Duplicate of Acrofatic: Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet

This trope's definition is "A fat character who is fast." Acrofatic is "A fat character who is fast and/or agile." What's the difference? Well, there doesn't seem to be any. If you compare the example sections, you'll find that most of the examples on the former are duplicated on the latter.

Both tropes are old enough to have archived discussion, but Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet still has only 42 wicks and 36 inbounds. That's pretty bad. Contrast with Acrofatic's 287 wicks/386 inbounds.

I propose changing Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet into a redirect for Acrofatic.

Merge 'em. Clear case of duplication. It even has Needs A Better Description in the description. Seriously...

edited 16th Aug '11 1:15:18 PM by Fighteer

I can see a legitimate difference between "fast" and "agile". I'd say remove the ""fast and/or" from Acrofatic and keep them separate. I believe that Acrofatic came first, then Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet was made for the fat characters who also have superspeed.

edited 16th Aug '11 2:08:13 PM by Madrugada

It's still an awful snowclone and I don't see any real (that is, functional) difference.

Well, I do see a good argument for the difference between speed and agility. Someone could have Super-Speed and still be a klutz, and the counter is that quite a few characters have a normal rate of speed but are quite agile (like Spider Man).

So if there are enough examples of both "fat yet fast" and "fat yet agile," I'd vote for making the tropes distinct along those lines.

As for the name... I've never had the seething rage over snowclone titles that others have, but I wouldn't be sad to see this one go, either.

If I remember correctly from when this was made, this one is supposed to be speed where Acrofatic was supposed to be agility. I'm not sure they need to be two different things though you can have agile characters that aren't fast and fast characters that aren't agile.

I have a dislike of snowclones that think snowcloning is a good way to make a title, clarity be damned. This one isn't bad. Not as blunt as something like Fat And Fast, but okay.

Fast Fat is currently an alt-title for Acrofatic.

I don't see a tropable distinction between "fast" and "agile" as they almost always go together; like I said, the examples on Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet are almost all duplicates of examples on Acrofatic.

Agility and speed may be related, but they're not the same thing. A character can be speedy and still a total klutz.

While I see the merits in keeping them separate, I am more inclined with merging the two. I am aware of the differences, but the idea of agility and speed share such similarities to the average person that keeping separate seems nigh pointless and would require quite a bit of trouble to maintain.

I do love the name Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet though, I can't stop laughing every time I see it.

Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet is an excellent pun.

Close enough that they could be one trope. Merge them imo.

This could work if nearly all the examples weren't copied between the tropes.

^ Which 'this', splitting or merging?

I'm going to have to go over these pages, since there's confusion over them if this is split between "fat yet agile" and "fat yet fast" - Rufus from Street Fighter IV for example qualifies as the former (he's almost comically agile, given the fact that he's so fat, his stomach has Jiggle Physics), but he's definitely not the latter (he's not slow, but he doesn't move appreciably faster than anyone else in the game).

It's a moot point if we do merge, but the fact that some examples are on both Acrofatic and Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet shows that there is some confusion as to which is which.

If we keep them separate, then many examples will be both, since speed and agility are often associated. But there are definitely going to be some examples that only belong on one or the other.

I'm ok with a merge; I just wanted to point out that they're not the same thing.

Of course some will be on both... but a quick scan of the examples I'm familiar with out of Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet, should that be solely for speed, indicate that it's misused if solely about speed. I just need time to look over them all to determine if the Rufus example is an isolated incident, and if there really is that much overlap between the two tropes.

I'm honestly a bit worried that the distinction between speed and agility for these purposes is Too Rare To Trope.

If they've become duplicates, then this is severe trope decay. Acrofatic is supposed to highlight that being fat doesn't make you inherently less flexible or mobile if you exercise right. Fatter than a speeding bullet is supposed to be A Fragile Speedster ...That's Fat!

edited 18th Aug '11 10:42:31 AM by Cider

Bumping this to do analysis of specific examples.

Rather than hand-wringing over whether or not there's enough examples to make "fat yet fast" and "fat yet agile" distinct, I decided to pull up both Acrofatic and Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet, in order, to see whether the examples are fast, agile, or both. Just going over the examples I know for certain. For the record, I'm using "fast" to mean "can move at least twice as fast as a healthy human."

Acrofatic examples:

Anime and Manga

• Naruto - Both fast and agile.
• Ranma One Half - Agile, not fast.
• One Piece - Agile, not fast.
• D Gray Man - Agile, not fast.
• Full Metal Panic Fumoffu - Agile, not fast.
• Full Metal Alchemist - It's been a bit, but I seem to remember said example being both fast and agile.

Comic books

• Xmen - Agile, not fast.
• Kingpin from Marvel Comics - Agile, not fast.
• Legion Of Super Heroes - Agile, fast when using powers creatively.
• Asterix - Agile, not fast.
• Buck Godot - Agile, not fast.

Film

• Coraline - Agile, not fast.
• Shaolin Soccer - Agile, borderline fast.
• Blues Brothers - Agile, not fast.

Video Games

• Street Fighter - Rufus is agile, not fast. E. Honda is neither, really, although he's more agile than most examples of Mighty Glacier.
• Wario - Agile, not fast (though his relative agility varies from game to game).
• Super Mario Bros - Agile, not fast.
• Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 - Agile, not fast.
• Sonic The Hedgehog - Agile, not fast.
• Kirby - Neither; Dedede is agile compared to other large characters, but not agile overall.
• Pokemon - Line is blurry, considering how the game actually treats speed.

Western Animation

• ''The Batman - Agile, not fast.
• The Simpsons - Agile, not fast, also dependant on Rule of Funny.

So for the examples I can vouch for on this trope, only two are misplaced - King Dedede from the Kirby series and E. Honda from the Street Fighter series (and even both of those two are far from clumsy; they just aren't agile overall compared to their competition). So for the most part, the examples on Acrofatic look like they belong. As a bonus, most of the examples are only agile.

Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet examples:

• Legion Of Super Heroes - As mentioned above, he qualifies as both when he uses his powers creatively.
• Fat Albert - Agile, not fast.
• Mutants And Masterminds - Fast, not agile.
• Street Fighter - As mentioned, agile, not fast.
• Sonic The Hedgehog - As mentioned, agile, not fast.
• Metal Gear Solid - Neither (uses mechanical aid to get speed; you might as well put a fat person in a car on this trope if this example is allowed).
• Pokemon - As before, line is blurry.
• Dead Rising - Agile, not fast.
• No More Heroes 2 Desperate Struggle - Neither (they don't run any faster than anyone else is capable of).

Oh, man, we do not have much to speak of here. Quite a few of those examples don't belong at all, and we'd be removing a bunch more if we did define this as purely being "fast yet fat." Even beyond that, I only see one example that wouldn't be duplicated off of the Acrofatic article.

(Note: I avoided the Real Life and Professional Wrestling sections of both because I think that a real human being could only be Acrofatic, unless speed powers have somehow been discovered.)

Given that Acrofatic is a much healthier article, and the distinction does, in fact, seem to be Too Rare To Trope, I think the two should be merged and some cleanup should happen to make sure that we keep the examples as genuinely agile/fast, and not just "agile/fast compared to regular fat people."

Seeing how Acrofatic wasn't initially meant to include speed, I think there still is a place for Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet. There are characters like Speed from Sky High that are fat but fast but not all that agile. I agree that we still get rid of other references from eachother's tropes as well as bad and vague examples.

Would a crowner at this point be appropriate? I don't know if there's much else to say on the issue, except vote on whether or not this should be merged.

The only thing I can think would be apropos would be voting on which title would be the primary one (I'd say Acrofatic, as it's the healthier trope).

The description says that "sprinting like an Olympic runner" is an indication of Acrofatic, so I suspect your assessment that it wasn't originally meant to include speed is incorrect.

Even if it's just Olympic sprinter speed, the only example of the ones I noted in Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet that would possibly qualify (other than the ones that already did) is Dr. Robotnik, depending on what his speed stats are in the Mario/Sonic Olympics crossover... and even that is if you want to start using crossover gaiden games for canon stats.

I'm not familiar enough to rate all the examples, but I don't think there's enough distinction to keep them distinct.

Here's a Page Action crowner. [1]

When I originally created the trope, another troper added that in a later edit. It wasn't my intention, to have it reference speed as well. The use of crossover gaiden games are questionable examples, but I still think there is life in the trope.

But if the trope is voted to get merged then there has to be a way to differentiate fat characters that just have agility, just have speed, or have both.