Archived Discussion Roleplay / SurvivalOfTheFittest

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Here's a thought - somebody maybe wanna put a link to this big roleplaying community so the rest of us can see it?

Linkage. There you go. Update to this. The main article now has its own link.

K Garrett: No, that doesn't even make sense, especially since Survival Of The Fittest is the roleplay's title.

I searched for this just to see if it was on the wiki so i could put "and the weak must die.", but there ya go first line.

Premium Irritation: Pulled:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: One of these (a sanitary sewer) appears on the island used for V2, spanning the entire island underground, but from the vague descriptions it's implied that people can only just barely move across the walkways on the sides, and that otherwise it's fairly cramped.
• Alas, Poor Yorick: Alice Jones to Guy Rapide.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Being as the SOTF members are unique people, they usually have their own opinions on various characters. For example, some people believe Danya is a Magnificent Bastard, others, that he is only a Smug Snake.
• Annoying Arrows: Just about anyone in either game who has been shot with an arrow.
• Ax-Crazy: The majority of the players are like this, whether to begin with or after enough time on the island.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Jeremy Torres of V1. Near the end of the game, he crashes a car into the warehouse while fighting a player, and plays Russian Roulette rather than be blown up by the danger zone. As an added bonus, the smoldering wreck of his car and ignites the chemicals inside the warehouse, causing a massive explosion which destroys the entire zone.
• Big Bad: Danya.
• Boat Lights: Hawley Faust.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: This happens to Beth Vandelinder - as Melina Frost walks in her. Particularly squicky as Melina then forces her to keep going before effectively joining in. Depraved Bisexual indeed... Oh, and Melina uses a vase to help.
  • Also, Carson Baye's Death
• Character Blog: Posts from Quincy Archer's blog, Sound and Fury, are being inserted into his SOTF posts. Plans to make the blog a real site have been mentioned, but nothing's definite yet.
• Companion Cube: Hannah Rose and her "magic hat."
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Paul Smith is usually a Chivalrous Pervert, pretty goofy and laid back - very much a comic relief character. However, from time to time, he almost seems to 'switch on' and become one hell of a lot more dangerous. And try lethally dangerous.
  • Subverted with Arthur Williams, who shoves aside his shyness and fear, charging an armed lunatic in order to save a hostage, and gets shot in the face for his trouble.
• Deadpan Snarker: More of an example on the board than the RP itself, but the handler known as Kyle definitely applies, using cynical remarks and blunt (sometimes insulting, such as half-seriously suggesting the person jump into traffic) statements to highlight the occasional stupidity on the board. He frequently compares everyday conversation to a fencing match, to explain this tendency ("if someone leaves an opening, I'm going to cut them.").
• Deadly Game: The SOTF ACT.
• Deep South: Subverted with Margaret Tweedy, who was a favorite target of bullies at school largely because of her Southern roots, despite being neither stupid nor behind the times. Said bullying did, however, make her bitter and perpetually angry.
• Deus ex Machina: A series of these are the only reason Adam won the first game.
• Evil Feels Good: Lenny Priestly of V3 is slowly falling victim to this.
• Evil Redheads: Melina Frost of V3. Boy, is she ever.
• Four Is Death: The Big Four (Steven Wilson, Melvin Carter, Jim Greynolds, and Sonia Nguyen), who are below only Danya in rank and stated to be the best of the best in their respective fields. Two of them commonly act as bodyguards for Danya.
• Gang of Hats: Two of the larger gangs in Denton (the city featured in version two's pregame), namely the Jackals and Prophets. The Jackals are all psychopaths who typically act more like wild animals than human beings, and the Prophets are all religious fanatics who dress in priest robes, shave their heads, and terrorize anyone in their territory who isn't a devout Christian (preferably Catholic), though since there are implications that they force people to join the gang it's possible that not all Prophets agree with this. The Prophets basically see themselves as a new generation of Knights Templar and believe it is their mission to unite the entirety of Denton into a holy city, and they frequently clash with the other gangs in their attempts to do this even though there is an enforced peace between the Denton gangs. During v2, the Prophets' leader attempts to finally accomplish this through a Xanatos Gambit. It backfires, shattering the tenuous peace and causing a massive city-wide gang war that even gets the police involved, resulting in hundreds of deaths, thousands of dollars in property damage, and the total annihilation of many of the Denton gangs, including the Prophets and Jackals themselves. The Jackals, on the other hand, merely want to cause as much chaos as possible without provoking a gang war, and are mostly just whackjobs that see murder and mayhem as their idea of a good time. The trope is subverted/deconstructed somewhat, due to the fact that the other gangs view the Prophets and Jackals with suspicion, seeing them as the biggest threats to the city's stability, and both gangs are often kept in check when they get out of hand by the threat of a huge multi-gang coalition coming down on them.
• Glory Days: so far, any season before the current season.
• Guns Akimbo: Jacob Starr and Peri Barclay both use this briefly in one of the gunfights at the hospital in v1, though Peri failed to hit anyone and Jacob only went Akimbo to keep as much lead in the air as possible to cover Adam's group's retreat, as David had been hit by some stray buckshot and was busy treating the wound.
• Hair Colors: In v1, Jack O'Connor's hair is white. v3's Bobby Jacks, an African-American boxer, has blonde hair for reasons that haven't been explained.
• Hannibal Lecture: Jack O'Connor gives one to Adam Dodd before they begin the final fight of v1.
• Heroic BSoD: Adam Dodd and Madelaine Shirohara.
• Implacable Man: A few, especially Jacob Starr.
• Instant Expert: Several of the students appear to instantly learn every detail of how to use their weapons within seconds of obtaining them. With the firearms, Danya provides an instruction manual, but that doesn't entirely justify it.
• Jerk Jock: Usually subverted, but in v1 the baseball team was said to sometimes bully other students despite the fact that they were like brothers to each other, and in v3 a few members of the football team have shown tendencies to do such, with Gentle Giant / Scary Black Man Darnell Butler having had to fight some of them on occasion to stop them from particularly severe actions. Though that doesn't change that he used to be one himself. Upcoming character Adam Reeves practically epitomizes this trope, with a touch of fatalism and darwinism thrown in.
• Jumping on a Grenade: Jack O'Connor was originally supposed to do this when Angelina Kaige threw a grenade through a window into the warehouse he and his group were in.
• Law of Inverse Recoil: Like Did Not Do The Research, it varies between handlers, but most in at least the first game fired off pistols one handed with near perfect accuracy as if there were no recoil at all. The one character who has gotten a grenade launcher suffered from fairly realistic recoil.
• Lord Error-Prone: Sidney Crosby
• Magnificent Bastard: Some believe that the instigator of the SOTF ACT, - Mr. Danya, is an example of this.
• Magnificent Seven: S.A.D.D (Generation 4)
• Mask Power: Blood Boy, aka Nathaniel Harris, wears a smiley-face mask to hide his disfigured face (or lack thereof after the beginning of the game, where he removed the skin of his own face). He was formerly the top killer in version 3. The trope is also subverted, in that the mask makes it difficult for him to see and ruins his ability to aim, forcing him to compensate by putting as many bullets in the air as possible.
• My Greatest Failure: Adam Dodd allowing Madelaine and Amanda to wander off and die at the hands of Cody and never forgiving his brother for attacking him until one of the last scenes of the v1 ending.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Daphne Rudko is a variation of this, as is Quincy Archer.
• Psycho Lesbian: Lyn "Laeil" Burbank
• Psychopathic Manchild: Blaine Eno and Cillian Crowe from v1.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Adam Dodd swears unholy vengeance upon Cody Jensen after learning about the above Rape The Dog moment.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Hawley Faust is sometimes depicted with these in artwork.
• Shell Shocked Senior: Adam Dodd during the third season. Erick Rischio is said to be one, but has yet to appear.
• Seppuku: Keiji Tanaka kills himself in this fashion (With the help of Lenny Priestly) after being fatally wounded.
• Shout-Out: Keiji Tanaka's many references to various video games, etc, especially Final Fantasy:
  'Man, it's like the beginning of that game, except I don't have a gunblade, I got a broken sabre. Least Lenny can't fireball me, with like, kaPOW and stuff! Man, that would hurt.' (Final Fantasy VIII)
  'Shit! SHIT! Injury! Medic! Somebody get me a potion! Who's on healing duty!? Critical hit people! Critical hit! With, like, the extra loud sound and red numbers and stuff!' (General)
  'Oh poopy' (Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series)
  • Guy Rapide also slips in a reference to The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion in his backstory.
  • There's also Quincy Archer, whose handler has made it his goal to put as many shout outs as he can in his posts without making them ridiculous. Battle Royale is commonly referenced, especially in v1 and 2, and just as a whole references to other media are very common.
• Smug Snake: Danya, the leader of the terrorists, who injects smarmy comments into his announcements and the profiles of the competing students.
• Squick: Many examples, especially Cillian Crowe's kills in the first game.
• Stepford Smiler: Warren Pace, a former gamer who gave himself a complete image makeover to fit in with the football team.
• Team Mom: V3's Amanda Redder has begun to put herself in this role in the small group she's will.
• The Vamp: Katherine Marks and Clemence during the first game.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In a fight between Laeil Burbank and Melina Frost, Madison Conner suddenly appears and attacks Laeil to keep her from killing Melina before she can. Laeil also exhibits this behavior towards Melina after the fight (with a bit of Foe Yay mixed in.)
• The Woobie: V3's Matthew Wittany tends to receive considerable sympathy from a number of SOTF handlers, primarily because he's just such a complete Buttmonkey.
• This! Is! SPARTA!: "YOU! MAXIE! EVERYONE!"
  • "I'M NOT LIKE YOU RYAN! I WILL LIVE! I! WILL! LIVE!" Also Punctuated Pounding.
• Trope Overdose: This is an RP forum, and an active one at that. You look hard enough, you're going to find almost every trope on the site. (Hence the "notable" above.)
• Unstoppable Rage: Adam Dodd when fighting Cody Jenson. Briefly subverted by the fact that Cody almost killed Adam. Darnell Butler is sometimes prone to these, and it is implied that he used to be in an Unstoppable Rage all the time.
• We Could Have Avoided All This: Bobby Jack's killing of Arthur Williams.
• Western Terrorists: The nationality of the terrorists involved in the SOTF ACT is not known, but most of them are neither Asian nor Middle Eastern.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Cody Jenson's discovery of a motorcycle in Survival Of The Fittest, a mundane occurrence tooled up with as much symbolism and imagery as was humanly possible. Oh, and he named it too.
• Wrench Wench: Version three's Katherine Blanco, a hot girl said to be the best mechanic in Southridge.
• Wretched Hive: Denton, New Jersey.
• Yaoi Guys: Peter Rosenthal and Andi Ayala of V2, Sean O'Cann and Anderson Walker of V3. Peri Barclay and Dorian Greywood of V1 also get into the act right before they die.

Because they aren't important enough to warrant being on the main page, although they've been kept in their relevant example pages.

Some Guy: Wow. That's all I have. I thought this page was ridiculously big already, but I am absolutely floored by how much was removed from it. I know, I know, No Such Thing As Notability, but this page is just ridiculous for an RP of 200 people.

K Garrett: 200 characters =/= 200 handlers. Also, you don't have to refrain from saying you think we should be removed out of politeness, we know.

Premium Irritation: No... you're just very paranoid. Some Guy, there were so many examples because one member of the board suggested we add each one to this page as well as the actual trope pages. I might need to comb over it a second time to keep it concise.

Adding on to that, there aren't really that many tropes on the page, comparitively speaking, they just have a little more detail than most.

Some Guy: K Garrett...huh? I know this, well, completely contradicts what my last post implied, but maybe this page actually needs more information. Because even though this thing has several dozen tropes, it looks like the description doesn't do a very good job of explaining what Survival Of The Fittest actually is.

Premium Irritation: Well I'm not sure what the trouble is, but I am reading the description as an insider, so maybe there's some things that wouldn't be readily apparent to people not part of the site. Hm, well, just tell me what the problems you're having are and I'll try and change the description a little to make it more understandable.

K Garrett: Also, since I'm not sure what you're asking, if there's something you want to know and you're not just trying to get under our skins, I did link to both the wiki and the site itself in the main article. So if you have questions, information is readily available.

Some Guy: Right, then. I'm still not entirely sure what this enterprise is, but so far I'm guessing it's a massive original fiction project, right? The trope page doesn't mention this. Going from the description alone, I thought it was just a message board RP. It seems to be way more complicated and different than that. The main page should go into more detail about what kind of RP this is. Right now it just look likes a regular ol' Internet RP with an Entry Pimp. But I suspect, after looking over this fan material, that it may be more than that.

Premium Irritation: It's a RP, albeit on a pretty large scale. If you've got the impression it's an original fiction project... well, it's been compared to a huge Fanfic before, so I guess that might be where you're getting that from. As for the rest... well, it's been going on for a few years already, and the writing is pretty advanced, but if you're gonna do it in your terms, then it's an internet RP with an Entry Pimp or two that contains examples of a lot of tropes. *shrugs*

Some Guy: Well, if you insist. Could you at least put in a brief description explaining what a "handler" is, in terms of the game? Because that's a term I never heard of before this discussion.

Broken Chaos: I know there's no such thing as notability here, but having things like this come up on such a huge amount of pages as trope examples annoys me... It just seems to be in the same vein as that "Whately Universe" in that... People seem to love posting about it, but it's not exactly something that's been heard about by a large number of people. More like a large fanfic than anything else, and fanfics tend to not be listed as examples...

Premium Irritation: Frankly there's a difference between a RP and a fanfic (which are also suitable for giving examples, I've seen some about) but in all honesty, if you begin a point with 'I know There Is No Such Thing As Notability but...' then you're already defeating the object. Read the page again.

We consider everything notable. Yes, everything.

If it fits the trope description, then it can be put in. All it requires is someone to put it in there. Simple as that. It could be a multi-million viewer ABC sitcom, or an all-but-forgotten Japanese videogame, or a Sprite Comic about Earth Bound that died after seven strips.

Therefore, although I understand it might annoy you that there's so many references to something you've never heard of... well, just remember the MST3K Mantra. Just because there are lots of examples doesn't mean it deserves less to be here. *shrugs*

Broken Chaos: I know what I was saying - I wasn't actually suggesting a deletion, just expressing an opinion on it. It seems hard to find much information elsewhere on the internet about it, and the forum (linked to on the article about it) seems to only have a few hundred members. Seems like a very tiny thing to have a proportionally large amount of examples.

Premium Irritation: The main reason is that there have been upwards of 400 characters involved over about four years of the RP being ongoing - which leaves quite a considerable amount of scope for all of the examples listed to occur. Plus, uh, well, I'm a bit of a shameless Entry Pimp about adding things in, although I do my best not to shoehorn.

X3: Sorry, I'm relatively new to TV Tropes and after reading some of Sot F, I thought there were quite a few tropes involved there that weren't mentioned here. I didn't read the discussion page and therefore missed the "Pulled" list up there. So sorry if I added some not-very-notable examples to it lately.

Premium Irritation: If you fancy adding examples, you could always add them to their relevant pages on the site itself rather than the main SOTF page here.

Caswin: I may be missing something, but if we want to keep SotF's presence proportional to its, er, notability but still cover all the tropes involved, why don't we focus on adding them to this one page rather than spreading them across the wiki?

Premium Irritation: I work on a 'if it fits, add an example' basis for making additions to pages. I don't like/don't think it's good having lots of stuff on the main page, when not all of them are necessarily particularly important to the work as a whole. Yes, there's an example of *x* trope provided, but how important/prominent was it? Take it as... okay, so at one point in one version there was an Air Vent Escape, but it wasn't a focal point or a pivotal event. Explosive Leash, however, is a very important part of the whole situation, hence why it warrants inclusion. That's my take, anyway