Ambiguous Name: Winds Of Destiny Change

What is this thing?*

Well, it's a good trope, but it at least needs some Redirect Farming. Badly.

I'm scanning the wikilinks right now (a damned slow task, that), and collecting examples of links that need some kind of help.

[EDIT - Complete A thru I range. Stopping before J.]

Zero Context Example or pothole of concern

• Albert Campion: "Capt. Jack Havoc and Canon Avril are both what Havoc calls 'Watchers'"
• Characters.Avengers60s Members: Scarlet Witch
• Bleach: "The Hougyoku did it."
• Characters.Care Bears: Good Luck Bear
• Fan Nickname: "...the Scarlet Witch."
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: "During the training camp, this Touka joins a table comprised of Saki, Koromo, and Fujita 'Pro'."
• Dead Little Sister: "Shinji Nagumo"
• FanFic.Drunkards Walk: "One of the effects of Doug's field."
• Roleplay.Evil Mastermind RPG: "Mr. 7's main power as well as Mr. 13's."
• Characters.Exalted Spirits: Remondin
• CurbStompBattle.Fan Fic: "...Flandre, Remilia, Sakuya and ..."
• Hellsinker: "What humanity tried to controll using the Garland system."

Unknown

• Warp That Aesop.Anime: "Bleach: You know that sweet-natured girl who recently developed special powers the Big Bad is sure to take an interest in for purposes of reactivating the long-dormant Artifact of Doom?"
• Billy Bat: "The bat allows people to either predict the future or change it, (apparently).
• Memes.Bleach: "Lol, Hogyoku. The Hogyoku is revealed to have the power of Winds of Destiny, Change!, resulting in any plot hole or question being responded to with Lol Hogyoku."
• Characters.Bleach: "Until it's revealed that [Orohime's] power was literally Winds of Destiny, Change! personified."
• Changeling The Lost: "The Contracts of Hearth allow one of the Lost to grant good or bad luck..." (This being a Tabletop RPG, I'm leaning towards Luck Manipulation Mechanic)
• Awesome.Changeling The Lost: "Goddamn fucking lucky Living Painting Fu ends up fighting a horde in a nightclub..."
• Cold Iron: "Cold iron in Never Never prevents Pookas from using any of their special abilities, including changing size and increased luck."
• Dungeon Bypass: "Andrew's "order" ability in Gunnerkrigg Court ends up doing this: It causes the MacGuffin to spontaneously appear at Andrew's feet before the plot of the simulation can even begin, much to his frustration and Parley's annoyance."
• Exalted: "Screw Destiny: Green Sun Princes are one of these, and have a Winds of Destiny, Change! ability to boot."
• Characters.Exalted Exalted: "Most of their powers are centered around manipulating fate and weaving destinies."
• Far Fetched Fiction: "The lead character of Sprout Mask Replica has the ability to change major things with his minor actions, although he really doesn't use it wisely."
• Functional Magic: "Holiness. Blessing, healing, protecting... all of the most benevolent of effects."
• Characters.Harry Potter Death Eaters: "That curse [Riddel] put on the Defence Against the Dark Arts Teaching post and how it works across the books would earn him a degree in this subject."
• I Believe I Can Fly: "The only character who explicitly has flight and another power is a freak of nature even by in-universe standards"
• Infernum: "Mortals are capable of generating iliaster by force of will and using it to boost themselves or alter fate...."

Suspected misuse outright:

• Belgariad: "Once upon a time, a stone which possessed the power to change destiny was stolen."
• Characters.Contrast Soul: "[Ciro] underwent Instantaneous Evolution during Luc’s time in Spain ... resulting in him gaining the ability to always hit his target through increased focus." (Improbable Aiming Skills)
• Fixing the Game: "In Wheel Of Time, Mat Cauthon occasionally gets accused of cheating. But he's just very, very lucky."
• Genius The Transgression: "They're good at mind control and apparently "psychic" powers"
• Good Omens: "Miraculous near-escapes work like this."
  • Characters.Good Omens: Aziraphale

Lists and indexes

• TropeNamers.Comic Books

Looks generally correct

• (21 of 55 articles checked)

edited 11th Mar '12 10:43:39 AM by Stratadrake

The Bleach examples are correct.

I think this name is pretty clear, and I didn't even know it was a reference to a work.

Luck Based Superpower?

Wait, update. I confused this with another trope.

This is the power to alter probability. So, the Bleach examples are incorrect.

I dislike the first line of the description. Screw Destiny as a superpower isn't what the trope is about, and it's misleading.

On an aside, do we have a tool to convert curly-brace links to their Wiki Word equivalent? Freedom City Play By Post had hundreds and hundreds of curly-brace links and it took me over half an hour to update them. I'm cutting off my sample with the I range for now — that distraction took waaaay too damned long.

edited 11th Mar '12 10:44:17 AM by Stratadrake

Is this supposed to be a pun on the famous song Winds Of Change? Because I should point out it basically means the opposite of what the song does.

Sorry to sidetrack a bit, but I think that one of the problems with Winds of Destiny, Change! comes from confusion with Born Lucky. The current divide between the two tropes is that Winds of Destiny, Change! is conscious, Born Lucky is just unconscious luck.

Born Lucky is confusing because it doesn't distinguish between ordinary luck and a superpower, and asserts that the character must always be lucky. Plus it has a fixation on "born", even in the laconic. And Winds of Destiny, Change! is mostly unconscious anyway, because only the most godlike examples can really control the actual specifics of how chance/fate/luck is altered when they use their power, and it's often an always-on deal anyway.

Bottom line, it's a lot of grey areas that renaming alone won't fix. If the name Winds of Destiny, Change! is a problem, it's probably as much underuse as misuse, due to restrictive defining factors of both tropes making people unsure where examples go.

edited 11th Mar '12 5:27:27 PM by Treblain

I can say that Touhou one (on CurbStompBattle.Fan Fic) is correct.

I think a title based on "luck" would be not quite correct. At least, Remilia's power (apparently-subconscious manipulation of Fate) doesn't seem to have anything related to luck. Or maybe I am misinterpreting the trope...

Isn't it more bending the laws of probability than luck?

Indeed, but it looks like the examples on the page include both.

So, is the trope defined as "manipulating probability"?

edited 17th Mar '12 2:52:48 AM by OneMore

That seems to be the case. At least as far as I can tell, this trope isn't about manipulating luck, it's manipulating probability, i.e. the ability to increase or decrease the chance of specific outcomes. Manipulating luck is far more general, making it so a specific target is prone receiving to a certain kind outcome. In other words, someone with this power can make it so that the winning lottery numbers match that of a certain ticket; someone who manipulates luck can make a certain person lucky enough to get the winning lottery ticket. They're similar, but the focus of the power is different.

Let's use a basic example to compare other cases to. Lady Bernkastel of Umineko No Naku Koro Ni has a power which is quite explicitly defined: she can cause any event to occur so long as the chances of that event occurring are not zero. That would fall under this trope, yes?

It seems like what we really need is a trope between Born Lucky and Winds Of Destiny, Change, for people who explicitly have the power to manipulate their or another person's luck, as opposed to being inexplicably lucky/being able to manipulate probability.

I can see several different tropes that may be confused/misused here:

1. Simply always being lucky, without any explicit supernaturalities involved.
   Should be covered by Born Lucky.

2. "Manipulating probability" — a supernatural power to change (usually increase) probability of a certain event/outcome happening.
   Examples: Lady Bernkastel from Umineko no Naku Koro ni (as said above), Arcueid Brunestud's Marble Phantasm from Tsukihime (capable of, for example, creating vacuum by driving the molecules of air away via manipulating Brownian motion).
   Should be under Winds of Destiny, Change!.

3. "Manipulating luck" — a supernatural power to give or take away "luck" to/from oneself or others; "luck" being defined as "increased probability of events beneficial for the character".
   Examples: Tewi Inaba from Touhou (explicit power of "granting luck to humans"), can't think of any more right now.
   Not currently a distinct tope, as far as I know, and can be (mis-)put under either of the previous two. May need a trope page, if it's worth it.

(edit: in hindsight, it is pretty much what you explained in the post above; but at least made more clear)

edited 20th Mar '12 12:57:32 PM by OneMore

Bump.

Any thoughts about renaming, or splitting (#2 and #3 in my previous post)?

Let's spin off the "luck superpower" trope, clean the examples, and keep an eye on it. If it continues to collect misuse after that, we'll try renaming.

"Probability Power"?

I like that!

redirects are free

Except they're not talking about redirects. There are multiple tropes in here.

The trope this page is describing is a Stock Super Power. All "other tropes" found here are just misuse and The Same But More Specific respectively.

If the character is just lucky that's not this trope. If their luck is supernatural but not conscience that's Power Incontinence or its not an example of this trope. Power over luck and power over probability is about as distinct as Magic and Magick(not at all). One is just more likely to be used by writers trying to be more "serious".

As for Winds Of Destiny Change, redirects are free.

edited 1st May '12 5:34:56 PM by Cider

Cider, we were talking about names for the tropes we're going to spin off. Not for this trope.

Probability Manipulation and Luck Manipulation seem good to me if that's how you intend to split this. Well, I guess you're only splitting off the luck based one, but this just seems like a bad name to me.

edited 1st May '12 6:08:33 PM by Arha

I already made a YKTTW for Luck Manipulation Power, but I suck at descriptions, so any help is welcome (Up For Grabs).

I'm fine with this.

The Wheel Of Time example is correct. Mat Cauthon actually has magical luck.

Yo, I saw the TRS thread for Luck Manipulation Power and wrote a new description. Does that look like what people were talking about doing in here?