I probably shouldn't judge a story by its tropes but I like the sound of it so far!
Have you thought about drawing inspiration from the Power Trio page itself? Just running through the list I'd say that Genki Girl sounds like Beauty, Short, Mage, Id, and Squire, while the Snark Knight sounds like Brains, Thin, Fighter, Superego, and Knave, which would mean that by the numbers you have vacancies for Brawn, Big, Thief, Ego, and Knight. Basically it sounds like you have the extremes covered and you need some kind of straightforward stabilising weight to keep everything balanced, which usually tends to be the protagonist but doesn't have to be.
To me, the list suggests two main character archetypes to work from:
- My favourite brand of generic shounen protagonist, the idealistic young hero who appears simple-minded and tends to rely on brute force to solve problems, but ultimately learns to temper his raw power with surprising cunning.
- Working from the other end of the list, a big tough guy with a stoic or sensible outlook and perhaps some kind of down-to-earth wisdom that finds a compromise between the others' opinions.
You don't have to do anything like that of course but I thought I'd state the obvious. Also, the powers you mentioned cover defence, offence, and guile, so they're diverse enough not to apply to any specific archetype.
edited 24th Jun '12 12:23:15 PM by Kesteven
gloamingbrood.tumblr.com MSPA: The Superpower Lottery
I sincerely hope this is satire.
Apparently there are some things our rivals do more efficiently than we by not having to stop every five minutes for a consensus.-Worldmaker
Who's Vergo-san.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Because heaven forbid people describe stories with tropes. I hear there's an entire website that does that, what losers.
The time is now,
It's not about describing the story - its the writing to tropes was aimed at.
Just write it - You will write tropes without realising it. I wrote a Freudian Trio without realising. I hadn't even seen the FT entry when I wrote them. I then have someone reference this site, telling the 'superego' he's getting too introspective.
“I thought you wouldn’t touch old Sigmund Fraud with a bargepole?”
“Well, obviously I wouldn’t, but it’s not him I’m talking about. There is this thing on the internet called ‘Tropes’, sort of conventions used in fiction, that’s where Richard got ‘adorkable’ from. In a Freudian Trio, each man represents one of the three parts of the psyche. So in ‘The Three Musketeers’ there is Athos as the superego, Porthos being the id and Aramis as the ego.”
“Ah, a man of thought, a man of action, and the one who keeps them together,” Gabe said. He paused. “So I’d be the superego, and I suppose you think Jase was the id. You know real people are more complex than that, not some stereotype to fit into the story line?”
Write what the story needs, concentrate on getting the character to fit the story, be believable. If he/she doesn't fit a trope it doesn't matter.
edited 30th Jun '12 6:30:06 PM by LastHussar
Do the job in front of you.
In something I'm writing, there needs to be a Power Trio of Protagonists. So far, I've figured out two of them.
An A Dorkable Genki Girl with Making a Splash powers, and An Ice Person. A Broken Ace Snark Knight Dance Battler, with Flight, Crimefighting with Cash and a specific variant of Reality Warping that makes him instantly win any board game or card game.
I'm not sure who the third member will be, but for the Theme my story has, his powers will be Force Fields, making force-explosions, and a Compelling Voice / Charm Person ability.
read Sunrise Stardust and The Burned World by Jason Epsilon 725!