Five-Man Band cleanup

I just find it strange that the Power Ranger, the OG Trope Codifier of the Five-Man Band, isn't included in the trope's example because the definition of the trope got streamlined, and the codifier turns out be radical by the definition's standard. It's like how the OG Mary Sue wasn't that much of a Mary Sue by its modern standard. Still think that instead of just deleting the entry outright, the one who edit it should change it to the proper trope.

So basically it's fine to just write the initial line-up as an example for the Five-Man Band, and note the Sixth Ranger in the specific character's folder?

Edited by AlaAlba on Jun 3rd 2022 at 1:43:28 AM

Basically.

The thing is the original definition doesn't seem exist. It was something that we created artificially in order to have a trope for Five man ensembles.

Yeah, the original definition was very troublesome, hence this thread, and at least one other, and the many, many pages of discussion that ensued within.

Power Rangers is a reasonable example; the first incarnation of the team, which exists for at least one story arc with five members, may well count. Once the Sixth Ranger joins, that version of the team doesn't count. Although granted there's some ambiguity as to how long a team has to exist with five members to be able to reasonably count as a separate 'version'.

Not really in the mood for serious wick cleaning now, but I have found an example on Characters.Battle Royale:

• Five-Man Band: The very beginning of the story presents the core male cast (Shuya, Nobu, Shinji, Yutaka, and Hiroki) as one.
  • The Leader: Shuya, being the team's moral center and nicest member who leads his friends through example, his own kindness and empathy pulling them forward.
  • The Lancer: Nobu, being Shuya's best friend, while also being considerably more cynical and paranoid than him while lacking much of his natural charisma.
  • The Smart Guy: Shinji, an expert computer hacker, and strategist who, during the program, attempts to deactivate the collars.
  • The Big Guy: Hiroki, being an expert martial artist, the largest member of the five physically, and looking very visually intimidating despite his friendly personality.
  • The Chick: Yutaka, who is the most outwardly affectionate of the five, and also the most difficult to take seriously during the actions of the story.

Anyone familiar enough with the book to comment on it?

Maybe comment it out with a note telling people to reformat it into a paragraph if it fits?

Questions regarding specific work

Czterej pancerni i pies, as the title indicates, is "Four tankers and the dog". In the final "season" (for lack of better term), the team indeed gets expanded to five tankers (but the title remains) and the dog is obviously still around. The issues at hand:

• Can the original team (4 human soldiers and their hunting dog) still qualify as Five-Man Band? The dog is the integral part of the team, and using the old classification, the tankers themselves have clear Leader, Lancer, Big Guy and Smart Guy (but no Chick) and the Team Pet. They do have VERY strong team dynamics, given this is literally the series of those four guys having adventures together, and the dog is as much a character as humans (and treated as such in-universe, too)
• Can then the "expanded" team qualify then, given Wichura joins them as permanent crew member (he's a truck driver in their division prior and a recurring character anyway), as their new tank explicitly requires 5 people to run? In the new set up, the old classification gets a bit watery, especially since Chick must be explicitly female nowdays (Czereśniak IS the Chick of the team, despite being male) and Gustlik plays double role of Big Guy and Lancer by then.
• Checking the history I found that in the past, the entry was cut. Not due to being poorly explained ZCE, but since it didn't follow the ultra-strict (and incredibly dumb) requirement for having strict roles along the subtropes, along with mandatory Chick (and said Chick being female, too). Does it mean the old requirement is no longer in place?

I'm asking, because the dynamics between those characters are so strong, if you ever wanted to explain a Pole what "five man band" is, you would just have to say "You know, like Czterej pancerni...", even if there is 4 in the title.

Edited by Stanisz on Jul 6th 2022 at 12:13:10 PM

I'm unsure about if a 4 + Team Pet or a 4 + Pet + New Member team would qualify as separate versions of a FMB or if only one of them would, but you're correct that the old ultra-strict definition no longer applies. Any team with specifically 5 members qualifies.

Whether a team pet counts is an interesting question. I suppose it comes down as to whether the pet is a true member of the team (contributing to tasks, part of the social dynamic); if yes than I'd say it could count. Probably best to get more opinions on that.

To get a bit more abstract/hypothetical if it was, say, a team of four humans, one of whom had an animal companion that rarely interacted with the others or a 'normal' pet who was more of an accessory than a character, I don't think that would count.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone would say that Mystery Incorporated doesn't count, because Scooby is a sentient character who just so happens to be a dog. Meanwhile, if Scooby was just a regular dog, they probably wouldn't. It depends on how human the pet is.

Well in this particular case the answer would be yes: Szarik the dog is integral part of the team (even if Janek, his owner, had to find various tricks to first be allowed to keep the dog, particularly as a tanker) and they all consider it integral part of their crew. This even gets elevated officially at certain point, where the dog is written into the brigade's registry as a crew-member and soldier. From the top of my head I can think of 3 different main plots (in a series with just 21 episodes long) that entirely depend on the dog performing given task along with the crew (and not just his owner, so it's not just pet-owner bond), everyone is dotting the dog and variety of secondary characters don't even consider the team "whole" if the dog isn't present with them.

In that case, I think yes, the dog counts as part of the Five-Man Band.

When we got rid of Five Bad Band, I remember that the reasoning was that it was just Five-Man Band, but evil. Now that the definition of Five-Man Band is changed, does that mean we can bring Five Bad Band back or is it still not tropeworthy?

It's still not tropeworthy. Five-Man Band got changed because the old definition was far too strict. Because it's now "any five person team and the dynamics of said team", evil teams count and there's no point in making Five Bad Band.

In fact one of my biggest pet peeves is when people just moved Five Bad Band examples to Five-Man Band and changed nothing. The faster we delete it all the better.

Just has a question on cleaning up.

1. Is it alright to remove ZCE example if I can't determineif they're working together or not? Or should I just comment out (or changed into The Team then comment out)?
2. if I have to comment out (or change the trope then comment out), should I leave bad indentation in place, or smack them all to the first bullet?

:

1: Yeah, pure ZCE should just be zapped.

2: Seperate them and re-alphabetise the tropes, if you need to. I'd just zap them, or rewrite them if I know the work.

Just remembered a potential example: the Now You See Me series. Here's a write-up:

• Five-Man Band: The Four Horsemen, with their secret Fifth Horseman, always have five members through the films they appear in.
  • The first film starts off with the Fifth Horseman, Dylan Shrike, helping four magicians pull off incredible heists. These four magicians are J. Daniel Atlas, a Smug Snake and the closest thing to a protaginist; Henley Reeves, an Escape Artist who helps the Horsemen escape from unlikely situations; Merritt McKinney, a hypnotist who gets others to help the Horsemen with their crimes, and Jack Wilder, a straightforward conman and pickpocket who gets to throw a lot of punches.
  • Now You See Me 2 continues the above formula with some minor changes. Aside from Dylan now being known to the rest of the group be the Fifth Horseman, Henley is replaced with Lula, who is an expert of faking deaths, but nevertheless fills the same niche as he predecessor.

Edited by GoldenCityBird on Aug 20th 2022 at 7:50:21 PM

New example, this one for The Bad Guys.

• The Bad Guys: The Bad Guys are a team of five criminals who specialise in grand heists. Mr. Wolf, a skilled mastermind and pickpocket, leads his four colleagues and close friends in committing several crimes. The crew is filled out by Mr. Snake, Mr. Wolf's close friend and expert safecracker; Mr. Shark, a Master of Disguise capable of fooling anyone; Ms. Tarantula, the resident hacker; and Mr. Piranha, who is the best of the group at beating people up.

I should mention that the page already has a Zero-Context FMB entry, and also a Caper Crew entry that is formatted quite like an old FMB entry (right down to role misuse).

V2009 has a classic bad Five-Man Band example.

Culled it

Rewriting an example for Sonic Boom, which is currently a zero-context-trope-slashing-indentation-violating mess:

• Sonic Boom: Team Sonic is the main opponent of Doctor Eggman's multiple attacks against the village. Led by famous speedster Sonic the Hedgehog, the team is bolstered by tech genius Tails, dumb muscle Knuckles, voice of reason Amy Rose, and total wildcard Sticks. Multiple episodes showcase the distasters that happen when members of the team go off on their own, ending with the team reuniting and ending Eggman's scheme of the day.

Golden City Bird there is a spelling error it's supposed to say Disasters not distasters in the sonicboom example, I've already edited it on the sonic boom page itself, but can't on the Five Man Band one due to restrictions.

^ I fixed the typo on Five-Man Band.

Ah, thanks. I really ought to get better at noticing the smaller typos.

Characters.My Little Pony Generation 5

• Five-Man Band:
  • Sunny Starscout is The Leader. She's the one who initiates and drives the quest to restore friendship to Equestria.
  • Izzy Moonbow is The Lancer, being an eccentric foil to Sunny and her longest-serving companion.
  • Hitch Trailblazer and Zipp Storm are both The Smart Guy and The Big Guy, being an intelligent tracker and a quick-thinker who's also a tough sheriff and and a cunning detective that is skilled in mathematics respectively, as who is the group's athletic tomboy respectively.
  • Pipp Petals is The Chick, being the most socially aware member of the group.

This issue is I believe they need to clearly fit a single role so if Hitch and Zipp fit both it's misuse. That the case?