Does Not Illustrate: The Loonie

The Loonie is, and I quote, "the Tabletop RPG player who plays mostly for the fun of doing silly things within the game". So of course this gets illustrated by... a gold coin with a duck on it. Seriously, whuh? I suppose that's some kind of joke but I seriously have no idea where this is coming from.

The best example I can think of is the last panel of this. Possibly two panels of this ("I tie the rat to a stick")

edited 22nd Sep '14 9:04:29 AM by Spark9

I have to assume that the bird on the coin is a loon. However, I agree that this is a weak Visual Pun...and when I'm dissing that, you know it's weak. As to the suggestions...eeeeehhhhhh, the OOTS one works better than the VG Cats one but I'm not sure that one panel has all the context needed.

edited 22nd Sep '14 7:10:11 PM by Willbyr

The Canadian dollar is called loonie for obvious reasons.

The OotS one works, although I wouldn't mind a better suggestion.

My only objection to the OotS one is that it's already on Chaotic Stupid.

I think it's better on this trope.

Pull the current. There's not even an explanation for those of use not familiar with Canadian currency. The joke is like JAFAAC for non Canadians.

Considering how this is not one of those omnipresent tropes, I don't think a Visual Pun makes a good page image anyhow. Especially since this is not the trope where you can guess the definition by reading the title alone.

Yeah, I'm inclined to move the pic on Chaotic Stupid to this page.

Move. It fits better here.

Can't really see how the OOTS example illustrates "tabletop RPG player". But then again, I've never played tabletop RPG, so perhaps it might be alluding to some rules/gameplay I'm not familiar about?

The image on Chaotic Stupid doesn't even seem to illustrate that anyway.

It'll be much better here.

Question: what, if anything, is the difference between The Loonie and Chaotic Stupid? Because I'm seeing a huge amount of overlap here.

I think the difference is that The Loonie is just silly, while Chaotic Stupid is usually actively destructive.

Anyway, I dug deep inside myself to Photoshop the dialog in the VG Cats strip into the panel with the appropriate illustration:

edited 24th Sep '14 8:38:53 AM by shigmiya64

I don't agree. The traditional definition of The Loonie is "the guy who will do anything for a cheap laugh, including casting a fireball at ground zero".

Looking over the pages again, I do actually feel that every Loonie is Chaotic Stupid, and that every Chaotic Stupid character is The Loonie (and both pages exist because they come from two very different classification schemes, in the same sense that we could have a page for The Spike and The Munchkin which are also essentially the same). There does not appear to be, in practice, any distinction between the pages.

Chaotic Stupid seems to describe the character, while The Loonie describes the player.

My Barbarian punches every wizard in the face (even when I need their help) = Chaotic Stupid

My Character punches every barkeep in the face just to piss everyone off = The Loonie

The Loonie specifically applies to players who do random things because they think it would be fun to mess with everything. Such players are not actually stupid enough to do such things seriously; their comedic routine is more like a facade—a specific type of roleplaying, if you will, with the goal of silly fun.

Chaotic Stupid, on the other hand, refers to characters in general. Such characters actually do take their actions seriously but will do the most random things for no apparent reason—hence the "stupid" in the title. They're not running on Insane Troll Logic in an attempt to be funny—they're just plain crazy.

To put it another way, the Loonie will often roleplay as a character who gives the appearance of being Chaotic Stupid, but with a key difference: he runs on Rule of Funny. A mage who cinderizes every character your party meets, even the helpful ones, would certainly qualify as Chaotic Stupid, but if the Loonie decides that such behavior wouldn't be funny, he won't do it.

With that in mind, I'm opposed to moving the Oot S image to The Loonie on the grounds that it's depicting a character rather than an actual player and said character isn't just trying to be funny—he really is that stupid/crazy.

edited 24th Sep '14 3:21:48 PM by MrL1193

Clock is set.

Well I might be biased, but I think the picture I posted in 13 is the strongest suggestion.

In the absence of any alternatives or opposition, I'm going to go ahead and put 13 on the page.

edited 18th Oct '14 8:22:43 PM by shigmiya64

For the record, I agree with 13.

edited 18th Oct '14 10:25:51 PM by Gaon

Ok, we got the new pic, and I agree with the explanation that Chaotic Stupid is the character whereas The Loonie is the player (and therefore doesn't apply to any media that don't have a "player", including Real Life).

Last thing for this thread: I think we should change the quote. Unless you're familiar with either Mr. Welsh or with Kate Moon (and most readers probably aren't) the quote doesn't say anything at all about the trope. Indeed there's nothing particularly loonie about basing a character on some drummer.

Since The Loonie originally comes from this classic text, we should probably have a quote from there.

A more clear Mr. Welsh quotation would probably be better in that case.

Why Welsh though? He's not particularly well known, nor does the trope originate from him.

There is a Page Quote Discussion thread in the Projects forum.

edited 19th Oct '14 3:36:31 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Neither of those are relavant for a good page quotation.