I was inspired by the TRS post I made
because there's still a mess of gushing and preemptive troping in the examples despite the definition of the trope being expanded. Like this for example:
- Author's Saving Throw:
- In the Shoshinkai demo, taking care of Bowser was too easy: all you had to do was swing him by the tail and throw him at one of the bombs. In the final product, this was only the first of three Bowser fights, with the next two becoming progressively more difficult.
- Once you make it to the top of Peach's castle, the back of it looks entirely unfinished. This was fixed in the DS remake where they covered it with a green hill.
I don't think the first example counts because that was prerelease. It's not like anyone other than the press had access to that version of the game. The second might count though.
Update: As of September 2022, per this TRS thread, examples should be moved from YMMV subpages to Trivia, and they require confirmation from Word of God and/or Word of Saint Paul regarding why the work was changed, so any on-page examples and wicks that don't fit the new restrictions must be removed. In-universe examples do not have this restriction. If the removal of examples on subpages renders the subpage too small, or if there are no valid examples left, Cut List the subpage, and, if there are any valid examples left, move them to the parent page (either the main page for Author's Saving Throw or a work's Trivia subpage).
If removing examples, consider whether they may fit Salvaged Story instead. For removals lacking creator conformation, there is an AST salvaging archive for sorting examples. Please put them there.
Edited by Tabs on Nov 19th 2022 at 11:31:32 AM
Those both are describing the normal order that a saving throw would happen in, so I don’t think them calling it “retroactive” matters. I would say the Skeeter one is probably not an example, since JKR’s transphobia wasn’t known of at the time the movie came out, and honestly probably wouldn’t have been received the way it is now (trans acceptance and visibility both being much higher than they were in 2005).
Old Enough to Be Your Absurdly Youthful Mother
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah, I doubt many people have complained about that.
I don't think we should allow retroactive examples at all.
Edited by RustBeard on Feb 28th 2022 at 4:58:25 AM
I don't think those examples are retroactive, but I agree that they are probably not examples at all. Goblet of Fire is twice the length of the previous book, so it's obvious that the less important subplots would get cut when transferring it to a movie, and it seems unlikely that this was done in response to criticism (especially when this criticism wasn't really widespread at the time).
Regarding comments on the ATS for 3H, I have to contest a few of the "no"s as significant misunderstandings of the issues at play.
One, fans didn't really hate Avatarsexuals, they just saw them as a weakness; it was less "This sucks!" and more "This good game would be even better if these characters had more supports."
The stuff about paired endings is weird. No game has ever had paired endings between every single character. There was some criticism of the lack of bespoke paired endings in Fates, but again, it was less "This sucks!" and more "This could be better".
In my experience, the Avatarsexuals thing absolutely was seen as "This sucks!" issue with Awakening and especially Fates. Not because fans hated the Avatarsexual characters themselves (the entry never implies that to begin with), but because people liked a lot of them too much and felt it was unfair to create an entire pool of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character whose purpose is mainly to make the Avatar even more of a Black Hole Sue. 3H allowing even the less story-important characters to form meaningful relationships with the rest of the cast and not just fellate the main character was seen as a pointed rejection of the increasingly self-insert centric storytelling longtime fans feared would become a series mainstay. I've seen a lot of talk on Reddit and Serenes Forest praising Three Hopes for its handling of Monica and Shamir's sapphism regarding their attraction to women who are clearly not the player character, so Avatarsexuality, especially where it intersects with If It's You, It's OK, still remains a fear on people's minds to this day, even with 3H doing its part to undo the damage.
The issue people had with other supports isn't about the lack of unique paired endings (a few people complained but it's a tertiary one, and nobody ever expected every single pairing to get unique endings either), but more that a lot of people think the writing for may of the supports in Awakening and Fates did indeed suck. The fact that characters from the marriage candidate pool could be paired with anyone else led to serious perceived quantity-over-quality problems and a lot of support lines that were seen as trite and shallow. 3H going for a much more limited set of supports brings back the character-centric and story-rich writing people missed from the earlier games (which dovetails into the later worldbuilding point).
Yes they did. Especially queer fans. As a bi ace person I was personally present for a lot of that discourse.
Anyway, that's a wild misinterpretation of what the entry is saying. Again, it's not about fans hating the child characters themselves (nowhere does the entry say that, and most people who hate the mechanic still like the characters fine), it's about LGBT fans and their allies, or people who are just annoyed with romance subplots in general, having a large axe to grind with the direction the franchise was going in because of Fates and to a lesser extent Awakening's Unfortunate Implications regarding heteronormativity and amatonormativity. While a lot of the ire is aimed at subjectives such as the questionable writing of its token LGBT characters like Tharja and Rhajat and Soleil and so on, the gameplay mechanics also got a lot of criticism too, because of how the games objectively rewards you for playing your party as a Gotta Ship 'Em All of M/F breeding pairsnote , so that isn't not a part of it.
3H reducing romantic pairing to almost entirely aesthetic/narrative this time around is praised both from a subjective writing quality standpoint, from a game balance standpoint, and from an LGBT Fanbase standpoint (and given the post-release attempts to make up for the F/F-M/M imbalance, LGBT Fanbase they are clearly listening to us on some level).
Eh, I'm still leaning on keeping it. The poor worldbuilding in Fates was a very popular criticism of the game (Awakening also got a few complaints about its worldbuilding feeling shallow and like cheap fanservice but the backlash is nowhere as big as for Fates), and also if we're concerned about using the YMMV page to document Audience Reaction, a hilariously common aspect of both fan and professional critic reviews of 3H was to note the disparity in its worldbuilding (which is exceptionally rich even by the franchise's usually high standards) after the lack of it in Fates. Whether it's objectively confirmed deliberate or not, it's something large swathes of the audience believe true enough that it's perceived as a deliberate walkback.
If not AST then it should at least be put on Win Back the Crowd, as the franchise is known for having a lot of worldbuilding to which Fates' lack of it was seen as a major step back and made a lot of folks fearful for the franchise selling out in favor of full waifu-pandering mode.
Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 10th 2022 at 2:10:40 PM
Calendar enthusiast
I do think a lot of these entries do belong under Win Back the Crowd rather than Author's Saving Throw, as you suggest. And this gives me a nice segue to something I've been pondering lately.
What actually is the scope of Author's Saving Throw? In my mind it has to be, if not a retcon, at least retcon-adjacent. It's a story development introduced after the fact which influences people's perception of a (poorly-received) prior plot development (alliteration unintentional).
The canonical example comes from Green Lantern comics. In the infamous "Emerald Twilight" story, Hal Jordan, the second Green Lantern, loses his mind, slaughters the Green Lantern Corps, and becomes a supervillain called Parallax. A new character by the name of Kyle Rayner acquires the last Green Lantern ring and becomes the third, solo Green Lantern.
Fans hated this. Really, really, really hated it. There was a whole movement called Hal's Emerald Attack Team calling for it to be reversed, and this was in the days when email and Usenet were bigger than the World Wide Web. That kind of organisation was seriously impressive when social media had yet to even be conceived.
A full decade later, DC published "Green Lantern: Rebirth", which retconned the events of "Emerald Twilight". Suddenly, it turned out that during his Parallax phase, Hal Jordan had actually been possessed by a sentient cosmic entity who was the embodiment of fear... and was named Parallax. This development completely changes the reader's perception of "Emerald Twilight", since now Hal wasn't actually evil, he was under Demonic Possession. Hal didn't destroy the Green Lantern Corps, Parallax (who is not Hal) did. And so on.
Since Fire Emblem is a Thematic Series, I'm not sure the Author's Saving Throw can even apply outside of direct sequels (and I guess Heroes). To take the specific examples you argue with me about, everybody agrees that Three Houses manages these things better than Awakening or especially Fates, but that doesn't actually affect anybody's perception of Awakening or Fates, since Three Houses stars a brand new cast of characters in a brand new setting in a brand new continuity. Can you really call it a saving throw when it's a completely separate story?
Ukrainian Red Cross
Goku Black
AST has some other issues in that without Word of God. It's hard to determine what is meant as an AST and what's just fans looking too deep into something not intended.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
I mean, by that line of thought, why should we even treat Thematic Series as series in the first place? While every creator undoubtedly wants to attract new fans as well, a new Fire Emblem game is clearly meant at least in part to appeal to people who have played previous Fire Emblem games, even if it's not a narrative sequel.
Also, speaking as a comics reader, I'm also not convinced your broader argument is true. It's undoubtedly true that people were happier with where Hal Jordan was as a character after Rebirth - but I'm not convinced that actually improved their opinions of the original Emerald Twilight storyline. Most people reading that are still going to know the retcon never existed at the time and (dis)like the story on its own merits.
Edited by nrjxll on Jul 10th 2022 at 7:50:14 AM
Calendar enthusiast
Even Better Sequel and Surprisingly Improved Sequel are for reception of the sequel as a whole. Though AST can be the explanation for why that's the case (especially if the previous work was somewhat flawed), it doesn't always have to be. Likewise, AST can be present in a work that is largely considered a Contested Sequel or a downgrade from the previous work if specific issues that fans took with the last entry were addressed in the sequel, but not enough to make up for the work's overall quality. Examples where AST is being misused to mean those tropes should be pretty straightforward to identity and delete/migrate.
Agreed that AST and Win Back the Crowd could probably stand to be differentiated a bit better. As I see it, AST is for when a sequel/update includes aspects which are reasonably self-evidently (they may not always have Word of God backing them, but the entry should still be able to articulate what the backlash is and how the change relates to it) a response to negative audience reaction from fans. Meanwhile Win Back the Crowd strikes me as the kind of thing that ends an Audience-Alienating Era, Seasonal Rot or Sequelitis. Sometimes it makes deliberate use of AST, but not always as it can also sometimes succeed by merit of being an overall better work in ways which were perpendicular to the problems of the previous entry.
Edited by AlleyOop on Jul 12th 2022 at 2:32:43 PM
Not sure about this example:
- Author's Saving Throw:
- A major criticism of Sakura is that she has little resemblance with Toji, making her design rather disappointing considering one of the most well-liked points of Evangelion's art direction is the subtle resemblances between family members and subtle differences among everyone else. The next movie introduces another family character, Ryoji, who has a subtle resemblance to his parents.
This dosen't fix Sakura not looking like her brother. Ryoji, the character in question who is apparently the Saving Throw to this complaint, is the son of Misato and Kaji, who are completely unrelated to to Toji and Sakura.
A bit of headcanon, but I think Toji and Sakura took features from their parents that we never get to see. Either that or she was adopted.
Edited by PlasmaPower on Jul 25th 2022 at 9:52:17 AM
Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!Found this under https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/PokemonS20E43WhenRegionsCollide:
Author's Saving Throw: One of the most criticized aspects of Misty's character in the original series was her near-constant abuse of Psyduck, which people found too cruel to be funny, especially since Psyduck seems to have a genuine medical condition over why they weren't useful in battle. This episode rectifies that by showing that Misty has long since grown to become quite attached and affectionate towards Psyduck and in turn, Psyduck seems to have (mostly) gotten over its condition and learned to become a pretty decent fighter in its own right.
1. All Psyduck have constant headaches (e.g. Lucy's Psyduck from Pokémon Detective Pikachu, the trio of Psyduck that block the road in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and their remakes and force you to get the Secret Potion.
2. Most of Misty's interactions with Psyduck were either recalling him or the Duck Pokémon getting a headache and instantly beating his opponents. The only time I can recall Misty being abusive towards Psyduck was in The Bridge Bike Gang! when she tried to slam her bike onto Psyduck's head to give him a headache and was stopped from doing so.
I think this should be removed or reworded.
Hi!
KIRBY CAR
This is on YMMV.Bear In The Big Blue House:
- Author's Saving Throw: After the show went nearly two decades with neither a physical nor digital release of the full series, Noel MacNeal vocally confirming on TikTok that the series would be coming to Disney+ in full on October 19, 2022 was a breath of fresh air for longtime fans.
I'm Sad Frogerson.
That seems more like an example of And the Fandom Rejoiced. It's not really the creator making changes to a work after negative feedback, it's just fans celebrating a work is now available to watch on a streaming service.
KIRBY CAR
Cut.
he/him
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Cleanup from Author's Saving Throw's TRS thread is being moved here since someone else mentioned this cleanup thread.
Here's what changed:
As of September 2022, per this TRS thread, out-of-universe examples require confirmation from Word of God and/or Word of Saint Paul regarding why the work was changed, so any on-page examples and wicks that don't fit the new restrictions must be removed. In-universe examples do not have this restriction. In addition, since this was moved from YMMV to Trivia due to the new requirement for confirmation, examples belong on Trivia/ subpages instead of YMMV/ subpages. If the removal of examples on subpages renders the subpage too small, or if there are no valid examples left, Cut List the subpage, and, if there are any valid examples left, move them to the parent page (either the main page for Author's Saving Throw or a work's Trivia subpage).
However, some misuse may fit Salvaged Story instead.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 6th 2022 at 4:08:40 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
The Man Outside Reality
I just moved a good chunk of former AST entries to Salvaged Story on all things related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The only ones I didn't tackle yet are Spider-Man: No Way Home (since doing so would just leave the page blank), and some of the installments another troper has in their sandbox. Might move other AST examples to Salvaged Story on other franchise-related material if it seems beneficial.
Trust no one.
Salvaged Story confuses me. The definition seems ok, but it also has a series of qualifiers to apply. I need some help with these examples that were under Author's Saving Throw in the Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club to know if they fit under Salvaged Story and as such start clean-up.
- Author's Saving Throw: The anime is noted for relying on heavy amounts of Adaptation Personality Change for the cast, giving the very one-note cast members much more complex personalities in the process. Generally speaking, most fans consider the changes much better:
- Kanata was considered by many fans to be an extremely uninteresting character in the original game, being defined almost exclusively by her Sleepyhead quirk and nothing else. The anime's rewrite of her into a compulsive and constantly exhausted hard worker with a strained relationship with her younger sister was considered a vast improvement, and earned her a lot more love in the process.
- Shizuku came off as very bland in ALL STARS, with minimal involvement with the plot and lack of characterization compared to the other Nijigasaki girls. The anime takes the time to deconstruct several aspects of her character that fans typically had problems with and give her meaningful flaws, making her much more endearing and relatable.
- Rina, who was almost entirely a gag character in the game, is given much more emphasis as a Shrinking Violet unable to express herself, with her "Rina-board" being played much more realistically as her only using it sporadically to show how she's feeling.
- Karin in the game was criticized for not having an impact and barely being relevant. The anime makes this up by portraying her as a model that even the girls want, and uses the discrepancy between the ultra-cool persona she created for herself and the cheerful idol she wants to be as the source of her internal conflict.
- Sunshine's first season was criticized for including a couple plot beats in Chika's apparent Love Confession to Riko and You's jealousy of Riko taking her place in Chika's life that ultimately ended up being Bait And Switches that went nowhere. Ayumu's jealousy of Setsuna's relationship with Yu is the focus of the better half of two episodes, and while there's no canon acknowledgement that Ayumu's Love Confession to Yu ever resulted in an actual relationship, the Les Yay between the two characters after that point is laid on as thick as it could possibly be.
- One of the main complaints in the anime's first season was that Shizuku had minimal interactions with her friends in the club outside of Kasumi and Rina, especially with Yu, at least onscreen, and was arguably barely relevant overall despite her character development in her focus episode. The anime's second season makes up for all of this by not only giving her more interactions with Yu, and later, Ayumu and Setsuna, she ends up being A•ZU•NA's founder in the anime, and her focus episode in the second season delves further into her personal quirks and other interesting traits.
- Lanzhu's portrayal in Season 2 Episode 1 has been so far received positively by fans, especially those who disliked how poorly she was treated in ALL STARS. While she remains the "antagonist" for the season, the show places her into a more-well-defined rival role rather than an outright villainous one, and the show takes the time to ensure that her motivations are clear cut while still keeping the competitive and self-driven aspects of her character that defined her early in ALL STARS Season 2.
The issue I have here is that most of these examples (with the exception of the Sunshine one and Shizuku's 2nd example are based around two different continuities that are still deeply interwoven; ALL STARS is a different continuity from the Nijigasaki anime, being the "source material" so to speak, while the anime is the adaptation. Still, most people that play the game watch the anime, and viceversa, and there has been a clear influence in the storyline decisions taken in the anime based on the reception to the game. Would this still count for Salvaged Story, or not?
Edited by Edgar81539 on Oct 10th 2022 at 2:40:17 AM
A question about Salvaged Story, as it currently stands, it only applies to works set in the same continuity, but what about blatant Expies or adaptations set in a different continuity who are deliberately intended to be a different take on a controversial character and thus an example in spirit?
E.g. a Creator-Driven Successor who can't use the original character for what are usually legal reasons, but is clearly attempting to remake the character but updated in a way more suitable to modern audiences, or repairing the issues that made them a Base-Breaking Character or The Scrappy back in the day? Or a movie adaptation of an old comic book who creates a different version of that character, sometimes via a Race Lift or Composite Character, but is overtly intended to address clear representational issues with that character?
Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 11th 2022 at 2:42:34 PM
Calendar enthusiast
Those sound like they're differences in adaptations which don't currently fit under existing tropes. Some of them might possibly fit under Remade and Improved.
Doesn't count. What you're describing is a conceptual do-over rather than an attempt to fix an existing story. Plus, if we allow that kind of thing in, SS will go the way of AST and be full of shoehorned examples of a writer or actor doing a similar plot better than their first attempt. There are other tropes such examples might fit under, like Adaptational Diversity.
Edited by VampireBuddha on Oct 11th 2022 at 3:29:34 PM
Ukrainian Red Cross
Well, it should certainly count for something YMMV-related, but I'm just not sure what as the closest tropes are for works rather than characters. I'm down with creating a sister YMMV trope for that and what Edgar described if need be, as it absolutely does constitute a legitimate Audience Reaction of some kind.
Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 11th 2022 at 2:44:11 PM
"Cool. Coolcoolcool."
As someone unfamiliar with this trope, is there anything salvageable in regards to this new definition on AuthorsSavingThrow.Once Upona Time or would be better moved to different tropes.
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
Calendar enthusiast
Hmm, maybe something like "Improved Second Attempt"? You're right, that sort of thing is probably worth documenting. Let me know if you start a TLP, I'll probably give you a hat.
Re Series.Once Upon A Time (BTW there's also an unrelated Westernanimation.Once Upon A Time. Those should probably be disambiguated).
- The Disney version of Snow White has been frequently criticized for the Squicky implications of the fact that the prince's first instinct upon finding a beautiful young woman unconscious is to kiss her. The show removes these implications by making it clear that Snow and Charming have been in love for a quite a while at the start of the series and reframing the kiss as a final goodbye, since Charming doesn't know that it will wake her up.
- When casting Tiger Lily, the show distinguished themselves from Pan by casting an actual Native American actress (Sarah Tomko) and removing the problematic aspects of the character — while still honoring her roots.
I don't think these fit anywhere, since the series doesn't appear to have anything to do with the Disney Animated Canon.
- Toward the end of season 2, the crew got a lot of grief over Greg and Tamara's "anti-magic" gear, especially Tamara's taser incapacitating a wooden August. The season 3 premiere patches this up by revealing that unbeknownst to them, it all worked due to Peter Pan's magic.
- Ursula got a lot of flak in season 4 for being noticeably different to her original appearance. It was eventually revealed that she was only named after the goddess who appeared earlier in the show.
- The reveal that Marian has been Dead All Along and replaced by Zelena can be seen as this towards complaints of Regina and Robin sleeping together in 4A, while Marian was in a coma.
- For that matter, the fact that Zelena isn't dead, thus nullifying her seemingly-easy defeat and death and explaining why the Snow Queen's curse on Marian came back.
- Many viewers were furious how Gold went from being a Noble Demon to essentially being a caricature of himself in Season 4. Turns out his heart is being consumed by centuries of evil deeds to the point it would kill him, and also snuffing out what redeeming traits he had. It's up for debate how successful this went over.
- After many fans criticized the Unfortunate Implications of Regina’s happy ending revolving entirely around Robin Hood, the last couple episodes of Season 4 show her realizing that having the right man is far from the only thing her happy ending should be.
- Restoring Pinocchio to adult form in Season 4 seems like an apology to those who felt August got the shaft way back in Season 2. This time he remains an adult and reappears a lot more.
- Operation Mongoose seems like it was largely intended as a way for the writers to re-develop the Emma/Hook and Regina/Robin relationships, which were varying degrees of poorly developed the first time, in order to get more people behind them, probably based on the growing number of complaints that neither of them (especially Regina/Robin) make much sense. Regina and Robin were even developed in a much more condensed version of exactly how Snow and Charming were developed in season 1.
- In general, the fifth season appears to be addressing several of the complaints fans have made about the series, particularly the previous season.
- A number of complaints about Robin's Angst? What Angst? attitude towards Zelena killing and impersonating his wife and essentially raping him were addressed in Season 5 — where Robin angrily chews out Zelena for what she did, as well as expressing some conflict about whether he should be happy or not that he has another child on the way.
- Leroy's speech to Mary Margaret in the premiere about being sick of sitting on the sidelines was essentially the character acting as a mouth piece about fans' complaints about how Storybrooke characters have been pushed to the background to show off guest characters, except for the Charming clan and friends. To cap it off Belle, Granny, Leroy and his dwarfs accompany the Charmings to help save Emma from the Darkness. But ultimately subverted as Granny and the dwarfs barely appear in the arc at all.
- Snow and Charming fans had felt that they have been losing more screen time, been stuck holding the Idiot Ball too much to move the plot, and feared their relationship with Emma was becoming overshadowed by Emma's relationships with Regina and Hook. The fifth season started with the couple asserting they would save their daughter no matter what. When the episode does not focus on them, it still shows them worrying over how they can save Emma. When many fans groaned that David seemingly fell for Arthur's con, the next episode showed him and Snow come up with a plan to reveal Arthur's true nature because they realized they needed to do what was best for Emma, which went a long way in counteracting the actions they took in 4B, which many of their fans found out of character and selfish.
- "The Bear King" is mostly devoted to clearing up two infamous cases of What Happened to the Mouse? that the show had been suffering for a couple years, showing why Ruby disappeared and why Mulan wasn't with the Merry Men when they showed up again.
- Likewise, the Season 5B premiere takes the opportunity to close a plot hole that had been dangling for almost the entire run of the show, revealing why Regina needed to rescue her father from Wonderland and got Jefferson trapped there.
- "Labor of Love" takes on the long-standing fan complaint of the show inexplicably acting like "Mary Margaret" is Snow White's real name rather than just her identity under the Dark Curse, portraying her as feeling like that name belongs to a hero which she hasn't been in a while, and now takes up again.
- "The Brothers Jones" wraps up another series-long plot hole: Henry didn't know the full story of the Evil Queen from the Once Upon a Time book because Regina had torn it out.
- "Ruby Slippers" explains Toto's absence from the previous Oz flashbacks: in this version, Dorothy only got him after returning from her first trip there.
- The finale also addresses the other aspect of Regina's character people don't like; the fact Regina shows no real regret for her past actions. Most of her character arc in the finale revolves around the fact that she does regret been the Evil Queen and wants to be rid of her baggage, and that her lack of regret before this was more a case of her repressing it because it was too painful otherwise, but Robin's death brought it all out once she realized the full extent of her bad karma (which she believes is the reason for all her misfortune after her Heel–Face Turn.)
- "A Pirate's Life" addresses the reason why Hook is with Henry in Hyperion Heights and not with his new wife Emma, revealing that the Hook in HH is actually the version from the Wish Realm, who at first plots to kill the original Hook and replace him as Emma's husband, but then has a change of heart and decides to help Henry all the while looking for his long lost daughter.
- Season 7 as a whole ended up being this for the Wish Realm from Season 6. Many fans hated how it was treated as "not real", thus allowing Regina to set its Rumple free, kill its Snow and Charming and leave its Henry orphaned, while also not explaining why its Hook was the way he was, yet then treating its Robin like a real person and even having him and the Evil Queen travel back to the Wish Realm which only proves it is a real place. In Season 7, Wish Realm Hook is a main character with his heartbreaking backstory explained, while the season/series finale deals with the consequences of Regina's actions, with Wish Realm Rumple as the Final Boss who is using a vengeful Wish Realm Henry as his Dragon.
From the way these are written, they appear to fit under Salvaged Story. However, I'm not familiar with the series, so I can't say for certain that any of these weren't how the plot was always intended to go.
- While each new season introduces a new story and set of characters from fairy tales/literature/movies, there has been a growing number of fans who feel the new elements took over the plot and stole focus away from the core cast. However, when the King Arthur and Brave stories became big parts of the fifth season, the focus has so far stayed on the core cast, with King Arthur and Brave characters being used to further the core cast's development.
- Belle, who had been getting more and more Out of Focus and becoming more of a Satellite Love Interest to Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold as the series progressed, has been helping the rest of the cast save Emma, her budding friendship with Hook has given her another relationship outside of Gold for the first since probably Ruby, and she has so far been in most of the episodes in the fifth season, and actually had a speaking role in said episodes. And when her romance with Gold came back into the picture, she managed to hold her own with him as a character rather than just serve his purposes, making their relationship stronger than it has been in a long time, which is another saving throw for Rumbelle shippers.
- And the season finale features the biggest one of all. Ever since Season 2, fans had been complaining about Regina being a Karma Houdini with the show acting like her Heel–Face Turn meant she should no longer need to face any consequences for her evil acts. So in this episode, she uses a refined version of Dr. Jekyll's potion to separate her good and evil sides, meaning the Regina we're left with has a clean slate, with the Evil Queen also still being around to face that punishment. Unfortunately, the climax of this arc in Season 6 completely negates this, as the Evil Queen ends up not facing such a punishment and becomes a Karma Houdini who lives happily ever after. Needless to say, the complaints came back and louder then ever.
- Season 6 continues what Season 5 started with regards to Rumbelle. When Rumple tries to wake her from the Sleeping Curse in "The Saviour", the events turn out to be a Secret Test of Character set up by Morpheus, who is actually their unborn child, to ensure Belle would not go back to Rumple. Belle decides to end her relationship with Rumple permanently. Needless to say, Belle actually getting back together with Rumple to raise their child in the Season 6 finale created yet another Broken Base issue.
- "I'll Be Your Mirror" addresses a long-standing fan complaint regarding the Anti-Climax Boss / They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character nature of The Dragon. He is not only revealed to have survived, but he finally transforms into his dragon form. It's every bit as awesome as fans knew it would be, by-and-large averting Special Effect Failure.
- "The Black Fairy" finally offers some backstory to the Blue Fairy, or at least sheds some light on her actions towards Tinker Bell. The Black Fairy was once a human woman who stole fairy magic to turn herself into one, and later became evil because she wanted to prevent her son from being killed. This episode at least shows where Blue was coming from when she tried to stop Tinker Bell from helping Regina, and why she de-powered her; she was trying to prevent another fairy going down a dark path with forbidden magic (despite good intentions).
- People were annoyed a lot of the main cast was jettisoned during Season 7; Jared Gilmore appears in the first two episodes, Jennifer appears as Emma one last time (for now) in "A Pirate's Life" and Emilie de Ravin in "Beauty". Strangest enough out of all of the departures, it's Rebecca Mader as Zelena who ends up officially recurring in the season.
- "A Pirate's Life" also avoids a common problem with Rumple and his Heel–Face Revolving Door. Despite making it look like he is a villain, his new cursed self, Weaver, turns out to be a Cowboy Cop With A Heart Of Gold, and he stays this way all the way to the end when he makes his Heroic Sacrifice, meaning the Heel–Face Turn he pulled in the Season 6 finale was indeed the final one.
- On a wider level, the fact that Seasons 6 and 7 seemed to be an attempt to return the show to something resembling the original premise was this for fans who felt that the show had strayed too far from what made it good in the first place.
- After the somewhat questionable decision to turn Lily's search for her father into an Aborted Arc at the end of Season 4 (due to the show-runners not being able to get the rights to the character they wanted, preventing him from appearing onscreen), the Season 7 finale does address the question in a line of dialogue, revealing his identity to be Zorro. Granted, how much of a saving throw this really is depends on how much you feel a line of dialogue works as a substitute for the Story Arc that could have spun out of that question.
These are stuctural changes; they don't fit under any established trope I am aware of.
- The Underworld arc on a whole returned Gold to his Anti-Villain roots, albeit darker than before (with justified reason, as he now had the darkness of all past Dark Ones inside him). The chief complaint against the character in the fourth season was that he lost moral complexity and became a more one-dimensional villain, while the Dark Swan arc got complaints of Gold becoming too heroic a bit too fast and easy for some. The Underworld arc found a compromise by having Gold commit villainous actions, but giving him the motivation of saving his and Belle's unborn child. This is much closer to his original characterization in the first two seasons where he had moral ambiguity that allowed him to act good or evil depending on the situation. He has also become very self-aware about himself, his power addiction, his relationship with Belle, and his refusal to change, which makes his villainy less frustrating since he's at least honest about it.
This sounds more like Character Check.
- People complained that Rumple and Belle's relationship revolved around Belle going back to Rumple after showing he can change only to immediately prove he has done nothing of the sort. After finding out that Rumple had become the Dark One again she becomes much more forceful about her attempts to change him and will not even consider taking him back until he proves he can change permanently and not go back to his old ways.
Not sure but without at least Word of Saint Paul it's not an AST.
- After the 5A finale had every bit of closure for the Camelot story cut from it, the crew brought it back for the last few episodes of 5B. This is especially true for King Arthur, who got a much-desired Heel–Face Turn and indication that he's going to develop into more of his legendary self.
Sounds more like Refitted for Sequel.
- Fans were hugely upset over how Robin Hood became Deader than Dead while in the same episode, Hook was revived through a literal Deus ex Machina. In an interview afterwords, the Word of God stated that they choose to believe that Hades was lying about what the Olympian Crystal does to your soul and that Robin Hood is in the better place now, hinting he wasn't truly Deader than Dead. The premiere of Series 6 has Henry and Regina decide to believe the same thing, and the mid-season premiere heavily hints at them being correct, with the implication that Wish-Realm!Robin contains some portion of Real!Robin's soul. The series finale would flat-out confirm that Robin's soul survived, as we see it visit Regina in a vision that leaves his trademark red feather behind afterward.
This one is borderline but actually looks valid.
- Fans liked to imagine that Anastasia from Once Upon a Time in Wonderland was one of Cinderella's stepsisters, based off Ashley appearing in the first episode and a couple of other hints. But one scene in the spin-off between Ana and her mother had the mother saying "I still have your sisters" — making fans wonder what she meant. "The Other Shoe" reveals that they had another sister called Corinda — which allows for the fan theory to still exist, as it's never resolved in the series.
I... uh... what?
- For all the worry Season 7 was going to trample over past continuity, the reveal that there are many different versions of the fairy tale characters allows a reboot without reversing all past continuity. Bonus points for using a previous plot point (the Wish Realm) to justify it and explaining why the stories seem to have only happened now despite having multiple previous versions.
Marketing crap.
- The relationship between Alice/Tilly and Robin/Margot appears to be one to the previous attempt to portray a same sex relationship on the show, the relationship between Ruby and Dorothy. That relationship was met with a severe case of Strangled by the Red String only getting developed for one episode which made it come across as a Very Special Episode even though the writers said this would not be the case. By contrast, Alice/Tilly and Robin/Margot get developed in the same way as any other romance on the show giving it more depth.
Do-over with a different set of characters.
- As per fitting for a Base-Breaking Character, Hook has always had his fair share of fans but equally as big a share of detractors who have trouble buying him as a hero, viewing him at best as a Nominal Hero who still acts in a shady manner and always takes the low road with others despite him being supposedly redeemed, culminating in the character receiving perhaps the largest amount of fan hate out of all the "redeemed villain" characters in Season 5. Season 7 finally puts in more effort to rectify this, albeit with a different incarnation of him in Wish Realm Hook/Rogers. While he shares the same backstory as the original Hook, Wish Realm Hook this time puts in more work to be a more lawful, upright person as Rogers, works better with others this time and even befriends/makes peace with Weaver/Rumplestiltskin, and ultimately chooses to take the high road, making the decision to raise his newborn daughter rather than continue pursuing the path of revenge.
Different character.
Edited by VampireBuddha on Oct 12th 2022 at 3:28:42 PM
Ukrainian Red Cross
i'm at the combination she and it
there's this on YMMV.The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter:
- Author's Saving Throw: While Islands of Adventure's Hogsmeade was definitely well-recieved, there were many complaints. For example, nearly everything was exposed to the sun with very little shading, which can make the Florida heat unbearable in the summer (the fact that all of the rooftops are covered in fake snow can come off as downright comical on a hot day), and how absolutely tight the size is. The Studios park's Diagon Alley covers both these complaints by providing some much-needed shade and substantially more room to breathe.
this is a case of clearly addressing design flaws that people had criticized, but it's in a meta sense due to being a theme park rather than a story sense like a narrative work. there's no word of god confirmation, so it can't just be moved to trivia, but there's probably a valid example of a trope i can't find here. any ideas?
I think that's a valid example. The "work" is the theme park, which is constantly evolving and iterating on itself, and the physical environment can be a big storytelling tool on top of being a way of accommodating guests. A new area that takes the lessons of designing a previous area and ensuring that it is more accessible while still telling a story can absolutely be an example of this trope.
I think Author's Saving Throw would apply to, say, 'the user interface in Game X was criticised at launch, so its redesign in the expansion pack was well-received for being much more user friendly'. The same logic should also apply to theme parks.
The closest I've found to a direct acknowledgement of this specific example is in the Making Of documentary, where the need to make the land resistant to hurricanes and the 'Florida weather' is brought up. I think it's extremely sensible to assume the designers have shelter from the heat in mind, even if it's not directly stated.
These I found on YMMV.Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire:
Retroactive examples don't count, right? These feel weird to me.