Fountain of Expies, Mountain of Problems

It's conflating being a trope codifier and a trope namer, Tuxedo and Martini is not The Bond Spy Genre. Most tropes with a specific name as trope namer struggle or outright fail because the name relies on awareness of the media beforehand. And even then it is trying to sum up an entire character when it is really about a handful of specific traits. Hence why The Al Bundy is now Jaded Washout because while that was a part of his character it was not as big as implied.

I guess to be as succinct as possible, I see value in Shana Clone as a character trope (snarky adolescent-looking woman who kicks ass in a dress) with a different name but not as a term to understand the significance of the characters' impact on related media. Broadly speaking, the trope description is three times too long for what should be a simpler idea.

Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!

But these characters are rarely snarky, and ass-kicking isn't mandatory.

Edited by Prime32 on May 7th 2021 at 1:14:32 PM

Maybe intense/aggressive is a better term to use, but there are literally more than a dozen bullet points on what that character is supposed to be. The picture does a good job illustrating that there is a pattern here, but I think the description is overworked and the quote is horrible.

Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!

the basic idea is just Tsundere + Tiny Tyrannical Girl which probably is tropeworthy but pinning it down to clones of one specific characters makes it much harder to document actual examples of it

Bumping.

What is the course of action here? Individual wick checks for the questionable Fountain of Expies pages, then judging if they reasonably form an archetype independently of the supposed fountain?

That seems like a good idea to me.

ETA: I think there's an Expy clean-up thread already—would it make sense to coordinate the wick checks through that thread, or is this worth its own?

Edited by Nightshade92 on May 19th 2021 at 11:14:58 AM

Old Enough to Be Your Absurdly Youthful Mother

I'm on board with that.

For my two cents, we need renames at the very least. I think that would help establish the tropes as broader concepts, and not just homages to specific characters.

As for the tropability of these concepts, I see Tuxedo and Martini, Stock Shōnen Hero, and similar tropes as collections of several tropes or potentially tropable ideas put together as big tropes. I'm mixed on whether or not we should have them—on one hand, I guess you could make the argument that we could take apart the smaller tropes and trope them separately, but on the other hand at a certain point these smaller tropes come together in specific, well-defined ways that I think would at least be worth noting in some capacity. That's just what I think though.

Shana Clone can probably go though. I don't watch very much anime, and as a result I find that trope a bit confusing.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on May 19th 2021 at 10:32:52 AM

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

The best way I can summarize it is the Shana Clone is essentially a Tsundere who runs far hotter than she does friendly, especially towards her love interest. She also suffers from issues regarding her shorter stature, usually things like Napoleon Complex and A-Cup Angst, that 'justify' her aggressive attitude; she's physically lacking compared to other characters along with the emotional baggage she carries, so she needs to make herself appear bigger to hide weakness.

Whether this is truly noteworthy, or if individual Tsunderes should just list all of the different traits that apply instead of trying to clump them all into one archetype would remain to be seen in a wick-check.

Edited by YourIdeas on May 19th 2021 at 8:12:40 AM

Ah thanks. I think I understand the trope a bit better now.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Sort of like Natsuki then? I have a better idea now.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Should we create a seperate cleanup thread for Fountain of Expies?

I'd rather do a batch TRS.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Well whatever we decide, we will have to cleanup the weaker examples in the Fountain of Expies subtropes. I'm thinking a separate thread might keep the Expy cleanup thread from getting clogged up.

I do think this is a problem that also applies to the other Expy subtropes (i.e. Cast of Expies, Corrupted Character Copy). Expy is a highly misused trope and these problems tend to be inherited by its subtropes.

The issue is, a thread like that would likely try and cut some tropes, and it seems only Appearance Tropes and Badass Tropes has that sort of pull and sway due to being pre-established. It's easier to just do it in TRS.

But we can't do anything until the backlog clears anyway, and we need wick checks for everything we're planning on taking to discussion.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 19th 2021 at 12:05:25 PM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I mean some of the tropes don't need to be cut. Some are just people conflating Fountain of Expies with Trope Codifier. For instance, Romantic Vampire Boy is listed as a Fountain of Expies for Edward Cullen.

I noticed that several "examples" in Fountain of Expies list multiple characters as its "source/inspiration", which makes this even more dubious.

Edited by Adept on May 23rd 2021 at 10:40:58 PM

Exactly, there are many tropes that are listed as Fountain of Expies that don't belong there. Let's start a cleanup to determine which tropes belong there and which don't. Then we can go through the tropes and eliminate the shoehorns and poor examples.

Yeah a lot of those can just be removed from the list without changing anything about the trope itself.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

The problem I see is that it is natural for audiences to think and talk of little known characters in terms of well known ones, especially ones that don't have much depth to them. "Rei clone" is used on /a/, for example. But things get difficult when you want to actually list them and sort out which ones belong and do not.

Some of our expy tropes might be better off as example-less fanspeak pages, that list the tropes usually invoked by these expies. I'm thinking the "Stock" ones would be suited to this. Others like Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever, Civvie Spandex and Man-Eating Plant are valid tropes, but not quite expies because the concept is simple (and sometimes pre-dates the listed work); they may be the Trope Codifier to an extent but it has grown beyond them. Others like Char Clone may need to list specific criteria of which any example must fulfil a certain number, and must have come after the original.

As for Shana Clone, I am sure there is something tropeworthy, but it needs to move out of the mould of the original Shana a bit.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

Well, that sort of turns into Fan Myopia, doesn't it? The assumption that OF COURSE the other character is an intentional expy or reference, because why wouldn't they be? It assumes that instead of these archetypes being proper tropes, they're actually just knockoffs and references, which forces the trope to be seen from that specific perspective.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Double post, but it's relevant:

Another Fountain of Expies subtrope is being drafted here. I'm trying to figure out if the trope is actually an expy thing or if it falls into the pattern of fans assuming the originator is being copied. I'd appreciate if other people took a look so I'm not just arguing into the void. Whether or not you agree with my take, I don't want to have the discussion with only a small handful of tropers, especially as those tropers have more of a stake in the draft and thus bias in favor of the idea (much like I might be biased against it due to my hatred of expy tropes).

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Reading the description, I don't think this is an Expy trope. If I understand things correctly, Yuusha is a concept or archetype. I guess Yuusha means "hero" or "person of bravery" in Japanese.

I'm going to toss out that we do not want non-English trope titles. Also, composite tropes with that many elements always get misused.

Edited by Fighteer on May 31st 2021 at 11:26:52 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Might want to add those thoughts to the draft's comments, guys.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'd say it's more just a Trope Maker or Trope Codifier thing but the draft isn't even a day old and the examples are already all over the place, not being able to decide if they're trying to list straight examples, shout outs or parodies of Dragon Quest, characters that have similar stat growths/clothing, etc. Basically, it's just suffering through the same issues as several other Fountain of Expies have.