Rescued From The Scrappy Heap discussion

At the Scrappy Cleanup Thread, we keep hitting snags when it comes to Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. It's unclear whether or not the character in question must have been an actual Scrappy, or if a Base-Breaking Character or Hate Sink is allowed to count as well. This opens up a bigger question of whether or not it qualifies as a subtrope of The Scrappy. It was discovered that part of the Super Trope definition was modified unilaterally, which makes it unclear as to whether a subtrope must count for the supertrope or can occasionally see different variants. The reason this matters is because right now, if a Rescued example exists for a character, the policy is to remove The Scrappy due to the supertrope rule — which can't be used anymore if Rescued doesn't qualify as a subtrope of The Scrappy at all.

So, it was decided that we needed a Trope Talk to get to the bottom of these issues. How do we define RFTSH? Does it count as a true subtrope of The Scrappy? Do we need to go to TRS for whatever reason? Let's discuss.

I think my starting point would be the Super-Trope question - if it's not possible to have a Sub-Trope that isn't always part of the Super-Trope, that reduces some of the options.

(And this is a question that has a much wider impact than a single trope)

Beyond that...

Rescued from the Scrappy Heap is clear that it can apply to multiple 'scrappy' tropes, not just The Scrappy (e.g. Low-Tier Letdown, High-Tier Scrappy etc.) - there's no definitive list on its trope page, but recent conversation's assumed that Ethnic Scrappy and Damsel Scrappy would be in scope for possible rescue as well (which seems logical to me).

But it feels like the character has to be on some sort of Scrappy Heap before they can be rescued from it... so if they don't qualify as some flavor of Scrappy, I think we're watering down the RFTSH trope by allowing them to qualify as that regardless.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 29th 2023 at 11:25:47 AM

Well, applying for other Scrappy tropes isn't a complicating matter necessarily since they all still include the "hated by the whole audience unintentionally" part. The reason why BBC and HS matter is because they don't follow that trend, which makes it unclear exactly how broad Rescued is. Basically, I agree with what you're saying about how it sort of waters things down; I'm really just clarifying on my point (as I lumped the subtropes in with The Scrappy).

I'm not really sure if we can hash out the full Super-Trope question here, since it's more of a wiki talk issue, and would impact more than just RFTSH.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 29th 2023 at 6:30:05 AM

Personally, I think a subtrope should always qualify as an example of the Super-Trope, otherwise it's not a subtrope; it just overlaps. As hypothetical examples:

• Obviously Not Fine is a subtrope of Blatant Lies, because by definition Blatant Lies are lies that everyone can see aren't true, and Obviously Not Fine is the same applied to being okay.
• A Dog Ate My Homework can be played alongside Blatant Lies, but it's not a subtrope, because in some cases, it's true, and in other cases, it is a lie but it's not blatant (it could be plausible deniability if the person does have a dog who chews paper.)

Right, it's the definition basically every supertrope / subtrope on this wiki actually uses... but that unilateral change to the Super-Trope page is conflicting with things and it throws a wrench into how we classify RFTSH

The practical application of the Sub-Trope / Super-Trope question for the Scrappy tropes is whether we list both for every character who's Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.

If Rescued from the Scrappy Heap is a subtrope, we wouldn't normally list The Scrappy (or one of its variants) on the YMMV page as well.

If it's not, we would presumably list both.

Historically, due to that unilateral change, the Scrappy cleanup does seem to have viewed it as a subtrope and we haven't been listing both tropes for the same character within the same work (although we might when spanning sequels and franchises - e.g. The Scrappy in book 1, Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in book 3).

We might need to do some cleanup whichever way this decision goes.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jun 29th 2023 at 11:49:44 AM

Personally, I feel like a Hate Sink who the audience grows to love fits the spirit of Rescued from the Scrappy Heap even if they technically aren't a scrappy.

Nah, that feels more like either Love To Hate or Draco In Leather Pants depending on the exact nature of it.

Is this the discussion about the nature of super- and sub-tropes that Dragon Quest had in mind?

I've always found it odd that apparently a character could be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap without being a Scrappy in the first place, and it never sat right with me since, you know, "Scrappy" is in the name.

If you don't have to be a Scrappy to be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, then "Scrappy" has no business being in that particular audience reaction name.

And if they were Love to Hate or an otherwise positively received contribution to the work "fixing" them would be the opposite. So Rescued only applies to Hate Sinks if they were unintentionally disliked.

I'd personally agree with that I feel like a character should have been, at some point, considered The Scrappy by the fandom for them to then be considered to be rescued from it. Otherwise I don't think the trope title really works. If the trope title was, say, "Rescued from the Trash Heap", that'd be something I'd be more lenient on being applied to "divisive character becoming more overall beloved", but as-is, the title does have "Scrappy" in the name for what is, IMO, a direct connection to The Scrappy trope, so it seems only logical to me that we would want it to be used for characters rescued from that trope and that trope alone.

I fully agree with this, however the description has included non-Scrappy characters for as far back as the history goes. And that's where a lot of the confusion lies.

Original YKTTW, oldest Internet Archive copy. I think the current name was meant to be a pun on "scrap heap" more than actually being descriptive. It sounds like the original idea wasn't even meant to be restricted to characters.

Edited by MorganWick on Jul 1st 2023 at 3:18:04 AM

I don't think the fact it has The Scrappy in the name means it's a subtrope. This came up in the cleanup thread when someone brought up Temporary Scrappy. The thing is, Temporary Scrappy is really a subtrope of Hate Sink because the character is intentionally hated.

My personal feeling on it, in that case, would be to rename the trope if possible. It seems to draw a lot of false correlations to The Scrappy itself and could be easily remedied by a re-name if it's truly meant to just mean "Something divisive or hateable, not necessarily The Scrappy, that becomes more well-liked by the fanbase"

There's also the question of whether or not it should remain separate from Character Perception Evolution, which from a cursory glance does have some examples that would also fit RFTSH, or be merged into it.

RFTSH is a subtrope of that one; we're not supposed to include examples of Rescued, but...

I don't know if it's that specific. Both pages say the other is related, but neither say they're a supertrope/subtrope. Probably an issue for the Trope Relationships thread.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Jul 1st 2023 at 5:48:11 AM

Edited by badtothebaritone on Jul 1st 2023 at 5:48:01 AM

That's how it was talked about in the TLP discussion tho... it was considered a subtrope back then. :/

I thought that Character Perception Evolution is about when fans retroactively change their mind about hating (or liking) a character, while Rescued from the Scrappy Heap is when they only like the character in later installments where they're now written better. In other words CPE is, as the name says, about fans' perception of the the character changing, while RFTSH is when the character itself is changed.

Either way, I always felt that a Base-Breaking Character can also be Rescued, since that's basically when half of fans treat the character as The Scrappy and the other half disagrees. In the end, rescuing that character has the same effect: people go from hating to liking them.

My thoughts is regardless of whether or not a character was rescued later it’s fine to list them for historic purposes of the entry mentions they were rescued later. The reason I think this is some of the most infamous Scrappies in existence such as the Trope Namer, Jar Jar Binks, Wesley Crusher, and Chris Thorndyke were rescued either from better recived later installments or Character Perception Evolution. Yet despite these later developments, their hatred within their fandoms was infamous and long lasting enough that not noting them would make their pages feel incomplete.

My one trepidation about the idea of making an exception to the sub trope rule is it could lead to problems down the line, such as can a character became The Scrappy if their later appearances were hated enough, in spite of being liked enough in earlier installments?

Edited by Mariofan99 on Jan 9th 2024 at 12:53:26 PM

Er, yeah, that's really not how it works. We aren't going to bend policy just because something might be noteworthy. If Rescued really is a subtrope, it will serve as a reminder of that time period just fine.

Anyway, I linked here so that we could discuss the actual subtrope issue, not the historical example idea.

I can see including the Trope Namer just to explain why the trope is called that, but other than that I don't see why we should include noteworthy examples.