Misused: Expy

Seconded. For one thing, recycling your own character is seen as a lot more morally and legally acceptable than ripping off someone else's.

edited 4th Nov '12 6:59:11 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

I disagree. And that solves nothing in regards to expy, since as I said, people will defer to as it's easy, quick and memorable and use it over whatever we find. We don't need to break this down further-it already has a number of subtropes that get confused for it.

The thing with the tropes that are confused with Expy is that they're not supertropes, subtropes, or sister tropes. They're just tropes that happen to have similar meanings with no clear relationship with one another.

My proposal would be very distinguishable from the supertrope Expy because it clearly defines itself as a subtrope and would clearly be about the creator reusing his/her characterizations.

Thirded. At least the characters under the same author/production team, we can observe certain patterns and traits that carry over from work to work. The way Expy is defined now, it's literally a free-for-all in terms of how any one troper can connect Character A to Character B.

edited 4th Nov '12 10:52:18 AM by MegaJ

So? That doesn't change the fact that it's arbitrary. The only thing that changes is that if a creator uses two similar characters, it's easier to tell it's a legitimate observable pattern instead of someone seeing similarities where there are none. It's not a trope by itself, and Expy is far too established to be swayed.

...Which still does nothing to fix Expy itself. The problem this trope has isn't the number of variations, it's the fact that people pothole it because they see more similarities between their favourite characters than there actually exist. If you moved all the verifiable stuff outside of Expy, you'd have yet another mess.

We cannot dispose of the page or rename it, because there's off-site use. And if that off-site use is making no such distinction either, it's unlikely it will catch on in the wiki even if we split it.

edited 4th Nov '12 11:17:31 AM by lu127

I think Fountain of Expies is probably the best place to look to see how to clarify the definition of Expy.

Earlier in the thread, I proposed that I make a Special Efforts thread to move all bad examples based on audience perception to Counterpart Comparison instead. Counterpart Comparison is clearly defined to be when the audience sees similarities between two characters, and it's a subjective trope, too. That's something we can do to Expy itself.

edited 4th Nov '12 12:53:41 PM by WaxingName

The problem, as has been pointed out several times, is that the term has taken on a life of its own, and we're no longer in charge of the definition. Using the term in different way from how it's used in the wild would be foolish in the extreme. Starting a special efforts to try to enforce what is now a non-standard definition would be doubly foolish.

My proposal wouldn't enforce a non-standard definition. It would actually reinforce the definition of Expy that we have now (intentional imitation of a character). And it's also enforcing the standard definition of an Audience Reaction, Counterpart Comparison, which is a good place for most of the bad examples to go to.

I think the main difference with similar characters by the same creator is that it indicates that that creator has a "well" he likes to go to, either because if it worked once, it'll work again, because the same factors went into the original character to begin with, or because he'd like to continue working on the same character like he already has been.

Which is why I keep suggesting not changing the definition, but making it a Super-Trope and starting from there and creating a trope for the old definition.

I still think having so many tropes that over-lap almost completely is part of it. We need to tighten up the other reasonable facsimile tropes to set them apart from Expy

edited 4th Nov '12 6:37:20 PM by shoboni

Waxing: I agree with that motion (and fundamental definition of 'expy'), but I think we should wait to rearrange everything until we straighten out exactly what all these variations are, so we don't have to reorganise multiple times.

Alrighty then, let's make a list of these tropes with these similar definitions, then.

This probably isn't a comprehensive list of the supposed definitions, problems with them, and/or what I feel we should do with them, but it's as best as I can do. Please respond if there are any you disagree with:

• Expy: The root one, supposed to be intentional similarity of a character to another. Commonly confused with all of the following tropes.
• Captain Ersatz: Supposed to be identical in everthing but name only by a different creator and different work. Commonly confused with Expy.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be that this is unquestionably the character, but the name or identity isn't mentioned. Also, the character is supposed to not play a role in the story (hence "cameo") Very problematic because it's easily confused with both Expy and Captain Ersatz.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Not too problematic, since it's clearly based on real-life celebrities.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Supposed to be identical to another character in the same universe or work. Should be used in place of Expy when it comes to characters in the same series/work.
• Distaff Counterpart: This one is way too broad in its use. It has the very vague definition of "female counterpart", but there's a lot of bad audience perception-based examples going around, not unlike the main Expy page. We're going to need to redefine this a little.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: Yet another trope that suffers from bad audience perception-based examples. Is easily confusible with Expy and Captain Ersatz.

And now here's what I feel will be a big solution:

• Counterpart Comparison: This is a very good page that we can use as (for lack of a better term) a "dumping ground" for all the bad audience perception-based examples, because this trope very specifically defines itself as being when the audience notes similarities between two characters from different works. It's very broad, and a YMMV reaction, so it's very useful.

edited 5th Nov '12 11:08:02 AM by WaxingName

There is yet another clusterfuck which is in TRS-Alternate Company Equivalent.

edited 5th Nov '12 10:17:03 AM by lu127

Will add.

I can see that being salvageable if it's dealing with direct intended "counterparts" to compete in the market, Like Sam Fisher and Solid Snake.

But how are we supposed to know when they're direct competing counterparts?

You can usually tell when one company is trying to mimic another in that way.

Alright then. Can I set up that Special Efforts to clean up all these pages, then?

If anything at first, can we at least note on all the pages that any coincidental example should go on Counterpart Comparison to at least put a damper on that?

We'd need some guideline for knowing if it was or not.

Does that mean we're going to restrict to creator-admitted examples only and make Expy Trivia?

I meant that with the trope where the resemeblence is accidental we need a way of knowing if it was accidental or intentional from the creators.

We really don't need to move the useless Fan Wank somewhere else. Just delete it if it's inaccurate.