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Why is this videogame specific?!? (Alt Titles Crowner Sept 15): Saving The World get usage counts
Deadlock Clock: 21st Apr 2012 11:59:00 PM
has crowner
Cure Candy
![[up]](http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Video Game Plot Esclation would be a decent trope I think. Persona 3, Persona 4, Final Fantasy (well all past the 3rd one) would be a big example of that.
As would be the rule "if there is a world map you will be saving the world."
However there are Fantasy series out there that do the same thing Lord of the Rings started just taking a ring to Rivendell and ended up saving the world. Or Negima!'s go teach middleschool in japan, save the school, Save the magic world
edited 9th Jul '11 1:13:57 AM by Raso
Dragon Writer
I think "Plot escalates until you have to Save The World" is not specific to videogames either. As the only tangientially-related example that comes to my mind, take Naruto: Title character just wants To Be a Master and become the Leaf's next Hokage. His Rival just wants to exact revenge on his older brother. But it just so happens there's a criminal organization out collecting all those canned beasts so someone somewhere can, yes, Take Over the World, and that would really put a cramp in one Highly-Visible Ninja's personal dream....
Diagonalizing The Matrix
Huh. And there I thought that's exactly what The World Is Always Doomed was about...
Anyway, this reminds me of Zawinski's Law of Expansion ("Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.")
Maybe we can formulate something similar. Say, a Law Of Escalation: Every plot attempts to escalate until someone has to save the world. Plots which cannot so escalate are replaced by ones which can.
edited 9th Jul '11 12:22:43 PM by TripleElation
Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to
Dragon Writer
I see the Awesomeness.
I think this trope is both misnamed and written to be videogame specific. It should be something like Plot Quest Upgrade or something showing that eventually a strange plot eventually evolves into saving the world. There's no point in making it videogame specific since it's a plot trope.
Dragon Writer
Wizard/Father of Tom
Yes.
Also, plot escalation is a cornerstone of storytelling, in terms of both what's at stake (i.e. going from looking for your lost dog to SavingTheWorld
), to the obstacles blocking the protagonist from reaching his goal.
Two sources are great for this (and really need a works page on the wiki). One is Freytag's Die Technik des Dramas and Robert McKee's Story.
Stories' tendencies of upping the ante definitely needs to be troped.
edited 9th Jul '11 7:39:36 PM by ArtemisStrong
Bump.
Follower of Eris
Something along the line of Raising the Stakes? It's currently red-linked, and it describes going from "save your village" to "save your country" to "save the world." I can see how it would be used for other tropes though.
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth."
Niels Bohr
36 Spark915th Jul 2011 12:48:17 AM from Castle Wulfenbach
, Relationship Status: Too sexy for my shirt
Gentleman Troper!
Raising The Stakes sounds like a gambling trope to me.
I like Plot Escalation, without the Video Game part. While the trope seems to mainly apply to video games, there is no reason (as said above) why a plot trope should only apply to video games.
Special trousers. Very heroic.
I like Plot Escalation as well.
On another note, do you feel "heroes save the world" in and of itself tropable? The whole reason I found out about this mess was because I noticed it doesn't exist. I disagree that ninjacrat's contention that "it would be boring" is a reasonable objection, but I'm not quite sure how we would handle it.
I see the Awesomeness.
I actually started a Special Efforts to hunt down any trope claiming to be medium specific.
nrjxll, we can just do a Trope Transplant. The plot being about saving the world is a common Motivation Trope.
Right, we can sit here for a month discussing it (or based on the post dates, a month not discussing it) or someone can do something about it. I'm someone, so I'm gonna do something, and since there seem to be many people saying that saving the world is tropable, I'm rewriting the article to be about that, and I'm doing it now.
People say an image is worth a thousand words. One look at the Image Pickin' board will tell you this is bullshit.
My computer froze halfway while I was typing the article and I can't be assed to try again. Someone else?
People say an image is worth a thousand words. One look at the Image Pickin' board will tell you this is bullshit.
42 Cider18th Aug 2011 04:13:07 PM from Not New York
, Relationship Status: They can't hide forever. We've got satellites.
The Final ECW Champion
Escalating Scale Of Villain Threat, get one for natural disasters and we're done here. Maybe Rising Threat Level?
edited 18th Aug '11 4:14:12 PM by Cider
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
I see the Awesomeness.
Bumping to try and clear this up. Anyway, I think the goal is pretty simple. We Trope Transplant this somewhere else, fiddle with the description so that it's not written videogame specific, and clean the examples. Then we need to either YKTTW or just write a new description for Saving the World.
Bumping again.
I see the Awesomeness.
So, name choosing. Escalating Villainy Threats, Rising Threat Level, any others?
Before any name discussion, I want to get something straight - should the current definition (as opposed to the Exactly What It Says on the Tin one) really focus on video games?
I see the Awesomeness.
No, it still needs to be rewritten. Go ahead and do a rewrite for both.
Thread bump.
How would Escalating Scale Of Villainy Threats differ from Sorting Algorithm of Evil? Not that Plot Escalation is unrelated to the latter, but isn't it distinct?
edited 17th Mar '12 10:39:35 PM by ArcadesSabboth
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
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Alternative Titles: Saving The World
15th Sep '12 2:48:51 PM |
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At issue:
Saving The World is getting a Trope Transplant to a new name so that the current name can be used for plots about...saving the world. The current trope is for when a story that starts with a mundane conflict escalates to saving the world by the end of the story. What would be the best name for this trope?