- Firstly, out of habit for Grammer Natzis - The Medal Text adds flavour to the article so TV Tropes doesn't end up some literal minded bore. Amongst This Website's stated aims is to be fun, a lot of tropers seem to be forgetting that recently. Would you bother reading a dictionary?
- As for Bronze Medal:
- Maybe the Flying Brick? or World's Stongest Man? Both are common and not very imagination-based, but most classical Superheroes, Super Villains and Anime Characters have the strength/durability combo.
- One of the Meta Abilities (Copy/Steal/Amplify Superpowers)?
- Alchemy? Red Magic?
- Green Lantern Ring (An Imagination-Based Superpower without real limit),
- Semantic Superpower (Based around a word or consept, see One Piece's Kuma example, 'Push' - people (across the globe), objects (at light speed), air (blast) pain (out of you and into him), fatigue (from your ally, into your enemy), yourself (out of the way of that attack)).
- If anyone knows more, suggest them here.
Semantic Superpower strikes me as the perfect candidate for the bronze medal - its versatility is only limited by its wielder's creativity and the wording of the power itself. This leads to the power in question being highly powerful in its own right (potentially being more powerful than control over time in extreme cases).
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Merge with Superpower Russian Roulette
, started by MarqFJA on Jun 19th 2011 at 2:12:41 PM
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Powers trope or character trope? Rename proposal, started by DrMcNinja on Jan 4th 2012 at 10:07:11 PM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Ambiguous Name, started by MorganWick on Feb 27th 2015 at 8:57:26 AM
I think this article might need its examples to be rewritten. Right now, the standards for winning the Superpower Lottery is just "being very powerful." However, the lynchpin of the Superpower Lottery is that, if there is some Super-Empowering mechanism (or a varying amount of them), that it arbitrarily favors some people over others. If aliens gave all human beings superpowers, then the person who can vaporize anything they look at has "won" and the person who can turn their hands into chihuahua heads has "lost."
Let's take, for example, the Abrahamic God. In the context of the Abrahamic religions, he is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent: he has the power to create entire universes and drive them extinct on a whim. However, he did not "win" the superpower lottery: God was the only thing that existed for at least some time before he created the universe. The superpower lottery doesn't exist because there was nobody to lose it.
If God had instead simultaneously existed among a Fantasy Pantheon before the creation of the universe, then he would have, given the other gods had powers that were lesser than his.
Now let's continue the analogy: God went on to create angels and humans. Angels are much more powerful than humans, and were created at (essentially) the same time. But they did not win the superpower lottery, because they were designed to be more powerful than humans. Even amongst the angels are subdivisions such as Archangels, Seraphim, Ophanim, and Cherubim. The superpower lottery doesn't apply, again, because some a of the angels were designed and had the purpose of being greater or lesser than one another.
Finally, Jesus Christ does fulfill the qualifications of the Superpower Lottery: God, being omniscient and omnipotent, chose Mary to bear his child the Messiah. Mary had no input on whether she would be impregnated with the Messiah, and Jesus had no input on whether he would be the Messiah. This effectively makes God's choices arbitrary, as he supposedly had 200 million humans to choose from.
Sorry if this post seems rambling and Wall Of Text-y. I just wanted to get out what I think counts as when I read the words "Superpower Lottery." This may entirely be a case of my own mileage varying from what other people have written under the examples. But in my opinion it bears thinking about.
Hi
The "Eyes Wide Shut" reference needs to be changed to something else; that's a film, not a trope.
- Subverted with Hyouma Muroga. He has basically the same broken abilities as his nephew Gennosuke, but he also can't turn them off. (For different reasons depending on which media we're talking of.) Therefore he must go Eyes Wide Shut all the time, or he risks affecting both friend and foe.
Seems like Eyes Always Shut is the trope that belongs. I would recommend to disambiguate Main.Eyes Wide Shut between the work and that.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
What's the difference between " Superpower Lottery" and "Flying Brick"?
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From the descriptions, it seems like "Flying Brick" is a specific set of powers while "Superpower Lottery" is just having powers that are way more powerful than the rest of the group.
Edited by ading I'm a Troper!!!
Is Superpower Lottery really the best name for this trope? The word "lottery," at least to me, would seem to imply the potential to lose as well as winning. I think "Superpower Jackpot" might be better.
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There is the potential to lose. The idea is that there is one superpowered character in a group that has powers that are so far beyond the others that they are on a whole separate level of power. That character won, everyone else lost.
I'm a Troper!!!
That Guy
For some reason, this article has the same text as Story-Breaker Power. I propose that we either delete Story-Breaker Power or merge the two articles.
I reject your requirement for a witty statement or fanboyish squealing in my signature. Hide / Show Replies
Something fishy's going on here. Someone *overwrote* the entire Story-Breaker Power article with the contents of this one on Nov. 10th.
This is just a minor point, but one that bugs me: The Reality Warper, Imagination-Based Superpower and Time Master tropes all reference the Superpower Lottery in their introductions:
I've searched TV Tropes, and can't find any reference to a particular superpower being the "bronze medal" - at least not on the pages.
(For the record, I am aware Time Master used to be the "bronze medal" in the Lottery and Imagination-Based Superpower was formerly the "silver medal".)
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