Does Not Illustrate: Weaponized Exhaust

I haven't played an MMO that didn't feature damage numbers being displayed in some form or another. Even the racing MMO Drift City featured damage numbers when you rammed your car into enemy racers.

But for the record, the yellow numbers are damage being caused to the enemy. The red numbers are damage being caused to myself, and the grey number is my ship's shields regenerating.

"I haven't played an MMO that didn't..."

He means what about people who haven't played any MMO at all.

Hard to say, given that I am familiar with that convention, but seems pretty clear even without the numbers.

edited 7th Jul '12 3:02:35 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

^ That's what bothers me about the image, though. It isn't obvious what's happening if you're not familiar with the conventions of MMOs.

(And for those thinking "Why didn't you bring this up before?", I just forgot that I had been in this thread before, and hadn't been following its turns.)

edited 7th Jul '12 4:37:41 PM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Damage numbers are pretty much standard in all RPGs, not just MMOs.

But thinking about it, the trope isn't really about damage per se. It's about engines being used as weapons. It would still be an example if the target's Deflector Shields repelled the attack or something.

edited 8th Jul '12 12:22:50 AM by DiamondWeapon

Given the limitations of static images, though, at least to me it's not clear that the image in question is depicting exhaust being used as a weapon. Without knowing what the numbers mean, it could just as well be a way to hide from the targeted ship with an overglorified smoke screen.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Nevermind, wrong thread.

edited 8th Jul '12 4:39:56 PM by Willbyr

Getting back on topic, I'd really like to add in my suggested caption to complete the picture.

Go for it.

Does this count?

Belief or disbelief rests with you.

That looks like an accident, honestly.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Especially given it's Fry.

edited 10th Jul '12 6:57:07 AM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Yeah, that was an accident.

If it wasn't a mistake (I know, I watched the episode), it would have been excellent.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Surely being accidental doesn't disqualify it from being a de facto weapon. A quick read of the trope didn't seem to indicate that intent is a part of the trope definition, merely that a drive be used to inflict damage. The Futurama image seems like an effective depiction to me.

Even if intent is decided to be important, we could always include a caption pointing out that Fry is clumsy enough to produce this trope accidentally.

(If there's a non-lethal version of the Accidental Murder trope then we might link such a caption to that.)

My Games & Writing

"Accident? So what?" occurred to me also. The image is great.

edited 10th Jul '12 7:20:12 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

The thing is that a lot of stuff (just about everything, actually) can be called "weaponized" using that reasoning. I know about Improvised Weapon and Improbable Weapon User, but that still requires it being done on purpose.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

edited 10th Jul '12 10:00:07 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Yeah but how do you "weaponize" something in the first place? You INTENTIONALLY do it. An accident may cause damage, but in order to be weaponized, it has to be the user's intentions to cause harm to others through the exhaust or engines.

Bingo.

I'm not sure that I agree.

Consider the comedy trope (for which I don't know the TV Tropes name, I'm afraid - it was, as I recall, what I was looking for when I found Accidental Murder) in which a character, otherwise incompetent and surrounded by mooks, manages to take them all out through accidental strikes while attempting to perform other actions (picking up a coin, turning to talk to someone, etc.). The character isn't portrayed as intending to harm the mooks; they just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In that case I'd argue that, if the character is doing this with an object (a steel rod or plank of wood, for example), then that object is an accidental weapon, despite the lack of intent.

(In this case the one being harmed is (presumably) an ally, but that just makes it friendly fire as well as accidental.)

Simply put, it's acting as a weapon, whether intended as such or not.

Which seems reasonable to me.

edited 11th Jul '12 8:32:38 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

My Games & Writing

I definitively can't see it being used as a weapon. The fact that the breathing tubes come from the same direction and the reaction of the people don't fit.

As for the current page image, the space ship looks like it's flying the wrong way around for weaponized exhaust.

edited 11th Jul '12 8:35:39 AM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Stretching a word beyond all rationality is "reasonable"? Huh, learn something new every day...

Less sarcastically, intent does matter. For example, a drunk driver who isn't able to avoid running over a pedestrian crossing the street because they were too smashed to react in time (or may not have even been able to realize there was a need for a reaction in the first place) doesn't qualify for a Car Fu entry. Likewise, someone accidentally blasting someone with their exhaust because they either couldn't do otherwise or didn't realize what was going to happen isn't weaponizing the exhaust, they're just an idiot/klutz/incompetent boob.

edited 11th Jul '12 8:40:12 AM by Nohbody

All your safe space are belong to Trump

I think that we disagree on how widely it is rational to apply the word. :P

Given further thought, however, I think that I concede your point.

In that case, my intuition is to wonder how heavily we should weigh the definition of "weapon" here - while the title does say "weaponised", I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a good idea to extend the definition of the trope to cover accidental harm; essentially, to mean "exhausts can do damage as well as propel" - unless there's a supertrope that I'm missing.

Finally, I have a suspicion that I'm letting largely-unrelated emotional elements on my side cloud my judgement, so I am going to bow out of the discussion, with my apologies.

My Games & Writing

"Stretching a word beyond all rationality" is an extreme overstatement.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

If it's just an accident, it implies it's a dangerous tool rather than a weapon. While that's pretty much the trope, you're not using it as a weapon if you only hurt someone by accident.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.