Fallen Creator cleanup

I feel that this trope should be moved to Tropes Needing TRS, since I don't really get the point of it. It is on Darth Wiki, which means it can't be added to creator pages. It is locked, which means that on page examples can't be added without admin approval. Both are understandable, given how it can devolve into complaining about creators you don't like.

But the real dealbreaker is that most of the examples feel like they work better under other tropes. Namely, Creator Killer, Overshadowed by Controversy, Condemned by History, Never Live It Down, Dork Age, or they simply made an unpopular work.

I'll make a wick sandbox for this, if others are ok with it.

This has been discussed before, I believe. People were pretty willing to keep it as is, since it is Darth Wiki and can't be wicked anywhere anyway. In fact, a previous attempt at a thread with the exact same issue you have was locked immediately.

Never thought of a sandbox. This could use a hefty cleaning.

One video dosent honestly signify anything since tbc Classic got enough positive reactions before the lawsuit hit and I think we’ve spent enough time on Blizzard and have decided to see reactions to Diablo II resurrected first.

It's been quite some time from the release. From what I gathered, D2R got pretty bad reviews but not as bad as WC3R. The game was actually playable and okay by it's supporters, however, it is heavily Overshadowed by Controversy and they once again ran into a similar server problem like Diablo 3 (Online players unable to log in due to being 'crowded'), but it doesn't have 'always online' thing, so there's that for a mitigation.

Unfortunately, as much as a 'not too bad' game it was, it's not the savior of the company many would hoped. The whole lawsuit saga still continued and it has the effect that even more developers jumped ship. One of the co-leaders of Blizzard after the departure of J. Allen Brack (who was kind of Misblamed for Blizzard's missteps), Jen O'Neal, said she's resigning after just 3 months of holding the position, leaving Blizzard under Mike Ybarra alone (I don't know the guy, rumors say he 'sells boosts and carry runs', but I'm not sure.)

WoW next patch once again underdelivered and people has been wary with this new 'Community Council' feature they're planning and 'new promised content' they plan on the release of Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker, which is seen as a desperate attempt to prevent people from jumping ships to FF, and the announcement felt so robotic and out of touch with the players' passion.

And it's not just Carbot Animations that jumped ship, if it's just him alone, I could see merit of not being used as a reason. Some of their top content creators like Asmongold, Preach, Captain Grim (and a lot more) has officially jumped ship and Blizzard reacted by insulting them (Preach being called a 'bad actor', Asmongold being called an asshole). As a comparison, when some of them interviewed Naoki Yoshida afterwards, Yoshi-P (and his team) displayed such passion for his own game which surprised these content creators, and when Endwalker ended up being delayed for reasons, Yoshi-P personally delivered the news and apologized while genuinely sobbing that he felt like he failed the players, all without mentioning the Blizzard debacle happening in the same time. This whole deal shows just how bad it has been for Blizzard and how they 'connect' to their players.

And of course... Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4, which would've been their 'savior' were DELAYED to 2023, leaving many players in a drought of new contents for one year.

According to reports, the whole debacle caused Blizzard to drop in revenue to be the lowest of Activision's subsidiaries, lower than Activision solo and King (behind Candy Crush) Then, later on, Activision declared to merge Blizzard with Vicarious Visions with Blizzard retaining their name, which is seen as "Taking an EA move." If many believed that Activision is a Pointy-Haired Boss and their record of shutting down those who didn't garner enough profits for them (like EA)... this could be bad news for Blizzard that they might get axed.

.... So yeah, it ain't lookin' too good despite D2R... So do we greenlit them being in Fallen Creator? (Don't worry, I'll trim these heavily when it's on!)

Edited by ChrisX on Nov 9th 2021 at 4:49:09 PM

...My final judgement regarding Blizzard Entertainment is yes, they're no longer the once-respected creators they were in the past. Even if those "miracles" such as Overwatch 2 came out, the damage was already done by then, and pretty much everyone has probably moved on to other games (and possibly a Heavy Update for Team Fortress 2). So yeah, approved.

Very well, I will inform the edit result in the Blizzard cleanup thread in your sig... once it's done.

If this is okay, I'd like to propose an entry to DarthWiki.Fallen Creator adding Joss Whedon. At this point in time, I believe there is a strong case to be made in favor of him qualifying. Here is a proposed entry:

• Few creators in the film and TV industry have fallen quite as hard as Joss Whedon. After the runaway success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon gained tremendous clout in the industry and an avid cult following, with praise given towards his witty writing style (which would be widely imitated in the following decades) and feminist themes. Whedon would go on to make further projects such as Angel and Firefly that earned similar acclaim, and cemented himself as an A-lister in 2012 with the blockbuster hit of The Avengers. Beyond the occasional misstep, Whedon seemingly had nowhere to go but up.
  However, cracks would soon begin to show by 2015. Avengers: Age of Ultron, while a hit with critics and at the box office, was widely seen as a step down from the first film and criticized for its sexist treatment of Black Widow, the only major female cast member of the Avengers at the time. The true damage to Whedon's reputation would come in 2017, when he was hired to helm rewrites and reshoots of Justice League (2017) after Executive Meddling and tragic personal circumstances led to original director Zack Snyder stepping down in post-production. Before the movie was even released, Whedon's ex-wife accused him of marital infidelity and using his marriage as a shield to uphold his feminist public image, undermining to his feminist reputation and generating bad publicity(with a prominent Whedon fansite shutting down in the aftermath). When the film was released, it was a critical and commercial failure (even past DC Extended Universe films, while receiving mixed to negative reviews, still managed to turn a profit), with the brunt of the criticism going towards Whedon's input and the Mood Whiplash it created with Snyder's style. By 2021, detractors of Whedon's cut would be vindicated when Snyder released an extensive recut of Justice League closer to his original vision to significantly better reception, becoming Snyder's first DCEU movie with a Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
  In the aftermath of Justice League's failure, Whedon rapidly saw future movie and TV projects dry up. The definitive blow to his reputation came in 2020 and 2021 when several cast and crew members of his projects, including Ray Fisher (who played Cyborg in Justice League), Gal Gadot (Fisher's co-star in Justice League), and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase in the Buffyverse), accused him of creating a toxic workplace environment, regularly mistreating his employees, and threatening to have cast and crew members such as Fisher and Patty Jenkins (director of Wonder Woman (2017)) blacklisted from the industry. Following Justice League, his only project to date has been creating the HBO Max series The Nevers, which he left after writing just two episodes in the fallout of the allegations against him and would be released to mediocre reviews. Whedon's reputation has sunken so far that even his "Whedonesque" writing style has seen a backlash in response to both overexposure and Whedon's disgrace, with critics coming to use "Whedonesque" as a pejorative.

I also came across this old entry that is severely outdated:

• The Wachowskis have been lurching dangerously towards this status over the last few years. After a modest start with Bound (which didn't do all that well at the box office but performed pretty nicely in the VHS market, no doubt due to the volume of lesbianism it featured) they hit it big with The Matrix, which many acclaimed for "revolutionizing" the action genre. Since then, it's been a gradual downwards slope. The Matrix Reloaded did pretty well at the box office, but there was a nagging feeling among viewers that it should have been a lot better, and later that year The Matrix Revolutions was widely slammed as being nigh-incomprehensible as well as being a poor conclusion to the series, and did only moderately well at the box office. V for Vendetta saw a brief return to form (although they didn't direct it), but since then it's been downhill all the way, as they helped to produce a butchered re-edit of The Invasion, had a major money loser with Speed Racer, and their following production, Ninja Assassin sank without a trace at the box office.

Considering how their subsequent TV series Sense8 was universally acclaimed and they are currently helming a new Matrix movie (though it remains to be seen how successful it will be), as well as Speed Racer (and to a lesser extent The Matrix sequels) becoming Vindicated by History, I feel like they no longer count as an example.

I think a Joss Whedon entry is fine, but that current entry is way too long. It should be cut down a bit.

Lemme try to trim the entry a bit:

• Few creators in the film and TV industry have fallen quite as hard as Joss Whedon. After the runaway success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon gained tremendous clout in the industry and an avid fandom, with praise given towards his witty writing style (which would be widely imitated in the following decades) and feminist themes. Whedon would go on to make further projects such as Angel and Firefly that earned similar acclaim, and cemented himself as an A-lister in 2012 with the blockbuster hit of The Avengers. Whedon seemingly had nowhere to go but up. However, Whedon's reputation took a turn for the worse in 2017, when he was hired to helm rewrites and reshoots of Justice League (2017) after Executive Meddling and tragic personal circumstances led to original director Zack Snyder stepping down in post-production. Before the movie was even released, Whedon's ex-wife accused him of marital infidelity and using his marriage as a shield to uphold his feminist public image, undermining his feminist reputation and generating bad publicity. When the film was released, it was a critical and commercial failure, with the brunt of the criticism going towards Whedon's input and the Mood Whiplash it created with Snyder's style. By 2021, detractors of Whedon's cut would be vindicated when Snyder released an extensive recut of Justice League closer to his original vision to significantly better reception with critics and audience alike.
  
  In the aftermath of Justice League's failure, Whedon rapidly saw future job offers dry up. The final blow to his reputation came in 2020 and 2021 when several cast and crew members of his projects (particularly women and people of color) accused him of creating a toxic workplace environment, regularly mistreating his employees, and threatening to have cast and crew members blacklisted for going against him. His only project to date since Justice League has been creating the HBO Max series The Nevers, which he left after writing just two episodes in the fallout of the allegations against him and would be released to mediocre reviews. Whedon's reputation has sunken so far that even his "Whedonesque" writing style has seen a backlash in response to both overexposure and Whedon's disgrace, with critics coming to use "Whedonesque" as a pejorative.

@Pemulis_128 As a duo, they're done for with movies. Jupiter Ascending flopped hard and Sense 8 is the only good big thing by them since. Lana has yet to prove her worth by herself. Not sure if all of this means they should still have the Fallen Creator status though. I would wait for the new Matrix movie for that.

M. Night Shyalaman could use an update as well. Old appears to be more divisive than Glass.

Edited by despoa on Dec 5th 2021 at 7:37:33 AM

Also, speaking of people like Joss Whedon, should Max Landis belong on the page as well?

Who are they?

Guy who wrote Chronicle and became a respected filmmaker in his own right until it turned out that was a fluke and put out movies that were worse in comparison. Then he was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women during the beginning of the #Me Too! movement and hasn't gotten work since.

https://www.vulture.com/article/joss-whedon-allegations.html

Yup, he's definitely a Fallen Creator, now. The article also has a nice analysis on what makes a Fallen Creator.

Edited by despoa on Jan 18th 2022 at 3:04:50 PM

TV Tropes really has an Old Shame in the trope name Jossed, named after a fallen creator, Joss Whedon. Though tropes can no longer be named after specific individuals, consensus was formed to have the name be grandfathered as the name isn't misleading (for now unless the definition of Jossed changed outside of TV Tropes, i.e. outside our control) and is used in numerous wicks.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 17th 2022 at 11:19:30 AM

I think we might need to update the Blizzard entry for this one thing:

Microsoft bought out Activision-Blizzard. It could be an aftereffect, but should we wait for a few months before we edit?

Wait a few months.

While we're at it, we should patrol the hindsight pages in case some troper were to mention Minecraft as having the same parent company as Warcraft and StarCraft as they are three very popular Microsoft games and game series ending in -craft.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 18th 2022 at 7:28:25 AM

I'm kind of thinking Bill Cosby should be added as well.

Man went from America's Dad to America's Creepy Uncle overnight with the ssxual assault allegations

Yeah that seems like an obvious pick.

There's gotta be a better way of cleaning up a locked page. The CM and MB pages got it right but those have way more support than Fallen Creator.

Yeah, I’ve always felt this was one case where a lock backfired. Not only are we living in an age of pop culture scandals resulting in many more legitimate examples that we can’t add, it also preserves bad examples that were already there when the lock was placed. Like, until I myself alerted the mods to it a ways back, ELTON JOHN was listed! Elton John on the same page as the likes of Polanski, geez…

Their was also Square Enix for the longest time...which was weird.

...especially given that as compared with certain major video game companies, Square-Enix is among the least controversial, though S-E isn't flawless.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jan 20th 2022 at 1:44:52 PM

... Right, the whole Crypto thing.