Needs Help: Vindicated By History

Vindicated by History is supposed to be about works that were initially unpopular or poorly received becoming popular or greatly received as time goes on. However, it is clear when looking at this wick check the standard needed to achieve this status is questionable at best. There are some examples listed for works that either were at least somewhat popular or well-received at release, or did not receive immense enough reappraisal to qualify as a full vindication. It seems that the requirements for a work to be vindicated are too lenient in its current state. This is especially obvious when it was established that Condemned by History, when it was renamed from Deader Than Disco, was a sister trope, which has far stricter requirements as to what qualifies as an example. When those standards are applied, it not only stops shoehorns and misuse from appearing, but it also makes higher-quality writeups necessary, which this wiki always appreciates.

Speaking of misuse, this item also suffers from a bunch of it regardless of how loose or strict the requirements are. I was shocked by how many examples were just "at least it isn't this later installment/adaptation that is hated". I knew they existed, but this wick check shows they almost equal valid examples in quantity. Also, it gets confused with other Audience Reactions quite a bit, most commonly Cult Classic and making up a majority of the "Other" folder as well. Some of it can be remedied with the recently created Character Perception Evolution page, but others require further investigation.

I think the solution here is two-fold. The first part is to mandate guidelines that are identical to the ones on the Condemned by History cleanup thread. To translate for this item, they would be:

1. The franchise has to be truly unpopular or disliked at first. Things that received widespread critical acclaim upon release don't count.
2. Simply becoming more known or less disliked isn't enough. We need to see an actual resurgence, with people finding its previous perception as bizarre. Otherwise, every Cult Classic series or absurd children's film would be here.

As for the second part, the item should explicitly forbid examples where the justification for vindication has to do with a later installment/adaptation making it "better". Examples must refer entirely to elements about the work on their own merits to count as valid.

Opening.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I support the suggestions. Are we allowed to add cases of something being disliked or overlooked by fans for unfair reasons? For example I believe Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was agreed to be a keeper since fans hated it on reveal, saw it as just another 2D platformer despite critical acclaim, and later came to see it as one of the best games on the Wii U. In cases like that would it count?

Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?

I like the proposed refinements in the opening post.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I believe some allowance could be made for sequels that sold well off brand inertia and reviewed poorly but eventually got a great reputation through time (though at the moment i can't really think of any example of this that isn't actually "the thing was successful from the start but a vocal minority on the internet hated it"), but DK Tropical Freeze is a pretty terrible example.

• Yeah, the reveal got a lot of knee-jerk hate, but that was entirely people outside the target audience of Donkey Kong and 2D platformers, people who wanted Retro Studios to do something "AAA" and thought making a 2D platformer was beneath them. That's Internet Backdraft or Periphery Hatedom (with some elements of Fandom Rivalry since there was a lot of "Should have been Metroid!"), not this.
• The Wii U release had great reviews (Metacritic aggregate of 83%) and sold well (2.01 million on an install base of less than 14 millions consoles). If it people loved it and bought it at release, it doesn't count.

If you allow stuff that got bashed on the internet pre-release but were successful once they got in the hands of people, that's not gonna fix the page.

Edited by Glowsquid on Sep 18th 2022 at 10:42:32 AM

I agree with Glowsquid, Tropical Freeze is a terrible example and the way people talk about it like it was some unmitigated sales disaster when it really wasn't puts it under Presumed Flop.

Honestly, basing examples off of fan reactions when a work was critically and commercially successful is totally suspect. People on the internet can and will complain about anything and everything.

Edited by supernintendo128 on Sep 18th 2022 at 9:20:33 AM

pee pee poo poo

What about Wind Waker? The game also was critically acclaimed and sold ok (but nowhere near as good as other games in the series) but it was absolutely despised when it was revealed due to it’s artstyle. It’s now considered one of the best games in the series.

Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?

That one I think may still count because of the sheer disparity between its reception then and now. More importantly, unlike Tropical Freeze, the negative reception actually came from the core Zelda fanbase.

Agreed

This might form its own audience reaction. The idea makes me think of Even Better Sequel. Due to the misuse, I suggest including that in the "see also" section of the description.

This also sounds like a different audience reaction, but due to the (known) potential for misuse/complaining, I'd suggest being definition-only. Describe the effect/possibility, but I'm concerned about collecting examples ending up with another trope (audience reaction) that needs constant cleaning.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

That last one is textbook It Will Never Catch On (and And You Thought It Would Fail, which is pretty much the exact same trope).

re Condemned by History: One thing I wanted to brought up ever since the comparison was made is that if anything, CBH used to suffer from the opposite issue. Back when it was called Deader than Disco, there was a first cleanup thread that cleaned the pages of really bad examples but it set the standards for example so impossibly high ("Has the average man on the street heard of the work"?) that it was essentially impossible to get new examples in: every valid entry brought up in the cleanup thread was stonewalled by a single (now banned) user going "Well, my grandmother didn't hear of it!" and then when a 2nd thread was made, the scope was broadened to "The work was loved and successful within its niche".

Granted that was more about scope than the intensity of the reaction, but something to keep in mind I suppose.

I agree. Wind Waker is kind of the edge because it still sold reasonably well and got great reviews (I remember the biggest French video game website causing controversy for giving it their first-ever perfect score) but ultimately fits the notion in spirit: that the backlash was so intense, that it was so notable retrospective and encyclopedia descriptions have to bring it up and that it influenced the creative decisions on the next Zelda game, and that the reputation of the game today is such a 180* from how it was perceived back then.

We talked about it in the cleanup thread and I do believe there's a distinct, if rather specific, type of reception evolution from those pages you mentioned. When something is truly popular with its target market but you wouldn't know it because genre snobs or fans of older installments bash it on the internet.

Some examples I can think of:

• The Transformers Armada franchise was hated by the online Transformers fandom because the tie-in cartoon wasn't great, and the toyline obviously played Follow the Leader to industry trends ("pokeformers" and all that) and sacrified a lot of features the older collector base wanted like articulation. etc for the sake of keeping it simple and afforadable for kids. However, those attributes that made it hated by older collectors also made it tremendously successful with its actual target audience of kids, and nowadays the kids that grew up on Armada still love it and credit it as a great part of the franchise, drowning out the people who hated it back then.
• Halo was obviously an extremely successful killer app, but the series got a lot of hate from PC FPS fans who saw it as dumbing down the genre and paving the way for mechanics that audience hated (aim assist, two weapons, regenerating health, etc). Nowadays though, as the people who grew up on Halo are adults now and write the narrative, the visible hate has cooled down a lot and the franchise (or at least the Bungie games) has been canonized as "one of the good ones", with newer games like Call Of Duty taking the role of the Bad Thing That Ruined Everything

But i don't know if it really warrants a page, and if it does, I would agree with crazysamaritan it should be kept example only as it'd invite a lot of repetitive entries and shoehorned, "badge of honor"-type stuff.

Edited by Glowsquid on Sep 18th 2022 at 11:52:10 AM

Wind Waker is definitely a more fitting example. The backlash towards that game upon reveal and release is legendary (no pun intended), yet now it's considered one of the finest Zelda games ever released.

Edited by supernintendo128 on Sep 18th 2022 at 11:05:40 AM

pee pee poo poo

Here’s a question I have for that and other related examples of core fan backlash despite initial critical and commercial success: for Wind Waker, did the core fan base dislike the game as a game upon its actual release, or was it contained solely in its pre-release aversion of visual style? If it’s the former, then I would say the derision is significant enough from the fans that the turnaround would be a valid example still. If it’s the latter, that is more of a historical Overshadowed by Controversy example, with that hatred before its release over visual elements defining the game for a significant period of time, until time finally started to heal that the game is remembered for its own merits.

Alternatively, it would potentially be a valid example that the visuals specifically are vindicated, similar to how it’s possible that the ending of AI specifically has been vindicated.

Edited by prettycoolguy on Sep 18th 2022 at 12:35:02 PM

Would it be possible to create a "Reception Evolution" supertrope to catch potential misuse and handle more nuanced examples? We have Character Perception Evolution, after all.

We have Popularity Polynomial if there's more than one shift.

I think the currently four listed Zelda examples (Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks) fit and should be kept. While they were all acclaimed by critics, fans initially wrote them off.

As for the suggested solutions, I'm inclined to support them, though it's rather unfortunate that they weren't brought into the table earlier.

135 - 169 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300

Using fan consensus at the time does feel like a slippery slope in terms of this trope's viability. Like Glowsquid said, it often boils down to the target audience growing up and shifting the narrative once they get old enough to talk about it online. I'll give you Wind Waker, the backlash was so huge at the time that it could warrant its inclusion on the page. However, Phantom Hourglass was an acclaimed bestseller on release, but because a few hardcore fans complained about that one dungeon you have to do over and over at the time, it still counts as being vindicated since.

Besides that, there's also another general problem with the trope brought up in the cleanup thread: How does it work with media from other countries? Ideally it should be judged by the reception in its native country, but the western-centric nature of the site means that, say, anime/manga can be "vindicated" even when it was always successful in Japan.

Edited by harryhenry on Sep 18th 2022 at 8:18:49 AM

That's an major issue with reception tropes sitewide, unfortunately. It's definitely at its worst with Japanese works due to Values Dissonance.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Sep 18th 2022 at 10:29:10 AM

Do we have an Audience Reaction for when it becomes more common to hear about a work being thought of highly not due to consensus in general, but because people who were younger at the time of release and liked the work more than people who were older gained more of an online presence as they grew up? I'm familiar with the concept itself, but I'm not sure if we have a page for it.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Sep 18th 2022 at 10:37:01 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Closest thing I can think of is Nostalgia Filter, but that's strictly an In-Universe trope and not for Audience Reactions.

Edited by supernintendo128 on Sep 18th 2022 at 10:41:14 AM

pee pee poo poo

I think that's what Imperial was also referring to. Worth a TLP.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I think a general "reception evolution" trope does risk becoming Chairs, but reception changing as online demographics shift does feel viable as its own Audience Reaction.

Edited by harryhenry on Sep 18th 2022 at 8:49:58 AM

Can't be chairs if you ain't a Trope :p (reactions ain't)

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

x6 Don't forget about Americans Hate Tingle affecting what qualifies as Vindicated by History.

Kirby is awesome.

I think that's fair though. Vindicated by (American) History or Vindicated by (Japanese) History is still a totally legitimate cultural phenomenon. Even in the internet age there can be huge differences in what's popular where. Perhaps examples could be clear about that, but it shouldn't make them not examples.