Misused: Mes A Crowd

This is a specific plot trope in which someone duplicates himself to do chores, and Hilarity Ensues as a result. But there is a ton of misuse for self-duplication in general:

• All of the Fan Works, Toys, and Web Original folder
• All of the Anime and Manga subpage
• All of the Comic Books page
• All of the Movies subpage (except for Multiplicity)
• All of the Literature subpage (except for The Duplicate)
• All of the Live Action TV subpage
• All of the Tabletop Games subpage
• All of the Video Games subpage
• All of the Webcomics subpage (except for The Wotch, Dr Mc Ninja, Blip, and Real Life Comics)
• Most of the Web Originals subpage
• The Western Animation subpage has many more good examples (for obvious reasons), but a few do fail, like Transformers Animated, Batman The Animated Series, The Batman, Ben10, and Danger Mouse, amongst others.

Not one of the examples not mentioned has anything to do with chores, or the character gaining an Evil Twin or ruining his reputation when the clones degrade or go wild.

I don't see any reason to not rewrite that first paragraph to match the misuse. My main question is, what, if any, overlap is there with Self-Duplication?

Opened.

I personally always thought this was a ton of clones, like a crowd of them.

It's definitely a subtrope of Self-Duplication. The main difference I see between the two descriptions is that Me's a Crowd implies that the clones have some of their own sentience or consciousness independent of the creator, so things can go wrong, whereas Self-Duplication covers both this situation and situations in which the main consciousness stays completely in control.

May I suggest a rename?

Aside from that, I believe Self-Duplication was made long after there's Me's a Crowd. That may explain the misuse.

This has been brought up before [1] and to be simple the solution seemed pretty clear last time but we couldn't get a change for the crowner. There needs to be a page for the current definition of Me's a Crowd, there's needs to be a page for Self-Duplication and there needs to be a page for Cloning in general and actually I could have done all the page creation myself but we need people to go through and change the wicks.

We already have Our Clones Are Identical as an index for cloning so its makes a current defacto supertrope page, we just need a description and examples moved over to it. Self-Duplication now exists. Me's a Crowd was fixed, got split up so it became harder to fix and then went bad again. The name still sucks at making it clear at what it actually is about.

Maybe call it Doppelganger Antics? Or Doppelganger Hijinks?

Me's a Crowd has 843 wicks and 1000+ inbounds though, so I doubt a rename is really feasible. If it's so interchageable with Self-Duplication, why not just merge the two?

If someone is willing to the leg work I would say yeah.

I'd actually redirect it to the general cloning trope page since about 50% of the trope usage at the last survey was not Self-Duplication. Like a Trope Transplant plus a rename. That way, if some wicks are still left unfixed and it seems unclear what trope it is meant to be, the link will take you to the broadest possible trope.

edited 29th Dec '14 8:22:16 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

I'm not seeing misuse here so much as an overly-specific definition that fails to account for the fact that Tropes Are Not Narrow. As soon as you start playing with the trope, quite a bit of that first paragraph becomes meaningless: What if the character is an adult and assigns them to do their job? Or the character is a workaholic and their clones are assigned tasks like going on dates with their fiancee and mastering golf to impress clients while the character works at the lab 24/7? Or they actually form a sports team? What if this is Played for Drama rather than for laughs? Is using them to form a Clone Army a chore? (The provider of the page quote would suggest the answer to that last one is "yes".)

My suggested fix: Just strip this trope down to Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There are not just one or two duplicates of a person, but enough to start a sports team. This can lead to any number of situations, such as the original assigning the clones to do things the original does not want to do.

Self-Duplication and Twin Maker cover duplication as a superpower/magic spell/Phlebotinum effect. Cloning Blues, Other Me Annoys Me, Evil Me Scares Me, Clones Are People, Too, Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot, Gone Horribly Wrong, and Gone Horribly Right cover various forms of "having duplicates of yourself (or being a duplicate) sucks". What is unique and tropable in Me's a Crowd is having a large number of duplicates.

edited 20th Jan '15 4:08:05 PM by Scorpion451

There's also the fact that the name sucks.

Taken literally, it just means that there's a lot of clones, regardless of the source and/or what happens after. It's still meaningless.

Clock is set.

I suppose the thing to do may be to figure out what exactly the misuse is. Is there anything to it beyond "many clones are created"?

having many clones of you leads to wacky hijinks.

Actually, I see many uses for serious multiple cloning.

Merge, as suggested above.

merge in what way?

I agree with post #8 above.

I could see a rename but point the old name toward Self-Duplication.

A rename to Clone Hijinks or something and not limit it to something as limiting as housework as out of control clone hijinks or unintended clone hijinks is something rather common doing housework, multiple dates, time travel or requiring to be two places at once.

edited 24th Feb '15 3:17:36 AM by Memers

Extending clock.

Anyone opposed to 20?

Not me, although I still note I see plenty of use for serious (as opposed to humorous) of multiple cloning. Are those just misuse?

I like Clone Hijinks for the current definition (perhaps with some expansion for non-household-chores, like going to work and staying home with family) but we do need a trope for too many clones.

"too many clones."

Huh? This doesn't sound tropable to me.