Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
The only character who could qualify as a Lethal Chef is Alphen because of his love of spices, but that gets Played for Laughs like twice, and none of the characters are explicitly stated to be bad at cooking.
Shionne is the only character with somewhat poor skills but she isn't a Lethal Chef.
Muramasa got.I think that it could be possible to write a "Subverted" example. As keyblade said, Shionne, Alphen and Dohalim are initially set up as being some variety of a Lethal Chef, but the cooking mechanics in the game don't really support that being the case. Certain characters are good at cooking certain meals, and this is always treated as them making something amazing, regardless of how "poor" their cooking experience supposedly is.
That said, the stated premise of the example that this marks a break from a series trend isn't actually true: Tales of Berseria also does not have a Lethal Chef either narratively or in game-mechanical terms. (And, IIRC, Tales of Zestiria doesn't have one specifically, although it's still possible for any given character to mess up a meal.) The subpage actually notes as much, too.
I also said in my reply to you that, though I haven't been looking at the character page due to not wanting spoilers, the "Related" button on Lethal Chef shows it's been added to the character page for the game by someone else. I suggested that you copy and paste the examples as written by other people from the character page onto the Video Games subpage of Lethal Chef. I legitimately don't see why this is an unworkable solution. It would change the wording you have issue with, and using pre-existing examples from another person should provide you the context you need to update it without having played the game yourself.
And I think Shionne's shown as having enough cooking disasters that she's lethal when she's not making the most basic food imaginable. One of the "chatting" animations that plays between her and Alphen has her making some black goop in a bowl that he recoils at the taste of. And in the sidequest where you acquire the Vitamin Smoothie, her idea of a "smoothie" is just pureed lettuce.
I agree that Shionne isn't a good cook but the game never portrays her cooking as something you eat and feel like sickly about, which is commonly used for the trope. Cordon Bleugh Chef works better for her because she can cook basic stuff, but when she tries to go more advanced things it goes poorly like with the Pancake sidequest. At best I think she's a Downplayed Trope example.
That is why the only character who is close to Lethal Chef based on the story would be Alphen, but again that gets played up like once because he put too much seasoning, which is covered by Unaffected by Spice
Personally I don't think this a huge issue. The series has flip-flopped on the cooking gag so it isn't really super consistent, but usually there is a character who makes mediocre food. Like Natalia from Tales of the Abyss would be a valid example of a Lethal Chef because she actually sucks at it at first and almost causes a fire.
Muramasa got.Doesn't Cordon Bleugh Chef require a level of experimentation, though? Like, the way I'm interpreting her character, her thing is that she doesn't know how to vary her cooking and that she can really only work with one ingredient at the time. (Hence making a smoothie with only lettuce.)
That said, re: Unaffected by Spice, the page for Fire-Breathing Diner does state that extremely spicy food is within the domain of a Lethal Chef, though clearly there's some debate here, as some people here are saying he definitely counts while others are thinking he's just, well, unaffected.
Downplayed could work, though. I intend to leave editing the example from here to other people, though.
Honestly, the distinction between Lethal Chef and Cordon Bleugh Chef has often seemed very blurred to me. More than a few Tales bad chefs are listed as both.
Like Raine herself, the page image! Canonically part of the reason she's so bad is because she keeps wanting to try ingredients that do not belong in what she makes—usually lemons.
Okay, since I have confirmation that only Alphen is a lethal chef, I'll edit the example to reflect that (and get rid of all the Weasel Words)
Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.Since you haven't played the game in question, I do politely ask that you use the Character page example(s) as reference, or collaborate with someone who has played the game.
Edited by PeppermintTwist
I'm having a bit of an issue with the Tales of Arise example on LethalChef.Video Games, as well as the troper who added it. On October 5, user Peppermint Twist added an example that started with, "Tales of Arise lacks a true lethal chef." Obviously, I deleted this as Examples Are Not Arguable, leaving an edit reason. The very next day, Peppermint Twist added a re-worded version of the same example, this time at least avoiding explicitly stating that it wasn't an example. However, the example was still incredibly disjointed, talking about how the game broke from the series formula of always having lethal chefs, except that these two characters are emphatically lethal chefs, except that they aren't because they're actually good at cooking. Note that this wasn't an accidental re-add, as they felt the need to argue their point in the edit reason.
At this point, I pmed Peppermint Twist. Based on what they wrote, at least one character might actually be a lethal chef, and I wanted to work with them to make the example into something workable. After an extended conversation (In which I admit I was not as clear as I could have been at the beginning), they refused to work with me, standing by the example as written.
Anyway, the most important thing right now is the example. I have no familiarity with the game. Can anyone who has played it help me determine which characters are lethal chefs and write a coherent example?
Edited by CompletelyNormalGuy