Needs distinction from other fire-related trope: Kill It With Fire

People keep putting examples of Playing with Fire or Pyromaniac here, which is either inappropriate or making those pages completely redundant.

I think the original definition was just "something is especially weak to fire", but now just seems to be "any use of fire as an attack". I blame naming the page after a internet meme.

I could say the same thing about Wreathed in Flames and Incendiary Exponent.

It's unlikely that the two will ever be truly separated because they are built around similar ideas, mostly involving fire.

If they're not separate, they don't need separate pages.

edited 4th Feb '11 3:41:29 PM by thatother1dude

I meant Playing with Fire and Pyromaniac as well as Kill It with Fire.

Just going by the names, I see a clear distinction here:

• Kill It with Fire: Some things are so horrible that the only way to be sure they're dead is to burn the bodies.
• Pyromaniac: A character that really, really, really likes fire.
• Playing with Fire: Dicking around with incendiaries because they look cool on screen.
  • It should be noted that colloquially, playing with fire generally means treating something dangerous frivolously and having it bite you on the ass.

edited 5th Feb '11 1:48:09 PM by BlackWolfe

Playing with Fire is an Elemental Powers trope (all the Elemental Powers have punny names).

[facepalm]

Can I just say that while I heart Punny Names, that just doesn't seem like a good name for an elemental power trope?

If you wanted to modify the name Playing with Fire so that it's not an exact figure of speech, I'd suggest Playing With Fire Balls.

It's got great wickage and inbound though.

Playing with Fire found in: 1437 articles, excluding discussions.

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edited 5th Feb '11 5:32:04 PM by Deboss

I don't think I've ever noticed Playing with Fire being misused.

Besides just now, I haven't either.

And yes, Kill It with Fire meaning "the only way to kill something is with fire" makes sense as a distinction, but a bunch of the examples include anyone that normally uses fire even if it already counts as Playing with Fire. It doesn't help that the picture doesn't even demonstrate it, being more of an example of Pyromaniac.

Really, it's the same with Kill It with Ice and Kill It with Water: people keep putting examples of character using ice/water/fire as a weapon or being killed by it instead of it being a specific weakness.

edited 6th Feb '11 11:37:49 AM by thatother1dude

For what it's worth, the Laconic is "If it'll burn, burn it." Which is...nonspecific. I think changing it to either things that can ONLY be killed with fire or even just when characters go a little crazy and torch the corpse (or field or planet or whatever) to make sure it doesn't regenerate would work. The second one is closer to the misuse, so there's that.

I think a better Laconic would be "When in doubt, set it on fire."

That sounds more like pyromaniac.

Pyromaniac is more "burn hahahaha ha BURN!"

The main difference I'm seeing between Kill It with Fire, Playing with Fire, and Pyromaniac is that the former means general use of fire to slay something, the second is general manipulation of fire, and the latter is a person obsessed with fire and burning things.

Let's be realistic here, these three tropes all deal with the use of fire and it's variants in an offensive manner in some way shape or form; they're going to overlap regardless of how distinctive you make them.

edited 16th Feb '11 11:17:54 AM by RainRequiem

These Kill it with X tropes have already become ubiquitous enough that it'd be impossible to clarify its meaning everywhere. Maybe something like "For Massive Damage,Kill It With X" would be a start, though.

That's way too long. Why not just go with Weak To X. Can't get clearer than that.

I support that.

While the parallels to Kill It with Water and Kill It with Ice are nice, I support the "Weak to Fire" rename, because Kill It with Fire sounds like something a Pyromaniac would say and probably adds to the trope's misuse.

Edit: I just had a look at the Kill It with Water page, its having a similar problem. It should be brought up there, but it could probably use the Weak To X rename too.

edited 11th Jun '11 7:01:19 PM by StubbyPenguin

Kill It with Ice is pretty bad too.

Bump. Okay, here's the approximate definitions as I've seen them used across the wiki. We'll deal with the Kill It With X snowclones later.

• Playing with Fire: Character has fire powers. Simple, easy, not really misused.

• Pyromaniac: Character really likes fire. Whether they actually have any ability to set fires of their own is irrelevant.

• Kill It with Fire: No Kill like Overkill specific to fire. Sort of like "This guy might come back to life, so I should set his corpse on fire, just in case. And to save time, maybe I'll do it while he's still alive." Maybe they really like fire, maybe they have fire powers, but its not important to the trope.

That seem good?

Yes.

I'd support a rename to "weak to fire". To me, the problem with "kill it with fire" is that (1) it sounds like something a Pyromaniac would say, but is intended as a different trope; and (2) it is netspeak for "get rid of it". For example, on the deletion debates of That Other Wiki, users will say "kill it with fire" to indicate a particularly fervent distaste of an article.

Know Your Meme and the Urban Dictionary concur. KIWF has a very different meaning on the 'net at large than what the page is about.

So should I put something like that on all three pages? Like what we did with the alignment pages? I've found that was a very simple and useful change to the relevant descriptions, and we should use it across the wiki more.

Ninja'ed

edited 4th Aug '11 2:11:01 PM by Discar

Yeah, the current name is a pre-existing term for something other than the trope, and worse, something that can easily be confused with the trope (unlike, say, Dishing Out Dirt). That's pretty bad.