Jerks Are Worse Than Cleanup Threads

Crossposting from the discussion tab:

• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The game features an insane king in Gangrel, Walhart—someone who dreams of conquering the world—and the Grimleal, a cult that seeks to revive the Fell Dragon Grima, who wants to kill all humans. But Severa is hated more than any of them for bullying Cynthia and Owain, manipulating her father into spending a lot of shopping money for her, and needing to be recruited during an Escort Mission.

~Kevjro 7, While I am not up to date with popularity polls, I cannot fathom why you would think people hate Severa more than the Grimleal and Gangrel, the latter of which commits a pretty heinous act in the first part.

"They played us like a DAMN FIDDLE!" — Kazuhira Miller, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

You must have used the wrong formatting because that ping didn't work—I'm only aware of your post because I'm following this thread. Read the "Notifying Users to Forum Replies" folder on Text-Formatting Rules to learn the correct markup.

Yes, those characters commit worse deeds, but that's the point of Jerks Are Worse Than Villains; audiences hate jerks more than the villains despite the jerks not being as bad objectively. I think Severa is hated more than them is because gamers are more likely to encounter someone like her in real life than Gangrel and the Grimleal, and she would remind the audience of those people. On top of that, more time is spent with her than the villains because of supports, and those supports put her Alpha Bitchness nature on full display.

Is "I disagree" your only objection? Based on your post and edit reason, that seems to be your only argument.

Edited by Kevjro7 on Feb 6th 2021 at 12:11:20 PM

Is there solid non-anecdotal evidence Severa is hated more than the villains? I know that Severa scored pretty high in the Awakening popularity poll for female characters and scored fairly decently in the Fates popularity poll as well, so my impression of the character is that she's fairly well-liked.

If the hatedom is a vocal minority, then I don't think the entry should be up. But I'd like to know if there is evidence more solid than "I personally think a lot of people hate her more than the villains."

For the record, the example only focuses on Severa in Awakening, not Fates.

The thing about popularity polls is that they only make the people who like the character visible—they can't make the hatedom for the character visible at all, and the only way to do that is to have a "which character do you hate most" poll, which I don't think has been done ever. Also, according to this, Edelgard has done well in popularity polls, but that didn't stop the cleanup thread from deciding she fits under Base-Breaking Character. If you to contest that, take it there.

If you want evidence that she's hated, check out this forum thread. There's plenty of people hating on her there. The comments on this video also hate on her quite a bit,^note though there's admittedly some people there that they like Severa, but it does show she has a hatedom and the top comment on this video says (paraphrasing) "Unpopular opinion, but I like Severa." which is a fan of her acknowledging she has a hatedom.

As for her being hated more than the villains, you can check out that forum I linked. On the first 2 pages, Gangrel is only hated on in 2 posts, Walhart is only disliked in one—and that's more for his roll in the story, not his personality, and the poster in question said they didn't even hate him—and the rest of the villains aren't mentioned at all.

I remember that forum not really being a good indicator of a majority opinion, considering that the entirety of the forum only consists of 4% of the fanbase if you assume the fanbase contains only a million fans. I'm also pretty sure that forum is not a good indicator of what the fanbase in the game's home country thinks about her.

I have no doubt Severa or any character in the series has a hatedom, considering how obnoxious the fans can be at times. But I still have my doubts that she qualifies for the contested entry, especially since we used to have people trying to push her as The Scrappy despite her popularity in her home country (which is an instant disqualifier).

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Feb 8th 2021 at 7:34:39 AM

dragonfire5000 summed up my thoughts. We will not cater to a Vocal Minority, ever.

This trope is already on extremely shaky grounds due to its very definition, and it would not surprise me in the future that we decide to completely tear it down for being a complaining magnet.

"They played us like a DAMN FIDDLE!" — Kazuhira Miller, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

We have not decided if the rules for Americans Hate Tingle and The Scrappy apply to Jerks Are Worse Than Villains—as a matter of fact, we haven't decided on any particular rules yet—but that might be something worth discussing. And if people were trying to push Severa for The Scrappy but not the villains, that's even more evidence that she's hated more than the villains.

This is something that I think is being misunderstood: A character falling under this doesn't make them The Scrappy, nor does it mean that the audience thinks they're poorly written. On the page, Blue is listed. Is he hated? Yes. Is he a Scrappy? No. Look at the SHAZAM! (2019) example. Are the Breyer Brothers hated? Yes. Are they Scrappies? No. And that's because those characters are hated more than the villains, not because they're written poorly. A character falling under doesn't mean that the audience thinks they're poorly written, and Severa falling under this doesn't mean she's terribly written. Love to Hate exists for a reason.

Now, can you provide evidence that the villains in Awakening are hated more than Severa?

My reason for bringing up some people trying to push Severa as The Scrappy by overblowing how much she is disliked and misusing The Scrappy is to explain why I'm skeptical about her counting; my experience with the Fire Emblem community is that there is definitely a vocal minority who will take any opportunity to bash a character while ignoring signs that said character is more popular than they believe.

From what I'm seeing, Severa is a character who is quite popular among the fanbase as shown in popularity polls, and I'm not seeing any evidence that the people wonking about her are anything more than just a very vocal minority. I'm also not really seeing anything that convinces me that the entire fanbase is being examined, only a few users from a single forum that probably makes up less than 4% of the fanbase.

Also, the burden of proof is on the person writing the entry. If someone has to say "Can you prove the villains are hated more?" as a rebuttal, it comes across to me as someone basically resorting to No, You and is not exactly making a good case that the entry is legit.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Feb 8th 2021 at 10:49:24 AM

And from what I've seen, Severa is hated for being Alpha Bitch. And I did provide proof that's she hated more than the villains, but you just dismissed it. Here's more: this thread has 4 posts hating her and doesn't mention any Awakening villains, there's this poll where she's more hated than Gangrel, and in this thread, she's hated on in 4 posts, but Gangrel is only hated on in 1.

I'm not claiming that Severa is unpopular, just that she has a hatedom that hates her more than the game's main antagonists. Also, not everyone who's played a game participates in its popularity polls.

Edited by Kevjro7 on Feb 8th 2021 at 11:49:53 AM

Those posts do not prove that such an opinion is noteworthy enough that they can be definitively said to be more than just a vocal minority.

Considering how easy it is for this particular audience reaction to be used as a complaint magnet, I do not think a few people wonking online is concrete enough evidence, especially for a very popular character.

I also don’t think “Some people hate a jerk more than a villain” is particularly noteworthy as an audience reaction unless a very high amount of people express such hatred, and I am not seeing that high amount of people in those forum posts.

Guys, the whole discussion about the one example feels like a bit of a derail. You might want to take it to the discussion page, or we might want to table it so we can finally hammer out the criteria for this trope. Debating over examples helps not at all when we still don't know exactly what counts and what doesn't.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

A character being popular doesn't mean that they don't have a very large hatedom. Look at Charizard; that mon tops popularity polls everyday, but it still has a large amount of haters—and this is coming from someone who likes Charizard. And it is a trend in everything I found that Severa gets more flack than the villains, so there's probably more what I found. You even said that some people tried to push her for The Scrappy, and a reason I can see for that is because they are aware of or encountered her haters.

Discussion pages are almost never used, and we've already discussed other examples here. Here's what the criteria should be:

• The jerk has a noticeable amount of haters.
• The hatred for the jerk is more than that of the main antagonists.

I provided evidence that this is the case for Severa, and I've seen nothing contradicting this.

Right, but they'd be used if you took the discussion there. Just say "hey, I made a post on the discussion, let's go there now". The discussion around the other examples was just "Yes, they count" or "no they don't". Your insistence on debating here is derailing things and isn't helping with the actual cleanup effort.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The discussion actually was brought to the discussion page first, but the person who contested the entry decided to bring it here instead; check the page topper. But fine, I'll stop discussing it here if that's you want.

Or at least the discussion should be resumed when we're all on the same page. You stated what the criteria should be, but does everyone agree? It doesn't look like it. We can hash out issues like this if we don't even all agree on what does and doesn't qualify as part of the trope or how hated the characters have to be.

That said, you're right that this was originally posted on the discussion tab; I didn't notice that part before.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2021 at 6:11:11 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Should we have a crowner? Options would be:

• Disallow Complete Monster
• Disallow villains
• Allow villains, if their jerkass nature is the reason they're hated

Anything else?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Maybe an option to disallow villains who are Hate Sinks?

Anyway, would Katie Killjoy from Hazbin Hotel be a valid example of this trope? On the one hand, she's a homophobic bitch who gets a lot more ire from fans than most of the outright evil characters in the show's universe other than Valentino despite most of them doing things objectively worse than what she does (examples being Alastor, Sir Pentious, Cherri Bomb, Blitzo, Stolas, Verosika Mayday, etc.). On the other hand... the show is set in Hell, and Katie's a sinner who almost certainly ended up down there for a reason.

Has the show implied she's anything worse than a homophobic bitch?

In other news, I stumbled on a quote I think encapsulates the trope perfectly:

Jawbreakers on sale for 99¢

Not the show itself, but there's a lot of Word of God and Word of Saint Paul stuff that I'm not entirely up on.

Crowner.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Oh, thanks.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I think the crowner's decided on an option, should we end it now?

Also...

• Kindergarten Cop: Cullen Crisp is a crime lord, who is willing to kidnap his own son and hold him hostage at gunpoint during the climax of the movie and yet he is not as loathsome as Mr. Sullivan, Zack's father. When John Kimble sees that Zack was being beaten again, he angrily confronts Mr. Sullivan, punches him in the gut when he tries to take a swing at Kimble and was willing to completely beat the living hell out of him, until he sees a bunch of parents with their own kids watching him, so he stops himself and tells him that he's going to press charges against him instead. Seeing John punch out Zack's abusive father was the most cathartic moment of the film. Even the school principal, who was reasonably skeptical of having Kimble as an undercover teacher with zero teaching experience was glad that he "hit that son of a bitch."

This was a recent addition, but I wonder, do Abusive Parents go above jerkassery? There's just something I sense isn't right here, as it seems he's hated more for being abusive rather than his personality.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Mar 5th 2021 at 3:37:04 PM

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

I think that the trope title really needs a rename. Make change to something like "Jerks Are Less Sympathetic Than Villains"?

MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB Dates

Could work? It's less direct and less extreme, I'll admit, but I feel it won't solve the underlying issue of character qualifications.

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Mar 6th 2021 at 4:55:52 AM