Weapon Of Choice clean up

I've noticed that issues about Weapon Of Choice and subtropes, so I thought it was about time a thread has been made to adresses this.

Weapon Of Choice is about how a certain weapon reflects its users' personality or traits associated with the character. It's being constantly misused for "Character X uses Y weapon''. They also attract a lot of Zero Context Example entries. A couple of months ago, The Archer was renamed to Archer Archetype and new description because of this problem.

edited 14th May '13 1:45:44 AM by MacronNotes

Yeah, I'd noticed that problem with WOC, as well, but hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it outside of the works I watch (particularly the character sheets for The Walking Dead, where the misuse was rampant).

Not sure this fits better in Long Term Projects than in Short Term ones, since it's just cleanup of a trope that doesn't need reworking, but either forum it's something that needs addressing, and it's really too big for just one person.

[edit] As for Improbable Weapon User (Improbable Weapon redirects to IWU), that might just be better handled in the ZCE thread, as the weapon tropes listed on IWU are just "this item used as a weapon" and don't attach any special meaning to their use.

edited 14th May '13 1:28:50 AM by Nohbody

Sorry, I actually meant Improvised Weapon, not Improbable Weapon User.

edited 14th May '13 1:33:24 AM by MacronNotes

I skimmed a couple of subpages of Improvised Weapon (VG, film, literature, webcomic), but didn't really see all that much of a problem outside of some ZCEs.

IW doesn't attach any special meaning to the use of non-weapon objects as weapons beyond "it's what's available", so it doesn't have the problem that WOC has.

edited 14th May '13 1:42:38 AM by Nohbody

Ah, alright so they won't be included then. Anyways, which WOC subtrope should be dealt with first?

Does this need it's own thread? It sounds like it's a ZCE problem and can be fixed in that thread.

I don't know about the specific weapons tropes listed under Weapon Of Choice (which is why I hadn't yet responded), but WOC's problem isn't just ZCEs, but that people are misusing it as "character uses this weapon", instead of the actual definition of the weapon being used for characterization of its owner.

I still think this would be better suited to the Short Term Projects forum, though.

A lot of the related weapon tropes (i.e. An Axe To Grind) seem to suffer the same ZCE problems, but some of them may currently be defined as "a character who uses X weapon" with no meaning attached.

So the issue is with the description of the tropes and the ZCEs in them? Should this be mentioned in the trope description thread?

Also, to ensure people don't add not-examples while the cleaning process is still happening, would a message in comment markup help? Like, "%%Note: This is about CHARACTERIZATION and not 'character uses this weapon,'" or something like that.

Comment markup text is good.

Bumping, since we have a thread that deals with Weapon Of Choice tropes now.

Locking, since we are using that thread now.