Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Misused, started by Specialist290 on Mar 25th 2012 at 9:42:53 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanThe page seems to emphasize it well enough, but does anyone have any ideas of how to get across the idea that Some Kind of Force Field is the trope of people walking up and putting their hands on it (or whatever) versus Deflector Shields being the proper trope for the actual item?
I'm going to delete all the bad examples, which is a lot, so I'll try to entry pimp this a bit.
Hide / Show RepliesOkay, so killed all the non-examples, and some zero context examples. Frankly, there were a ton of examples which seem like they might possibly be about this trope, but the wording was unclear and I'm not familiar enough with the works in question to tell. So here is the text of the examples I cut, with a few exceptions where I'm quite sure they were NOT examples. I think we should try to add some or most of these back into the page, but not by just copying them back in please! Let's take each one, and someone who knows about it can write the example as an example of this trope if it is one, or confirm that it is NOT an example of this trope, and we'll not put it back.
Examples of force fields in fiction belong on Deflector Shields, so let's keep these matching the trope please! Let's avoid edit wars and make sure to add back examples in ways different than they were originally phrased, so that those of us not familiar with the work can know it is a good example from the text.
Anyway, here is the giant list:
- In Haruhi Suzumiya, the boundaries of the closed space use these.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers, there's a force field called AMF (Anti-Magic Field) that will render magical spells destabilized and useless. That means, basically magic user that trapped under here is a sitting duck (unless he/she is strong enough to overcome the field). These fields are invisible until a magical attack from an outside source tries to enter them.
- The AMF's opposite counterpart is the standard "Barrier" spell, which is Invisible to Normals but is both easily seen by and displaces magic users into a contained Phantom Zone. A visible version was seen in Season 3
- The holding cells in TRON.
- There is one in the animated movie Titan AE The Hero is trapped in a prison made of energy.
- The Dresden Files has several varieties:
- Magic circles can act like this to keep magical creatures out.
- Dresden has a shield bracelet which blocks physical attacks except heat, until he upgrades it
- In Small Favor, Dresden finds he has been given Soulfire a much more powerful and flexible magic ability which can create a variety of these.
- The Hunger Games has force-fields surrounding the arena as well as other places (such as the roof of the Training Center). It becomes a major plot point in Catching Fire.
What the heck is this in reference too? Under Literature. Is it Hunger Games, because then it should have been double indented, it does seem like a good example of the trope though.
- Whilst showing his girlfriend Ruby the grave he found in the cairn, she and Ralph are targeted by a Wawaka ship, which drops a just-about-visible field around to keep them from running. Ralph pokes it with his shotgun, prompting the following exchange:
Ralph: "Must be a forcefield."Ruby: "You mean - like they have on Star Trek?"
- The "Zyzzybalubah" episode in Pee Wee's Playhouse
- Various spaceship forcefields in Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, as well as Goa'uld personal shields, and the later ones used within/around facilities. (For some reason, spaceship shields look more like the personal shields than the ones used by buildings... which don't have the slower-objects-get-through loophole.)
- Although that loophole was dismissed by more advanced force fields in later seasons
I deleted the entire Tabletop Gaming folder, as ALL the examples were just games that had force fields. I don't even see how you could possible have this trope in a Tabletop Game aside from someone's particular game session, which would be a Troper Tale.
Zero Context Example: ** Likewise in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II.
folder:Webcomics
- In The Fan, some kind of force field traps the Juniors' League with a vigilante killer and his mooks. Both groups believe the other is trying to keep them from leaving. In truth, the barrier was raised by the Hermit to keep outsiders from noticing the ensuing fight. She admits it was a bad idea.
- In El Goonish Shive, Greg can do it. Also, "Standard lockdown procedure". For schools that have a wizard teacher, that is. ZERO CONTEXT EXAMPLE
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- This happened to the Super Friends all the time. Superman was the usual victim.
Any idea where the set phrase "it's some kind of forcefield" comes from? It seems too specific to be independently constructed by chance so many times.