Saturday, June 28, 2008

Cross Post from GDL: Avoiding the Scrappy

You all know him and hate him: That one annoying character who ruins an ensemble and makes you wish for his death. Even worse if he's the author's favorite. I confess I tend to have higher tolerances for some Scrappies than I see in other people, though I guess I wouldn't hear as much from the tolerant people. This thread is open for you to talk about all the things that make you grind your teeth, or just post flames for your least favorite characters in epic verse.

Something I find that takes the edge off a Scrappy: The rest of the cast is visibly annoyed by him and find humorous ways to express their contempt or just twitch uncomfortably as they try to get him out of their hair.

Traits that tend to add Scrappy points for me:
Team Pet: When the pet's useless, there's no point. Even worse if the pet's loud and counterproductive.
Talkative: Having a lot to say is okay, but it'd better be meaningful. Silence is golden when the situation gets serious.
Bad jokes. Especially bad puns.
Useless in a fight, but insists on coming along anyway, or worse, thinks he's the primary contributor when he isn't. Help my sympathies if they're knowingly trying to overcome their problem.
Clingy Crush: If one of these somehow ends up happening, it'll get shot down very quickly.
Not a Team Player: If the team makes a plan, there'd better be a good reason for deviation.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Afraid I can't help you here. I've never hated Wesley, or Yuffie, or any of these characters everyone else says is "so annoying" or possibly wanting to die "in a fire". I also loved Neelix, and even Navi was interesting except that she kinda ruined the difficulty of the game with her "hints" like "there's a STALAGTITE on the ceiling, maybe if you had something EXLOSIVE you could DO something to IT?".

I guess what I'm saying is it takes a lot to make a character I truly despise if the storytelling is good. I also get the impression that for a lot of these characters there's only a percieved universal hatred, the whole "vocal minority, mute majority" situation.

Oh I also thought Raiden was cool, but I'm one of those people that claim to "get" MGS2 (it's all a rich tapestry, Raiden's melodrama with his girlfriend, that was all part of the layers of information control).

Bronze Dog said...

Yeah, as mentioned, I have a higher tolerance.

I was okay with Wesley the first time I was going through Next Gen, but he started grating on my nerves in reruns before I knew he had a hatedom.

Yuffie didn't make much of an impression on me in either direction.

Neelix was okay mostly because I found humor in how the other characters dealt with him.

Navi didn't cause a lot of trouble for me. She doesn't speak up nearly as much as depicted, or at least it doesn't feel like that to me. About the only thing I found annoying was the phase where she'd try to get you 'back on track' to the main adventure when you might already know and you're just looking for pieces of heart or on a side quest.

No comment on Raiden. Never played the MGS series.

But I still run into some things I find annoying. Like Tingle.

Anonymous said...

Haha, funny you mention Tingle. I love that guy. He's just so delightfully creepy. I don't know, something about the disturbing 35 year old man who's convinced himself he's a fairy right down to using balloons to pretend to fly and coming up with his own magical words and throwing confetti around? It makes me want to play that Tingle game just thinking about it actually :D.

I know a lot of people despise him though. Just be glad he hasn't been fully rendered in FMV form, as his bulging hairy fat shows just under the sweaty almost transparent layer of his clothes, his nose hairs dancing in his breathe as the world cries.