This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Idle Dandy: This entry is awesome. I'd submit that Buffy Season 6 is the exception that proves the rule.
Semiapies: I kinda disagree about the Buffy mention. The First Evil just wasn't that impressive a villain. It relied purely on minions of one form or another, and none of the minions, even Caleb, should have been so threatening (aside from the ubervamps, of course). It's never explained why Yet Another Enemy Stronger Than Buffy is such a threat after her and the Scoobies defeated Glory. But then season 7 can be looked at as wreckage from season 6...
Idle Dandy: The notion of the First Evil fits the bill. The execution sucked, of course, but after defeating a Hellgod, the personification of Evil is about the only place to go.
Corvus: One series that handled this well is Babylon Five. The Shadows appear in season 1 and really are unbeatable; everyone who meets them is defeated. It takes 3 seasons of the heroes getting allies, alien tech, telepaths, spacecraft, etc. before they were able to take the Shadows on, and even then the first few times still got their butts kicked.
Morgan: Is the thing with City of Hero unusual? Most MMORPGs I've seen let you go pretty much wherever you want, no matter how stupid it would be...
Man Called True: I have to question part of the entry for Yu-Gi-Oh. The series actually bothers to explain why each of the villains have never entered a tournament; what's there seems more like a non-fan trying to mock the series.
Ununnilium: Edit it up, then. ``v
Morgan Wick: Oh, and MCT, there's a little box marked "Author:" on the editing page. If you type your handle in there, it will show up beside your edits on the history pages and Recent Changes display, instead of an IP address. That way you can claim some form of credit for your edits.
Red Shoe: Actually, I *am* a fan. I'm just really, really cynical. And I don't think the presence of an attempt at explanation really matters. The last thing we need is for every example to every entry to get an injection of "no, no, it really makes sense because insert-technobabble-here." Remember, it's only our cynicism that keeps our ridiculously encyclopaedic knowledge of every television show (many of them really bad, really geeky, or aimed at a much younger audience) ever made from just being really sad and kind of creepy.
Ununnilium: G'point; OTOH, I think it should at least be noted that an explaination was attempted.
Seth I cant see a reason to have the City of heroes text in the main body, it might work in the examples section but where it is it seems... lame. It's been possible for years in games to go in areas that are too strong for you (See every RPG ever made) making this a non uniqe example — It is not a subversion anyway the game explicitly numbers quests in dificulty and you are suposed to do them in order if you want to survive — However it might be worth saying some games are exempt from this trope.
Securiger: possibly should point out that in Beowulf, this phenomenon is a bit more plausible. For a start, the list is only three bad guys long. And bad guy #2 follows bad guy #1 (Grendel) for the perfectly logical reason that it's Grendel's Mum, seeking revenge. Further, it's not at all clear that Grendel's Mum is significantly more powerful than Grendel. Both have similar special abilities and strengths, and Grendel's Mother is much more fearful of Beowulf. Finally, while bad guy #3 (the dragon) is definitely more powerful than the Grendel family, it kills Beowulf!
Red Shoe: Well, it's implied that Grendel's Mom was more powerful by the way Beowulf makes a huge point of the fact that he wouldn't even consider fighting Grendel any other way than bare-handed, as it wouldn't be fair: but he doesn't even give a moment's thought to using a sword on Mom. On the other hand, of course, there's a bit of "But she's just a female" stuff going on.
Seth: I dont get the Yu-gi-oh bit. Ordered by power and feyness? Doesn't being fey mean being supernatural/fairy like ect. I'm not sure what that line means.
HeartBurn Kid: I don't know if it applies here (don't watch the show), but maybe he's saying they're ordered by how gay they are?
Seth: Then i think that its the wrong word for it, i'm not a lit major or anything but feyness doesn't have anything to do with being gay. It might apply to being pretty/effeminate though if you take the Fairy-like usage of the word over the Supernatural usage. But then wouldn't saying effeminate or some variation thereof make more sense? We need a dictionary here.
Red Shoe: "Fey" is a slang term for "effeminate in a way stereotypical of homosexuality. Wikipedia identifies it as "gay slang" for "effeminate"; Merriam Webster lists it as a synonym for "camp". It is, I assume, derived from "fairy". I'm, frankly, really surprised that anyone would be unfamiliar with this usage.
Seth: Not everyone lives in the same area and slang is not universal. I wouldn't be surprised if I used a slang term and there is someone out there who hasn't heard of it (Say i said fag referring to cigarettes or Kaze/loo referring to a toilet, these are not universal phrases that a lot of Americans wouldn't know) - that's what separates it from an actual word. I just wasn't aware of this usage but did know the original meaning of the word (Fey, from Fae old English word from faerie, meaning otherworldly/supernatural, synonymous with fairy ect. Blame my year 11 English teacher and a confusing line from a Midsummer nights dream) so confusion is bound to happen. As i said before, there is a natural leap from fairy like to effeminate so this usage does make sense. I just wasn't sure... thats why i asked on the talk page... kinda what its here for.
Looney Toons: For what it's worth, I consider fey=gay a relatively minor meaning; I generally use it when I want to say "weird in a vaguely supernatural way" using only three letters. The few times I've employed it in this Wiki (Oracular Urchin, for one, I think) that's the meaning I've intended.
maxius: Fey should mean doomed. So the line means that the villains appear in order of skill and suicidalness.
Anima: I fixed it.
Does Warren maybe count as some sort of subversion? He did manage to kill Tara and (nearly) kill Buffy with a single burst of gunfire.
Caswin: Removing the entry on the Borg. I don't think it fits here overall, the entry is misleading (even with the amendment at the end), and anyway, the Borg actually were a few steps above Voyager's original main foe, the Kazon - but I don't think one major antagonist shift is what this article is looking for.
- Averted with the Borg in Star Trek. In TNG, it took only one Borg vessel to almost destroy the Earth. By the end of Voyager, the titular ship single-handedly destroyed the entire collective. (though with technology from the future.)
SchwaStL: Would the escalation of Big Bads on Lost count? Something to the effect of the ambiguous Others and Smokey in S1 into S2, shifting into the specification of Ben in S3, then turning Ben and the Others into anti-heroes and somewhat removing the teeth from Smokey in S4 while setting up Widmore as the seemingly official Big Bad of the Series?
Random french user : Doesn't Captain Crow in One Piece counts as a subversion ? His deadliest move, which was dubbed "Mort subite" (Sudden Death) in french, is basically Soru : a flash step that makes him temporarily invisible. Except Soru works only on short distances and usualy recquires to stop before hitting your target, whereas Kuro can do it for several minutes while cutting through everything on his path, and this with only one of his two claw-gloves. Soru appears around volume 40, Kuro in Volume 3... And while he probably hadn' had a fought or a serious training in 3 years, as he was pretending to be the butler of an ill girl.
I would like to address how they pretty much describe the sorting algorithm of evil as a stupid strategy for the overlord to employ. I am not convinced it is. Yes it leads to them getting killed in movies and shows and I understand why shows use it but I don't think it is that different from what a normal person if they did not know they where in a movie. To illustrate the point take an example of a man making an enemy of the government by robbing a store, how would the government respond? 1) they would send in the police to arrest him, if he is well armed and has help and kills them then 2) SWAT would be called in to bring down him and his friends, if that fails 3) they would call in the national guard, if they fail 4) an airstike would be called in on his location 5) if he is some sort of super-powerful mutant that survives all that the bring in the A-bomb
The point is that they would not jump to their strongest weapon right away but would slowly excalate bringing in stronger and stronger weapons to bring him down (assuming no evidence that he is super-powered right off the bat). The reason for this is that more powerful options are also more expensive and can cause more collateral and other damages. This is also the case for an evil overlord. He will likely have many enemies and if he hires high-level mercenaries to kill anyone that survives his cheap enforcers his operation will quickly cease to be profitable, and sending in loyal members that are among the best at what they do will cause them to be overworked, fatigued, and thus less effective. Just imagine if the "Dragon" went around killing 10 people every day, not to mention that having such people away on assignment means that they are not there to protect the overlord if a rival decides to attack his base. sorry for the long post but I really don't think sending employees in order of rapidly increasing power level is that strange or irrational strategy to take, normal people take months of training to get stronger and can't double their power level from one fight like Ichigo or Goku do.
