I find your second suggestion better than the current pic.
Hi
The first suggestion is already in use as Gigyas' pic on Characters.Earth Bound. The second is pretty good...gotta say, though, the spidery, sorta grasping fingers effect of the current is striking, and it leads me to want to keep it.
No to either suggestion. They all look like something, and the trope is about stuff that can't be shown on screen.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
No, the other one.
I sort of agree with Sep. The suggestions are no improvements.
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Sharknado Warning
Like the 2nd. What with being all screaming faces.
One Winged Egret
All suggestions are bad because the trope is about things that are scarier when unseen. It reeks a bit of Fan Myopia to even suggest anything at all.
Mummy Woomy
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
If that's the case then a motion to pull would be in need. I mean, I can't really see "evil" in the current picture.
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
I dunno, it's big and scary and red. Seems evil to me
Oh really when?
Gotta disagree with pulling as well. The demonic spidery figure is superimposed over a bloodstained notebook page, implying the image is a hallucination brought on by looking at Things Man Was Not Meant To Know
Mummy Woomy
Did you really see it at first or are you familiar with the source material? Because I honestly couldn't recognize smack until you pointed it out.
edited 10th Apr '14 8:35:19 PM by Elbruno
"Yeah, it's a shame. Here we are in an underground cave with all these lasers, and instead of having a rave we're using it for evil."
I say pull. I can't... it's ominous, sure, but it's... not much of anything.
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The suggestions are lateral and reliant upon knowledge of Earthbound.
Mummy Woomy
At risk of sounding insistent, I think the current has that exact same problem.
"Yeah, it's a shame. Here we are in an underground cave with all these lasers, and instead of having a rave we're using it for evil."
Lakija
1.2 is pretty creepy. But I had no idea that the current image showed anything at all save for some red stuff and a possible gunshot.
It is what it is.
1.2 has countless screaming, warped faces. I don't think you need to know Earthbound to think that's "evil," though I guess you could just see it as tortured souls.
edited 11th Apr '14 8:30:08 AM by Larkmarn
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Considering the trope is "Evil so horrifying it cannot be shown", I think the image not showing much of anything recognizable actually works in its favor.
The twisted faces of 1.2 are definitely inferior in that regard. 1.1 is pretty much the same as current (indescribable red splat).
edited 12th Apr '14 9:18:30 AM by DiamondWeapon
Is there anything actually wrong with the current pic? I don't even know where it's from, but I can tell two things about it: One, everything about it looks evil, and two, since I can see a hand but no other body parts, I can assume that there is something else that I'm (probably deliberately) not being shown. That fits the trope perfectly in my opinion.
@Elbruno — Both. The page image doesn't actually appear in Ruby Quest; it's stitched together from several images. So I was totally able to see the notepad scribblings "at first".
@ading — Exactly. It's able to convey Evil through Red and Black and Evil All Over and a dash of Starfish Aliens, but not enough to actually get a sense of identity. You can't identify the evil, just that it is evil. The Ultimate Evil trope in pictorial form
I don't find the current picture scary or evil in any way. TBH.
@Dutchtica — I can understand not finding it scary, because you're looking at a small black square on the white backdrop of TV Tropes, one of the least scary and most funny pages I've visited in recent memory. But do you really not see any of the Evil tropes about it?
edited 16th Apr '14 1:32:18 PM by TARINunit9
Mummy Woomy
Nope. I honestly can't feel any evil vibes coming from it.
@TARI Nunit 9 No, not really. First glance I thought it was some kind of a VR cyberspace simulation, what with the wire-frame and the two colour palette.
Still don't know what it's SUPPOSED to be. It's just a weird thing.
Lakija
I watched the video of the Final boss in Earthbound I think? And it is eerie. So now I see why someone chose it.
However, either picture is fine. Current or suggestion. Their both red, weird, and use imagery (spidery skeletal hands or distorted gaping mouths).
Hell, we could just layer them on top of each other and create the Ultimate Ultimate Evil.
edited 17th Apr '14 11:46:08 AM by Lakija
It is what it is.
Okay, we're going about this all the wrong way. How about Dr. Claw
◊ from Inspector Gadget. I'm surprised they he isn't the page image for a trope already. I thought of him, then saw he was an example. Ironically, Google searching "Dr. Claw" will show what he looks like, but he was never seen in the show. I'm not a huge fan of an of the images I found, but it's a start.
I guess the current looks kind of ominous, but... I dunno. I can't really feel an effective sinister vibe coming from it. Maybe Giygas from Earthbound would work better? [1]
◊ [2]
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Current: