Fountain of Expies, Mountain of Problems

edit: this thread was renamed as the discussion became broader to discuss Fountain of Expies sub-tropes in general, but for the sake of posterity i'm keeping this OP as it was, which was originally focused on if Shana Clone specifically is tropeworthy

my attention was brought to this trope a bit earlier by the grand unified appearance trope clean-up, and i wanted to ask about it here because i'm not entirely sure if it should be taken to TRS just yet; it's not something i'm super familiar with.

my main concern is, is Shana Clone really so noteworthy of an archetype versus a Char Clone or a Rei Ayanami Expy? it seems to have significantly fewer examples, only around 170 wicks versus Char Clone's and Rei Expy's ~500 each, and the exemplary traits essentially being "Tiny Tyrannical Girl + Tsundere" seem to make for an awfully generic archetype versus the numerous distinct aspects that are copied with the other two characters. another concern is that rei and char are both legendary characters in the anime scene to the point that even non-anime fans could identify at least the patterns typically associated with them, whereas shana is from a relatively obscure early-2000s light novel/mid-2000s anime that suffers from Seinfeld Is Unfunny, and expies of her seem to just have been a passing trend the anime scene's moved past from.

is the trope more common than the examples imply and the page just needs some work, or is it worth cutting altogether as a discredited passing trend?

edit 2: i just noticed Tiny Tyrannical Girl and Shana Clone are both listed as having launched on the same day, so is it possible they were split from the same YKTTW thread?

Edited by NoUsername on Apr 19th 2022 at 9:28:01 AM

All of these <character> Clone or <character> Expy tropes need to get shut down. They are useless.

I agree that they attract terrible examples. I do think some of them can be salvaged and forcing an Expy relationship makes the trope a lot narrower than they should be. Darth Vader Clone came up in IP recently because Doctor Doom isn't an example (he predated Mr. Skywalker), but surely the actual thingy here is "tall, menacing, hooded villain" that both Vader and Doom are examples of?

Superman Substitute is another one that seems like a legit thing; every superhero world has a "beloved The Cape paragon" character even if they aren't to the level of making him a journalist named Kent Clark. So I think they at least need to be de-expyfied and made more about the archetypes themselves.

Shana Clone *is* flimsy af though.

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 28th 2021 at 9:58:22 AM

The trope is Fountain of Expies. Under that trope we can list characters that are frequently copied but each of those is not a trope in and of itself.

i agree that even Char and Rei are dubious for their own "expy" trope but they do at least have the examples to back them up. if nothing else we could at least have the names be more generic to signify they're an archetype rather than a fountain of expies, rei already has Pale Strange Emotionless Girl as a redirect.

edit: Fountain of Expies itself has a list of characters who inspired tropes based on expies of theirs and it's telling that the ones with generic names (Tuxedo and Martini, Stock Shōnen Hero, Mascot with Attitude) are much less narrow in their scope than the ones that're just "[famous character] expy" (there are ones like Fauxba Fett and HULK MASH!-Up i didn't even know existed). i think this might require a larger scale cleanup.

Edited by NoUsername on Apr 28th 2021 at 11:16:03 AM

I'm not personally a big fan of the specific Clone/Expy tropes either. A lot of these are literally written like:

A Bob Clone is a character written like Bob. Character traits may include Trope A, Body Trait B, Personality Trait C, D, E, F....and ZZZ.

Alice from Show 1:

• She's a Bob Clone because she's B, D, ZZZ.

Carol from Show 2:

• She's a Bob Clone because she's A, B, E, F.

Dave from Show 3:

• He's a Bob Clone because he's C and ZZZ.

It's literally just picking and listing a few coincidental traits with no relation to the original character. I think some of them have trope-worthiness to them but they need to be condensed down to a basic set of traits that can be found in several characters and given a clear name so I don't have to see something like Char Clone and not have a clue what they're referring to.

On the Shana Clone specifically, I personally think that changing the main name to Tiny Tyrannical Tsundere, removing mentioning of the phrase Shana Clone, and updating the definition to not be a laundry list of traits would help make it more legitimate and stop misuse where people focus on superficial details like hair length/color. There was a time when Rie Kugimiya was all over the place and carried that specific class of Tsundere, and while it might be a Discredited Trope these days (Not sure on this; I don't watch nearly as much anime as I used to), I think there's still something there, even if it's just a blurb on the Tsundere page.

Edited by YourIdeas on Apr 28th 2021 at 10:20:42 AM

yeah i'm willing to agree that Tiny Tyrannical Tsundere is a much better name and would help it feel less narrow

I would love a large scale cleanup of Fountain of Expies tbh.

I think it also contributes to Expy misuse, since the trope Expy is supposed to be "pretty much that one character" but because of these subtropes people think it means "this character evokes these two other characters" or "this character is kindasortashoehorny similar to this other guy".

I think it's kind of the other way around? Because expy is already so heavily misused, it bleeds into the sub-tropes.

But I digress. I also dislike X-expy tropes because it also kind of reeks of Fan Myopia. Even if the archetype is created/popularized by a particular character, claiming that every single character having that particular archetype is directly referencing the "original character" is way too conceited.

Edited by Adept on Apr 30th 2021 at 2:04:38 AM

Shana Clone seems like a name that probably doesn't fit... but Stock Anime Girl would probably work better, and the trope being more clearly defined.

I get what the idea's trying to convey, a young Tsundere, but equally, there are valid points here.

FWIW, I did suggest Lex Luthor Clone (original title Lexpy) on TLP, but Lex is probably in the public consciousness a lot due to Superman, and of course, we have Superman Substitute; but Corrupt Corporate Executive is where that trope overlaps.

I didn't want to have Fan Myopia. At least this suggested trope never got beyond TLP.

There is an argument for keeping these tropes, if the examples can be condensed down to ones that are deliberately based off them and not just vague shout-outs (for example, Krunk off Dexter's Laboratory would fit in a Hulk parody trope if there's one)

Edited by Merseyuser1 on Apr 29th 2021 at 9:37:38 AM

Stock Anime Girl is an even worse name though given there are various basic personality types in anime beyond tsundere.

If the examples can be condensed down such that a creator deliberately creates a copy of the original character then it should just fall under Expy. We don't need a specific sub-trope for that.

i would prefer to broaden the scope of the trope and get rid of the checklist as was mentioned above, Tiny Tyrannical Tsundere seems like it could work as its own trope and make it less hyper-specific to one character

Tiny Tyrannical Tsundere would absolutely be a better name. While some characters, such as Superman and The Hulk has plenty of characters that were clearly inspired by them and meant to be seen that way by the audience, Shana Clone is too generic to be an Expy trope as it is.

FWIW, this is the past discussion on the name of this trope. If my understanding is correct, the name choice was quite deliberate as any other name would be misleadingly broad.

The problem with expy is that people keep adding examples that are merely coincidental similarities. For this reason, any attempt to merge a subtrope into the supertrope is dumb. Fountain of Expies are for characters that expies are based off of, that's the inverse thing than characters who all take inspiration from one particular character.

i suppose my concern then is that the trope itself would require a broadening of its definition in order to remain tropeworthy, seeing as how the original trope of "a clone of this specific character with all the same appearance traits" is very narrow and somewhat discredited. while keeping the same definition and renaming it to Tiny Tyrannical Tsundere would be misleadingly broad, the personality itself is a generic enough type that if the rest of the elements were stripped out you'd be left with more of an archetype than a expy, which would directly lead into a rename. at least, that's what i'm thinking.

Edited by NoUsername on Apr 29th 2021 at 10:44:40 AM

I agree that in general, these sorts of tropes would be better if framed as "Character trope with these traits.Bob is the Trope Codifier" rather than "all these works RIPPED OFF Bob". I've seen a lot of these type of proposals lately and they all seem to have trouble.

I have always been confused by the actual definition of expy. I pretty much only use it for two works by the same creator, where you can be fairly sure the characters were inspired by the same thing or it's a Mythology Gag.

"Character A copies Character B's traits in an attempt to mimic them because of popularity or memes or whatever" is most definitely a trope. However, the specific choice of character being copied is not.

Part of my problem is that a lot of these expy tropes are anime-based, and not knowing much about anime means that I can't even definitively say if these tropes do or don't exist. I have no idea if, say, Rei Ayanami Expy is an actual thing or just anime fans making shoehorny comparisons. The non-anime based ones seem a lot more broad or are more like parodies than actual expies, such as The Real Spoofbusters or Tuxedo and Martini.

I think there are some characters who are so iconic and influential that they might deserve a trope (i.e. Superman, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond). However, I feel like most Fountain of Expies suptropes are unwarranted and are just the result of Fan Myopia.

yeah, my main source there is the number of wicks; Rei Ayanami Expy is a month older than Shana Clone, Char Clone about a year older than both, and both have over 500 wicks where shana clone has less than 200. it's not an underused trope and that indicates to me there's likely some merit behind it, but i think the unclear name and overly-narrow requirements are leading it to underperform versus the other two. even non-anime fans have some basic understand of what a rei or char clone entails, but making exact copies of shana's become more obscure and discredited since she otherwise has a pretty cliché personality

Wick check time?

i made this thread to check if it'd be okay to do a TRS thread and a wick check would be necessary for that to happen, so yeah i can do that sometime soon

If you want help, feel free to visit the Wick Check project thread.

another thing i notice, with the Shana Clone page at least, is that it makes references to "kugimiya point" (presumably other characters voiced by shana's VA) and a nonexistent "type A / type B" (i guess the trope was already redefined at some point and the examples weren't cleaned up to match). so even if this doesn't result in a drastic rename it'd probably require some cleanup regardless, a lot of the examples are really difficult to parse.

Another angle to think of this from, are tropers just labeling characters as Tsundere and not looking further to see if they're also a Shana Clone? Tsundere is definitely the more common term and muddying the waters even further is the idea that the four prominent Shana clones (Shana, Nagi, Taiga, and Louise) are sometimes called the 'Four Tsundere Wonders'.