Misused: Hate Sink

As the wick check shows, the trope needs a great deal of weeding, and possibly rewording as well. A lot of tropers are just using it as a non-YMMV Complete Monster. The author's intention is almost entirely ignored.

As it says: "unlike The Scrappy, the Hate Sink is a character created by an author with the specific goal of making the audience hate this character's guts." This should be enforced more heavily. Don't just add it to a guy because you hate him, because that's YMMV, and this isn't.

Edited by Potman on Jun 24th 2021 at 12:01:16 PM

Opened.

One way to resolve some of the misuse is to disqualify heinous villains.

I can see that there is a problem, but honestly, I am not sure what the solution would be beyond cleaning up the misuse.

I've honestly said for a while now that Hate Sink characters usually exist in works where there's no actual villains, or where the villains are too detached and enigmatic to be really despicable or likable. They're hatred lightning rods moreso than they are actual characters, and you don't need a lightning rod when there's already a villain to hate.

In other words, I agree with Berrenta.

I agree, been saying this for a while.

How effective/active is the cleanup thread? I used to follow it but at some point it became very similar to the Complete Monster thread, is that still the case?

I posted this elsewhere but FYI the description was rewritten about a year ago to emphasize the character's role in the story, worth keeping in mind.

The thread has been reformed, so to speak. We've ditched the EP thing almost entirely and focus primarily on cleanup.

I think the trope's definition and function are fine: it's tropeworthy, there's plenty of legitimate examples out there, and it doesn't need too much of a fix in itself. Just need to clear away all the frankly excessive misused examples, maybe make the definition a little bit clearer so that it won't happen again.

Edited by Potman on Jun 24th 2021 at 1:04:44 AM

I remember checking the Hate Sink page a few years ago, and every Complete Monster from Fullmetal Alchemist had an entry. I thought the point of Hate Sinks is that they aren't evil?

From what I've understood - the way it's written - the point is just that they were built from the ground-up as something for the audience to hate. It's not just that they've got a lot of heinous, hateable qualities, it's that the author looked at this character and went "Yeah, I really want them to hate him. Let's make sure he's a proper asshole".

It doesn't necessarily preclude villains, even major ones, from this trope - but they've got a lot going for them already anyway, and they tend to be pretty heinous by default so there's neither the need nor inclination for the author to crank it up on that front. It'd far more often come up with minor antagonists, or just general jerks and bullies and nuisances.

That's my take on it, anyway. But so long as we can clear up all the Complete Monsters and make it far more solid and less YMMV in general, I'll be content.

Edited by Potman on Jun 24th 2021 at 1:31:03 AM

Honestly, I suspect this may actually be two different tropes being treated as one:

• A character written with the intent of being not just bad, but despised by the audience.
• A character intended to act as a magnet for audience hatred in lieu of a main villain who can serve that purpose.

In my opinion, there's enough overlap between those two for both to be represented with the same trope. There's a number of tropes out there pulling double-duty like this, even triple-, and doing fine.

What's important is that we hate them, and we're meant to.

Yeah but the problem is it's being misused for actual villains with actual heinis deeds at this point. Several entries just list deeds or how "they don't have redeeming qualities" which isn't this trope either.

Yeah; a lack of redeeming qualities is a symptom of being a Hate Sink but not the sole criteria.

Like a good example is this Power Rangers.

Most of these main villains listed here also have cool or intimidating moments like serrator or org.

This is just listing deeds.

The listing of deeds is how you get Complete Monster. It got a whole folder of its own in my wick check for a reason.

We can debate on the exact parameters of the trope, but I think we can all agree that those gotta go.

Edited by Potman on Jun 24th 2021 at 2:49:20 AM

I think D Qing Heinous villains is a bit much

I think a Heinous villain could count it just depends on...well if they have 'Hatable' Qualities.

Patrick Bateman from American Psycho wasn't just a really evil mass murder, he was also every shade of Politically Incorrect Villain and meant to embody everything that the writer hates about society. For one of the Classic examples, Joffery from Game of thrones wasn't just an Evil king, he was a Smug and Vindictive Brat who is meant to be loathsome as possible.

As far as I am concerned, disqualifying heinous villains will just make it so that this is further misuse of The Scrappy. I think that at its most basic, the Hate Sink is intended to draw the audience's ire away from other characters, and their status as such is made plain by the narrative.

In this regard, I consider the Book of Esther's Haman the Agagite to be the trope codifier. The narrative paints his actions in such a way that makes clear that he is intended to draw the audience's ire, specifically by calling him epithets such as "Haman the Evil" or by otherwise pointing out how selfish he is to damn an entire demographic because of a petty slight. Most notably, it is nearly a universal custom among Jews to jeer at the mere mention of his name during the Megillah reading. Thus, he draws heat away from other characters.

Similarly, I would say that Sack Lodge, from Wedding Crashers takes a lot of cues from Haman, having his actions painted in a way that deliberately invokes the audience's wrath. He deliberately makes the douchey protagonists look like saints in comparison.

Like the above was saying, it really depends on if the villain was meant to be loathsome.

Maybe we should merge this with an index then.

Edited by SkyCat32 on Jun 24th 2021 at 6:34:27 AM

Thing is, villains are expected to be hated by default. We have special tropes like Affably Evil and Evil Is Cool for the exceptions. We also have a bunch of other tropes to describe the ways villains can be hatable. Having yet another one doesn't strike me as very useful. The unique aspect of Hate Sink is the way they work to add tension to the narrative when the villain isn't obviously present. Given the way the troper base's love of Gushing About Villains You Like leads to Trope Decay, I think focusing on the unique narrative role of the Hate Sink is the way to go.

Edited by naturalironist on Jun 24th 2021 at 6:34:25 AM

I've never liked this trope and I honestly wouldn't mind cutting it.

Before you start throwing tomatoes:

• "Authorial intent", as I've come to learn from left-side forum work, is difficult to verify more times than not, and tropers will not bother to verify more times than not. I simply don't think it's worth it to keep trying to discern whether or not the author wanted you to hate this character.
• What this trope has become in practice is "Jerkass/[other asshole trope here]". At least a Jerkass can be contextualized by listing heinous deeds. This asks you to go the extra mile with "heinous, but that's the point!".
• If not that, it's an excuse to sneak Complete Monster or The Scrappy in Main/, ie. stealth complain.

[wipes tomato juice off self]

If not, I agree with the proposition to disqualify outright villains. And maybe we could rename? I think the Hate Sink term is too ingrained into the troper hivemind as "asshole".

Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 24th 2021 at 5:36:48 AM

Yeah I mean we already have a ton of other things you could fit this stuff under Kick the Dog, Absolute Xenophobe, Ax-Crazy, Activist-Fundamentalist Antics for like a few on this page. Do we really need more.

Edited by miraculous on Jun 24th 2021 at 3:37:21 AM

Point taken on Affably Evil, but isn't Evil Is Cool YMMV?

Also, if we are not allowing villains, this is just Villainy-Free Villain.

We may as well just cut the trope.

Edited by SkyCat32 on Jun 24th 2021 at 6:42:18 AM

I think the name of the trope is fine. It implies some kind of a sinkhole, even a black hole, for hatred - like it pulled your ire towards it, by means of gravity or some other force. It's also a short and catchy one, and rings well on the tongue.

Edited by Potman on Jun 24th 2021 at 3:39:51 AM

What about guys like Shou tucker from FMA? Or Umbrage from Harry Potter?

A villain does evil stuff, Like say...Dude blows up a building, alright, evil. Not every villain is designed to be as loathsome as possible like the above.

Alternately, we could make this a trivia item about characters confirmed by WOG to be written as deliberately detestable.

I would argue that Umbrage would/should still count because she's not the main villain of the story. The main characters don't try to defeat her, and the book isn't about her really. She's just a device that adds tension and distracts everyone from the real villain.