Maybe it's because I play Villager, but I disagree there. The most important thing in terms of results is that when a character's top mains show up, they perform.
I don't disagree with this. But sadly, we have to make do with the results we get because we will probably never get the top mains of every viable character in this game attending the same tournament. Not to mention SMASH G0D is a solid player with
a few strong placings under his belt, so he should have been able to do Corrin justice.
And when you talk about character's trajectories, you need to bear in mind that there's a fine line between actual historical trends and pure recency bias. We could, for instance, talk about how Ness and Peach had downward trends in results in late 2015, or we could talk about how when FOW/Shaky or SlayerZ came to tournaments, they always made top 16, no matter how stacked the event.
This is a self-defeating argument. Recent results are by far the most important thing - no-one's worried about how strong Duck Hunt and Bowser were 18 months ago. This might be relevant if we were talking about ~1 month's worth of results (I could see this counting as recency bias), but we're not - there's been a lack of results from Peach, Pit and others for a long time. SlayerZ hasn't been active lately and sure, he could boost Peach's results when he gets back, but right now she doesn't have a strong position in the meta.
Ness is doing okay without FOW/Shaky, and FOW is decently active anyway. I would say we have Ness "figured out" in the current meta as a top 10-15 character who's a significant threat but gets roadblocked by Rosalina.
With 58 characters in this game, looking at tournaments one by one is going to make your perceptions of anyone below the established top tiers shift wildly every month due to the fact that their top players are few and have lives outside of the game. I'm not going to hold Genesis 3 against Greninja because Some and iStudying couldn't get transoceanic flights; why would I? Otherwise you're looking at a popularity contest and can look at the Smashboards rankings for all your tiering needs.
I don't think looking at majors one-by-one is a good way to arrange tier lists either, but this particular tournament still backs up what I already thought about Corrin and I'm not going to ignore that. Also, there aren't that many majors - I think it's fair for each one to have an impact, however small, on tiering considerations.
Trust me, I was there reminding everyone that no good Greninja players were present at Genesis 3, but it didn't stop anyone saying he "placed poorly" or whatever. I'm afraid I'll be giving as good as I get on that front. And I can understand and agree with the thought behind it - when a character starts making waves it
is disappointing when they don't perform well at a stacked event, whatever the reason.
I don't disagree with what you're saying by the way, I just think we have to be realistic about how people will perceive results, and indeed the results themselves. "Corrin suffered from a lack of rep, but she performed badly this tournament" might be a better way to phrase what I want to say.
To everyone liking teddy's posts, I hope you remember them next time Greninja fails to place because of no rep :3