Expy Cleanup Thread

The OGL rakshasa is the same "character" as 3E's, not a copy. It is not eligible for Expy as characters cannot be expies of themselves.

Paizo tends to stay away from totally-not-the-copyrighted-monster monsters for obvious reasons (they try their hardest to not be seen as a D&D knockoff.)

• id say the compatibility makes them expies since theyre equivalents

• per this text:
  When not disguised as a humanoid, the otherwise humanoid rakshasa has the head of an animal. 'Often, they possess the heads of great cats (such as a tiger or panther) or a snake (like a cobra or viper), yet other heads are not unknown—apes, jackals, vultures, elephants, mantises, lizards, rhinos, boars, and more are possible. In most cases, the type of head a rakshasa possesses speaks in some way to its personality—a tiger-headed rakshasa is stealthy and ravenous, while a boar-headed one might be gluttonous and crude. These changes rarely impact the rakshasa’s base statistics, although there are more powerful variants of the standard rakshasa that possess multiple heads, more potent spellcasting powers, and additional deadly and unusual special abilities.

  Raja's heads often resemble those of cats or snakes, but they can also be similar to apes, jackals, vultures, elephants, mantises, lizards, rhinos, boars, and more are possible. In most cases, the type of head a raja rakshasa possesses symbolizes its personality—a tiger-headed one is stealthy and ravenous, while a boar-headed one might be gluttonous and crude.

• emphasis mine. that they can show up with other heads doesnt discount the fact tiger rakshasa are still common

• the example raja rakshasa art also uses tiger-heads, and other rakshasa◊ with tiger heads show up

• i reread the entries and while describing them all as solely magicians is a stretch, my bad, many of them are connected to magic and have spells at the ready. also telling both start with detect thoughts and 7th-level spells

• i hope i dont sound rude, but im not trying to accuse PF of being a DND ripoff. they are a fork. im not a wotc or paizo fangirl and i dont think pointing out similarities is accusing paizo of ripping off anything, especially when there are still references to dnd. there is nothing wrong with saying as such in my opinion. especially since rakshasa were iirc one of the first things ported over when paizo split

• if that is the case, is there any objection to Alternate Company Equivalent or similar tropes?

Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDancer on Mar 9th 2023 at 11:38:02 AM

hail, holy queen of the sea, you're whirling-in-rags, you're vast and you're sad

Again, you're only looking at the raja rakshasa while ignoring the other species. As said above , since it was directly brought over from D&D to PF via the OGL, it isn't a real example either.

I'm not accusing you of anything here, but remember that one of the criteria for Expy is Deliberate (done with intent), which doesn't really hold when you take into account the Paizo staff members' statements.

if the issue is that it only pertains to the raja rakshasa then i can reword it so it specifies raja rakshasa. even then there is the matter of the rakshasa society being similar between DND and PF

im pretty sure the port of rakshasa is intentional unlike the example with the Lupin and Rougarou, especially if (as you said) were used with the OGL

Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDancer on Mar 9th 2023 at 5:12:49 AM

hail, holy queen of the sea, you're whirling-in-rags, you're vast and you're sad

And the raja rakshasa is also not a valid example for the reason elaborated .

~HTD

then you wont have a problem with me using Alternate Company Equivalent or a similar trope per ?

Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDancer on Mar 13th 2023 at 12:46:07 PM

hail, holy queen of the sea, you're whirling-in-rags, you're vast and you're sad

Er, that's an expy subtrope. If the beasts in question are literally the same as they are in D&D anyway I don't see how Alternate Company Equivalent would apply.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

it is a bit tricky since while the appearance and behaviours are the same, the spells are still specifically that of a sorcerer but are different or Pathfinder equivalents of the DND spells, save one (detect thought)

and the background is slightly different. theyre reincarnated sinners turned into fiends in pathfinder when they were just fiends who reincarnate in DND, but still have the same weaknesses and tells, as well as a similar society

what would cover clear ports? it isnt Captain Ersatz. they arent literally the same but are similar in roles, function, and lore.

edit: im also confused because OGL port or not theres still enough changes and backstory additions to not make it literally 'oh these are 100% unmodified rakshasa using DND lore for them, have fun'

Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDancer on Mar 13th 2023 at 1:42:33 AM

hail, holy queen of the sea, you're whirling-in-rags, you're vast and you're sad

Characters.Hunie Pop has Expy listings that go by appearance alone. Should those be nuked?

The other related character sheets may have this too; haven't checked.

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i think they can be covered under Shout Outs if they are just visual references

Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDancer on Mar 15th 2023 at 2:24:23 AM

hail, holy queen of the sea, you're whirling-in-rags, you're vast and you're sad

...Assuming they're actual shout outs anyway; coincidental similarities don't cut it.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Found these VideoGame.The Legend Of Heroes Trails From Zero And Trails To Azure

• Expy: by appearances alone: Lloyd and Randy, meet Shing and Creed. seems like a shoehorn
  • A number of the characters also resemble various characters from other works by Katsumi Enami: for all of these, this is probs just Enami making characters based on previous designs of his, but I could be wrong
    • Lloyd looks really similar to Firo Prochainezo, especially when comparing certain promotional images for both titles. Firo technically has a thinner face, but it can be really hard to tell sometimes. It does not help that the girls go crazy for both of them.
    • Likewise, Dieter Crois is appearance-wise a dead ringer for Ladd Russo, especially his anime incarnation due to him being blonde.
    • Randy looks pretty similar to Crowe, straight down to the same hair color and style. It's really temperament that makes them easy to tell apart. Usually.
    • From the same game, Wazy looks very similar to Faize. It's the haircut and hair color that really does it. They are primarily differentiated by eye color and Faize's Space Elf ears.
  • Sigmund is a dead ringer for Alexander the Great feels like a shoehorn

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VideoGame.Pizza Tower and Characters.Pizza Tower are filled with Expy examples; some of them were bad enough that I moved or removed them already (including listing abilities and objects as Expies when they should be Shout Outs at most), and two (The Noise and Snick the Porcupine) I do think are valid enough that I'll avoid asking, but there are a few between the two pages I'm more on the fence on (even before getting into the other tropes the pages use to make dubious "Character X is like Character Y" claims):

Peppino as a Wario Expy (Both pages)

Video Game page:

• Peppino is one for Wario. He's an overweight Italian man trying to get money (though for much more sympathetic reasons). Many of his moves are taken from Wario Land, including his dash, ground pound, roll, and super jump.

Characters page:

• Expy: Of Wario. He's an overweight Italian man trying to get money (though for much more sympathetic reasons). In addition, his outfit resembles the black and white overalls sprite Wario had in Wario Land 3.

Pizza Tower does not hide that its main inspiration is the Wario Land games, so I feel confident in counting Peppino as unambiguously and deliberately based on Wario. Whether or not he counts as a copy is my main concern, because while Wario is overall greedy, crude, and mean, Peppino is more anxious but short-tempered, which feels like it could count as a "major trait or characteristic" enough for Peppino to fall just short of all needed Expy criteria.

Gustavo as a Mario Expy (Both pages)

Video Game page:

• Gustavo is the Mario to Peppino's Wario, being a cheerful and supportive Nice Guy with brown hair and a thick mustache who rides a mount through levels and can defeat enemies by jumping on them. His spinning attack even appears to be drawn from Mario's moveset in Super Smash Bros..

Characters page:

• Expy: Gustavo is one for Mario. He's a cheerful, short character with a big, round nose, a moustache, and an animal companion-slash-mount. He jumps around like Mario, lifting one fist to do so (which can break blocks above him), he can Goomba Stomp as a unique property, he can Wall Jump, his Brick Kick move is comparable to Mario's Fire Flower ability in that it provides a ranged projectile with limited uses that rolls along the ground. And if he gets caught by Pizzaface, his death sprite mimicks Mario's death sprite in Super Mario World.

I'd say Gustavo does have a few similarities to Mario, but not enough to be an Expy; his gameplay does seem to take after 2D Super Mario Bros. games sometimes, but not only is it less common than Peppino's references to Wario Land gameplay, his friendly relationship with Peppino goes completely against Wario's role as Mario's antithesis and rival.

Pickle as a Memoirs of Magic Roper Expy (Video Game Page)

• The Pickle enemy is directly based on the Ropers from Memoirs of Magic. This is actually backed up by Word of God, a reference to Memoirs in the "Oh, Shit!" level, and credit to the original design in the credits. I don't know if minor enemies can be Expies, but this is definitely otherwise a Shout-Out or The Cameo (the Characters page goes with the latter).

The Vigilante as a Clint Eastwood Expy (Characters page)

• Expy: He's inspired by Clint Eastwood, as a gun-slinging Vigilante Man Cowboy with a Clint Squint. Clint Eastwood being a real person and not a character is already a massive red flag; an older version of this bullet with a second character mentioned Word of God, though I have yet to find a definitive source for this; I'm unsure whether to repurpose this for Shout-Out or No Celebrities Were Harmed, or to cut it altogether.

Edited by BrashBuster on Mar 31st 2023 at 12:19:22 PM

Bumping above

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Those assessments all seem fair. Dunno about the pickles, but Vigilante's entry should probably just be cut.

Cut Gustavo and Vigilante, moved Gustavo's valid Shout Outs to the matching bullet on his Character folder; want to hear some more people's thoughts before making a choice with Peppino or the Pickles.

I think Peppino's personality being very different from Wario's means he's doesn't count as an Expy. He's like one step down from it, though.

Moved Peppino's Wario similarities to Shout-Out on both the Characters page and Video Game page (including mentioning in the former that his personality is what keeps him from being an Expy).

x6: If there's nothing to work off of besides appearance those can all be shredded.

Hi: I wonder if this post is the appropriate forum to discuss whether a proposed Expy entry passes the current thresholds for the trope? I think I haven't even used this trope for the past 10 years, so I have zero experience with the thresholds for the requirements set in the sticky.

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

Feel free to. And yes, these above are in use.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

OK, thanks. I'm not giving the actual proposed example yet, but why I believe one character is exported from the other (and why I still have reservations).

In this case, I am proposing Tsubasa Tokiniwa of Shiawase Tori-mingu as an expy of Ao Manaka of Asteroid in Love.

A bit of background which might help with the Unambiguous and Deliberate requirements. The works in question are manga serialized (and ongoing as of the time of writing) in Manga Time Kirara (Shiawase Tori-mingu) and Manga Time Kirara Caret (Asteroid in Love), two Anthologies Comic owned by the same publisher and generally seen by anime fans to have the same pool of editors.

It is commonly thought that, while series published in these magazines have different authors, their editors are often a significant influence in their creative processes, which causes several character archetypes to be overrepresented in works serialized in Kirara magazines, not unlike a case of Reused Character Design. (An analysis of these archetypes can be read at Analysis.Manga Time Kirara; the two characters involved belong to the "Pigtailed Deutagonist" archetype, which is the best known of all—it is a meme among Chinese fans) However, I think the similarities between Tokiniwa and Manaka are beyond the level of Reused Character Design and can potentially call Tokiniwa (series debut in 2020) an expy of Manaka (series debuted in 2017, animated 2020).

The similarities of between these two characters include:

• Role in story: Both series relate to a hobby—Asteroid in Love is about astronomy while Shiawase Tori-mingu is about birdwatching. Both characters are geeks in that hobby and functionally work as a mentor deutagonist to the protagonist, who are relatively ditzy newbies.
• Appearance: Both are relatively tall girls (but not at the Huge Schoolgirl threshold) with long tied-up blue hair. However, Tokiniwa wears it as a ponytail while Manaka wears it as pigtails. The characters are the leftmost character in their respective work page's image. Both characters also tend to wear unisex clothing more, but are seen to wear more conventionally feminine clothing occasionally.
• Personalities: Both are serious, introverted, and relatively uneasy in social situations (although not to the full-blown Shy Blue-Haired Girl—both are just downplayed cases). They are also known to have a case of Situational Socialbility, when they become more verbose—Manaka goes Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness while Tokiniwa goes Motor Mouth. They both come off as boyish, but not in a tomboyish way. However, while Manaka has a visible tint of stoicism, this has so far not been observed in Tokiniwa.

---

My issue here is drawing a line between Reused Character Design and Expy in this case.

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

I found this example in Kira Yamato's section in Characters.Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Heliopolis:

• Expy: Subverted. Kira is superficially based on Amuro Ray, the original Gundam pilot; however, where they're both technical geniuses, emotional characters, and protagonists, Amuro only had one real friend initially; Kira has several who are very important to him. Amuro infamously fought with his CO and deserted; Kira was nothing but supportive of Murrue and the AA and vice-versa. A distraught Amuro spent the series deciding against a Relationship Upgrade with his good friend Frau; a distraught Kira made the decision to sleep with his crush Flay very early on. Amuro also fully awakens into a powerful Newtype by the end of his series; Kira only starts to awaken into the Cosmic Era equivalent at the end of his, principally because of the downplayed nature of Newtypes in the Cosmic Era. The vast difference in temperaments and reactions between them outweigh the few glancing similarities.

Should we keep it or remove it?

Edited by gjjones on May 1st 2023 at 5:09:37 AM

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

Kira is strongly modeled on Amuro Rey, but those examples sound more like proof of how he ended up more of a spinoff type of Contrasting Sequel Main Character instead.

Not too long ago, jetrip moved the Contrasting Sequel Main Character example for Kira to Expy in this edit with the reason "SEED is not a sequel to Mobile Suite Gundam nor in the same universe."

Given that, I've commented out the example for now.

Edited by gjjones on May 1st 2023 at 6:20:48 AM

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

Gundam's extremely tricky that way. This is the series notorious for starting Char Clone after all. Not sure what fits honestly.