Hate Sink cleanup

Love to Hate is YMMV, so it's completely divorced from authorial intent.

"A properly written Hate Sink will largely invoke the audience's wrath as a result of their actions."

This will replace that nonsense bit about a hate sink never getting support for their actions, to start.

Yeah Alter that. Thanks for bringing that to our attention 43.

And frankly with E Ps...let's just keep the rules we decided on last time we had this discussion, the threads run perfectly smooth with no real issue sense.

I do agree(And thought We already talked about this) that the 2 weeks thing should be disregarded here unlike the other cleanup threads.

Also Been meaning to bring this up for awhile, found this on Darth vitiates Charachter Sheet.

Hate Sink: Vitiate is basically Darth Sidious if the latter replaced his absolute sadism with complete apathy. This is a man who tortured his true father to death, killed billions of people, was an utter dick to anyone, and was so evil that even other Sith held him in contempt, among many other things

The Darth Sidious comparison makes me wary, Sidious himself is a perfect example of how Complete Monster Dosent equal this. But reading stuff about him He kinda sounds like the SW version of Ego, where he's evil in mass scope and makes time for personal Scumfuckery.

@Lighty I know your familiar with the old republic stuff, so I'm curious if you could vouch for if he is this or not?

Vitiate is a keeper, yes

Vitiate.

Lighty, are you okay with handling the rewrite?

Unfortunately, I don't know squat about that particular area of the Star Wars franchise, or I'd be willing to do it. If you were to give me, or someone else in the thread the extra information we need for a writeup, however, someone else could do it.

Edited by SkyCat32 on Nov 19th 2019 at 8:24:30 AM

I'd rather not be drafted if I don't need to be...

Redrafting the page is starting to sound like "Let's make this trope look the way I want it to" as opposed to "Find examples of the trope which exists", as a good cleanup thread could and I'm going to contest this thread running smoothly so much as it is, again, running to the way a few people want it to look.

The way the page has it, which I think is fine btw indicates that if a character ends up being Love to Hate, the author has failed to write a Hate Sink. We've axed examples of intended Hate Sinks that wound up hitting MB instead. An "objective" trope can fail to come across, an author could, for instance, insist a character is the Big Bad, despite the character failing to be either the most pressing antagonistic force in the story or be behind the troubles faced in the work. In that case, despite authorial insistence, the character in question isn't the main antagonist.

Wait a minute...are you saying that a Draco in Leather Pants cannot be a hate sink?

And what the article is suggesting doesn't seem to be that they have "failed" to write a hate sink if they are popular because of their awful behaviour; rather, I think it is suggesting that if the character is popular for the same reasons they should be hated, it may be a sign that the author's intent fell flat.

Edited by SkyCat32 on Nov 19th 2019 at 8:49:24 AM

Where. Did. I. Say. That. I'm saying that something being YMMV (never said Draco) doesn't instantly discount it's weight here. Woobie is YMMV, MB is YMMV. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would say that being either of those would be irrelevant to accepting someone's an HS.

Edited by 43110 on Nov 19th 2019 at 8:46:30 AM

If you don't want too it's fine Lighty.

@43

Are you suggesting cutting examples where the Author failed at the intention? I'd contest that, if your talking about Grimmel he wasn't axed cause of failure of Author Intent. He was Axed because the Example was zero Context based on a Trailer and his Cool traits made it unlikely he was intended to be Hated.(There was actually a discussion for reevaluating him awhile back that kind of got forgotten bout IIRC)

I support rewording it, not cause I want to "Change" the trope but because it directly Contradicts the Statement beforehand that a Hate Sink can either be a Designated Villain or Unintentionally Unsympathetic if the writing sucks.

He was brought up in the MB thread in reference on a page indicating he was written to be a Hate Sink, his status as an MB did having weight, don't ignore it.

Look at this. People are already arguing in circles over vague aspects of the trope that never needed to be vague in the first place.

This entire "let's dress up a cleanup thread to emulate CM!" has been an epidemic that, put quite frankly, needs to stop. Complete Monster adopted the strict criteria because the trpoe had decayed to a point the only other alternative was the cut list: Magnificent Bastard warranted the effortpost system because it too was falling into misuse and had a sketchy, nebulous definition that resulted in inconsistencies and misuse wiki-wide.

Hate Sink has not nor ever invited this kind of misuse. We're coming back to the exact same points I made the last time we visited this; demanding rigid writeups and discussion dates and effortposts overcomplicates the trope to a point I'd say it's becoming worse with the criteria and effortpost system rather than without it.

I'm going to be blunt about this: an effective cleanup thread should strive to clean out misuse and make the trope as easy to understand and define as possible, not shroud the trope in a haze of unnecessary criteria. Adding "we only might have to address these factors in an effortpost format!" does not change the fact you've overcomplicated an objective trope far more beyond than it needs to be and adopted a system the trope never needed in the first place (which, BTW, I'm not pointing fingers, but this trope almost seems to have become defined as Complete Monster-lite in many aspects—I've lost count of the times I've seen someone say "oh, X can't count for CM, but they'd be a great Hate Sink!"). More dubious qualifiers for the trope (those who intersect with Love to Hate, i.e. Scar from The Lion King) can be resolved, as Lighty said, in a few paragraphs.

Hate Sink did not demand a Long-Term forum at any point, neither did it need to replicate the CM thread. We already tossed the Woobie cleanup's overcomplicated system for causing more issues than it solved. I don't think we need to be dressing up Hate Sink like this either.

Edited by Scraggle on Nov 19th 2019 at 6:51:57 AM

I do think Grimmel may need re-evaluation.

My contention is that a HS can only be an MB through poor or weak writing.

Okay. So, the only criteria there really is for this trope, is whether or not the narrative actually portrays a character as despicable.

If a character has no actual despicable traits, they are only a designated villain.

The only reason factors which cast any doubt on the narrative intent are even addressed is in order to clarify whether those factors are downplayed in favour of the character's despicable behaviour.

And there are still plenty of zero context examples of this trope on the wiki to fix, and there likely always will be. So even if we don't need a Drafts page or to do list, keeping this as a short term project was not going to be a viable option, as even though this trope is subject to less abuse than CM and MB, it still has plenty of zero context examples, and poorly written examples.

Edited by SkyCat32 on Nov 19th 2019 at 9:09:14 AM

I mean, I guess audience reaction can be addressed in a discussion about wether the Author intended to hate them or not. Like "Yeah there popular but it's unlikely the writer intended for us to like them cause..."

I dislike the fact were having arguments about this being used as proof of the system being faulty, none of this was a problem til discussions on its neccecity started, unlike the Woobie thread beforehand no real issues were being caused by it. The Woobie thread raised pointless questions like "Can they defend themself" Wich overcomplicated things cause it had nothing to do with wether or not the Charachter was pitable. It had no other purpose other then "Other threads do it". Here, Wether or not they're cool or have redeeming qualities is a perfectly reasonable question to how the Author intended for the Charachter to come across. And it really isn't that complicated

And I disagree with the statement this hadn't gone under massive Misuse. There had been many, many zero Context examples, people using this as synonymous with CM or using it for Charachters the audience hated.

Also, I can see why you'd have that concern but I don't think all the "Not a CM but could be a great HS!" Is making this trope out to be CM-Lite. But because those Charachters were brought up on the CM thread because they sounded Scummy and such.

Edited by Kylotrope on Nov 19th 2019 at 6:20:00 AM

Well see how it goes but stick to cutting bad examples and summing up good ones in a few sentences instead of recreating the writeup format. Try that for a month or so and see where it takes you in terms of project scope.

Were there any more thoughts about the Doctor Sleep candidates?

to Barry and Snakebite.

I have to say, I don't see why this is getting such a degree of close management. Hate Sink is nowhere near the same degree of misuse. Just treat it like any other cleanup thread and bring up bad examples as you find them.

Thanks for the post, Scraggs, kinda the reason why I generally avoid participating in discussions about a certain trope that I'm not totally familiar with. If you guys want to fix/cut poorly-written examples, that's incredibly beneficial in the grand scheme of things, but this "CM 2.0" mentality isn't going to help anyone, handling this thread as if it were the carbon copy of another is actually going to make people question why do we even need this in the first place, Hell, that was the case with me. There is no need for us to keep eating our tails over and over again, trying to be "professional" in this situation is synonymous with making things look harder than they should be.

Agreed, the pages aren't locked and I don't think there's a need for them to be. I think the only aspect from CM/MB this could really benefit from is the routine pulling of a list of examples for folks to decide if they warrant a cut, keep or rewording.

Edited by 43110 on Nov 19th 2019 at 9:45:58 AM

I'm not going to bother writing them up then.

I will just clarify something, because it seems like perhaps this isn't widely known:

Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard clean-up threads are only in their particular set up out of exceptional misapplication. It is a last resort to ensure that the good examples outweigh the bad. Otherwise, it spins wildly out of hand.

Clean-up threads shouldn't aim to be like CM and MB. The conventional clean-up methods are always preferred.

Edited by nombretomado on Nov 19th 2019 at 6:51:15 AM

Ok. So are you suggesting we cutlist the sandboxes?

One thing I want to say?

The reason for the EP process was never to be CM 2.0, it was because many HS Charachters can have cool traits and sympathetic qualities. So I felt it would make it easier to address that stuff and explain where the emphasis is, Wich so far seems to have been a success.

Also, one thong I want to note really quick? If someone just wants to make an EP? They should he allowed too.

As someone who has only ever lurked on this thread, I gotta say, I agree that the EP-model is... not ideal. CM and MB required this, but you guys take this way too seriously, and it's just getting silly.

Not to mention it makes these threads seem more clique-ish than they really should be; like cleanup threads shouldn't just be a bunch of people creating rules and trying to dictate how a trope is defined down to the exact letter, and then doing votes on it. It works for CM and MB because it has to work, but a cleanup thread should just be...well, there for the cleanup. There for anyone to stop by and discuss the issue being cleaned; while each thread has some "regulars", it shouldn't feel like I'm intruding when I make a post on a thread like this, due to not being "part" of the thread. It's just weird.

Not every cleanup thread needs such extreme measures.