Rename / Guess the trope (Newer Crowner 12.30): Green Lantern Ring

@ Crazysamaritan- I understand if others don't consider that a distinction, but to me there is a difference between all the different abilities a Green Lantern has (Combo Platter Powers) and an ability/item that is limited only by the imagination of the user. Constructs are largely what everyone thinks of when it comes to the Green Lanterns powers. Thus the ring gives them a variety of powers but those powers individually aren't all that unique.

Back on the main topic we have a solid redirect with Highly Adaptive Powers and I see no real reason to rename unless there is misuse or poor inbounds (which, due to the name, is probably stronger than most other tropes in that regard).

To me, the green lanterns have combo platter because of their powers based on imagination.

The latter should cause the former, as most Electricity / Magnetism superpowers show.

edited 19th Oct '11 7:19:05 AM by crazysamaritan

First: Still need some word on the definition.

And two: Can somebody point out this "Mistaken for a universal benevolent force" on the main page? Because I'm not seeing it.

• Dragon Ball Z: Ki, life energy, is discovered to be able to fuel new techniques all the time beyond the usual energy waves like the kaio ken (multiply strength), bend reality (Janemba), self-destruction, absorbing energy (Genki-dama), make holes through reality itself (Gotenks), etc.

This was the example cited, though it was implied there were more. Looking at it, I don't think it's what Artemis Strong claimed, but it still doesn't look like an example to me.

I think the definition needs to be tweaked a bit. The current description makes it seem like the powers are just vague, like "the power of Heart" or something — but that's not actually what the trope is. The powers can be very precisely defined, they're just put to a lot of different uses. Magneto, for example, has control over magnetism, which he can use to do everything from fly to blocking bullets. "The ability to spontaneously create magnetic fields" isn't vague, it's just versatile.

Oh, and shouldn't Swiss Army Superpowers be singular? You can always add an s with curly braces if you need to, but you can't remove it if you want to refer to a singular superpower.

edited 19th Oct '11 8:39:28 AM by NativeJovian

Honestly, at this point I think it needs a split. There's a difference between "Limits are intentionally vague so that new things aren't an asspull" (the current definition), "Green Lantern-style superpowers" (pretty sure that's how its being used), and "Extremely versatile" (which is probably Inverse Law of Complexity to Power).

Maybe we need a page action crowner instead of a single prop. For crying out loud, for the first trope the internet counts, which isn't anything like Green Lantern's powers.

Yeah, should the crowner be for renaming, I would go with the singular version of that.

The problem with the trope name for me is that it's not intuitively obvious what aspect of a Green Lantern Ring it refers to.

For the record, this isn't related to Combo Platter Powers at all. If you can make up your own powers, it doesn't fall into Combo Platter. A really broad power is different from multiple explicit powers. Combo Platter Powers is the latter.

I think the perfect non-Green Lantern example of what this trope is getting at is his buddy The Flash. Super-speed sounds pretty boring and limited, but the writers figured out—and by extension, so did Barry Allen, the Flash—that super speed implies so much more, that The Flash can do stuff like turn invisible and (I believe) pass through walls and junk just by vibrating at super fast speeds.

Thus he's turned a power that in uncreative hands would just allow him to run around really fast into something more versatile. It's about application.

Also, while it is versatile, there are limits to super speed that prevent Ass Pull, so while adaptable, there is an underlying groundwork that limits what the writers can believably do with the character.

I'd say that if someone's power is something that can be enhanced or upgraded, then that's not the same thing.

As for power derived from raw energy forces that anyone can use, the Green Lantern himself veers into this territory. What sets him apart, I think, is that it is a limited power—it's just the limit is his imagination.

I'm starting to think that the Green Lantern isn't a great example of Green Lantern Ring.

edited 20th Oct '11 9:28:16 AM by ArtemisStrong

So we have two tropes here: One about a single power that is incredibly versatile, and another about a character being creative to make his powers versatile.

Is that actually two tropes? I'd be disposed to lumping them both under "powers that get used in creative ways".

Maybe it would work as two tropes if you contrasted powers that were explicitly meant to be versatile versus fairly limited powers that get used in nonintuitive ways. The actual green lantern ring would be the former, while the Flash using speed powers to phase through walls and such would be the latter.

That's pretty much what I meant.

The "Everyone in One Piece" example on this page counts as the second one. EG Luffy using his Rubber Man powers make his legs pump his blood faster and grant himself super speed because the "nutrients" are moving throughout his body at an accelerated rate. Yes, that's honestly the explanation for Gear Second.

edited 20th Oct '11 10:18:51 AM by SalFishFin

In terms of misuse... it looks to me like a lot of people are associating this trope with magical objects and rings in particular. (It's hard to say, because the trope itself is vaguely-defined enough that any really powerful magical ring could theoretically qualify, but a lot of these don't seem to fit quite as well as that.)

Does Aladdin's Ring really qualify, say? "The user simply gains new insight on it or becomes aware to try something they didn't think of before." That doesn't happen, that I recall.

The Spikard (a magic ring mentioned in Amulet of Concentrated Awesome) doesn't really seem to fit, either. As I recall, it was just an Upgrade Artifact for his existing powers.

It frequently gets potholed from mentions of the Green Lantern's titular ring in situations where the trope doesn't really seem to be important. I'd say that that's generally misuse, since it's not a link that really tells you about what's being discussed.

GAH, going over it, there are a huge number of potholes that just refer to the titular rings without any relation to this trope at all. Heavy misuse.

There also seem to be a lot of potholes that just refer to magical items capable of creating objects from nothing, though it's hard to say, since so few of them give any detail and those might fit the trope (though I'd say it depends on whether they're written up in a way that focuses on the imagination aspect.)

edited 21st Oct '11 1:00:01 PM by Aquillion

I still think there are at least two tropes here: Intentionally-vaguely defined powers that let writers avoid an Ass Pull, and literal create anything you can think of Green Lantern-type powers. None of the names would work for the former.

I'm curious why the crowner says that this is a "fairly well known" example. Is this based on any evidence, or is it just some fan's opinion? Because I think you need to be quite the comics buff to have heard of "green lantern" in the first place, let alone of what his ring does.

I am not a fan, and I know who he is. Thus, I assumed he was fairly well known. I generally assume that most of the famous superheroes like Superman, Batman or Spiderman are well known and I was under the impression that the Green Lantern wasn't much below the likes of those three. If I am somehow wrong, then I don't really mind you removing it if you can argue that the Green Lanterns are obscure.

Well, let's put it like this. Aside from many, many comics, Spider-Man has had twelve TV series, four movies starting in 2002, thirty videogames, and a musical.

Superman has had twenty TV series, thirteen movies starting in 1948, and eighteen video games.

Batman has had nine TV series, twenty-one movies starting in 1943, and twenty-four video games.

Green Lantern has two films starting in 2009, and the prerequisite tie-in video game and a planned TV series. Yeah sorry, but that's not even in the same league (even aside from the fact that casual fans won't know what exactly the ring is for).

edited 20th Oct '11 2:59:55 PM by SalFishFin

If you say so. Go ahead and remove it then. I can't say for sure whether he's well known or not.

There's also Justice League, which is probably where most people who have heard of Green Lantern. Definitely not as widely known as Batman or Superman, though.

edited 20th Oct '11 4:28:52 PM by 20LogRoot10

Yeah, most people are likely to run into the Lanterns in a group of DC heroes.

The name is bad, since the ring is actually a swiss army Phlebotinum rather than a superpower.

Green Lantern Ring is not about vaguely defined powers and never has been. The trope explicitly states that it is about creative uses of the same base power. If the powers are vague then they don't fall into the trope. The reason the trope was named after the Green Lantern Ring is because the explicit power of the ring was that it was limited only by the imagination of the wearer. It may be open-ended but it isn't vague.

Yeah I always got this as powers based on how creative the user is.

Like Haruna's Art Initiates Life book in Negima which create anything she draws on the paper. Which can be anything that strikes her fancy, Big muscle dudes, a giant flying manta ray that is psychically controlled by its pilot, a Mobile-Suit Human, a evil version of her best friend, Tentacle Monsters, Living handcuffs etc.