Ookay, but what about character's whose controversies were from years ago, or whose evidence has been lost? I'm troubled by these examples, because they all bank on the controversy being recent enough to have tons of evidence floating around the internet or in real-life.
I'm going to bring up Ashfur again as my case for why those standards are expecting too much. Ashfur of Warrior Cats was an extreme Base Breaker. People either loved him as a favorite or loathed him with great passion, and those in the middle were few and far between. On the official forums where I spent a lot of time, these debates were pretty common and massive, and grew pretty heated (as heated as could be possible on a PG fora), and because they grew pretty out of control, Most, if not all Ashfur threads, would end up being destroyed by the mods after several pages of arguing. Poof. Gone. And then the site all of this was hosted on was lost eventually anyway, so if there were any huge threads I could have pointed to that didn't get crushed by the mods, they're all gone too because the website itself is gone.
What does that leave? There are youtube videos floating around, some made by fans and others by detractors, but they're just videos, nothing anyone here would accept as evidence. Maybe on other sites there's more to find, but I wouldn't know where any of it is.
All this leads me to believe that the character so controversial as to make the page image wouldn't be accepted under these citation-standards, simply because the evidence of his base-breaking nature has been deleted.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
You bring up a good point, not just for older works, but also for newer. The kind of discussion that we are looking for as proof for this trope are exactly the kind that tend to be shut down by moderators. By definition, then, proof will be hard to find, because many fora will have a vested interest in either destroying that proof, or discouraging that sort of heated discussion.
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I always did wonder if that screenshot was an actual screenshot or something someone doctored to demonstrate what a Broken Base looks like. If that was from an actual forum, all I can say is I'm glad I'm not a part of that community.
The examples I gave for what to look for are admittedly best suited for more recent examples. "Historical" examples are definitely a tricky thing to tackle, especially since lack of evidence means we're stuck with believing what other tropers say and, as I've mentioned before, there are tropers who outright lie just to get entries shoehorned in (the Complete Monster cleanup thread comes to mind).
I would say that certain forums give us some way of telling if a character is particularly contentious. Using our own site as an example, we have a list of banned topics and a brief explanation on why the topic can't be mentioned. Some forums don't nuke topics and instead just lock them; we can look at how many pages they go on for or if there's any mentions of "This topic didn't end well the last couple of times it happened, so I'm locking it right now."
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 11:36:13 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."
That's why I'm not convinced using citations, even just for the discussion process, would work very well. They assume that the controversy in question is new enough and lucky enough to still have existing evidence floating around.
As for the page image, I'm not 100% sure it's a real screenshot, but I can guarantee that it's very reflective of how polarized the fanbase was about this character.
Edited by WarJay77 on May 30th 2019 at 2:35:42 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWell, a Broken Base has to last a pretty long time to count. If there isn't evidence of such fights after the six month period is over and everybody moved on, well, we most likely don't have a Broken Base or Base-Breaking Character. The "long-sustained conflict" is also a big part of the definition.
Admittedly, it doesn't do much to validate whether very old examples hold up, but at least it can be used to see if newer conflicts have the longevity to count.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 11:38:45 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."Also, this method completely ignores evidence from the real world, ie, people talking about a work in real life, at cons, the office, whathaveyou. I think that will especially be an issue for tv shows that don't have many viewers amongst the traditional internet crowd.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesI say that if quality citations can be provided, then by all means, they should be provided. They just shouldn't be required as evidence.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall![]()
I have my doubts that many Base-Breaking Character entries actually take the real world into account in the first place. Though I suspect if there is any "real world" evidence of such conflicts, they would probably be something like YouTube videos of people talking about how surprised they were about how controversial a character is, or a full-out brawl in a convention (which probably isn't very likely...I hope).
I do think the review process should require something much more solid than some troper's word that it exists. Those don't have much value as evidence, especially since, as I said earlier, there are cleanup threads where some tropers outright lie.
The Complete Monster cleanup thread comes to mind, where there were cases where the other posters found out a troper making an effort post intentionally left out information about a character just so the others would be more likely to vote them in as a Complete Monster.
I suppose the examples I gave for what to provide can be used as a kind of "final check" for examples that the cleanup thread isn't completely sure of. They could be helpful for cases where the proposed character in question consistently scores highly in popularity polls, so it can be used to check and see if the haters are just a very Vocal Minority or if the sheer scale of the fanbase means that there really is just as many haters as there are fans.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 11:54:28 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."I think that while it may be useful to ask for citations in the case of entries brought up by the populace to question whether they ought to stay after the fact, requiring them for entries is excessive, inconvenient, and unnecessary. I'm fine with us going by the honor system and having egregious examples removed or reported to the cleanup thread. Tropes Are Flexible and thus we can have the main article page point out what kinds of entries are not acceptable, e.g. "some people think this, some people think that" so future people reading the page before adding the entries have soft guidelines to follow.
Edited by AlleyOop on May 30th 2019 at 3:00:30 PM
I know that this isn't how burden of proof works, but wouldn't it be easier to try and disprove examples? What I'm getting here is that finding proof of a broken base is hard, but it shouldn't be hard to prove a character isn't a base-breaker. If they're always scoring high on popularity polls, if most fanfics, videos and art portray the character positively, if finding evidence for the other side existing in similar number is hard-to-impossible, chances are the character isn't a base-breaker. But, if their status can't be properly disproven, it's more likely that they very well could be a base-breaker.
I don't know. Could help, I guess.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
I think burden of proof should stay as going to the person making the claim that the character counts as an example. I don't think a cleanup thread trying to clean up misuse should assume all examples count until proven otherwise; the person who thinks the character counts should be providing the evidence.
"Well, they could be an example" is also a bad entry.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 12:10:18 PM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."
Yeah, that's why I admitted that my idea ran afoul of the laws of burden of proof. I just thought that, since we seem to have trouble proving characters are base-breakers...
Said trouble is why I always assumed that there really aren't that many Base-Breaking Characters, at least by the definition used by this site, and that any legitimate examples would be very exceptional cases.
I do agree that requiring citations in actual entries is a tad overkill, though being able to include a citation would certainly strengthen an entry. Evidence should probably be brought up in the review process itself; if entries are only allowed to be written after approved by the cleanup thread, then readers can probably safely assume that the entries written have been properly reviewed. Kind of like how you can safely assume for the most part that a Complete Monster entry has been properly reviewed...most of the time, at least.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 12:16:52 PM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."The thing is though, with those sort of clean-up-threads, all that's needed is for someone to watch/read/play the work in question and write down how a character acts during the story. That's it.
But this is a trope that requires far more than just being familiar with the work. It requires familiarity with the work's fandom enough to definitively say and prove whether or not one character qualifies as a Base-Breaking Character. In massive fandoms, I'm sure there'll be many people on the site who can help out. But what of smaller fandoms? Dead fandoms? Sure, the smaller the work, the less the chance of the fandom being active enough to have major disagreements, but it can definitely happen- the issue is that smaller fandoms might not have enough people that can come on and discuss the character in question, and in fandoms that don't exist anymore, there's no chance of that happening. What happens then?
Listen, I obviously haven't been involved in the clean-up thread. I'm just worried that the insistence on having 100% definite proof that a character qualifies is counterproductive and harmful. Forcing all examples to be thread-approved would just lead to headaches and a lot of characters being unfairly deleted because people weren't able to gather enough evidence from small or inactive fandoms.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallNitpick: it's an audience reaction, not a trope.
Personally, I follow the personal philosophy of "If you're not sure and can't verify authenticity, don't list it," especially for something that has seen enough misuse to warrant a cleanup thread. This site is still a wiki, after all; better to make sure all entries are as accurate as possible and not just people playing guessing games.
We might not be able to tell 100% for sure, but we should at least try to get as close to that number as possible. Again, I do not think one person merely saying "People argue about this character" has that much credibility.
And if anything, I would think small fandoms would make it easier to tell when a base is broken since we're dealing with more manageable numbers.
As for making examples thread-approved only, I still think it's worth a try. Making Complete Monster thread-approved only has done wonders in cutting down misuse; now you can't put a character in just because they sneered at the protagonist and called them a cake-sniffer or something stupid like that.
Granted, Complete Monster has criteria that's somewhat easier to examine, but I feel like if we can hammer out what criteria we want to look for when reviewing examples, the cleanup thread will have an easier time vetting examples and determining which ones can be put up.
Better than having examples that might count; that feels like the audience reaction version of Speculative Troping to me (which, by the way, is against the rules).
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 8:22:37 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."
Yeah, yeah, saying "trope" is just more convenient.
My point is that, for examples already posted but unverified, whoever posted likely did have proof to support this claim back when they posted it. The chances of that troper still being around, interested in the subject, and able to dig up evidence isn't very likely, so the example would get cut even if it's true, just because it's no longer verifiable.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI personally think that it's better to just zap unverified entries. The wiki isn't going to come to an end just because entries of questionable authenticity got axed. Though again, that's just my personal philosophy of "Don't put it on a wiki if you can't verify its authenticity," both for audience reactions and for tropes.
That being said, I think that the cleanup thread should probably focus on cleaning up more recent examples, since those tend to be the ones that cause problems with trigger-happy entries, poorly-disguised wonking, etc.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 8:42:21 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."My general stance is that Base-Breaking Character, and other similar fandom tropes, can only really exist for works that have a large, active fandom that interacts with each other. You can have works (i.e. a lot of literature fiction or dramatic/Oscar Bait films) that lots of people read/view, but these readers don't create conventions, don't create forums, and don't have flame wars over characters. These works are popular, but don't have a fandom. As such, these fandom-free works can't ever have examples of Base-Breaking Character.
I do think that works that have a less active fandom now but once did (like Buffy or Warrior Cats) can qualify. Providing evidence of conflict seems possible although maybe harder than the latest hot controversy.
Edited by naturalironist on May 31st 2019 at 9:04:30 AM
"It's just a show; I should really just relax"I think these works can definitely have base breaking characters, it's just not expressed in what we traditionally define as fandom. These particular battles are generally fought out in literary studies departments, newspaper reviews, that sort of thing.
You should know that the newspaper critics of the 19th century were basically the internet forum of their time. They were the vocal minority in print, and there were certainly "fandom" rivalries there, although these were generally not the sort of people who would describe themselves as such.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesPersonally, I'm team "expand to allow characters who are polarizing altogether, regardless of whether or not they can lead to arguing/Flame Wars".
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!![]()
I'm pretty sure "characters who are polarizing altogether, regardless of whether or not they can lead to arguing" being put up was a contributing factor to why Base-Breaking Character needed a cleanup thread. After all, the "conflict" part is still a big part of the definition.
I mean, if something needs a cleanup thread, that means it's causing problems due to misuse. I don't think "Let's find a way to make it easier to shove characters in" is a good attitude to take when it comes to fixing misuse.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 31st 2019 at 10:48:14 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."It's possible some of those cases aren't necessarily what most people would think of as misuse except for the most stringent reading of the trope. I remember having to revise Author's Saving Throw for the same reason; a lot of cases got deleted citing misuse when it turned out the person cutting them was hewing too closely to the actual trope description at the time, which dealt with an overly specific phenomenon that's almost existent outside of comic books and other such serial long-runners.
Crown Description:
Base Breaking Character has stagnated, with the cleanup thread raising issues of the trope rules being too narrow to adequately document a real fanbase phenomenon. How should we fix the issue? Note that these options are not inherently mutually exclusive.

I said earlier I don't think having citations in the entries themselves is necessary (though it certainly wouldn't hurt); most of my suggestions for things to examine are for the actual review process in the cleanup thread itself.
Though, and I admit that I do not write entries for Unfortunate Implications, I don't see the rule about requiring citations for that audience reaction as a bad thing. From what I can tell, it has done a good job in cutting down misuse, at least.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on May 30th 2019 at 11:19:22 AM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."