Overshadowed By Controversy Cleanup

Is that actually a "controversy", though? "Thing that was a dramatic failure is overshadowed by being a failure" doesn't really make sense as an entry.

Thing is, it was quite successful in Japan, where it sold a comparable number of units to the N64 and had a rather famous advertising campaign over there. However, that is often forgotten due to the botched western launch.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on May 4th 2020 at 6:36:17 AM

~~Acebrock The most I could find on that was an ad that was banned from several magazines (potential NSFW image in link) for being very suggestive in appearance and an even more suggestive Double Entendre.

Exactly.

One final point I’ll make in favor of listing the Saturn, is that the controversial surprise launch overshadows discussions about the Saturn’s quality (specialized in 2D graphics better than Play Station, but wasn’t as great for 3D), its game library, or other reasons it failed (Like Executive Meddling keeping most 2D titles overseas). In contrast with some other Sega failures:

Sega Master System: Mostly just forgotten, and when it is remembered, is considered to have failed mainly due to competing with the NES and its draconian 3rd party games policy that restricted them from seeing a Master System port.

Game Gear: Failure was due to its fast rate of battery usage (6 AAs in about 5 hours), but is remembered for various Sonic games and having similar specs to the Master System. Nomad, a literal portable Genesis, failed for similar reasons.

Sega Genesis add-ons: CD is remembered for Sonic CD, an over abundance of FMV games, and Night Trap and its role in ESRB’s creation. 32x for it’s baffling creation which was quickly invalidated by the Saturn. They’re considered why Sega lost the “16 bit wars”, as Nintendo made a fool of them with Donkey Kong Country.
Dreamcast: Fondly remembered as Sega’s swan song, a solid library of arcade ports and unique titles, and for being the first console to fully support online gaming. Considered to have failed due to lack of EA support, the upcoming PS 2, and Sega’s general bad reputation from previous mistakes.

Point being that Sega’s other failures aren’t as overwhelming remembered for one particular mistake by contrast. All that said, with the current 50/50 split on if the Saturn qualifies, I suppose that means it will be excluded as an allowed example for the time being.

Sinfest has been added and deleted twice. The additions were by two different tropers, but the deletions were both by the same troper, with slightly rude edit reasons.

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The first version of the example, added Aug 2nd 2019 by bowserbros, removed Aug 5th 2019 by Scifimaster92:

• Sinfest, a webcomic initially known for its raunchy, dark comedy and its lighthearted parodies of religious tropes, garnered a much more negative reputation after the onset of the Sisterhood arc in 2011, which radically shifted the comic's focus into a story-driven one with heavy, radical feminist overtones. What made this so controversial was a combination of its misandrist attitudes towards men, the author's constant deflection of criticism as "dudebro misogyny," attempts at using female characters to speak for women despite being a middle-aged man (as well as insulting women who disagree with his views), and more recently the use of the Sisterhood as a mouthpiece for transphobia, depicting gender non-conforming individuals as liars and literal zombies. Consequently, the comic's fanbase has been hemorrhaging out over the years, the author's Patreon is seeing a steady decline in support, and Sinfest is now more well-known for its trans-exclusionary radical feminist overtones than for anything else about it.
  Removal reason: "As I have said a thousand times before, the subject of feminism is one best left to another site. In the case of this particular entry, there's just no way to summarize it without taking a specific stance on the issue."

The second version, added Jan 6th 2020 by Caps-luna, removed Jan 19th 2020 by Scifimaster92 (again):

• Sinfest is now more often remembered as that one web comic that suddenly became a Pro-TERF comic and never went back. Any merit to the comic before or after the transition is overshadowed by the spectacle of just how suddenly and powerfully the Patriarchy/Sisterhood arc came up.
  Removal reason: "What did I say about that earlier? The issue of feminism is best left to another site, and in the case of this particular work, there's just no way to summarize it without taking any stance on the issue."

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Thoughts? It's true that writing the example in a 100% neutral way is pretty much impossible, and the first version was pretty overt in saying that the Sisterhood arc was a bad thing, but the trope definition says that the author holding some controversial political views is a legitimate reason for a work to become OBC, other controversial-views-based examples allowed to stay, and the second is as close to neutral as possible (outside of the stealth real life example pothole to Straw Feminist, which can just be removed without losing anything), so I don't see why trans-exclusionary radical feminism should be given special treatment.

Also, the following example is on YMMV.Sinfest (added on Aug 2nd 2019 by bowserbros) and hasn't been deleted yet:

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• Overshadowed by Controversy: These days, the strip is more well-known for the rampant misandry and transphobia of the Sisterhood arc and the author's constant deflection of all criticism— even reasonable criticism— as "dudebro misogyny" than for anything of its actual content prior to the arc's introduction.

Edited by Someoneman on May 5th 2020 at 3:03:15 AM

Yeah, one random troper doesn’t get to say what we aren’t allowed to cover or how to cover it. That’s the job of a moderator. Maybe add it back, but I get the feeling we’re going to have to confront Scifimaster92 directly about it if we do decide it is valid.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on May 5th 2020 at 3:30:21 AM

Sinfest is absolutely valid. Before I knew anything about the strip itself, I knew about the controversial politics of the work's creator. The strip doesn't seem to be discussed nearly as much.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 5th 2020 at 6:19:30 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Concur.

I’ll add it back in using the second version but with comment and a link to this discussion. The guy who deleted it is almost certainly going to do it again otherwise.

Edit: Also took out the Straw Feminist pothole as suggested.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on May 5th 2020 at 10:11:26 AM

This sub-bullet of Super Bowl LIII on the main page was briefly deleted before someone else restored it:

• Following the death of SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg, a petition was made to have the song "Sweet Victory", one of the show's most iconic musical numbers, played during the Super Bowl halftime as a tribute to him. Despite the petition reaching its goal, and numerous teases that the NFL would indeed include the song in their halftime, the most glaring being that it was played prior to the game, "Sweet Victory" was never actually sung. This received widespread outrage from not only SpongeBob fans, but the animation community as a whole who felt that the NFL and PepsiCo disrespected Hillenberg's legacy and made the efforts to get them to have "Sweet Victory" sung for the halftime feel pointless. There was, however, a brief animation of Squidward introducing the actual halftime singers, ^note Maroon 5, with special appearances from Travis Scott and Big Boi but many didn't think it was nearly enough, in addition to looking more like an incredibly blatant case of Bait-and-Switch.

It was deleted with the following reasoning before being restored without one. Once again, I need to state that I don’t care much for Football. However, I do remember the effort to get Sweet Victory into the Super Bowl, and probably would have been livid to witness this go down. And Spongebob is a very famous show and widely known show, so I don’t buy the deletion reason as valid.

Further worth noting is a similar example under Super Bowl:

• Super Bowl LIII's halftime show has become highly infamous for the outrage that ensued from SpongeBob SquarePants fans when Sicko Mode by Travis Scott was played instead of Sweet Victory from the fan favorite episode Band Geeks as a tribute to the show's recently deceased creator Stephen Hillenburg, even after implying that it was going to be played by showing an animation of Squidward introducing it beforehand! Said outrage has gotten so bad that that one incident seems to be the only thing anyone remembers about not just that halftime show, but that entire Super Bowl!

The bait-and-switch existed within the "work", and is certainly more remembered than the actual performance. However, it would not go on the SpongeBob page, as the "work" is the Super Bowl itself.

(The Super Bowl is namespaced as UsefulNotes/; if there are any issues with that, it could be moved to Series/ cf. Monday Night Football.)

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

I know the Olympics are useful notes and still get a YMMV, so I doubt it’s an issue for the superbowl. I probably will add a comment note to the about this discussion to the disputed main page example to with a link here.

OvershadowedByControversy.Comic Books

• Diamond Comics Distributors, the industry's primary distributor, has long been controversial due to its absolute monopoly over distribution, allowing it an inordinate level of control over the industry. It has been repeatedly accused by smaller comic-book companies of favoring larger publishers while discriminating against smaller ones, and in the 80's and early 90's was repeatedly accused of using its monopoly to censor comics that its founder considered distasteful. These complaints have only grown louder since 1996, when industry consolidation led to Diamond becoming large enough and powerful enough to buy out any distribution company that tried to compete with it.

Controversial, but I'm not seeing anything overshadowed by it. The troper fist added the entry over the controversy over it suspending operations due to coronavirus, which violates the 6 month waiting period. I'll cut unless I hear anything.

It cannot possibly be violating the six-month rule, as the example doesn't mention or allude to any events of the past six months. Nevertheless, merely controlling an industry isn't enough to qualify as "controversy." Cut it as non-controversial.

YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 9 E 24 The Ending Of The End Part 1:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: It’s clear that this episode and its follow up will always live in the shadow of the heavily-maligned twist of Grogar being fake.

This was added by a troper who has a personal dislike of it. A stain on the episodes, yes, but I'm less sure if it's to the point of overshadowing it (the can't the discussed by it's own merits with devolving into debating the issue).

If nothing else it's zero context and/or speculative, since there's nothing showing that such controversy has come about, only that it's "clear that this episode and its follow up will".

There's nothing to explain why this is so.

Maybe we should call in whoever added that so they can defend its inclusion.

As someone who has occasionally dabbled in writing for OBC pages (and in some cases, regrettably) and observed the cleanup thread, I honestly agree with the belief that the trope has devolved into "controversy exists" or a List of Transgressions, even if in some cases its justifiable. I feel that some of the entries might end up causing an edit war some day (any of the modern political ones definitely). Personally, I feel that requesting the entire trope to be deleted would be too much, but I feel that it should be like Moral Guardians - Approved entries only. If the trope gets out of hand, I wouldn't have second thoughts about voting for it to be removed.

Anyway, I probably have no say in what any of you guys say, but I thought I'd give my thoughts on the article as someone who has written some entries for the page. I honestly regret writing a few.

Moral Guardians isn't approved entries only. Are you thinking of Unfortunate Implications?

Edit: Or are you talking about the fact that it's locked?

Edited by WarJay77 on May 16th 2020 at 5:49:47 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

This is on the real life page:

• It's difficult bringing up Phill Lewis, famous for his role as Mr. Moseby in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, without addressing the fact he once was convicted of manslaughter in the 1990s for a DUI that resulted in the death of a woman. While it isn't the only thing he's known for, he still suffers from infamy over it.

I'm not sure if this is an example or not... sorry if it is...

I'm pretty sure it's not, I've seriously never heard it get brought up like ever.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

@WarJay77 Yes. I was referring to Moral Guardians.

Edited by SkylaNoivern on May 16th 2020 at 1:07:35 PM

But because it's locked, right?

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Didn't we decide Pokémon Sword and Shield weren't overshadowed by dexit a while back? Because someone just added it back to YMMV.Pokemon Sword And Shield.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on May 18th 2020 at 7:24:14 AM

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