Does Not Illustrate: Power At A Price

While you could possibly surmise the "price" element from this picture, nothing about it illustrates power. For all we know it's just some random guy who's being turned into a skeleton.

Well, it's not great, but it shows part of the trope (probably the most important part to illustrate), and it's not misleading in any way. And the caption fills the missing part in well enough.

edited 10th Mar '14 6:01:20 PM by AnotherDuck

Or even a guy holding a skeleton hand.

Mozenrath's upposed to be a wizard of some type. We could just add a second panel to show the power part of the equation.

Closest I could find.

We could just run with that on its own, honestly. Glowing hand = power. Said glowing hand being skeletal = cost.

Ehhhhh...seems closer to Red Right Hand than this trope.

I tried looking for a picture of Mozenrath using his power, but I can't find much. The best I can find is fan art. [1]◊

That was already linked by someone else. It's not terrible, I suppose.

To be fair, I spent that entire time looking for it while having not refreshed the page.

Hey, let's just say "great minds" and all that.

Edit: This actually reminds me of the IP thread for Blood Magic, since vanished into the forum ether, where no less than three of us chimed in with the exact same image suggestion. Good times.

edited 10th Mar '14 7:15:06 PM by Earnest

Pictures of him using magic by themslves don't really illustrate it to me. I like the horrified reaction to the skeletal hand, but without that he sort of looks like a lich, rather than a wizard whose magic has stripped away his flesh.

'Phenomenal Cosmic Powers!... Itty bitty living space.'

That seems clear enough.

Pending other suggestions, I'm good with that.

That appears to be two different genies (Jafar in the top picture, Genie in the bottom) and it mostly seems to show a ritual to trap a Sealed Evil in a Can.

So I prefer the current. Note that the "power" in the trope doesn't have to be magic; it can be any form of power, including political; and the character shown clearly wears clothes that show his stature.

That's actually the good Genie in both, he just changed his color from blue to red to showcase his phenomenalness. It's all from the same 8 second clip.

That said, here's a couple of different top images.

That's good to know, but it still looks like Sealed Evil in a Can (or in the good genie's case, Sealed Good in a Can), rather than this trope here.

(edit) And I just found out that Sealed Good in a Can has an image from the same sequence, and the exact same quote underneath. Sorry, I don't think that's a good fit for Power at a Price.

edited 27th Mar '14 10:35:53 AM by Spark9

Any illustration we come up with will, by the nature of Power at a Price as an index, overlap or apply to some other trope. As such, I don't really think we can come up with something that won't be equally viable as a page pic to another trope, so personally I don't see why this looking like either of the Sealed tropes would be a bad thing.

That said, do you have any suggestions?

I'm actually fine with the current pic; it shows a powerful person that's paid an obvious price for that.

I've tried googling for alternatives but I mainly end up with graphs depicting electricity cost; I supposed we could use that as a Visual Pun, but it's kind of lame.

My issue with the current is that the "price" is clearly displayed, but not so much the "power". It's really just his clothing that could infer that he's a wizard.

As I pointed out earlier, the trope is not just about magical power. For example, political power also qualifies.

Don't say no one listens.

The pic is from a comparison of president's aging once in office. There's actual science to back up that the stress does age them faster than the 4 to 8 year period would otherwise. Image source. A wee bit of research.

edited 27th Mar '14 6:33:37 PM by Earnest

That's actually pretty clever.

I agree. Most examples are magic, but this works well. Also, this seems like something that would make a good index. Can we do that like we did for Stock Poses?

If it's going to be the President one, maybe replace Obama with Clinton? The former is not done yet, and the latter is more dramatic anyway IMO.