Ask The Tropers

My question would be simplier. Is even describing HB's channel creative content or HB Guy himself or his views? Because one of those would be invalid as Moments.

I'd argue that (my issues aside) it would be a moment about the work based on what HB's content is

We do have a thread for cleaning up moments pages.

This is also a fundamental misunderstanding of what heartwarming pages are. Regardless of whether or not Hbomberguy is telling the truth or lying, heartwarming pages are meant to catalogue an audience reaction to the work. If people viewed Hbomberguy's complimenting of Monty Oum in the video as heartwarming, lie or not, that's a valid entry. Or to put it differently, just because a portion of the RWBY fandom thinks Hbomberguy is lying and therefore doesn't find that section heartwarming does not mean that there aren't others who do believe Hbomberguy to be telling the truth about his admiration and thinks the compliment is a nice thing to say.

I agree with amathieu13. The YMMV subpages like heartwarming and nightmare fuel are about cataloging the audiences subjective perspectives. By their very nature, some other fan disagreeing with whatever opinion they read on one of them will happen sooner or later. I don't see any real good reasons for deleting the viewpoint from HBomberguy's heartwarming page here.

Alright but we delete entries that are factually wrong all the time. The individual who put them up might believe it happened but we drew that line.

Also I’d washer that we have deleted such entries praising people who later turned out to be monsters and nobody consulted the original tropers on that, so there is obviously a point where we say “we don’t consider this entry legitimate anymore”

Putting aside the top level edit comment for a moment, what about the three sub points that are thinly veiled potshots at RWBY fans and Rooster Teeth?

Looking at the entry I think its...salvageable. Just make sure to not include any of the 'life long fan' stuff he claimed in the video. That is the thing we can verify for a fact is a lie, and getting rid of the off-topic stuff about Harris' issue with copyright battle with RT is good too. But stuff just listing him complimenting Monty's work or congratulating other animators instead of solely Monty can stay as those seem like valid examples.

I think some stuff on the main page about the review could be worth a look? A good deal of it is written well, simply saying how this was Hbomber's personal opinion. But other parts seems to write these as if they were more 'objective' rather then simply stating this is the opinion he has. Like under the Accidental Aesop example.

"RWBY's handling of the Faunus plot is so muddled and disoriented that it accidentally makes the point that supressing a civil rights movement is actually a good thing, because they're all evil terrorists who want to bomb cities that largely are apathetic to individual acts of racism."

I don't see anything that could be considered an objectionable statement made against fans or the Rooster Teeth company. It's difficult to see how anyone except an overly self-conscious fan of RWBY could find these bullets points contentious.

One of the entries on the heartwarming page is just detailing how its 'less' heartwarming because of the battle between RT and Harris and having a whole paragraph dedicated to that. Stuff like that could go easily.

I think most, at least half of the heartwarming thing can stay anyways. As it does not go heavy into the things that we know are untrue. Saying that he claims to respect Monty and compliments his work in the present is accurate. People can find that heartwarming. The only thing we know is a lie is him claiming he was a life-long fan or that Monty and RT were big inspirations to him, and said lie is not a big part of this.

And no offense Melon, but that is a fairly rude accusation to make.

Though I understand my words can seem harsh I wasn't trying to do anything insulting, just provide context for my skepticism. The RWBY fandom has become known for its issues with handling criticism at this point, so any query of this nature will be suspect.

I'm trying to see this query in good faith but I really don't see any serious issues here. Harris lying or not doesn't matter because this is about how the person who wrote this felt about Harris's words spoken in the video. Rooster Teeth is a fairly shitty company so I don't understand anyone taking issue with someone winning a fishy copyright claim against them. And if you are confident enough in your fandom that you know you don't act a certain way, then the minor mention of how some RWBY fans talk about Monty shouldn't matter to you. I just don't feel there are any substantial issues with the way this is written.

Its not really related to if Harris was right in his conflict with RT or not, its not on-topic for the heartwarming moments page. So it should be axed. Maybe moved to somewhere else if it belongs somewhere.

I also feel most of it should stay but for different reasons. I do think that if something is proven to be a lie that things holding it as true should be removed. No matter how the person felt about the lie itself or if they felt it was sweet. But I think most of the moments given here are not directly connected to the things we can prove are lies.

You are making fair arguments, I just disagree with them. Since I dislike getting into circular arguments and made all the points I could within reason I will simply bow out and leave this to the mods to decide on.

I do feel like bringing up old forum posts to call him a liar (such as OP's edit here on YMMV.H Bomberguy) does ring of drama importation. We can call his video divisive without accusing him of lying.

It's also irrelevant if what he says is accurate, Heartwarming is what the audience thinks.

@harryhenry Except he objectively was lying. His video made the claim that he was in awe of the RWBY trailers and was always a life long fan of Monty and always held great respect for him. His SA posts have him call Monty a hack, say he's only creative in the same way a porn director is, and disparages all of Monty's work going back to his original animations. That's not importing drama, that's no different than someone referencing an old interview. Especially since people have referenced HB's previous opinions in the context of his claims of impartibility and to support their conclusion that the video was mean-spirited.

^^Right. YMMV pages aren't arbiters of fact, they are collections of audience opinions/reactions. So long as a subsection of the audience felt this way, it's a valid heartwarming moment.

I also think characterizing hbomberguy saying he was a fan of Monty Oum as "factually wrong" is inaccurate. I'm not familiar with the exact comments Hbomber made about Monty Oum but to be clear, it is possible to consider yourself a fan of someone and be heavily critical of them and their work. Many of the harshest critics of works are fans disappointed by a perceived fall in quality of something they initially loved.

This just seems like a case of different audience opinions, which is the entire point of YMMV pages anyways. I don't think anything needs to be changed.

HB comments in his old forum posts:

• Says he considered RWBY to be a joke for all time when he entered the thread, and at best he thought the trailers were semi-neat but watching a random episode made him write the whole thing off as horrible. His comments in his video talked about how he was so blown away by the trailers when he first watched them and how amazing they were.
• Dismisses Monty's animation skill in poser and mocks him for ripping off the Matrix but with lesbians (Monty's Haloid video), while in his video talking up how impressive Monty's skill was (HB does have a point that Poser was not a good program to use for animation, but his posts in SA were very mean spirited about it)
• Dismisses Monty and his fans as people who just wanted to live self-insert fantasies and said "Monty Oum is a genius in the very specific way the creators of porn are geniuses."

At no point did he say anything positive or suggest or indicate that he was a fan of Monty, it was just a lot of put downs on Monty, his work and the people who liked said work. And to clarify this point as I've had people come after me for it elsewhere, I don't think it's bad he has these opinions or he doesn't like any of these things, that's perfectly okay. And it is possible that in the years after Monty's death he's revaluated his previous stance and softened up. But the way he describes his opinion in his videos was that he was always a massive fan of Monty, was awestruck by his trailers and went in wanting to love it, which his prior postings show he didn't hold those views.

Okay so to get back onto the original topic, the consensus I'm gathering is that the original dot point stays as the truth of HB's opinions hold no meaning for it, it's purely audience reaction. That leaves three subpoints left:

• The first expands on that but includes HB's comment "I never got the chance to meet you, but your work humbles me." This is the one is what bothers me the most as all of HB's comments while Monty was alive were to disparage the man, mock his work, belittle his skills and were absolutely meanspirited. From a less emotional level it's also really unnecessary as a second dot point. You could roll it back into the main example if it had to stay.
• The second dot point is about HB crediting specific animators, but includes the line "rather than do what a lot of RWBY fans are guilty of" which is just taking a needless potshot at the fandom. And like above you could roll that overall point back into the main video.
• The final dot point which goes into the double-dot level should get cut in my opinion. It is bringing up his legal problems with Rooster Teeth. It's not heartwarming stuff, it's not a reaction to the video itself, and comes off as a 250 word rant about the evils of modern Rooster Teeth.

^Again, everything regarding Hbomberguy's "true" feelings towards Monty Oum is irrelevant. Heartwarming Moments is a Sugar Wiki trope for a reason; it's meant to document positive feelings a portion of a work inspired in a portion of the audience. If Hbomberguy described his admiration for Monty Oum in the video and a portion of the audience found it nice that Hbomberguy found ways to compliment Monty Oum and the creators of RWBY while also criticizing the show, that's completely valid as a heartwarming moment. The differing perceptions regarding Hbomberguy's feelings towards Monty Oum and the genuineness of his criticisms of RWBY are already discussed on the YMMV page under Broken Base, exactly as it should be.

Regarding the bulleted points:

• See my above point. Your personal feelings regarding his authenticity aren't relevant. Since the bullet is going into further detail on how Hbomberguy showed his appreciation for Monty and the creators, I think it's fine to leave as a second bullet.
• You can remove "rather than do what a lot of RWBY fans are guilty of" and that point seems fine as another specific example of "hbomberguy showing appreciation".
• That third point is the only one I think could be safely cut since it isn't focusing on something in the work being heartwarming.

That said, given the fixation on hbomberguy "definitively being a liar" when that isn't even relevant, I'm starting to feel more like Very Melon in terms of the good faith-ness of this ATT.

If you want to accuse me if not operating in good faith I would appreciate it if you stated that outright rather than beat around the bush with it. I have already conceded that wether or not HB is being truthful or not is not relevant to if an example enters or not.

I have to side with Shaokan on this. If "Fans felt this is heartwarming" was all that was required of Heartwarming pages, there is literally nothing stopping anyone from putting outright lies in the entries.

That's not the case — the cleanup thread, linked earlier, sets out the requirements for Moments pages, one of which is that the moment must have actually happened.

Ok that's nice but I think that at the very least try and not lie in the page, if Hguy changed his mind and now praises Monty and we write it truthfully to reflect that, that's nice, but if there is verifiable proof that the version currently up is a lie we should correct it.

As said before, I think most of it can stay.

We know for a fact that Hbomber was lying video when he made up being a 'life-long fan' of Monty's in the video. We can verifiably prove that. But things like the "I never got the chance to meet you, but your work humbles me." quote are written in the present tense. You could believe that Harris' views on Monty changed and he was just dishonest about having different views in the past, that is a highly generous interpretation, yes, but its not objectively wrong per say. So I think there is still a valid entry there. Stuff like the "Hbomb makes sure to clarify that his criticisms are not meant to make anyone think less of the show or downplay the effort that went into creating it" are....really iffy to me, as a lot of what he says in the actual video does not reflect that mindset. But again, its not objective and he does atleast try to say this is his stance in the video.

This ATT was done in very good faith from what I can see, and it does raise valid issues or concerns IMO. Stuff like his battle with RT is completely irrelevant to the subject and the "rather than do what a lot of RWBY fans are guilty of" thing can be edited out. And if you find anything taking Harris' 'life-long fan' thing at face value that can indeed be deleted.

Shouldn't this discussion be at the Moments Cleanup thread, actually? It's getting pretty long over here. I have my thoughts, but I don't want to keep this long debate going.

In the context of being a Heartwarming Moment for the work being discussed (H Bomberguy's video, and even his channel at large) it's factually accurate that he treats Monty as an inspiration and is a lifelong fan.

That it's contradicted by claims of older posts on a famously negative forum (that aren't linked in this thread so I can't verify, but even if they're true, they're irrelevant) changes this from documenting a reaction to this piece of work to a reaction of the person, turning it into an Audience Reaction not to his work, but to Real Life which is generally frowned upon.

That said, the natter-y lone subbullet about RT absolutely needs to go. It's complete natter that at its most relevant just repeats the very first point and is complain-y.

Happy to take this to the Moments Cleanup thread.

This query is getting long and since the appropriate thread for this discussion is the Moments cleanup thread, I am going to go ahead and lock this.