Expy Cleanup Thread

Sharing a voice actor and a handful of tropes is not enough to call a character an expy. What about their roles in the their respective stories, their personalities, etc.? Those are the things that matter.

It's especially not a good idea to use a voice actor as evidence of being an expy when said voice actor is extremely prolific, like Laura Bailey is.

Edited by Primis on Oct 18th 2018 at 11:27:52 AM

Didn't the first post say Word of God adds a lot of weight but it does not automatically mean one does not qualify?

I noted the following example in Video Games:

• The comparisons between Lusamine and Ragyo Kiryuin are simply too obvious to ignore; Bright clothing and extravagant hairstyle? Check. Obsessed with beauty and an Eldritch Abomination, eventually fusing with said Abomination for her final battle? Check. Controls a large company that's really famous? Check. Controlled every aspect of her children's lives for who knows how long? Oh, you'd better believe that's a check.

That again? Wasn't it pulled years ago?

I think it was. No evidence that the similarities were intentional other than "Look, so many similarities, trust me!"

Yes, but you still haven't given a convincing argument regardless. "Unambiguous; There is no doubt." is the first bullet point on that same list.

"Action Girl Vampire voiced by Laura Bailey" is not enough.

Regarding the Lusamine thing, I have to point out that her character sheet has her listed instead as an Expy of another character entirely.

I say cut them both.

I'd say actor (regular or voice) has no impact on whether a character qualifies, unless the role was specifically written for that actor. What actor is used is something that's almost always determined after the character is written an expy (or more frequently, not).

Just out of curiosity what would it take to convince you?

That's already been said: Do they have the same roles in their respective stories? Are their personalities similar? Things that actually define the character, not just a random assortment of tropes that, honestly, are probably also shared by dozens, if not hundreds of other characters.

It's also just as important to note if there are any major differences between the two, which would also disqualify one from being an expy.

Without an explicit authorial statement, honestly the characters have to be pretty damn close to identical.

Okay...if that is the case then Captain Ersatz should suffice and going by the criteria I thought I would ask about Big O.

I certainly agree with the similarities to Batman: The Animated Series. However I would dispute that it is a true expy, given the criteria it must meet. Different jobs and methods of fighting. Norman seems closer to...maybe, any incarnation of Phil Coulson than the portrayal of Alfred.

Captain Ersatz isn't just a dumping ground for characters that failed to meet the criteria for Expy. It's actually when a character is even more similar than Expies are, to the point of having the Serial Numbers Filed Off. If one's not an Expy, then they're definitely not a Captain Ersatz.

Are you sure you're not just seeing similarities between the two characters because you want there to be similarities? I've never played BloodRayne or Skyrim, so I have no idea how much these two characters have in common, but it seems odd to me that a medieval fantasy RPG would deliberately reference an unrelated, Gothic horror, Hack and Slash series that hasn't had a major release since 2004.

As for The Big O, an entire series cannot be an Expy. The Big O was absolutely inspired by Batman / BTAS (one episode of BTAS in particular — "His Silicon Soul" — has been cited as the major inspiration), but it is true that people often exaggerate how much they were lifting from BTAS, sometimes to the point of saying every single character is an Expy of a Batman character, which is of course ridiculous.

However Norman is definitely an Expy of Alfred. I don't know why you'd say he has a different job than Alfred, since they have the exact same job: Mission Control for The Hero. While most people think of Alfred as a Non-Action Guy, he has fought before, that's not something that The Big O made up. There is no way that Norman is an Expy of Phil Coulson, since Norman predates him by a decade.

Edited by Primis on Oct 19th 2018 at 7:20:21 AM

According to the entry the whole series is supposed to be based off Bt AS. If series cannot be considered an example then should it be removed?

Yes, it should be removed. The Big O undeniably took some inspiration from BTAS, but it is not "based on" BTAS, any more so than Sonic the Hedgehog is "based on" Dragon Ball. There is plenty of original content in there.

Edited by Primis on Oct 19th 2018 at 6:32:33 AM

The following example was recently added to for Slaaneshi Daemons on the Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Gods character page:

• Expy: Slaanesh's most dedicated servants, with their focus on bringing out the corruption in people's hearts, their twisted sense of aesthetics, and their inability to distinguish any difference between pleasure and pain, are practically Cenobites.

While I don't know much about Hellraiser I feel that this is a rather loose use of the trope seeing as such demons are relatively common in fiction and mythology.

I agree.

On the subject of demons, I wanted to bring up this example from The Good Place, regarding the character Shawn:

• Expy: In terms of personality and mannerisms, Shawn is extremely similar to Marc Evan Jackson's Kevin of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which shares quite a few creators with this show.

So, as the example itself gets at, this is really an instance of Production Posse coupled with some combination of type-casting of an actor and a Signature Style of a writer.

I unfortunately haven't watched much of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, so I'm not directly familiar with Jackson's character on that show, but my understanding is that while The Comically Serious (I believe the joke is that he's even more deadpan than his husband), his character, Kevin, is a good guy.

Conversely, while Shawn is similarly The Comically Serious, his character is essentially The Devil and is a sadistic jerk.

So yeah, although the two have quite similar mannerisms, their personalities are really quite different and obviously a stuffy but kindly classics professor (I googled Kevin) is not really at all like a character who is Satan.

Edited by Hodor2 on Nov 14th 2018 at 11:40:56 AM

Bringing up this example from Robin Hood (2018):

• Expy: Will Scarlet is an up and coming politician vying for the position of Nottingham's Sheriff who is also in a Love Triangle with Marian and Robin. By the end of the film, Will gets his face scarred by a molotov cocktail and becomes the new Sheriff with implications that he will oppose Robin's actions. He might as well be named Harvey Dent.

The actual example is hidden behind spoilers, which means it's not an example as written. It also looks like some troper drew up some comparisons and called it an Expy, which is the kind of examples we're trying to clean up.

Trace was added back as an expy on Pokémon Protagonists and Rivals:

• Expy: He fills a near identical role to Blue, though personality wise he's very different than his predecessor. He even becomes the Champion the player faces at the end of the game.

Doe he count?

I'm going to say no, because while he's a rival, he's far too different from Blue to be an Expy. Also, an Expy has to be intentional on the creator's part, and so far I'm not seeing any hints that the creators intentionally made him similar to Blue other than making him the rival.

Works better under Mythology Gag in my opinion

Edited by miraculous on Dec 17th 2018 at 12:28:30 PM

So on the thread for Getting Crap Past the Radar, a lot of bad examples get redirected to Parental Bonus. This is for stuff that's directed towards adults, but not mature enough to count as Getting Crap Past the Radar. Maybe we should do something similar here, where we take examples that don't meet the criteria for an Expy and redirect it to a trope like Counterpart Comparison or a trope it does apply to. We could add a paragraph to the Expy page, or even create a Not An Expy page, to explain the differences between the tropes and what falls up which.

I must admit, I've never quite understood what the point of Counterpart Comparison was. I don't see how "these two characters have literally anything in common according to somebody somewhere" can possibly be a tropable concept, even as YMMV, and I don't think treating it as a dumping ground for bad expy examples is likely to do much to improve that.

I'm kind of of the same opinion. It's pretty much JustForFun.Surprisingly Similar Characters, but that page is at least honest about what it is. Counterpart Comparison is just allegedly some more fans having the same idea.