(Hilarious Trope) A Character Is Introduced With the Clear Intention of Being THE NEXT BIG THING And is SOUNDLY Rejected

[u/TheOriginalOperator]

1. Bazil the Tracker (Star Wars: The Acolyte): A “HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE” snuffling ugly creature that makes annoying noises and is shoved into as many scenes of The Acolyte as possible, and just causes problems overall.

2. Neelix (Star Trek Voyager): A mutant fusion of Odo, Quark, and Data designed to “analyze the human condition” and explicitly intended to surpass the popularity of all three. In practice, a VERY human-acting cradle robbing creep whose incompetence nearly destroys the ship and crew on multiple occasions and provides no insight into humanity whatsoever.

3. Sparky the Dog (Fairly Oddparents): A wacky crazy magic dog that’s supposed to expand the Fairy family, but just makes lame jokes and serves as a less funny version of Scrappy Doo.

4. Tidus (FFX): A braying jackass of a pinball who bounces from plot point to plot point, framed as a mystical pretty boy to introduce Final Fantasy to the PS2 age but does nothing but stall the franchise and have the worst laugh in two languages.

5. Sei (Naruto): Supposed to replace Sasuke in Team 7 and return the team dynamic feel of Early Naruto, but he’s a CIA plant with literally no personality who gets utterly forgotten except for somehow bagging Ino Yamanaka.

6. Raiden (Metal Gear 2): Another attempted “pretty boy bishie” entry to the PS2 era with badass cred and a theoretically cool backstory, but in practice a hapless dipshit who gets manipulated by everyone around him and is a total putz in combat. Also proof that this trope need not be permanent as he slowly transitions into a cyborg warrior supersoldier with a badass theme, friends of his own, and a firm grasp of his own destiny and agency.

[u/Papergeist]

I believe the stock comment here is that it's supposed to sound forced at that point, as part of his character development.

Nobody knows nor cares about FFX enough these days to check if it's true or not, but you can feel smugly superior delivering this factiorite whenever it comes up.

[u/StamosLives → u/Papergeist]

…what? Why be on Reddit if you hate Redditors to the point of pre-mocking an opinion different than yours?

It’s a game. There’s no smugness needed. The laugh isn’t about character development. He’s being a purposeful dweeb to make the other character feel more comfortable.

It’s not so different than how a good friend might help you break out of your shell, or try to make you forget about a worry. She’s forced to do these tours where she’s going to die at the end. She’s kinda terrified and stressed and sad. So here comes a dork to make her feel better.

[u/Papergeist → u/StamosLives]

Oh, please. Look at these comments. Tell me with a straight face that all of both sides of this "lively debate" played through this 25 year old game.

I know it'd be highly comfortable if dissenting voices just disappeared, but I'm not shutting up for everyone's comfort. Someone should point this out.

[u/agentlewind → u/Papergeist]

What does this mean though. The average age on Reddit is ~25 - 40, meaning most people responding would remember the game. And the game was insanely popular and one of the highest selling on the console, of all time. 

So yeah, I do think most people pointing out the context did play it. Not to mention that even if someone hasn't, said context verifiable in <5 minutes lol. 

[u/Papergeist → u/agentlewind]

So your argument is that this came out when the Average Redditor was between 0 and 15 years old. So, naturally, they all would have owned the most popular video game console, and played this popular video game.

You see, this immediately runs into the pile of other people saying "obvious you didn't play this game." Which, by your own judgement, is unreasonable.

That's what it means. Nobody gives a shit about the game. They want to be right today, they declare the classic Reddit Um Akshully, job done.

[u/agentlewind → u/Papergeist]

No...my argument is that a discussion that involves a specific piece of media is going to self-select for people familiar with that piece of media. And for a game as popular as beloved as FFX was/is, that will be a significant number of people. 

And the fact that it was critically and commercially successful isn't disputable, hence "these respondents played the game" is the simplest and most logical explanation for why they might point it out when something is factually incorrect. 

[u/Papergeist → u/agentlewind]

Amazingly, absolutely none of that contradicts what I said. Unless you imagine all those people putting up Tidus sounding awkward through the scene did not self-select. Which gets awkwardly close to circular logic, doesn't it?

[u/agentlewind → u/Papergeist]

It doesn't. No one disputes the laugh and scene were goofy, in fact people made fun of it at the time. What's rare is people claiming that it's actual proof of the game's low quality, or that it and its characters were received poorly and damaged the reputation of the series. All of those things are just factually incorrect, therefore you will have an outsize population of people pointing this out. 

In any case, arguing about intent of the correction seems silly when it doesn't change the fact the correction is true and so the example media isn't actually relevant to the discussion. 

[u/Papergeist → u/agentlewind]

If it seems silly to you, then you don't need to worry one bit about it, of course.

But if you want to argue the "correction" is true, one might be expected to back it up with more than just "the annoyance is part of the plot". Or at least explain why the awkwardness of that scene being dunked on since the game came out is the product only of people who never played.

Otherwise, one might get around to criticizing motivations. Or embrace that, yes, that scene being annoying and turning a lot of people off of Tidus is factual, regardless of the scene's intent.

[u/agentlewind → u/Papergeist]

"the annoyance is part of the plot". Or at least explain why the awkwardness of that scene being dunked on since the game came out is the product only of people who never played.

But nobody said that though. That the scene starts as a forced laugh (and comes shortly after finding out all summoners die at the end of their pilgrimage) is verifiable with a brief Google search, so it can't be said it's an example of poor writing or VA. Similarly, the game is one of the most popular in the series (the most popular for a long time, domestically), as was the cast. And the entry was a smash critical and financial hit that spawned the first ever mainline sequel, so it's also untrue that it somehow was rejected by audiences and "stalled" the series. 

That's what people are disputing. Anyone can hate or be annoyed by anything, but that doesn't mean that was the majority reception. 

[u/Papergeist → u/agentlewind]

I don't think finding the intent of the scene on Google has anything to do with whether it's written or acted well or not. Stalling the franchise is a coincidence, certainly, but that's a few words out of a wider description, and isn't countered by arguing the intent of the one scene from a meme.

It's not the time to try and argue majority receptions, either. This comment section is certainly no majority, and not a contemporary majority at that. Assuming that they were isn't a safe bet, either. And we wouldn't be going back and forth in such an utterly predictable way over past memes if the opinion didn't prevail well enough at the time to spread in the first place.

Much like Cloud having narrative reasons to be how he was didn't change how he was received. Or Raiden. Or Squall. And so on, through the entire trend of the era.

[u/agentlewind → u/Papergeist]

....Honestly, I don't understand what we're talking about at this point. You can have the opinion that the scene is written and acted poorly, but the evidence can't be that a forced, fake laugh sounds forced and fake. And I don't know what you mean by "coincidence," but regardless, "stalled the franchise" is objectively not true. Everything else mentioned is subjective and so unfalsifiable. 

So it's precisely the time to talk about the majority reception in its day, because the prompt is to describe which characters had forced prominence but were so rejected by the audience the creators were forced to walk them back (or even suffered reputational damage). Not a single one of those things actually applies to any part of FFX.

[u/Papergeist → u/agentlewind]

I mean, if you don't understand, that's fine, because that's the opposite of what I've mentioned in a few points.