Powers trope or character trope? Rename proposal: Superpower Lottery

Ninja:

1. Stop making personal attacks on other tropers.

2. Your opinions are not facts. The fact that you believe them does not make them true.

3. Other people's opinions are not lies. Do not call people liars for holding them.

4. You do not seem to grasp what the trope is. You have been informed several times by various tropers you are wrong. Insisting you are right in the face of this will not make it so.

1) So people can take me for stupid or say that I'm trying to "stab it" like you did, but it's only me who is making personal attacks. Right.

2) Except they aren't opinions. When the trope says one thing and the example say another the examples are wrong, and that's not an opinion. With no comparisons at all we can't know if the trope is correct, and that makes them bad examples at best, or no examples at worst.

3) Saying that "99% of what you call misuse is not" when the examples make no comparisons (the point of the trope), is a lie. It's not "personal attacking", this is not a war against anyone. And if people is in fact reading what I say then I don't know what I'm doing wrong that no one seems to understand it.

4) The trope is supposed to make COMPARISONS between the characters. The description says that. The laconic says that. The examples in the page make comparisons. The wiks? Not at all. Without the comparisons the examples are making a misuse of the trope, because they are being used to mean "powerful character". Some might fit, but no one can know that. And sometimes they just don't. If there are many other characters in the same setting that are just as powerful as the character in the example then the example is bad. Magneto, for example, is powerful, but without his helmet is vulnerable to any of the telepaths in the setting, and there are many of them. And his power doesn't prevent him being attacked with many other powers too. He's powerful because he knows how he has to use his powers, but that doesn't make him more powerful than anyone else.

Just so everyone can see it, from the description (I don't know how to make boxes):

"Someone who won the Superpower Lottery has a completely overwhelming ability compared to everyone else in the story. There is no Competitive Balance; thus a common Fan Nickname for such a power is "Hax", implying it's the kind of power someone who's rewriting "the game" would give themselves.

This often leads to weaker cast members becoming as irrelevant as mere bystanders, but can outright threaten to remove all conflict to the character, necessitating either Plot Induced Stupidity, Deus Exit Machina, Poor Communication Kills and other creative ways to keep the story going. And when a villain wins the lottery, it can be an intimidating challenge but can also lead to Only the Author Can Save Them Now and strain Willing Suspension of Disbelief."

I don't know how we can have tons and tons of examples from the same setting. I don't know how having the Flying Brick set of powers is winning the Superpower Lottery if in the same setting there are Reality Warpers. I don't know why I'm explaining this and no one seems to notice it.

Calm down and read post 42 again.

I don't see why you keep telling me to calm. I just don't know what's the problem with my explanations that no one gets them.

And I read it, it's not an scale. The supposed scale is just an introduction to the winner of the Superpower Lottery. Apart from that the whole article is about the character and how it affects the work. And in order to know that the character is indeed the winner we need comparisons, just like those in the examples in the page.

But the wiks don't follow the same rule. We're just told "hey, this guy has this power" without saying us what powers have the rest of the characters. To continue with the example I made before, Magneto is indeed powerful, but there are many others with awesome powers too. Wolverine has a stupidly broken Healing Factor, lots of training and his claws (well, the whole skeleton) are practically invulnerable. Charles Xavier is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) telepaths in the world. Iceman is an Omega level mutant. Apocalypse has too many powers to count. Phoenix and Dark Phoenix. The Juggernaut. Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Beyonder. I could continue, but I think my point is clear.

It's like when we're told "the Superpower Lottery winners usually get the Flying Brick set". That's the same as saying "if you have the Flying Brick set then you're a Superpower Lottery winner". Superman being the greatest example out there, we have, in the same setting, Darkseid, Bizarro, Martian Manhunter, some of the Green Lanterns, Aquaman, and more than can easily put up a fight with him and some of them win. Without a character example the Reality Warper most times is quite more powerful than the Flying Brick, so Flying Brick=/=Superpower Lottery Winner.

More things: Naruto, the girl with double Kekkei Genkai. In the same setting we have Madara Uchiha, that battles her and the Raikage at the same time. The mentioned Raikage. Naruto and Killer B, hosts of the two most powerful Tailed Beasts, destroy forests and mountains like if they were made of paper. Tobi says to space "screw you" and pretty much ignores attacks almost whenever he wants. We don't know how much has Sasuke improved his power with his brother's eyes, but if he's no match for Naruto then I'm a Superpower Lottery winner too.

Those are just a few examples of why there is a problem with the trope. People use it for "this guy is powerful", but with no comparison with the rest of the cast. And there may be a few of them in every setting, but when every character is called Superpower Lottery Winner then there's a problem, like it happens in Touhou.

And I'm not forgetting the fact that the trope is about a character, the broken one (every example supports this claim), not about the setting having random powers as the current name suggests.

EDIT: I've been checking the page, but it's just the same. There are quite a few "It has a lot of powers" when in the same setting there are multiple examples that have at least the same power level.

edited 6th Jan '12 6:40:32 AM by DrMcNinja

I keep telling you to calm down because you're hyperfocused on one point; the examples are wrong. You draw the conclusion that examples must be wrong because the name is misleading. You've been repeatedly told that your arguments are flawed. Instead of listening to why they are wrong, you harass the other tropers. You call them liars and claim they harass you. I've given you a way to fix the trope. I've given you a way to fix the misuse. Then, if you can't accept either of those solutions, I told you to give up.

Step back, get a new perspective, and try again, without the persecution complex.

I don't draw the conclussion that they are wrong from the name, but from the description. I started suggesting to make the name of the character trope about the character but I was told numerous times to bring misuse to the table. Well, there it is. I've read the examples, and I'm saying that they are bad, or not examples at all, because they make no comparisons at all. Without the comparisons we can't distinguish if the character in fact has more power than the rest of the cast, or he is just a character with a lot of power. I've shown what happens with that: we have examples where there are a lot of "winners", but if they are evenly matched then they don't have "an overwhelming ability compared to everyone else in the story" as the description says. I agree there are examples that fit, but in my wick check they are under "Zero Context Example". The "implicit comparison" shimaspawn talks about just makes us have Magneto (and it's just one of many examples that fail, not the only one), because people apply the trope as "it has a lot of power".

And even without bad examples the name would still be misleading because it's a character trope, the description talks about how this character affects the work, and has nothing to do with the powers varying greatly in the work. I'm not the only one who thinks the trope has a problem there. Tbarrie and King Zeal think the same, or at least that's what I get from their posts. We might need a split or something else done to deal with the problems, but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

I claim I'm harassed because I'm told things like "you've sorted them out by how they're phrased" (when I didn't) or "you're trying to stab it" (when I took them at random, I don't need to cheat). Or something that basically amounts to "you're wrong" when I'm bringing support for it. And you're taking the "liar" thing too far. Just because I say that something is a lie doesn't mean I'm personally attacking anyone. I'm attacking the statement. If you want me to apologize, alright, I'm sorry if someone took offense from anything I said, but it's never been my intention to make this a war against anyone.

edited 6th Jan '12 8:11:42 AM by DrMcNinja

I don't want it renamed Super Power Lottery Winner because people can lose the lottery too. X-men, mutants are a crap shoot. Compare the awesomely powerful and good looking Xavier, Colossus, Iceman and Storm to Beak, Rogue, Wither, and Cyclops, who can barely interact with the rest of humanity without restraining bolts. Compare to Nightcrawler and Hepzibah, who have useful powers but look like a blue elf and a funny animal respectively.

That's what the superpower lottery is. The winners will be story breakers, the losers will be...super losers.

You haven't read the trope or the thread. The trope is not about the lottery, but about the winner and how he makes the rest of the cast losers, and that's why I proposed a rename in the first place.

The trope goes basically "there are many characters with powers in this setting, and then there is X, who makes them look really bad in comparison".

So, if we have half of the cast considered "winners", then there are no winners at all. With the words of Syndrome "when everyone's super, no one is".

edited 6th Jan '12 11:35:31 AM by DrMcNinja

That's your opinion of the description.

How is that "my opinion" if the description goes like that? Or the examples go by that too?

Because you are the only one who thinks that the description goes like that and no one else who reads it sees it that way.

No one? Then why every single example mentions just the winner? Why the description only focuses in the winner too?

Very first example, doesn't mention the winners until it gets to Aizen.

• The various sword powers in Bleach vary hugely, according to their wielders' importance to the plot. Ikkaku's shikai takes the form of a spear, with the power to... bend at two points. Lame. At least Renji gets a Whip Sword.

Have I not?

No, I haven't read the thread but I have read the page. The examples do spend a lot of time on the winners but they also talk about why that person in question is a winner compared to everyone else and occasionally lists the losers as well. This trope isn't "blah blah is powerful" that's Super Weight. This trope this group had a chance to get super powers, here is where they ended up. Man Man is about a lottery loser for example.

Some examples in the page make comparisons, but they focus on the winners anyway. Mentioning just a bit about the losers doesn't bypass the fact that everything else it's just the winners. The One Piece example talks about the losers too, but the only time it does that it only talks about the drawbacks and forgets the good things. But others don't talk about the losers at all, in the same page (Naruto, for example). And the wiks don't compare either, just mention winners. Just because the examples in the page are a bit better doesn't make we can ignore the examples in the wiks are bad.

And what about the fact that in the same example we have many examples in the same setting? One Piece, Naruto, Marvel and DC and more. The description is a bit more than just the first paragraph, and this part "someone who won the Superpower Lottery has a completely overwhelming ability compared to everyone else in the story" doesn't work if everyone else is called a winner too.

Again, that's just the introduction, everything else in the description is "the winner is like this, causes these effects in the plot, we can recognize a winner because of these traits, and they are prone to these tropes". So, out of 5 parts, 4 are about the winner, 1 talks about the losers. The examples in the page may be a bit better, but not all of them, and the wiks are just plain bad.

I know the trope is not "blah blah is powerful". That's why I complain. Because the examples act like that, and we don't get any comparison at all. The trope is about the winners, the examples say that and the description says that. But we can't know they're winners without a comparison, and without comparison the example devolves into "blah blah is powerful".

And please explain me how did they get "a chance to get superpowers" please, because I don't get what you mean with that. Some of them may have done something to get the powers, but many others got the powers from birth or training, I don't see the chance part there.

The comparison is implied. If the setting has a bunch of people with superpowers, and one person is significantly more powerful, then he's implicitly more powerful than all of those other people, even if it's not explicitly mentioned.

There's very little misuse of the trope. You're simply misunderstanding it.

The implicit comparison that you and shimaspawn talk about is something that shouldn't be tolerated. I've explained why many times. Take the One Piece examples in the page, for example. Count the number of "winners". And now explain me how that doesn't conflict with "someone who won the Superpower Lottery has a completely overwhelming ability compared to everyone else in the story".

Because so far no one did. The examples themselves may fit. Or not, without knowing the work you can't know that. So people who don't read what the trope is about just read "this character is pretty powerful", and when they edit they write examples that don't fit the trope, like Magneto, or say things like "if you are a Reality Warper then you are a Superpower Lottery Winner", which may be or may be not correct. When in the casting there are a lot of characters that are in the same level you are then then you are not a winner.

You're being too literal. One Piece apparently has a lot of different power tiers. Someone who has an elemental power has won the lottery compared to someone with a normal power. Someone who has a light-elemental power has won the lottery even compared to other elemental powers. That's not misuse.

Again, the trope is "some powers are significantly stronger than others". Not "ONE power is impossibly stronger than ALL others".

Magneto fits this trope perfectly. In most of his incarnations he's been one of the strongest Mutants on the planet and is normally the strongest mutant in whatever work he's showing up in. He can pull all sorts of stuff out of his ass. He's thrown around entire planets. He's an example.

It's not like that. One Piece has 3 kinds of fruits, and supposedly one of them is more powerful than the others. Which is fine on paper, but doesn't match what we see in the actual work. The character called "the strongest man in the world" has a fruit that is not in the "powerful" group. The characters in that group, in fact, are only powerful when pitted against Mooks, because every other important character has an ability that nullifies the advantage of that group. So, compared with the rest of the cast they're more or less the same. And taking into account the fruits don't get stronger, but the creativity of the user improves, their actual power level has less to do with the power itself than the usage the power is given.

And there are more examples. Naruto, Marvel, DC, take your pick. I'm not being literal, I'm adhering to the meaning of the trope. There are more parts of the trope that they don't fit, like most of the third paragraph.

EDIT: I didn't see this yesterday. About Magneto I already showed how many other characters can be considered more powerful than him.

edited 7th Jan '12 2:26:36 AM by DrMcNinja

The third paragraph fits the idea that it's a scale. The fact that you're ignoring large parts of the trope definition to pretend it's something other than what it is does not make your definition correct. It just makes it wilfully ignorant.

The third paragraph explains the impact of the winners in the plot, and how they have to be restrained in order to keep the story going. So please explain me where is the part where the scale appears there because I honestly don't see it.

And it still doesn't ignore the fact that the examples focus mainly on the winners and that many supposed winners have a vast lot of characters in the same setting that have the same power level. Or that they don't fit the third paragraph.

edited 6th Jan '12 2:46:32 PM by DrMcNinja

Dude, seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

You're just repeating yourself at this point. You either do not understand the trope or you're being deliberately obtuse for some reason.

I don't think it's getting ridiculous, but I have to deal with at least 3 people at the same time that bring different issues to the table and I have to give the explanations to all of you, so it can get a bit messy.

You say the trope is about some powers being more powerful than others. If that's the case, then explain me why most the examples focus on the characters more than on comparing the powers in the setting. Explain why those powers are most times equal between themselves, yet all of them are called winners and why there's an example from Touhou somewhere in the wiks that says that the most powerful character has the ability of controlling flowers*. Explain me why in the description the winner gets so much focus.

I'm told a lot that I don't get the trope. Well, explain it to me then. If I get a good explanation about all I'm asking then I should have no reason to continue with this, but I seriously don't see what you tell me I should see, and that feels like I'm stupid and you're pointing it out yet not helping me to grow out of it. Because otherwise I'm the one who's right.

* The flower girl is called a subversion of this trope. I don't truly know how that applies to this trope, all I know is that the power sucks balls yet the girl is the one who breaks the Competitive Balance, something only the winners should do.

edited 6th Jan '12 3:18:57 PM by DrMcNinja

Certainly. But under that definition, referring to such a character as simply an example of the "Superpower Lottery" trope isn't correct. This is why I'm inclined to concentrate on works pages and character pages when checking wicks. An off-hand reference to a powerful character as someone who won the superpower lottery is valid under any plausible definition of the term, so they aren't useful in determining whether people are misusing the term; seeing how people use the term in trope lists seems more informative to me.

I'll get a write-up of what I found posted some time this weekend, but my preliminary investigations aren't promising.