Cleaning & Reorganizing Weaponry Tropes:

I officially hate our tagging markup because it's not easy to remember.

~shimaspawn,

I agree. Chainsaw Good is very much "Chainsaws exist" which does a disservice to actual tropes that use it.

Would Gratuitous Chainsaw also be a thing? As in, sticking that kind of rotating blades where they don't belong for Rule of Cool.

Gratuitous Spinning Saws in general would probably be a better trope, covering Circular Saw style stuff and Chain Saws.

After this can we tackle Weapon Of Choice? Going back to my post 356 I really like the layout I made.

edited 31st Dec '15 1:01:13 PM by Memers

Depicting a chainsaw as being usable as an actual weapon (especially if the chainsaw being used was designed strictly for non-combat uses) should be a trope, IMO. It's a fact that all the stunts you see being done with chainsaws in video games and other fictional media is pretty much impossible to do, if only because a real chainsaw would not withstanding such use before it breaks down... and that's assuming that you don't horribly mutilating yourself with the machine with a miscalculated swing.

Heck, Chainsaw Good's own description explains well the Awesome, but Impractical nature of the fictional portrayals of chainsaws.

edited 31st Dec '15 1:05:26 PM by MarqFJA

That is covered by the Weapons Of The Trade YKTTW here

Except that Weapons Of The Trade preassumes that the user works in an occupation that involves using such tools in their usual capacity, and just happens to be forced to repurpose them as Improvised Weapons. That's not true of way too many examples of weaponized chainsaws (the original Doom game appears to be the Trope Codifier / Trope Maker, at least for video games), where the user is more often than not works as a soldier or some other occupation that would logically never involve him/her regularly using chainsaws.

edited 31st Dec '15 1:09:53 PM by MarqFJA

I dont know, maybe a Chainsaw Brutality trope would fit Doom and the other examples?

Just a Chainsaw I don't think is a trope. Shoot look at Final Fantasy VI, Edgar uses as chainsaw in one of his attacks ok and then what? It's a Sprite game so there is no gore no nothing.

edited 31st Dec '15 2:32:21 PM by Memers

I'm pretty sure that the Doom example is part of the "Chainsaw Maniac" concept. Chainsaws were used to make more Blood and Guts than conventional weapons.

I thought Chainsaw Good was when a chainsaw was more effective than it would be in real life (which is why uses in works like Pain & Gain were subversions-at least for the villain protagonists-as the chainsaw did not work like in the movies).

Then again there should be a Super-Trope for when weapons are played as more effective than in reality (not Impossibly Cool Weapon, as those are weapons where working at all would be out of the bounds of reality).

That's how I see it. The key part of Chainsaw Good is this line:

Basically, the chainsaw is just as effective as any other more practical weapon, if not moreso. Warhammer 40K is about as good a case for this as I can think of, as chainblade weapons are commonplace and hideously effective due to them usually having absurdly sharp edges and blades made of metals much stronger than anything we have right now.

edited 1st Jan '16 7:16:40 AM by Willbyr

Removed a few things from the list that probably aren't actually PSOC (Batter Up! and Golf Clubbing).

Bumping this to go back to my proposal about changing Weapon Of Choice to the more tropeable Signature Weapon and the more gameplay specific Weapon Type Of Choice.

Weapon Type Of Choice definitely needs to be a thing.

Weapon Of Choice should not be a thing mostly because we know already that people are prone to massively misusing it. If I had a dollar for every time someone listed a weapon that someone used once as the chosen weapon of a character, I'd have a small fortune.

Signature Weapon is a much clearer name for a trope. It indicates that it's just one weapon that the character is strongly associated with. Not just a weapon that they once chose to use.

There are some elements of Wespon Of Choice that are meaningful however those would be better served as more as things more specific like

• a game specific Weapon Type Of Choice
  • X Character can equip weapons of a certain type or types, usually based around a Class System or a hidden class system
• Mass Weapon Multiple Choice any character can equip any weapon, occasionally requires achievable stat requirements and not every weapon is good for everyone but they can be used
• And maybe Cliche Weapon For A Character Type, an index for common or universal stereotypes like Heroes Prefer Swords, Soldiers Use Guns, Big Guy Big Weapon, Little Girl Big Weapon, Fictional Cultural And Racial Weapons like Dwarves Use Axes And Hammers and real Cultural Weapon IE Vikings Use Axes etc.
• Aforementioned Signature Weapon.

All Weapon Of Choice tropes like An Axe To Grind themselves should be cut or sorted and renamed to subpages of Signature Weapon like 'Signature Weapon : Axe'. Reading An Axe To Grind is just 'these characters use axes, here is the Cultural Weapon for axes.'

This thread just keeps dying... Wanna vote on it? Or at least more people discuss.

edited 4th May '16 2:48:36 AM by Memers

Little Girl Big Weapon would be the natural supertrope for Small Girl, Big Gun, and would conveniently cover the Sword Counterpart of said trope (i.e. small girl wields a Big Freaking Sword instead of a Big Freaking Gun).

Also the Pet Class stereotype of little girl summoning a giant Killer Teddy Bear, Dragon, Demon etc. like Kurumi in Myriad Colors Phantom World or what's her face in Nanoha.

I just grabbed names out of my head on those red links.

edited 4th May '16 3:16:04 AM by Memers

The Nanoha character is Caro Ru Lushe.

The Pet Class isn't confined to little girls. I've seen beautiful adult women wielding fierce beasts, and forest types of any gender doing the same. I do think that those three groups are the most likely to use pets as weapons.

That said, I think with Pet Class the emphasis should be more on the bond between the two rather than what the trainer is.

I don't like Cliche Weapon as a trope. I think it's better as a Useful Note about writing than a real trope. It's not a concept that tropers are great at recognizing and there tend to be way more than one weapon that has a stereotype for a weapon.

edited 4th May '16 9:05:01 AM by shimaspawn

No I meant that Pet Class little girls will have a giant pet whatever in the whole Little Girl Big Weapon thing. Pet Class apparently is filed under The Beast Master, although Pet Classes do not have to use beasts at all or anything like it, Unholy Deathknights in World Of Warcraft use undead.

And Cliche weapon kinda already exists with National Weapon, although that is more specific than racial weapons and such.

edited 4th May '16 10:16:44 AM by Memers

So you mean Little Girl Giant Pet?

I wasn't talking about any specific subtrope, just Little Girl Big Weapon is a thing way beyond Little Girl Big Gun, a pet class / user uses pets in combat as their weapon. And as I said I pulled the names out of my head and not an actual trope index.

Anyway that is getting side tracked off my idea of smashing up Weapon Of Choice and subtropes into at least 4 tropes or indexes of tropes.

• Weapon Category Of Choice / Weapon Type Of Choice, standard RPG weapon categories restricted by character or by class
• Equip Any Weapon No Restrictions, no restrictions no fuss.
• Weapon Stereotypes: An index or something for Heroes Prefer Swords and the like like Soldiers Use Guns, Thieves Prefer Daggers, Dwarves Use Axes And Hammers, Monks Use Fists. And National Weapon which covers the rest. Alongside physical weapon to user tropes tropes like a literal Big Guy Big Weapon trope or Little Girl Big Gun and its potential supertrope Little Girl Big Weapon
• Signature Weapon

Reading all the Weapon Of Choice tropes and subtropes like An Axe To Grind that is literally all I see in them that is actually tropeable.

For number 3 specifically Quoting An Axe To Grind

That is tropeable as a concept but not a a specific page dedicated to just axes, one page can cover, supertrope or index pretty much all association stereotypes with weapon types. And no not every redlink I wrote down needs a page on its own, they just need inclusion in the 4.

edited 4th May '16 1:27:34 PM by Memers

I think Equip Anything is a better choice for two. It's not always weapons. Sometimes it's armour or clothing or fish. Maybe with Equip Limits as the opposite trope being able to only equip certain things. That encourages examples like Alice can only use weapons from the Spider category. Or for equip anything Bob can wear any clothing in the game reguardless of gender.

edited 4th May '16 9:45:36 PM by shimaspawn

Potentially, If we include armor then you really start getting into a sliding scale.

Let me think, Redlinks do not mean I think it should be a trope on its own

• Exclusive Weapon, you only got 1 weapon and that's it almost always their Signature Weapon. You can usually equip or manipulate other things as you progress such as talents and learning new moves.
• Character Equip Category: X character can equip things from 1 specific tier of weapons such as 1 handed swords and a specific tier of clothing, it is unique to only them no other character can equip. Almost exclusively used for weaponry.
• Class Equip Categories: This is where you get into Cloth, Leather, Mail and Plate Armor. A class can only equip from a specific category or set of categories but other classes might as well, no class can absolutely equip everything. Occasionally there are pieces absolutely exclusive to only 1 class but rare.
• Hybrid Equips: can only equip 1 weapon class but multiple and shared armor categories. The Standard trope for JRP Gs.
• Faction Equip Category: only a character of a specific faction can equip a specified armor, usually because it has that faction's symbol on it. Almost always has a counterpart for other factions.
• Racial Equip: Pieces are exclusive to a race, possibly a Fridge Logic reason since a race without legs can not equip leg armor. Almost entirely exclusive to armor.
• Gender Exclusive Equips: Guys Can Not Wear Dresses, and such, if that trope exists. Almost entirely exclusive to outfits, it is not a weapon thing.
• Stat Required Equipment: A character can equip anything but first they must meet stat or level requirements.
• Equip Anything.

edited 5th May '16 7:29:08 AM by Memers