What do you mean "where else would you have mounted it, if you didn't want it to be hand-held?" That's what makes it unusual — Gatling Guns are not designed to be hand-held. They aren't designed to be carried by a person at all. They are designed to be mounted on a tripod, a vehicle or a gun emplacement. Putting one on your shoulder is definitely unusual.
There's various purposes to designing things a certain way. If the artist is shooting for realism, it's most likely Shown Their Work. Otherwise it's likely to be Rule of Cool. There's other purposes as well, for instance Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon is done so that a ship has to maneuver so that it's pointed at the enemy: this means that you can't really run (as the gun is generally pointed away from the engines) and it provides a way to prevent the cast from using the Wave-Motion Gun all willy nilly. It can also serve to force the crew to desperately try to maneuver the ship to get it right.
Fight smart, not fair.I mean just what I asked. Isn't one of the reasons for the very existence of Powered Armor is to allow a person to carry heavier weapons than they could otherwise? If I'm understanding your logic correctly, Madrugada, ANY chassis weapon mounted on Powered Armor, or maybe even a Humongous Mecha is automatically an Unusual Weapon Placement, since humans carry weapons in their hands. And any weapon that can't be wielded a human not in Powered Armor is the same? That doesn't make any sense to me. One would think that once you've identified the Power Armor trope, that you should be able to mount weapons to it, without those automatically being some variation on the Unusual Weapon Placement Trope. Otherwise, doesn't any capability that Powered Armor has that an unaugmented human does not become a Trope?
So if I'm reading you right, Deboss, pretty much any design element of a machine, home, vehicle et cetera that comes across as striking or unusual can be considered a Trope. Seems like that could be a never-ending list.
RZ-007. Side of Republic.It pretty much is. The difference being whether it has plot significance or if it's just something the designer liked. If it's something the designer liked it can be lumped into Rule of Cool or Author Appeal until enough authors like it to break it off.
Fight smart, not fair.No. Just... No. The post above and the main page do talk about plot significance ie "this is not here just because it is". That, among other things. A trope does not "lose" "value" (both quotes had to be used) by excess use — at the most, it becomes a Dead Horse Trope if I am right.
edited 13th Mar '11 7:14:11 PM by SilentReverence
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?If I were trying to come up with a simple word definition for "trope" it would be "a pattern that a creator uses in a work". Many of the design tropes are tropes because somebody designed some piece of equipment, another creator saw it, liked it, and put it in their work. Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future is one such trope, being based around creators liking an aesthetic and continuing to use it.
Fight smart, not fair.Maybe it's just me, but it doesn't seem hard to find examples of Tropes that lack "plot significance." To go back to my original example, Shoulder Cannon I fail to see the plot significance of the fact that War Machine's minigun is mounted in such a way that it can fire forward over the Powered Armor's shoulders. It's an interesting design element, yes, but it doesn't seem to be significant to the story. Or Cool Chair, for that matter. Some the listed chairs are VERY cool, but I wouldn't describe their coolness as being significant to the plot of the story being told. They may have had other uses, but the way the examples list reads, any eye-catching object designed to sat upon us a Cool Chair.
In that sense, it seems that the term "Trope" is starting to mean ANY element of a story that catches my attention for one reason or another, regardless of it's significance to the plot. That's what I mean by the idea of Tropes (not any one particular Trope) loosing some of its meaning.
"A pattern that a creator uses in a work" seems to be TOO broad a definition of a Trope, mainly because any similarity between works could be described as a pattern.
edited 13th Mar '11 8:21:48 PM by Lyger
RZ-007. Side of Republic.I'm trying to be broad. I'd add "intentional" to the phrase, but that would exclude stereotypes, which are also a trope. I could add "pattern the creator put effort into" but that has both the previous problem and the addition of tropes that are taken as a short cut or cost cutting measure.
Fight smart, not fair.The shoulder cannon being shoulder-mounted does have plot significance, albeit mostly minor and mostly backstory (ie.: in weapons design, it makes sense that you can look at or otherwise get a visual of what you're aiming to). That's passable enough for me given the nature of the work (a man doing weapon design on his own to go fighting crime). There are cases where it gets convoluted, but it's still easy enough when you remember that the plot is not only what you see printed in the pages of the comic. Stuff happens before and after the pages.
Then again the home page explicitly talks about "being able to be expected by the audience". So a cannon being shoulder mounted does have sense as a trope, as the audience is expecting that the guy is still able to use his hands, and they are also expecting him to make use of tech high enough to override some common weaponry issues.
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?I see what you're saying, both of you. Really, I do. Personally, it seems to make the definition of "Trope" overly broad. But it's not for me to define, so I'll live with it.
RZ-007. Side of Republic.

When does the design of an item represent a Trope, as opposed to a design consideration for the item in question? For instance, Shoulder Cannon trope is "A Sub Trope of Unusual Weapon Mounting," but the examples rarely mention anything about the placement of the weapons in question being in any way unusual. In film, War Machine is mentioned: "Like his comic book counterpart, War Machine has a Gatling Gun on his shoulder in Iron Man 2." Where else would you have mounted it, if you didn't want it to be a handheld weapon? This doesn't strike me as being so much "a device or convention that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations," so much as simply a design consideration.
So is there a real difference between the design of an item being simply design and it representing a Trope, or is what I'm seeing simply the inevitable shading of any standout story or visual element into a Trope?
Thanks!
RZ-007. Side of Republic.