fails at being neutral: Overused Copycat Character

^Fair enough.

What shimaspawn said. I originally launced that YKTTW because I noticed that every second Emotionless Girl is mentioned as an expy of Rei on their respective pages. Even though many other Characters As Devices have trope codifiers, it might be notable that this particular group is so unusually closely related.

Now that I think about it, the source character doesn't even have to be a Trope Codifier, just look a Shakugan No Shana. Since it's release, JC Staff sarted to mass produce Shana-type Tsunderes but these didn't reform the whole huge Tsundere archetype, just formed their own little circle of Shana-inspired characters.

edited 28th Aug '10 4:24:00 AM by Superior

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Summary: (what I learned)

Overused Copycat Character was formerly known as Drizzt Syndrome, and it was about "amateur roleplayers ripping off a famous pre-existing chacters, and fictional examples of mocking this tendency".

The perceived problems of the page are results of a half-assed attempt at expanding it to "professional writers in any media using many similar Expies", while trying to keep the old connotations from RPGs, that this is supposed to be a noobish, mocked behavior of the player, ignoring the fact that in professional writing, the Expy trope isn't necessarily looked down this way.

---

Suggestions for page action:

A) Split Overused Copycat Character into these two parts:

1. Something closer to the trope formerly known as Drizzt Syndrome, about self-designed player characters tending to be rip-offs, mostly in Tabletop Games and Video Games.

2. Something closer to This YKTTW, about certain influential characters tending to have many Expies in other works.

• Pros: The two concepts have different connotations and they get different treatments, so they should be individually tropeable.
• Cons: It was argued that the first variation was expanded for a reason, and the second one is not sufficiently different from Trope Codifier

B) Rename and rewrite Overused Copycat Character to be more value neutral, and be about certain influential characters tending to have many Expies in other works.

• Pros: It was the previous page action's original intention.
• Cons: It would completely drop the potentially tropeable idea described in A)1.

C) Do nothing.

• Cons: The page stays negative instead of value neutral, and it would keep partially covering two potential tropes.

---

Could someone attach this to the thread as a crowner?

BTW I rewrote the YKTTW according to the feedback from this thread.

edited 29th Aug '10 9:43:06 AM by Superior

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Ok, I figured out how to make a crowner. Here it is.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

How many examples of the first variant of your "split" option are we going to find in fiction? It seems to me that making it specifically about player-designed characters will mean that it's essentially a Troper Tales page with no main page.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Plus your ykttw is already separate. Again, this trope requires that it becomes a joke that a character is copied.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

^^ Looking through quickly, I spot at least 3 examples, Order Of The Stick and 8-Bit Theater referencing Drizzt specifically , as well as The Noob noting how common this concept is in MMOs, specifically the tendency to make Elves in some way named "Legolas". There's also a note about the number of characters named Sephiroth in Final Fantasy XI.

edited 30th Aug '10 1:15:42 AM by Twilightdusk

So any that are not that simply get moved to Superior's ykttw. In short, the crowner can be locked, as it's already redundant.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

To be honest, the very title makes the concept not value neutral.

Overused Copycat Character. Overused is a negative thing, and therefore it can't be made neutral.

But we are aiming to make our tropes value-neutral. This is why one of the three suggestions includes a rename.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

^^ That is the problem isn't it? There is may be example that fits th trope but can't be used because it sounds negative.

The very CONCEPT is negative. If it's overused then it becomes less a trope and more into a trite cliché. This is a trope on clichéd characters, basically, and they ARE bad.

But there are also copycat characters who are not (yet) overused, and if we create a trope for them then Overused Copycat Character becomes "The same, but bad" which I'm pretty sure we don't like.

edited 30th Aug '10 3:37:33 AM by Clarste

Those are Expies and Captain Erzats'.

edited 30th Aug '10 3:42:57 AM by Autarch

^^^ It is negative only because it is negatively worded.

For example, Superman is listed as an example, but even though he provided many Expies, many of these, like Hyperion ("What if the government raised Superman?"), or Supreme ("a more arrogant and violent take on Superman.") are cosidered popular, interesting stories and characters on their own, coming from respected writers. They are not the same trope as "random roleplayer can't think up an original character so he plays as "Legollaz the elf".

Therefore, Superman shouldn't be listed as an Overused Copycat Character, but as a Fountain of Expies.

^ They are still notable for many expies, but they are not overused.

edited 30th Aug '10 4:11:27 AM by Superior

De gustibus non est disputandum.

There's a character with one or two Expies and Captain Erzats and then there's the idea of characters with a hundred of them. There's a difference between the two and what they mean.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I think the only problem is with the "overused" part of the title. This is an actual trope, distinct from a Trope Codifier. Essentially this is when the process of codification ended up with an impossibly specific trope that leaves no room for the imagination.

I dunno, maybe rename to Launcher Of A Thousand Copycats.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

"This is an actual trope, distinct from a Trope Codifier."

Why do you all keep assuming this has anything to do with a codifier? The only requirement is that people start mocking a character for being overused. Why are you all arguing about baggage it doesn't have?

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Who added the new poll option, and why do we need it? It's basically same thing as the split option, only in a different order.

Launcher Of A Thousand Copycats is a bad title on many levels, (well, a least on two). It has nothing to do neither with the Launcher of a Thousand Ships trope or with Helen of Troy, so it shouldn't be a snowclone, and the word "copycat" is almost as bad as "overused", we have anice value neutral term for that, and that is Expy.

edited 30th Aug '10 9:53:23 AM by Superior

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Apparently, the crowner stabilized, and the two most popular options are extremely similar to each other. The first one is basically "rework the page into Drizzt Syndrome and launch Fountain of Expies from scratch", while the second one is "rework the page into Fountain of Expies and launch Drizzt Syndrome from scratch".

Assuming that it will stay in a similar position for the next days, we could just follow the first place suggestion word by word, but since there is no difference in the end result of the two, and they don't contradict each other, we could also follow the "restart Drizzt Syndrome from scratch through YKTTW" part of the second, along with it.

Is there anyone, who voted for any for the two, opposed to that solution?

edited 31st Aug '10 10:13:19 AM by Superior

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Wait, you're suggesting to rework the page into Drizzt Syndrome and launch Drizzt Syndrome from scratch?

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

No, I meant launching both split parts from the YKTTW, both Fountain of Expies and Dizzt Syndrome, while redirecting the current page for one of them.

It doesn't really matter to me, but according to the crowner there are some people who want Dizzt Syndrome repaired in the YKTTW first, and it doesn't directly contradict the currently leading option.

edited 31st Aug '10 11:10:15 AM by Superior

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Oh, okay.

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

The problem with the crowner is that it assumed the trope is something other than it is, and the identical extra option just made it worse. The crowner will not do anything, since it's the thing suggested to split isn't in the trope to be split.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Does that even count as a consensus?