of the fan base that doesn't like them. Some other characters that aren't a listed yet might apply though (like Jane, perhaps).

So it's been a week, any chance I could any more thoughts regarding the examples I brought up above? x8

I removed this example from YMMV.Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina

• Base-Breaking Character: Harvey. This comes from whether people consider him an incredibly bland Love Interest or an adorable Woobie.

The series debuted on October 26, I guess it's too early.