Extreme Trope Makeover: Five Rounds Rapid

Next on Extreme Trope Makeover: Five Rounds Rapid

Problems:

• Unintuitive name.
• Murky Description: Is it "The military always tries to use conventional weapons against a monster" or "The military uses small-arms against the monster"?
• Page Image — none
• Page Quote — is it a good example?
• No associated pages except Laconic and Quotes and the quotes page only has one that might not apply.

What else?

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I think I caught significant overlap with Shooting Superman in the description as well.

Fight smart, not fair.

I have to concur on multiple counts. The quote in the Quotes section doesn't account towards the trope at all. The name makes me think more of burst-fire than what the trope actually is. The Laconic Wiki section actually puts it better, that it's small arms against something Immune to Bullets.

However, I don't believe that it can be pictured effectively. It's a multi-step process, involving first small arms, then the Heroes need to beat the Military to kill the monster (it's either the Nuke, or the Applied Phlebotinum, according to the trope's description). That would make it extremely difficult to put a proper picture up that describes the trope.

Quote doesn't work either. It's more of "Shoot that guy there." other than 'Oh no! Our weapons are useless!' I suggest a quote that more accurately describes the trope. Same with the name. Though I can't think of a quote or a name off the top of my head that'll work.

Still need More Dakka, and it's about time to start a real WAAAAAGH.

Image Pickin' conversation

Also: I think that the definition is unclear. It might also be "using small arms against a target that requires something bigger", or others, which could in fact be depicted by a single image. Recommend nailing down definition before tweaking quote and image.

edited 15th Dec '10 12:57:12 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

I definitely think we should nail the definition down. If there's multiple tropes hiding here, it might be a good idea to break them off on their own. A fist step is to ask: what does the title Five Rounds Rapid sound like?

Fight smart, not fair.

It sounds like a related trope of More Dakka.

The one that popped into my mind was the battle field sound effect where nothing will be happening to the main characters and then a burst of fire will go off in the back ground. Don't ask me why.

Fight smart, not fair.

On the topic of the name, I didn't even make the connection to weapons until I read the description.

On the topic of that description, I think it could accurately be described as "Authority uses ineffective weapons on monster". The point is the establishment that the police or military or whoever it is that is heavily armed compared to the heroes can not deal with the threat using their weapons (and in some cases that they should just be leaving the heroes alone to do their job in the first place).

The current description, however, obviously does a poor job of explaining this. Based on this interpretation I don't think there is an overlap, but I would like to hear a second opinion on it.

Guess who, it's Kaosubaloo!

To borrow from Immune to Bullets, how about: "When the Monster of the Week is Immune to Bullets, the script often requires the police/army/whatever to demonstrate so with Five Rounds Rapid."

Full disclosure: I think I may have written at least part of that, originally.

There's clearly a lot of overlap between Immune to Bullets and Five Rounds Rapid. However, they're not the same. Immune to Bullets is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Five Rounds Rapid — you can have an immortal monster, but not try to shoot it. But you need Immune to Bullets for Five Rounds Rapid to mean anything.

It may be the distinction is subtle enough it isn't worth having two pages. It would take a serious grovel over the examples on both to make that call, and I'm not about to spend the time.

There's clearly some overlap with Shooting Superman, but it's a good-guy vs bad-guy point-of-view. There seem to be lots of those elsewhere, e.g. Hero with an F in Good vs Minion with an F in Evil. I'm not a heavy troper, though, so maybe I missed a memo and we're merging all those.

WRT to "conventional" vs "small": It's a little of both, often with a dash of arrogance thrown in. We've all seen it:

1. Monster of the week: "ROAR!!!"
2. Police cars drive up and disgorge cops
3. Cops fire bullets at monster
4. Monster either (1) doesn't notice or (2) just gets more angry

But a really big monster might justify a really big weapon, which is then still ineffectual, for exactly the same reasons. Witness countless scenes of the military firing rockets at the giant-monster-of-the-week in vain.

OTOH, firing large rockets at a relatively small monster might actually kill it. Maybe shooting the vampire doesn't work, but hitting it with a 500 pound bomb does. I'd say this still counts, if they tried shooting first. The distinction is what would normally seem like overkill is "just enough kill" for this monster.

Or so I see it.

edited 16th Dec '10 9:46:28 PM by DragonHawk

Shooting Superman is not hero specific.

Fight smart, not fair.

I thought this was "try five pistol rounds first and if that doesn't work, move up to something bigger". Obviously, ammunition for a handgun would be cheap compared to the big stuff the military would have at their disposal, and they'd want to save the big stuff for when it's really needed.

edited 16th Dec '10 10:41:53 PM by Roxor

Accidental mistakes are forgivable, intentional ones are not.

I think "X rounds rapid" just means, ultimately, "shoot that thing more than once".  ^*

One might say "two rounds rapid" or "ten rounds rapid", hypothetically.

edited 16th Dec '10 11:53:30 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

@Deboss: Actually, Shooting Superman is Hero specific. It's for when a group of mooks use weapons against a hero that they should KNOW won't work. It's pretty much a "Mooks with Genre Blindness" trope.

My Brother, and only member of my Trope Nakama

Hm, last time I read it, it included monsters.

Fight smart, not fair.

. Well, the scene the quote is from is a perfect Five Rounds Rapid moment.

The Red Shirt Army is being menaced by a flying demon thing. If I recall correctly, The Doctor even tells the Brigadier (who is commanding the redshirt army) that he won't be able to solve the situation with primitive human violence. Of course, the Brigadier tries anyway, and orders Jenkins to shoot the demon thing. Five times. Quickly. Of course, the demon thing is Immune to Bullets. Having demonstrated that, the plot moves on.

Now, maybe the quote doesn't really convey the full import of the scene. As has been noted, it's kind of tough to describe concisely. If we can find a better quote, I'm all for it.

(Doctor Who really likes this trope, in case you couldn't tell. That scene, or one very much like it, plays out all the time. The Doctor is a Technical Pacifist who at times gets quite preachy at us violent humans.)

edited 17th Dec '10 2:47:16 PM by DragonHawk

Then perhaps extending the quote would work out better to give better context?

Still need More Dakka, and it's about time to start a real WAAAAAGH.

Hm, that is a good idea: I think when the title is obscure/myopic but there isn't consensus to rename (unless, there is...?), then it helps make the page clearer if the page quote and page image depict something different that is also a case.

Strongly support changing the page quote to something other than the Trope Namer, it doesn't actually communicate much about the trope. Maybe add a second quote (above that one, it would be demoted) instead of replacing it, though, since the title makes very little sense without any context at all?

edited 17th Dec '10 4:38:51 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Crowner to rename or not added.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

It's got a lot of use for some reason.

Maybe people think it's the Doctor Who book?

Fight smart, not fair.

Out of the first 30 of the related to links (including the ptitle)

1. Ciaphas Cain — the phrase, not the trope.
2. Doctor Who: Quote, not trope.
3. Doctor Who 2010 Series: Quote, not trope
4. Doctor Who S23 E1 "The Mysterious Planet": quote not trope
5. Horus Heresy: The command, not the trope.

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1. Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: Misused to mean Immune to Bullets

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1. I Will Fight Some More Forever: Maybe. It's just about the military shooting.
2. D-War — Maybe. The example is about how pathetically the US Military does against the citters.
3. D To F: Don't know, don't think it's being used in reference to the trope.

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1. Doctor Who — Brigadier mentioned as a Trope Namer
2. Doctor Who – Companions and Supporting Cast: Brigadier mentioned as Trope Namer

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11 out of 30 either wrong, referring to the phrase, identifying the show or The Brigadier as the Trope Namer, or questionable. If the rest follow true to form, nearly a sixth of them will be about the phrase, either as a command or as a quote, rather than the trope.

edited 17th Dec '10 7:37:57 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

The image I get in my head for this trope is tanks and helicopters attacking Godzilla.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Hm, that is a good question to keep in mind or maybe even answer before renaming. What is the trope about? It should be distinct from Immune to Bullets and Shooting Superman.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

That was my point and I'm not sure what it's about, nor what it sounds like it's about. If it's just going to get linked as a reference to Doctor Who, maybe we should change the name entirely?

Fight smart, not fair.

I like the idea of changing it to "The standard method by which a threat is proven Immune to Bullets". If the people facing the monster continue to attempt to shoot it with conventional weapons/small arms, then it either becomes Shooting Superman or a demonstration that they don't have any other options (yet) and are in dire straits.

Against a rename at the moment...I'm not attached to the name but given that we know it has many other problems, those should be addressed first. If it comes up for renaming after that has been given a chance to work, so be it.

edited 18th Dec '10 12:42:57 PM by Elle

I Will Fight Some More Forever seems to actually be what Five Rounds Rapid is trying to get across.