Is this an example?

I also found this Wall of Text on SeasonalRot.Live Action TV for Series.Vikings, which I am not sure of where it needs to be re-edited to make sense:

• Vikings:
  • Fans and critics felt the series went downhill from season 4. Ragnar's subplot with Yidu left many cold and his motive decay made the character loose much of his appeal. Perhaps this was intentional, given Ragnar's instory fall from grace. Character derailment of Björn turned him from a loving son and husband to a constantly angry [[Expy Ragnar-clone]]. His love interest Thorunn being replaced by Torvi (who is played the creator's daughter) left some fans with a bad taste in their mouth. To be fair, this already happened at the end of season 3 but with the death of Thorunn's and Björn's child and the lack of reaction from Björn, as well as Thorunn's disappearence in season 4 made it worse. Many once important characters became relegated to plots that went nowhere. The decision to extend season to 20 episodes instead of 10 seemed to coincide with the dip in quality and left many people puzzled as History Channel still released 10 episodes for 10 weeks and then had a hiatus for almost a year, making no difference the viewers. Essentially the halfs of season 4 felt like two separate seasons. The series managed to make a turn around and went home much better with the fans with the coming of age of Ragnar's sons (Ivar becoming a break-out character and fan-favorite), actually giving the new villain Harald Finehair some actual depth and the emotionally resonate Ragnar death arc.
  • Come Season 5 the rot took hold again and went even further, firmly swifting the film from the viking age to the dork age. The plot started to derail and the motive decay (or flat out derailment) of many of the characters infuriated the fans and outshone eventual brightspots in the seasons. The fan favorite going from a somewhat sympathic anti-hero to fullfledged villain turned out to be a mistake as he was the clearly most defined Ragnarsson, with the other not making that much of an impression. Likewise the new Saxon protagonists Heahmund & Alfred came off as flat and unappealing, especially in contrast to Aethelwulf and Ecbert. The Romanticplottumor between Lagertha and Heahmund baffled both fans and critics. The character of Heahmund was a big failure for the showrunners as he was clearly intended to be a break-out character like Ivar but most fans simply responded with a "meh". Creator Micheal Hirst once again threw out an established love interest so he could pair Torvi with another of Ragnar's sons. The season also introduced the much maligned Iceland-arc, banishing one of the show's most beloved characters Floki to plotline crowded by underdeveloped characters. When the series dropped the big twist(s) at the end of the arc, it was mostly received positively, but most felt it was to little, to late. Speaking of that, most fans did not consider the season entierly without merit: the romance between Ivar and his former slave Freydis was well recieved by fans and got hyped even before the release of the second part of the season.

The issue here is how many bullet points to avoid Wall of Text and ensuring that things make sense.

IMO, the combination of Wall of Text, opaqueness to non-viewers, and numerous grammatical errors renders this outright incomprehensible. It might be better to just cut the entire thing and start from scratch

Edited by nrjxll on Sep 29th 2019 at 6:58:24 AM

Is Everythings Better With Princesses an example of a Dead Horse Trope? I mean, it's been used so many times over at this point that I seriously wonder if it should be considered a cliche.

- I made a TRS for it that's slowly achieving things.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1566534316062550600&page=2#32

I say let's delete the Seasonal Rot on Vikings. I've watched the show, and yeah, the quality went down a bit probably, later seasons were less exciting and fresh, but nowhere near this level described in the rant. The horrible misuse of Expy just takes the cake. Though to be honest, I haven't watched the season described in the second bullet. Perhaps it does have a point about that season.

Edited by XFllo on Sep 30th 2019 at 12:18:59 PM

The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask is a trope on the Always Female index and has no other gendered redirects like other tropes applicable to any gender would have. But the trope description mentions male regents for some reason, and there's at least one case of it applying to a male that I'm not sure should stay: (Characters.Fate Grand Order Sabers A To M for Gaius Julius Caesar)

• The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask: His strained relationship with Cleopatra and Caesarion is not by his choice, but he has to maintain it to maintain the unity of the Empire. His wish for the Grail is for the three of them to reunited without any of the political intrigue and conspiracy holding them back.
  "Enough of conspiracy! I just want to hug my boy, my boy!"

Nuke it?

I'd say yes, the example should go. And I'd delete the sentence about male regents from the description, too. It feels like shoehorning.

This is very clearly a gendered trope. I mean, Gender Flipped tropes do exist, but this one feels too connected to femininity and ideas about women as rulers. Males as kings are portrayed differently in fiction.

Hot Witch

• In SilfofinaDragon's Sengoku Basara fanfics, while Oichi and Kyogoku Maria, both very enticing enchantresses appear, Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura's son Masa acquires his share of dark arms from Oichi, making him a Magic Knight, though considering how he is depicted in misakiyu's illustrations, he is quite young and attractive, making him a male example of this trope (or a Hot Wizard).

I think this is clearly Square Peg, Round Trope. I don't know the work, but Hot Witch is Always Female for a reason. Wizards are not stereotypically portrayed as beautiful or attractive in fiction. This character is a wizard/sorcerer who happens to be a Pretty Boy (or Bishōnen, since the fic is based on anime/manga.)

Do you agree?

(This page once had an example with context "they are male hot witches", if I remember correctly those were some men/boys from the TV series Charmed, but I deleted those with extreme prejudice. "Male witches" is nonsense, right?)

Note: This example is currently commented out. I deleted the male example as misuse, but I left the two enchantresses as they look like they might fit if proper context is added. The original troper added it back (without discussion, might I add) but they left the %% mark-up.

Thanks for your input.

Edited by XFllo on Sep 30th 2019 at 7:31:52 PM

Do these YMMV items have enough context?

YMMV.OKKO Lets Be Heroes S 2 E 18 Crossover Nexus

• Awesome Music: The classic Cartoon Cartoon Fridays theme playing as Ben winds up to punch Strike, unleashing a Continuity Cavalcade of heroes.
  • An orchestral version of the old CN City bumpers theme plays as the heroes' city returns to life.
• Heartwarming Moments: Pretty much all of K.O. and Garnet's interactions come across as this; particularly their heartfelt goodbye to one another.
• Moment of Awesome: Ben transforming into dozens of characters from CN's history and using their combined power to wind up a Megaton Punch that finishes off the Big Bad. All while the classic Cartoon Cartoon jingle plays.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The swelling Cartoon Cartoon jingle that plays when Ben lands the final blow as dozens of CN characters.

Question, can an Out-of-Character Moment be justified? If it's justified, it can't be an Out-of-Character Moment, just like how you can't justify Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, can it?

It can through things like O.O.C. Is Serious Business. An Out-of-Character Moment just means the character does something that seems...well...contradictory compared to who they are as a person, but it can be justified with development, stress, a Spot the Thread scenario, etc. After all, people in real life aren't always 100% consistent, so characters can be justifiably OOC.

...Eh, I guess that makes sense.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 1st 2019 at 2:16:25 PM

In order: no, no, no, yes, wrong.

The Most Wonderful Sound example looks like it's invalid — if the sound only plays once then it can't count — and has grammar issues as well.

If it's justified, then it's not out-of-character, more or less by definition, although this is difficult to pin down. The point of Out-of-Character Moment is that the behavior must be inconsistent with previously established characterization, and if the character is shown to have a valid reason for acting as they did, the inconsistency goes away. O.O.C. Is Serious Business is more or less the opposite situation, when doing something unusual is explicitly justified.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 1st 2019 at 2:17:34 PM

Asking again about my previous query on whether the Fire Emblem entry really fits in the Low Fantasy page.

I still maintain that Fire Emblem has way too many fantastical elements to count as Low Fantasy and that it seems like there are quite a few entries that just talk about how certain works have themes commonly seen in Low Fantasy works without considering the "amount of fantasy present" part of the description.

I'd like to get more feedback on this, since I'm thinking Low Fantasy might need some cleanup if every entry that only talks about how the work has certain Low Fantasy themes turns out to be misuse.

Low Fantasy is a difficult term to properly define, but according to the description, it generally revolves around realistic or at least semi-realistic medieval settings with relatively few fantastical elements, substantial moral ambiguity, and situations resolved through physical might rather than magic or moral superiority.

Indeed, the defining trait of Heroic Fantasy is that the heroes are heroes because they are right, not necessarily because they are stronger or smarter than their opponents. Knowing nothing about Fire Emblem, I cannot evaluate this criterion. Given that it's published by Nintendo and gave rise to games like Final Fantasy Tactics, it seems unlikely to satisfy either the "morally grey" or "low magic" elements of Low Fantasy.

Some simple tests:

• Is magic a casual part of the game world or is it only used rarely and at great risk?
• Are there magic-users among the playable characters, and do they wield power comparable with the other characters?
• Do the heroes frequently solve problems through magic, or do they almost exclusively engage in physical combat?
• Are the heroes good and honest (generally speaking) and the villains dastardly, or is everyone pretty much out for themselves without clear moral victors?
• Are there substantial fantastic elements (dragons, mythical beasts, flying cities, etc.) or is everything pretty mundane with only a few mystical elements or anachronisms?

If the answers are mostly Yes to the first parts, it's High Fantasy or Heroic Fantasy. If the answers are mostly no or the yes to the second parts, it's probably Low Fantasy.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 1st 2019 at 2:59:37 PM

The recent game that actually prompted my query in the first place does seem to have the "morally grey" part down, but certainly not the "low magic" element. Fire Emblem as a whole really does not meet the "low magic" element.

Some of the examples on Low Fantasy I feel also don't meet the "low magic" part of the description:

• While Final Fantasy VI itself straddles between high and low fantasy (definitely the lowest of the Final Fantasies), the end result of the death of Kefka, who became the God of Magic through draining the power of the Warring Triad, is the elimination of magic in the world, resulting in the end, a low fantasy world.
• Gungnir, which is gritty and set to a Black and Gray Morality racial conflict. The world has some magic, but anything flashy is bound to be a forbidden art; there are Sprites, but they tend to stay away from people, and the resident angel's morality and objectives are a bit questionable. It helps that this game is part of the unabashedly Dark Fantasy Dept. Heaven series.
• Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale: Considering the main focus of the game is on the simple everyday trials of an item shop owner, most of what mixes up the setting is only implied or heard of as background information, some of which could be base enough for a game plot in and of themselves. Outside of just what Recette deals with personally, we got a refugee princess, The Fair Folk reinventing themselves in order to avoid extinction, which ties into the inherent human dominance of the setting which leads to the prejudice against Elves and Demons, and while magic is a simple and everyday occurrence, the local churches are trying to snuff out any and all magic items, something Recette helps prevent only through a head-ache inducing loop hole. Also, the most prevalent threats to the world are dispatched by a simple item shop owner and her hired help. The closest thing to a Heroic Fantasy stock hero is Recette's dad, who is... underwhelming to say the least.
• Tyranny: Unlike most Low Fantasy RPGS, The world of Tyranny is a literal Bronze-Age, where iron swords are the game's equivalent of mithril-tier weaponry. Magic is actually abundant, but mostly chaotic; only the elite have fine control of the potential programming of magic, and just barely enough to come up with memory storage or a specific WMD curse known as an Edict. Everyone else gets the "blow stuff up with an element" magic, which is supplied from said elite in exchange for service. The majority is humans, the beastmen are a persecuted minority (and not without good reason), and they all find reasons to fight each other despite the threat of the armies of an actual overlord. Most importantly, as the overlord's vassal, you are not some "kill everything on sight" evil knight. You're a commissar, sent to judge the masses and make-or-break various communities and tribes as you see fit in the name of the empire, and you can make the best of a horrible position or just ruin the lives of an entire nation with corrupt policy and well-timed betrayal.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Oct 1st 2019 at 12:01:22 PM

Sounds like High Fantasy, then.

Got it. Thank you for the feedback!

Tropes are misused sometimes, film at eleven.

More seriously, looking at the examples you listed....

• FFVI is most definitely not Low Fantasy. Not even the slightest little tiny miniscule bit close. The trope being alluded to there is The Magic Goes Away.
• Gungnir seems to miss on Low Fantasy with the whole "angels" thing. It has to be set in a realistic pseudo-medieval world to count. Angels are right out.
• Recettear: Nope. Not by that description.
• Tyranny: "Magic is abundant". Nooooope.

Thanks for your input. I'll remove those entries.

Looking at the Overwatch entry in Mechanically Unusual Fighter:

• Overwatch has done a good job of creating a wide assortment of characters with unique abilities.
  • Mei is the only character who can create a physical impediment with Ice Wall ability. While other shields can be walked through, hers must be destroyed in order to be broken. This also means she can block off her own team if one isn't careful enough (or is trolling).
  • Lucio is the only character who can buff his teammates' movement speed, which requires timing his movement buff and coordinating with his team in a much different way than the more-common health or damage buffs of other characters.
  • Sombra is the only character with a true stealth ability, and can interact with the map differently than any other character by hacking health packs to deny their use to the enemy and cause them to respawn more quickly for her team. She's also the only character that can directly lock other characters' abilities so they can't be used at all, as opposed to stunning the character altogether or physically blocking or otherwise countering them.
  • D.Va is the only character who remains in the game after being eliminated. Instead of instantly dying, she ejects from her mech suit and runs around as a completely different character, a Fragile Speedster. If she can survive long enough in this mode to build up her Ultimate, she can summon a new mech and return to her original state at full health.
  • Wrecking Ball is the only character who can move through physics when he goes into his wrecking ball mode and uses his grappling hook to swing around.
  • Pharah is the only flying character. While other characters can jump, grapple, teleport or get brief moments of boost, Pharah can fly and glide for long periods of time in her standard playing mode. Mercy is the closest comparison, as she gains temporary flight during the latest version of her ultimate and can use her Guardian Angel ability to follow an already-flying Pharah.
  • Mercy is the only character whose primary weapon isn't a weapon. It's a staff that she uses to heal or buff other teammates. She can switch over to a secondary blaster pistol in a pinch, however. She's also the only character who can bring a character back from death early with her Resurrection ability.
  • Some unique mechanics were removed in later versions:
    • Torbjorn was the only character who could create power-ups (armor shards) in the environment for his teammates to pick up.
    • The ability to "loot" dead enemies for power ups was shared only by Torbjorn (scrap for his armor shards) and Reaper (healing soul orbs), but both abilities were eventually removed.

That's 7 characters (9 if you count the previous versions of Reaper and Torbjorn), between 1/4 and 1/3 of the cast. At that point, I start to question whether any given example is actually unusual by the standards of the game. One of those "if everyone's unusual, no one is" things.

The thing is, Overwatch is designed to be a game where every character has unique abilities. I could probably do a writeup for every other character in the game describing what makes them unique and they wouldn't stand out as any more or less shoehorn-y than any of the above.

As an avid Overwatch player, the only entry above that strikes me as even potentially valid is Wrecking Ball, who really does take a vastly different skill set than any other character to even move him around the battlefield properly and definitely fits the Difficult, but Awesome portion of the trope description.

Every other character more or less controls the same as any other character at a basic level: WASD to move around the battlefield, left-click on heads, right-click and a few other buttons to activate special movement / attack / defensive abilities. Those special abilities certainly add some wrinkles to that, but that's just what they are: wrinkles, not a vastly different control scheme the way the trope describes.

Thoughts?

Edited by HighCrate on Oct 1st 2019 at 12:20:11 PM

I agree that the example seems to work way too hard to justify itself, and thus misses out on the intent of the trope. The trope describes a situation in which a small subset of playable characters uses vastly different mechanics than the others. If every fighter uses diverse mechanics, then the trope doesn't apply since there is no "normal" against which to compare.

As you said, everyone uses WASD to move, clicks LMB on heads, and has secondary/special abilities. There's nothing there to justify the trope.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 1st 2019 at 3:25:22 PM

Thanks Fighteer! Gonna go comment those out again and delete Most Wonderful Sound.

Edit: From that same page, does it count as Unexpected Character if it's a character that could be expected, but the iteration is a surprise?

• Unexpected Character It's a rather subtle detail, but Buttercup, during the final battle, sports her original series design instead of the reboot's.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Oct 1st 2019 at 3:55:02 PM

Taking another look at the page, the Paladins and Team Fortress 2 entries seem to have the same problem. Cutting them for now and leaving a link here in the edit reason.

If the Mechanically Unusual Fighter trope is limited to characters that alter a foundational element of gameplay, then D.Va of Overwatch would still count. A foundational element of the game is that players control a character until they are eliminated and then respawn as that character in their respawn area. With D.Va, the player plays as one character, and then after elimination, immediately starts playing as a secondary character with completely different characteristics. Unlike all other characters, D.Va must be eliminated twice in sequence as two different characters before respawn.

I suppose. I don't play Overwatch. I assume that character still uses WASD movement and kills people by left-clicking on or at them. I don't know if what amounts to a quirky "extra life" mechanic is distinct enough to count for the trope, but I'll leave that up to you.

What should not happen is that every single character gets listed as an example. If that's going on, people are misusing the trope.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 1st 2019 at 9:34:58 AM