split:Laser Bullet?: Frickin Laser Beams

The part about devices spitting glowy colored things called "lasers".

There are enough of examples. And after all, those aren't beams. And the proper title sort of becomes misleading.

Hm, support. Continuous beams and the little pulses are mostly different.

Isn't the trope about things being called "lasers" that don't act like real lasers? If so, what's the misuse that's prompting a split? I could maybe see a trope for "lasers that actually do behave like lasers", as it would capture a lot of the aversion/subversions.

It's more that there's two different families of lasers that don't behave like lasers. One is a steady beam like original Star Trek, the other is bolt, like Star Wars. They have visual distinctiveness and are used differently in some cases.

Maybe it's just my skepticism but I doubt you'll be able to hard split it and find titles that adequately capture the difference. Frickin Laser Bolts and Frickin' Laser Beams just aren't distinct enough.

edited 13th May '11 11:19:25 AM by Fighteer

I was going to suggest plain Laser Bolt. Or Blaster Bolt if you want both a Star Wars shoutout and AAA.

edited 13th May '11 11:00:55 PM by Deboss

Laser Bolt sounds a bit more universal.

I'd support a split, because I know works that use both types. Sins Of A Solar Empire has an alien faction that uses the beam type, and the human faction uses the bolt type.

I know for a fact that a lot of shmups use both types, for various reasons. Can't speak for other stuff though.

My point is that there are in fact two different tropes:

1) weaponized beams, glowing, often squeaking, usually red, called "laser"; any part of this may be justified or not

2) flying glowy bolts, red and squeaking even more often than in (1), for some enigmatic reason called "laser"

It looks to me like the trope is about how they're used, and the beam/glowy bolt distinction is just two different visual effects which don't really affect the important parts of how they're used - as Family-Friendly Firearms or to make the setting look more like The Future or whatever. If the visual effects aren't really that important to what this trope is about, I don't think it should be split.

I think Laser Bullets is a distinct trope from Frickin' Laser Beams. Frickin' Laser Beams, essentially, Hollywood Lasers (where lasers form a visible glowy line from laser gun to target, and tend to move visibly rather than being effectively instantaneous); Laser Bullets would be where lasers are behave almost exactly like bullets (are fired in discrete shots rather than continuous beams, come in magazines with a particular number of shots rather than being produced by an actual power source, etc), but cooler. Star Trek uses Frickin' Laser Beams, Star Wars uses Laser Bullets.

edited 21st May '11 4:35:11 PM by NativeJovian

I'm willing to entertain that distinction. YKTTW it.

Are we sure the proposed Laser Bullets doesn't already fall under one of Ray Gun's many subtropes?

It doesn't look like any of the preexisting subtropes - probably the closest match would be Ray Gun itself, what with the page image being Han and his blaster.

Pretty sure, it's mentioned as "and plasma weapons" on Ray Gun's page after Frickin' Laser Beams. Don't we have a Impossibly Slow Projectiles or some such trope where the two overlap?

There's Painfully Slow Projectile, but that seems to be more of a video game trope.

That was it. Generally when you see it in video games, it's the same way.

Also, the description could probably use a trim.

IMO it heavily overlaps with Painfully Slow Projectile, but isn't a subtrope since there are non-dodgeable glowy "laser" bolts

Also, there's Energy Ball, which some examples might fall under.