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Five-Man Band cleanup

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Five-Man Band has been receiving a lot of misuse. As was concluded in this TRS thread, it needs a massive cleanup. There are over 30 subpages and almost 3500 wicks to be gone through. This thread is for organizing the cleanup effort and discussing any and all examples to be added and cut.

What is correct use of the trope?

  • The characters must be part of a team, that is, a team dynamic must exist between members of the band.
  • There must be exactly 5 team members

Format for examples

In an effort to cut down on misuse as well as get rid of all the Zero Context Examples, we are trying to shift all examples to the following format. If you are familiar with a current work and can do a writeup for it, please do so and post it here.

The sandbox for sorting examples is here.


Completed

Subpages:

  • Other (Moved and redirected to a Just for Fun page, as that is what is was acting as.)

Still needs work

Wicks (Related To page):

  • B-V

I will keep this post updated with the progress made, and any other needed information.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 19th 2022 at 8:59:40 AM

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2001: Sep 17th 2020 at 2:50:31 PM

Isn't The Chick also the emotional center? That's how I've been using it. It's not just "the girly one".

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Serac she/her (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Oh my word! I'm gay!
she/her
#2002: Sep 17th 2020 at 2:54:36 PM

By the way, do we really need the massive list of cut subpages that "still need work" in the opening post?

acrobox Since: Nov, 2010
#2003: Sep 17th 2020 at 2:54:42 PM

also this article has a really good break down of why "the feminine one" is even a thing.

Basically how you start with The Smurfette Principle (one female member. full stop.) to "The Girl of the Group" where femininity becomes a character trait.

Once it becomes a character trait, it can be in a character regardless of the make up of the rest of the team their own.

acrobox Since: Nov, 2010
#2004: Sep 17th 2020 at 2:58:11 PM

[up][up]War Jay. I think there's natural overlap between "the girly one" and "the emotional center" because of how emotion is feminine coded historically.

But at the same time The Heart can be like The Flash from Justice League who's more comic relief, or Steven from Steven Universe (the trope image) who's more Tagalong Kid. Or like a Magnetic Hero. There are lots of ways to be the emotional center without being girly.

Similar to how most Heroes are Leaders but that's not always the case. Or most Lancers are Number Two in rank, but not always.

It could be the FMB would be better served by replacing Chick with Heart. But Chick is still an independent thing. It could even be the nexus of "girly" + "emotional center" which is how its pretty much described in both the original page and the sandbox.

Edited by acrobox on Sep 17th 2020 at 2:59:15 AM

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2005: Sep 17th 2020 at 3:16:18 PM

Right, what I'm saying is that for the FMB dynamic, The Chick is the emotional center. The reason I feel it could be theoretically merged with The Heart is that they both cover the same idea, but The Chick has to be female.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
acrobox Since: Nov, 2010
#2006: Sep 17th 2020 at 4:46:38 PM

yeah you could even describe it as a subtrope. But i think Chick as "feminine + emotional center" is a subtrope that deserves to be independent of the super trope "emotional center." Mostly because of the history that it shares with Smurfette.

Whether the subtrope or supertrope goes in the FMB I'm less concerned about.

JXZ Since: May, 2011
#2007: Sep 19th 2020 at 7:27:29 AM

Well, I guess we're not discussing it after all. Septimus Heap says "we cannot afford a new thread that is likely to invite a sea of misuse." Which doesn't make sense to me but whatever.

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2008: Sep 19th 2020 at 11:15:50 AM

Then...shit. I guess this can't ever be resolved then. Thanks Sep'...

I don't want to sound rude about it, I'm just not sure what we're to do. We've all been discussing a TRS for this thing for several months and there's no proof that expanding the trope will cause any misuse. There's a lot of that sure but we know how to identify it and we've already been cleaning it out. Examples do exist where the team dynamic fits perfectly but the gender-ratio is off, and there's no reason why this trope has to stay in an outdated format if the times have changed enough for the gender ratio to evolve or be scrapped entirely in media.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#2009: Sep 19th 2020 at 11:48:14 AM

The last time someone considered a thread for expanding the definition and I asked about it, I was told that such a change would be one of these outward shifts in the trope definition that will invite misuse. Besides, we did exceed 100 threads in TRS yesterday.

I don't know anything about whether the Five-Man Band dynamic with a different gender ratio exists. Examples itself sometimes can be proof. Sometimes they are just shoehorning.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2010: Sep 19th 2020 at 11:54:33 AM

We did find examples during the subpage cleanup; fairly certain we kept them in a sandbox somewhere specifically so we could go back to them if the gender issue was resolved. Shoehorns are plentiful, but I disagree that expanding the trope would allow more shoehorns to exist; it wouldn't fix the misuse this trope is getting but it wouldn't cause new misuse either.

But the 100 thread issue is a big one. I don't have any issues waiting a little longer for things to clear out, I just take issue with the claim that expanding the trope will inherently cause problems. Maybe Eddie would disagree with us but he's not the boss anymore.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
naturalironist from The Information Superhighway Since: Jul, 2016 Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
#2011: Sep 19th 2020 at 1:29:27 PM

I agree with Acrobox about the difference between The Chick and The Heart.

Also @Septimus, when we cleaned up the on-page examples we found many, many examples where The Chick was not the Tolken Girl but otherwise seemed to fit. I think examples with more than 3 female members are pushing it because it becomes hard to determine who is "the most feminine one" at that point (with 3 you can have a Town Girls dynamic within the larger team), but applying the strictest definition cuts out a lot of otherwise good examples currently on the page.


Also, can I get additional feedback on this contested entry here? If I remove it again I think it's an Edit War.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"
HalfFaust Since: Jan, 2019
#2012: Sep 19th 2020 at 1:46:29 PM

Yeah, ultimately I think this trope is too troublesome for just a cleanup thread.

Frankly, I think FMB inherently invites misuse. A part of me wonders if its very existence is shoehorning, but the amount of examples we've managed to gather goes some way towards disproving that. But a lot of editors seem to just see "team with five people in it" (or in the worst examples, not even that). There are plenty of misuse examples with the so-called correct ratio.


The Derry Girls example doesn't fit right with me, mostly for the reasons listed already. I also don't think Orla's really The Big Guy.

Edited by HalfFaust on Sep 19th 2020 at 8:49:54 AM

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2013: Sep 19th 2020 at 1:48:21 PM

One example I have of a "3 girls, 2 guys" team is House of Anubis. In the first two seasons, Sibuna had 3 girls to a team and 2 guys, but they otherwise fit the dynamic nicely:

  • The Leader: Nina Martin, The Chosen One and protagonist. She's seen as the leader and given some measure of authority even if she was never officially given the role, and is the centerpoint of the team's activities.
  • The Lancer: Patricia Williamson, who spent time working on a mystery outside of Sibuna for a while and acted like an antagonist to Nina. This gives she and Nina a foil dynamic, makes her the most independent Sibuna member, and her snarky, Only Sane Man personality serves as a good balance to the other members on the team. She's also extremely dedicated to the cause and is a very loyal member.
  • The Smart Guy: Fabian Rutter, who handles most of the research and clue-solving. He's the one expected to know all sorts of obscure information or to be able to find said information, while also being physically weaker than the others.
  • The Big Guy: Alfie Lewis, the most physically fit of the team. When muscle of some sort is needed he's usually involved and he's less talented than the others are at solving puzzles.
  • The Chick: Amber Millington, the most feminine of all the girls as well as the person who first created and named Sibuna. She's the group's main emotional core and the glue that binds them together, as she's always the one to initiate getting the group back together.

Literally the only reason this wasn't approved was because of the gender ratio. A FMB example does exist for Sibuna but in the 3rd season version, where the only change is that Nina and Amber got replaced with KT and Eddie; it's otherwise the exact same dynamic with the only difference being that Eddie brings the team to 3 guys.

Like, is the misuse pervasive? Hell yeah. It's everywhere. But it's nothing to do with the gender ratio, people just like to shoehorn ensemble tropes.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 19th 2020 at 4:49:42 AM

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PurpleEyedGuma Since: Apr, 2020
#2014: Sep 28th 2020 at 11:31:44 AM

I’m guessing sub-bulleted Five-Man Band examples on work pages aren’t allowed? For example (commented out b/c of no context), from Fallout 2:

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2015: Sep 28th 2020 at 11:45:43 AM

That's absolutely not allowed, and not just because of the indentation. The FMB must be 5 members only. We can't have multiple characters share roles.

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PurpleEyedGuma Since: Apr, 2020
#2016: Sep 28th 2020 at 11:49:27 AM

Then I’ll just remove it entirely.

acrobox Since: Nov, 2010
#2017: Sep 28th 2020 at 10:46:02 PM

wow yeah, especially as a ZCE it looks like 16 characters across 7 roles. Not a Five-Man anything.

Yinyang107 from the True North (Decatroper) Relationship Status: Tongue-tied
#2018: Sep 30th 2020 at 5:29:28 PM

They're not even a band. All of those are optional characters. You can't even have five people in your group unless your charisma is nearly maxed out.

MidnightMan Dichter and Denker from Northern Germany Since: Dec, 2009
#2019: Oct 7th 2020 at 12:56:35 PM

As for Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, if we go strictly according to the definition of a Five-Man Band, they don't apply at all anymore. And believe me, I'm a long-time Rangerphile, I know the show inside-out.

  • Leaving Gadget as The Chick and denying her Smart Guy status to give it to someone else who deserves it less than her is shoehorning. She's more of a female Smart Guy than The Chick, and she qualifies way more for The Smart Guy than everyone else on the team with her "mind-bogglingly high IQ" (Gadget, "To the Rescue part 3"), but she's the only female on the team that absolutely requires someone to be The Chick.
  • This leaves none of the five required roles for Zipper because he can't be The Smart Guy instead of Gadget. He isn't dumb, but Gadget is the perfect Distaff Counterpart of The Smart Guy.
  • Foxglove started as a one-shot character. She only appeared in one episode, #52 "Good Times, Bat Times" which premiered on February 21, 1990. She did work together with the Rangers over large parts of the episode, but the show itself doesn't show her staying with the Rangers. Mind you, the episodes were neither produced nor aired in chronological order, so "Good Times, Bat Times" may pretty well the chronologically last episode in spite of 13 more episodes that came after it, and Foxglove may have stayed with the Rangers. However, as likely as this is, there is no rock-solid proof in the show for it, and even if there was, she has still only worked with the Rangers for one out of 65 episodes.
    It's mostly the fandom that decided that she stayed with the Rangers. The old comics in which Foxy doesn't appear could easily be ignored and have never officially been declared canon, so at least from the end of the show in 1990 to the first Boom! comic in 2008, the fans and especially the fanfic writers ruled supreme over the Rangers. And believe me, both Foxy and the Dale/Foxy shipping are wildly popular in the fandom. Foxy is such an Ensemble Dark Horse that she even got her own website, the Foxglove Feature. Starting with Home Is Where You Hang Upside-Down which has yet to be troped, she may have appeared in more fanfics than not.
    The Boom! comics were the first official pieces of CDRR storytelling that weren't targeted at kids but at Rangerphiles, and thus, they contain many a Fandom Nod. For example, Foxy is the literal Sixth Ranger and Dale's girlfriend, and Geegaw is remembered as his "To the Rescue" self rather than the totally different-looking character from the comics. Even then, neither do they officially count as canon, nor did the Rangerphiles universally accept them into their fanon.
    So the only canonical appearance of Foxy in the show (which the article is about, rather than the Boom! comics) is one episode. This, however, doesn't even matter since the Rangers can no longer count as a Five-Man Band with The Smart Guy and The Chick being one and the same character.

Welcome to the Signature, Mon
acrobox Since: Nov, 2010
#2020: Oct 7th 2020 at 3:34:07 PM

hmm yeah seems right.

I guess its a case of being "visually" a FMB instead of actually one. (i.e. main, alternate, large, small, feminine)

But if the roles don't fit then the roles don't fit.

If there is a salient role for Zipper, even if not an FMB role like Team Pet or Tag Along Kid, it could be an example of The Team.

The other non-chick roles aren't gendered unless its a strict old school FMB, so Gadget Hackwrench even by her name is just The Smart Guy straight up, or a smart / chick hybrid.

Edited by acrobox on Oct 7th 2020 at 3:39:09 AM

OzzyMandias He who digs out rocks from Six feet underground Since: Sep, 2020 Relationship Status: Naked on a bearskin rug, playing the saxophone
He who digs out rocks
#2021: Oct 18th 2020 at 10:48:43 AM

Hello, I have an edit request for the trope description about an issue that is getting me sleepless : could you please replace "vocal effects, tambourine" by "bass guitar" in the parenthesis right beside of "The Chick", ?

First off, in rock bands, vocal effects aren't that widespread up until the end of the 1970s, and most songs that use them could do without, it's an accessory device. As for tambourines, they are next to non-existent and when there is some, it is inaudible (quite ironic, since the Chick is, with the Leader, kind of the orator of the group).

Bass guitar, on the other side, fits perfectly the definition of the Chick in any rock band.

Aside from being ubiquitous in rock bands, the bass unites the melody and the rhythm, and while some may find it self-effacing lacking of aggressivity, it is a good medium between the other members of the band, it backs up the guitarist and assures the transition between musical phrases.

Edited by OzzyMandias on Oct 18th 2020 at 7:50:01 PM

I am a drow and I'm diggin a hole, diggy diggy ho, diggy diggy ho
acrobox Since: Nov, 2010
#2022: Oct 18th 2020 at 2:09:29 PM

i'm personally for it. never thought that much about it. and don't know much about rock bands.

probably a leftover when there was more overlap between The Chick and The Load that we've been trying to move away from. Being feminine, or spiritual, or a uniter like you're saying with bass guitar can be just as essential or exciting a role to add to the dynamic.

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2023: Oct 18th 2020 at 2:23:03 PM

I think it's a good idea.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
PurpleEyedGuma Since: Apr, 2020
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (8,356/50,000)
#2025: Oct 21st 2020 at 8:53:03 AM

Old-school TVT weirdness and Fast Eddie Fiat. If we can get the gender restriction dropped, though...

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