Five-Man Band cleanup

See, I've only ever watched one season of Power Rangers, so I wouldn't know how to fix it without digging through every character page. But we should probably do it one season at a time, and judge them all separately.

Someone's tried to add Five-Man Band back to gen:LOCK (see here and here for the last few attempts by fans to shoehorn the trope).

I've removed it and told them that the trope needs to be approved by this thread. For the curious, the example was written as follows:

• Five-Man Band:
  • The Leader - Chase
  • The Lancer - Yaz
  • The Smart Guy - Cammie
    • Arguably doubles as the Chick
  • The Big Guy - Kazu
  • The Chick - Valentina...sort of

I think the reason people keep trying to add it is the numbers game: the team has five members and the trope is about a team of five. That does seem to be where most misuse comes from: people count the number of people in the team and don't bother trying to understand what the trope actually is.

Edited to add:

Oh, my God. I've just found it on the Character Page for the team (again — the above entry was on the main work's page). Not listed as above, but as follows:

• Five-Man Band:
  • The Leader - Chase
  • The Lancer - Valentina
  • The Smart Guy - Cammie
  • The Big Guy - Kazu
  • The Chick - Yaz

When a fandom can't even agree what tropes to place the team in, you know there's showhorning. Having Yaz as anything other than The Lancer is as much a misrepresentation of the team as that previous entry that claimed Chase was The Chick instead of The Leader.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Mar 10th 2019 at 3:58:54 PM

That's an easy no.

Right, I've cleaned up the Character Page as well, and linked back to this thread. The individual tropes had been added to the individual character sections, too. It looks like one troper had added back the same entry that was on the main work page, but a different troper went along afterwards and swapped Valentina and Yaz around (so Valentina became The Lancer and Yaz became The Chick). He also added the individual tropes into each character section, so I've gone through removing everything that's misuse.

The only things I've left are as follows:

• A The Leader entry for Julian Chase, because he is the team's leader, and there should be no doubt about that.
• A The Big Guy entry for Kazu. While Kazu and Chase are both very physical fighters and Yaz is also a skilled, unarmed combat fighter, Kazu does have a particularly physically destructive aspect to the way he fights. I personally still think it's slight shoehorning, but I can accept that an argument can be made for Kazu.

While Yaz does play The Lancer's role, I've not added in an entry to her character section for this trope. At this point, the following characters have been shoehorned into the role of The Chick: Cammie, Yaz, Chase (who is male), and Valentina (who is genderfluid, currently presenting as female but talking about changing soon to male, and their digital (avatar) presentation is currently always male). The only one who hasn't been dumped into the role is Kazu.

I'm wondering if a commented out note should be added to the top of both the work and character pages that the Five-Man Band trope should not be added for this team.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Mar 10th 2019 at 4:12:38 PM

updated the FMB sandbox with power rangers, and took out x-men. i think that pretty much closes it out?

The above issue points again to rampant chick misuse which could be cleaned up by clarifying the trope via the chick sandbox that's still been in limbo forever. I'd personally like to tackle that next once the main FMB examples project is done.

Edited by acrobox on Mar 10th 2019 at 4:14:30 AM

Edit: Sorry, read instead

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 10th 2019 at 9:01:46 AM

I didn't even know there was a sandbox for The Chick. I'm all for tackling that next.

Current sandbox is looking better. The one thing that still needs fixing is minor formatting things, like italicizing all the work names. I can do that myself in a bit.

I've seen so much misuse involving teams with too many members that I'd hesitate to claim that this is the most common cause. We even inserted a snide comment for the image caption to hammer in the "five people only" part.

The hive mind just seems to be totally incapable of understanding this trope at all.

Edited by Karxrida on Mar 11th 2019 at 9:27:19 AM

Unfortunately... I hope our pruning of the subpages helps...

Speaking of, I think the sandbox is ready to go.

Well, that's true. I've seen most of the misuse of that type occur when it's a team of six or ten (Five-Man Band plus Sixth Ranger, and two sub-teams of Five-Man Band).

As anyone who's read a lot of this thread knows, there have been many, many attempts to make FM Bs out of character groups of many more than 5, by adding other tropes like Sixth Ranger, The Mentor, Team Mom/Team Dad, Team Pet, Tagalong Kid/Kid-Appeal Character, etc. There was even once an entry with 23 characters spread across 11 roles!

Edited by Lymantria on Mar 12th 2019 at 5:25:46 AM

Looking pretty good.

Anyone have group context for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or Geronimo Stilton?

Based on the works description it seems like the team in Breath of Fire III has more than five core members. Can anyone confirm?

I'm also wondering if The Breakfast Club counts. I haven't seen it, but based on reading the work page it doesn't seem like there's a clear team leader.

The cast of The Breakfast Club never operates as a team. They're friends by the end— after quite a bit of bickering— but IIRC, they never really work together toward a common goal. They just serve out a Saturday's detention together. Not An Example.

Edited by HighCrate on Mar 12th 2019 at 3:28:12 AM

The Geronimo Stilton example might fit if not for the fact that one of the members (Bugsy) only appears in a few books to the best of my memory.

Good points, let's remove Breakfast Club at the very least.

Actually, there's an example I want to pitch before adding it to the sandbox, since it wasn't included on the subpage. It's one team with two incarnations- and in both cases the characters work as a genuine team with goals and meetings and all that good stuff. The only thing I'm worried about is the first version of the team, where it's a team of three girls and two boys.

The second one, though, is three boys and two girls, so that one isn't an issue.

Let's see what you guys think:

• House of Anubis: The Sibuna members, who team up in each season to uncover the mysteries of the house and stop the antagonists in their evil plans. The team roster changed a bit in season 3, with two members leaving and two new members joining in their place.
  • Season 1-2:
    • The Leader: Nina, the smart, compassionate, protagonist who is also The Chosen One. Her position makes her the unofficial head of Sibuna.
    • The Lancer: Patricia, who was originally working solo to find her missing friend, before her mystery and Sibuna's mystery crossed paths. She's a Deadpan Snarker Determinator who has had a lot of conflict with Nina, but eventually grows to be a loyal and dedicated friend of hers.
    • The Big Guy: Alfie, the Class Clown who is the largest member of Sibuna, and is the one most often doing physical work.
    • The Smart Guy: Fabian, who, despite being Nina's closest companion, is less of a Number Two and more of a strategist who comes up with a majority of the plans and solves a majority of the clues the team comes across.
    • The Chick: Amber, the Girly Girl Genius Ditz who was the one who initially came up with the idea to create the Sibuna club. She's also one of the most welcoming and friendly members of the club.
  • Season 3:
    • The Leader: Eddie, the season 3 protagonist and another one of The Chosen One, who was given the leader title after Nina left. He's compassionate and loyal, though also rebellious and impulsive as a leader.
    • The Lancer: Patricia, who once again takes up the role due to being Eddie's Belligerent Sexual Tension love-interest. She's jealous over his friendship with KT, and ends up being the first Sibuna member to pull a Face–Heel Turn and become a sinner.
    • The Big Guy: Alfie, who remains the largest and strongest member of Sibuna. He takes his role much more seriously than in later seasons, and even gets physically forceful against the evil team threatening to harm his girlfriend.
    • The Smart Guy: Fabian, who continues making the plans and solving the puzzles to allow Sibuna to advance.
    • The Chick: KT, taking the role in Amber's absence, is the emotional core of Sibuna. She is sweet, respectful, and is actively opposed to causing drama within the group.

above looks fine to me.

Yeah, looks fine

Power Rangers in the sandbox looks alright-ish as is but I feel it (and Super Sentai) should be counted per series and carefully so; every series (with a few exceptions) had new characters and many of the teams are 'five plus one (or three plus two, or five plus one, plus one again, etc) and thus misuse-magnets. Megaforce's trope page has Aloof Ally...

Edited by HalfFaust on Mar 14th 2019 at 5:24:47 AM

Okay, I'll add the House of Anubis example then, Thanks.

I removed a few things

How I Met Your Mother sounds more like a "main cast" thing than a "team" thing and so roles like "leader" sound iffy.

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: in addition to having zero context is just wrong. "the looks" is not the leader. "useless chick" is something we're trying to move away from because it leads people to think "token girl+the load" instead of what the trope actually is. Also, this one was already brought up as questionable in this thread for similar reasons.

The Backyardigans: Uniqua does not sound like a leader. Nor Tyrone a big guy nor Tasha a chick.

The Breakfast Club has already been stated as not an example.

I removed the Geronimo Stilton example because it didn't make clear when in the plot/for which books the dynamic applied. If someone knows that context, feel free to add it back in.

Edited by naturalironist on Mar 14th 2019 at 6:36:23 AM

I've read the books, and as I said, one of the listed characters isn't even a main character. I'm not sure whether the characters fit the team requirement either.

all good. For most of them, if you feel strongly about it i'm inclined to agree. a lot of these were added just because they were on the old subpages and i tried to find as much justification for as many as i could.

if you're more familiar with the work and can make the case that its wrong feel free to remove stuff.

Edited by acrobox on Mar 15th 2019 at 12:09:57 PM

any more sandbox edits or should we holler for the mods to ax all the old subpages and have this be the new standard?

say by end of week?

I think it's good to go except for the fact that we didn't really get a consensus about how many girls are allowed. Plenty of the sandbox examples have more than two women on the team, and if we stick with "The Chick is the token girl" we'll need to get rid of those.

My opinion: As seen on Sandbox.The Chick, The Chick's key feature is that her femininity stands out against, and counterbalances the rest of the team. As long as The Chick is obviously less actiony, more feelings-oriented, and clearly more feminine than other characters, the number of females on the team isn't that important. That said, the more female characters you have, the more gradients of femininity you get (see Town Girls), and the less likely to have a clear cut Chick. For this reason, no all-female teams.

The counterargument is that this is an old trope based on The Smurfette Principle and 1960's rock bands, and newer, gender-inclusive groups aren't really channeling the same trope. Based on my experience with the sandbox, I've seen very few "only one girl" teams, even in older media, and I'm not sure the stricter definition exists much outside of Star Wars. That said, there are a lot of things grandfathered in here and I don't want us to unilaterally re-write the trope, but it would be nice to have some clarity here.