Naming Your Attacks Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

From YKTTW Working Title: Naming Your Attacks

reply: I really, really don't understand what this trope is.

reply: I think what it's getting at is that in real life, martial arts attacks and weapons are usually Exactly What It Says On The Tin, whereas in fiction they tend to have ridiculous/poetic/really cool-sounding names that don't have as much to do with what they actually do/are. It is really confusingly-worded, though.

reply: Plus, the image has him punching with his left arm, so it hardly fits.

reply: I'm sorry if it is confusingly-worded, my English is not that good anymore(and when I wrote this I was half-asleep). If someone can speak Italian, there's the link to the Italian version of this trope. Anyway, what I meant is that in real life martial arts attacks and weapons are usually Exactly What It Says On The Tin, and in fiction too; but since in fiction the names are usually made to be cool/poetic/ridicolous, the effects too are utterly ridicolous. To the point that it almost seems like they think of the name first, and then the attack follows the name to the letter. Like in the picture above: the character with Super Strenght punched an enemy, and the wall behind the enemy was shattered. But since the name of the attack is "Left arm of the devil" it shattered assuming the form of a skull.

reply: Whether a martial arts attack is or is not Exactly What It Says On The Tin depends largely on the culture underlying the style. Traditional kung fu moves, for instance, often have names that sound arcane or confusing, particularly to a Western listener.

reply: So this is basically when something rediculous is called for an attack and said call for the attack is shown to be comepletly accurate?

@Desertopa: That doesn't change the fact that is was named to be Exactly What It Says On The Tin. After all Gratuitous English sounds arcane to native speakers of other languages...

Anyway;

Deadpool has the "Inflatable Sheep Gun", which does indeed fire inflatable sheep.

reply: @Desertopa and/or Bisected8: Yeah — most of the names for throws in aikido seemed totally random to me until I started learning Japanese and realized that it was all just "both-hands-grabbing turn-and-throw" or what have you.

reply: Japanese technique names are generally more straightforward. In traditional kung fu, technique names like monkey steals the peaches are relatively transparent.

reply: Instead of discussing about that, can anyone think of a better title? I'm really bad at naming things, so please.

reply: Unexpectedly Appropriately Named Attack ?

reply: It's not so bad of an idea...

reply: Astonishingly Appropriate Attack Appellation And Appearance? Sorry, my alliterative quota was short for today. ^_^

The "Budha Palm" technique in Kung Fu Hustle create a giant air palm that strikes a potentially huge area, much like the tale of Budha and the Monkey King, where Budha's palm is so large the whole universe fits inside. (And Budha is in the universe.)

reply: End of markup

Anke: If this is about crazy attacks, how about Crazy Attack? Making assumptions on the line of "it is crazy because they came up with the name first" does not make sense to me.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Okay, so this trope (if it survives) has three or four components:

This attack is Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
This attack is called by name
The name of this attack implies something that is not a martial arts move or that sounds like it would violate the laws of physics — something that no one who isn't Genre Savvy would expect to be a martial arts attack.

Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: It is already noted that in Real Life, the names of attacks (and the attacks they name) are prosaic. What we need is the converse of this trope: attacks that aren't Exactly What It Says On The Tin. If we have that, then we can define this.

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