Fountain of Expies, Mountain of Problems

Reminder that Referenced by... is the inverse of Shout-Out.

based on the page description, the difference seems to be intentionality, which if the Unfortunate Implications thread pointed out anything, is that basing things on intentionality without requiring Word of God, in practice tends to amount to "how obvious of a reference is it".

but that's somewhat tangential. point I was making is that, there are tropes that already exist to cover "superficial references to aspects of a work" aspect of expy tropes

eta: oh by inverse you meant more literally, i.e. "this work references this other work" (Shout-Out) vs "this work gets referenced by this other work" (Referenced by...). gotcha

Edited by amathieu13 on Sep 12th 2022 at 12:19:03 PM

Have the saber expies been discussed yet? Because thats the page image but from what I know of those characters they don't seem to have much in common

"Saberface" wasn't discussed because she doesn't have own page.

Blue-yellow blond female armored knight with a cape. Someone could have made a page, but there isn't one, so I don't see an issue.

Notably Saber is also the image of Overused Copycat Character for inter-franchise expies.

She's the main girlie on Fountainof Expies' image, which was already contested for most of them not really being expies. Point in favor of "archetype > expy" tbh.

I've guessed that, but if anyone has better ideas that would be the IP problem.

Is there a formal definition somewhere of what an archetype is in contrast with an expy? Based on Archetypal Character it seems like the main difference is that an archetype is too old and broad to be able to point to a trope codifier. But it uses an example in its description (Batman) which doesn't actually fit the definition and is narrower than any of the tropes actually listed in the index.

This is my understanding, though I could be wrong, so take it with a gain of salt

Archetypal Character refers to the role a character plays in a narrative. They fulfill the same or similar function within a story whenever the show up. While similar personality traits are very common (because those personality traits may be important to resolving the narrative), it is equally if not more important how that character relates to and influences the narrative.

An Expy on the other hand, is just a character that is derived from another character. That inspiration can take many forms, most common being everything: personality, appearance, narrative role, background.

In theory, every character can be related to a character archetype, since it's about story function more than the specific form they take. But Expies are much more specific and narrow because they relate to a particular character, and this is where the issues start to happen in a very "Ship Of Theseus" way: how much can you change about a character from their reference point for them to still be considered a true Expy vs just inspired by them vs fulfilling a similar function? Or from a different perspective, does a character having a lot of the same traits matter make them an expy of a character or just...a similar character?

Archetypes avoid this problem because they explicitly prioritize narrative role over everything else. Consider the difference between The Hero and Anti-Hero, which is a sub archetype of The Hero. Very different personalities, backstories, morals, ethics, but ultimately Anti-Hero still fulfills the same narrative role as The Hero. We wouldn't call Batman an expy of Superman, but Batman is certainly an Anti-Hero to Superman's more classic The Hero. Expy subtypes don't exist.

Expy means "exported character." The idea is that this new character is the original character that it was based off of with a new name and setting. So a Batman Expy would be a crimefighter who has no superpowers, dresses in all black, is motivated by the death of his parents, hates guns, and has a Kid Sidekick. However, if that character is just a Badass Normal crimefighter who dresses in black, that's an Archetypal Character.

Edited by SharkToast on Sep 25th 2022 at 2:12:45 AM

This may have been discussed earlier in the thread, but could we not just use the JustForFun.Surprisingly Similar Characters to deal with expys?

The more it shows up the more I have interest in ranking up Practically Joker by the amount of points from the "definition" they get. And I'm sure pretty much none of them have connection to Batman series.

Thinking about doing a wick check on HULK MASH!-Up per an earlier comment on this thread indicating an unclear name/definition. Good idea, or no?

Sure.

Edited by Amonimus on Oct 20th 2022 at 9:25:18 PM

Thanks. When I finish my wick check for Sapient Cetaceans I'll try to work on it.

Some time ago, I was thinking about setting up a "Tetsuo Echo" on TLP, concerning Expies and Captain Ersatzes of AKIRA antagonist Tetsuo Shima, but looking through this discussion made me decide against it, because come to think of it, it definitely wouldn't survive attempts to definite it as a character archetype. And besides, although there may be many other characters inspired by Tetsuo, the only three examples that came to my head instantly were Tomura Shigaraki, Andrew Detmer and K9999.

And this is what leads to my two cents: the main argument supporting the continued existence of many of the pre-existing tropes seems to be how many succeeding characters were inspired by or take notes from (insert prime character here). But where exactly do we draw the line that the character has inspired enough additional characters to become a Fountain of Expies?

Just as a note, I'm planning on taking Slender Man Stand In to the TRS. It's a pretty recent trope, being from 2019, but is still exhibiting a lot of misuse: only 4 of its wicks are unambiguous expies or parodies of Slender Man, with an additional 7 being what I'd call a 'Slender Man archetype' of The Blank Humanoid Abominations with unclear motives who stalk people. The rest mostly have some superficial resemblance to Slender Man, but it isn't clear if it was intended by the creator or it they were just drawing on prexisting tropes like The Blank and the resemblance is a coincidence. (Link to the wick check.)

I remember having issues with it back at the TLP, because even at the time I knew some of the examples didn't really count and I think I was pushing for a retool. I could be misremembering but

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 7th 2022 at 8:19:05 AM

Oh wow, i open the page and am immediately greeted by two characters that have absolutely nothing to do with slenderman. The silence atleast resemble slendy but the same can't be said for hunson

I'm planning to do HULK MASH!-Up at some point myself, as concerns with the trope were outlined earlier in the thread.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 7th 2022 at 9:49:44 AM

Contrary to my last comment, I'm thinking of doing King Koopa Copy instead of HULK MASH!-Up because some of the comments on the discussion tab are indicating misuse. Should I do a wick check on it, or no?

Misuse always needs a usage check unless there's an existing one floating around somewhere.

In regards to T. Rexpy, this was a consequence of the initial decision to make King of the Dinosaurs (now known as Terrifying Tyrannosaur) solely about the actual T. rex, with any fictional creature that resembles T. rex but isn't to be regulated to T. Rexpy. But now that Terrifying Tyrannosaur has expanded to any member of the Tyrannosaur species, the King Of Dinosaurs trope is now akin to Temper-Ceratops or Gentle Giant Sauropod. In short, you don't need an actual T. rex species to showcase the trope, just a dinosaur that looks like T. rex and is scary.

The problem is that the trope has "expy" in the name when most examples aren't.

Yeah, but that's just for pun. I don't think it needs a rename given that most people don't actually seem to know what Expy is anyway.

then that makes it bad for being non-indicative and obscure

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 10th 2023 at 11:08:46 AM