Discussion YMMV / CalvinAndHobbes

Would Hobbes qualify as a Designated Hero or not, given that he alternates between the Straight Man with an ethical code to a hypocritical bully who doesn't act upon said ethical code on a whim and yet is very rarely ever acknowledged as wrong (if ever) while Calvin at least suffers Laser-Guided Karma regularly?

What the hell is with these?

• The Scrappy: Calvin's Father, who very nearly always makes Calvin (and younger readers) miserable ("But it builds character") not to mention seems to exist to tell the reader, "Hey, don't end up like this jerk."

I have never met a person who disliked Calvin's father. I have seen no evidence that people actually do dislike Calvin's father, outside of Calvin himself in some of the strips. The part at the end makes no sense when the dad is hardly the most negatively portrayed character in the comic (Compare him to Ms. Wormwood, Rosalyn with her bribes, or, hell, the main character).. It's especially hilarious when you consider that Calvin's father is designed to resemble Watterson.

I'll remove this for that reason. If you think there's any evidence that the readerbase actually dislikes Calvin's father, then please, show it to me and I'll put this back up. The Scrappy has to be a character that's widely hated with barely anybody liking him, and I've seen nobody doing this.

• True Art Sticks It To The Man / The Man Is Sticking It To The Man: Calvin and Hobbes is well-beloved by many for its examples of questioning authority, support of individualism and imagination, decrying crass consumerism, and numerous Green Aesops about how Humans Are Bastards. (While it's often praised for its sheer imagination, no defense of the strip as being art comes without mentioning of Watterson's environmentalist strips or his battles with the syndicate.) Meanwhile, Watterson has made a ton of money and gotten very famous off of the sales of book collections of his comics (made of dead trees, remember... and in the case of the complete collection, leather).

This part honestly makes me angry. The majority of children do not know about Watterson's legal battle, and the majority of the most beloved strips aren't about the environment. It's obnoxious to assume that people who like the comic just like it because it's anti-establishment in a few strips. I understand that YMMV is, well, YMMV, but frankly, if you're going to make asinine assumptions about the readerbase, you'd better make some sense. Whenever I describe what's good about Calvin and Hobbes, I describe the strip, not any silly outside factors.

I'm also going to take down the Fridge Logic example, since the justifying edit makes it pointless.

I am the troper that added the Ho Yay entry. Having seen the reason for its removal, I apologize. I did not intend it to be either homophobic or inflammatory.

""Funny Aneurysm" Moment: In an early strip, Calvin tells his mom he wants to be a radical terrorist when he grows up. Not so funny after three girls left Britain to join ISIS but disappeared."

The idea that terrorism became any worse (or better) than it was before it harshly impacted a given nation is an unfortunate implication of such thinking. Executive meddling might continually try to force given creators to not have their extremely popular characters say given things, but plenty of comics have continued to sell well even after openly proclaiming extremist positions. If anything, Calvin's "declaration" to his mother probably wouldn't have been treated in nearly so offhand a manner, but with grim seriousness. One can't help wondering how Watterson himself would've handled such a story...given that others long since have.

My statement above was removed for being "conversation in the article", when it was more an attempt to say (in the article itself because Your Mileage May Vary, as opposed to the non-YMMV article) that it's an Aneurysm moment only to people who are predisposed to not want to have funny stories written about subjects that elsewhere involve extensive violence and death to real people. As such, I'm considering just erasing it, since my mileage varies too widely.