Five-Man Band cleanup

The Brute can be a stand alone trope, as long as the character is still in a team (not an ensemble). Being an Evil Counterpart trope, it can be helpful in determining who has the role by comparing it to The Big Guy.

The Chick sandbox has numbers on it because The Big Guy has numbers on his page. I could change it to bullets on both.

Regarding Webcomics, for the webcomic Grrl Power, it should go: Leader = Maxima, Lancer = Halo, Big Guy = Anvil, Smart Guy = Dabbler, Chick = Arianna, Sixth Ranger = Harem

(This matches the six main characters shown at the header of the webcomic; Heatwave is only a minor character. Harem is a known traitor in-comic. Halo is clearly the foil for Maxima; Arianna is the heart of the team and the only one without powers). $.02

edited 20th Jan '16 4:20:50 AM by Spark9

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

There is no Sixth Ranger in the five man band. That is a plot trope, not a character trope.

any other thoughts on The Chick's Sandbox

Can I ask what The Chick is supposed to be? I'm struggling to understand the sandbox description. It's offering so many options that it feels like several tropes mashed together. I can see people looking at that and thinking any girl in a group will be able to classify as "The Chick" because she can be squashed into any of the available options.

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

I still think this is unnecessary, and any change should go through TRS.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

The unifying aspect of The Chick is that she's the emotional Heart. But that can be expressed in different ways, and can have different impacts on the other characters or the plot.

Most of these variants are at least implied on the Playing With page, and have been accepted in this cleanup thread on a case by case basis.

Do you feel like The Leader, The Lancer, The Big Guy, or The Smart G Uy offer too many options?

Do you have any suggestions to make it more clear?

Yes I still plan to go to TRS, but not everyone frequents the TRS so i'm trying to gain opinions and edits here before hand. In no way would any edits be unilateral. They can't even be considering the page is locked.

edited 2nd Feb '16 3:51:36 PM by acrobox

Got a question- On Minions, there's a Five Bad Band example without much context, as well as separate trope entities for the respective membership tropes (i.e. Scarlet as Big Bad).

I don't really think there is a Five Bad Band in the film and I'm questioning some (but not all of) the examples.

So basically (for anyone who hasn't seen it), you have this supervillain Scarlet Overkill who is in Unholy Matrimony with her loving husband, Herb, and they hire the three Minions as welll... minions. So it is accurate to label Scarlet as Big Bad and tech guy Herb as an Evil Genius.

However, because of the nature of the relationship, while there's five "people" involved, it's not really a Band. And similarly, because the Minions all report to Scarlet equally, I wouldn't say Kevin qualifies as The Dragon. And without a Band, Stuart isn't really The Dark Chick.

I can kind of see the reasoning behind Bob being The Brute, although it seems weird given that the tech used by the Minions was essentially assigned at random and Bob is basically an innocent Cheerful Child.

Edit- And I know more about Minions than I probably should (what can I say, I like them/the movie).

edited 4th Feb '16 7:39:25 AM by Hodor2

Yeah, the Minions are more a collective The Brute than anything else (as Mooks often are). They exist to be Scarlet's muscle, plain and simple.

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Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

And at best, Kevin would be a Mook Lieutenant (not The Dragon to Scarlet)- although I don't think she really thinks of the Minions as individuals enough to see him as their leader, even though he is.

I don't mind the description for The Leader. While it has a long description with several categories, it's nicely laid out and every paragraph seems quite clear about the point it's making.

However, I do have the same clarity issues with The Lancer, The Big Guy and The Smart Guy that I cited above for The Chick sandbox.

Your comment here:

This explanation did a very good job of summarising the entire point - and flexibility - of The Chick to me (thank you for that, by the way). In terms of the further detail and examples that a trope description may need, I think The Leader has handled that far better than any of the others.

edited 5th Feb '16 2:42:01 PM by Wyldchyld

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

Then what would be the difference between The Chick and The Heart?

edited 6th Feb '16 6:30:24 AM by DeisTheAlcano

Wrong thread.

edited 5th Feb '16 11:22:33 PM by Adept

My understanding is that there isn't. The Chick is an artifact from the days when it was the only female role in the traditional Five-Man Band. The Heart is the gender-neutral version of The Chick.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

edited 5th Feb '16 11:54:00 PM by ObsidianFire

The other important thing about The Chick is that its Always Female, so I think how that intersects with being The Heart is also important. The Heart x Femininity

For instance The Heart x Strength could be a Gentle Giant. Or The Heart X Heroism could be a Magnetic Hero. A charismatic leader could have traits of The Heart. So The Heart isn't necessarily just a gender neutral chick.

edited 6th Feb '16 3:22:49 AM by acrobox

Did the current versions come from TRS or just normal tweaking? I wouldn't mind doing a bit of description improvement for them in this thread. I like the general layout for them, but I agree that the definitions themselves are a bit weak.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

tweaking overtime I believe.

The only reason The Chick didn't follow suit is because the page has been locked for a long time. That's why I wanted to catch it up to lok like the others.

But the others could get trimmed down too if we feel they've grown too far.

Someone just removed all the bullet points off of The Lancer yesterday.

edited 8th Feb '16 7:39:32 AM by acrobox

I would like clarification that it must be a core group with exactly five members? Because every webcomic listed that I read (about a third of them) has some point where they do not conform to this trope.

Ed from Digger dosnt even meet the rest of the characters beyond the main protagonist.

Should I purge them or do I wait?

The "five" in FMB is there for a reason, as is the "band". If they're not working together as a single team (which they aren't in Digger, IIRC), then it doesn't count.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Going through the Webcomics I read we have:

Digger: not a team at any point in the comic.

Ellgoonishshive: Also not a real team beyond eating lunch together and Catalina doesnt even do that. Calling Susan The Smart Guy when she is sitting next to Ted is silly and while Eliot can be The Hero he is not The Leader.

Grrl Power: This team has between ten and sixteen members, not five.

Sluggy Freelance: Zoe is not The Lancer, Gwynn is definitely not The Chick. The team does not really play out like a Five-Man Band at all. As for the bRoken constellation Zo.H.A.S is not The Chick, Team Pet maybe. This may be a parody of this trope.

Dan and Mabs fury adventure: I dont think Lorenda is ever part of the original adventure party. It also omits the character Merlitz who is.

Goblins: Complains about names is not The Leader. Chief is not The Smart Guy, well beyond being One Sane Man any way. Fumbles is male and shows no other signs of being The Chick.

Guilded Age:Bandit is not The Chick, her primary MO is to stab people and steal stuff.I also question Gravedust being The Lancer.

Wapsi Square: Is Jin really a The Chick? She is mostly mentally broken and suicidal.

Darths and Droids: This feels very shoehorned. What makes Ben The Big Guy? How is Sally The Chick? Pete seems more like a The Smart Guy wannabe.

Troy does not have a page on TV Tropes and does no longer exist on the internet. Not even the internet way back machine can find the actual comic any more. Should it still be on the webcomic page?

The page is locked so I cant remove even the most egregious examples.

Once again, the archetype that people have the most trouble with is what qualifies as The Chick, seeing that the page has been locked so long it hasn't kept up with the times like the others have.

Would most people agree that what the sandbox is now is a good launching point to TRS it?

edited 8th Mar '16 12:43:12 PM by acrobox

The Chick hasn't kept up with the times because it's kind of a dated trope. That's the reason efforts to broaden its definition have always been so troubled.

is that a yes or a no?

or if no input?

Wondering about two examples on the Percy Jackson page and also the opinion on Co-Dragons, since one example has this.

• Five Bad Band: The Titans and Luke
  • Big Bad: Kronos
  • Co-Dragons: Hyperion, who the second-in-command of the Titan Army, and Luke Castellan, Kronos' primary demigod agent, the latter acting as The Heavy for the first two books. Both hold equal authority under Kronos.
  • The Brute: Atlas, the strongest Titan, who is just as manipulative as the others.
  • The Evil Genius: Prometheus, who is the craftiest of the Titans, can see into the future and sees that the Titans will win.
  • The Dark Chick: Krios, who feels overshadowed by the rest, tasks include defending the Titans' fortress Mount Othrys, and "babysitting" Atlas.

• Five-Man Band: The quest mates in The Titan's Curse:
  • The Leader: Zoe Nightshade, who leads the quest on behalf of Artemis.
  • The Lancer: Thalia Grace, who has the most conflict with Zoe.
  • The Smart Guy: Grover Underwood, who brings his knowledge of nature to the table.
  • The Big Guy: Percy Jackson, who is the best at sword fighting and more Book Dumb than the rest.
  • The Chick: Bianca DiAngelo, the youngest of the group and newest member of the Hunters of Artemis.

edited 23rd Mar '16 6:05:13 AM by k410ren

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