Fountain of Expies, Mountain of Problems

That would only follow if people knew how specific Expy was meant to be, and they clearly don't.

Frankly I've long suspected that's a huge part of why Expy itself sees so much misuse - I don't know the exact origins of the name but it's become one of those genericized troper terms like Woobie, and I think that predisposes people to using it for literally any referential character. There's countless cases on the forums of people calling a character an "expy" of another character purely as shorthand.

I think it's just short for "exported character".

yes i do think the name is a big part of the issue, less so than captain ersatz which is completely impenetrable but i'm certain many people just do not make the connection between "exported character" and "expy". it sounds like one of those made-up words like woobie or anvilicious or macguffin that just abstracts the concept to the point that there's no apparent correlation between the name and the idea. i think it would be difficult to do something to fix that since it's a very catchy name but it gives people the wrong impression.

If all else fails, we could just use Exported Character.

I just made that connection, and only because you told me.

My point of T. Rexpy is that was made during a time where the T. rex trope was exclusively referring to just T. rex. But now that Terrifying Tyrannosaur has know narrowed the scope to scary T. rex and has expanded the candidates to include dinosaurs that are part of the Tyrannosaur family like Tarbosaurus, as well as fictional dinosaurs that resemble T. rex, T. Rexpy feels like a relic of the past and could be removed, give or take.

But there are plenty of T. Rexpy that aren't portrayed as terrifying.

T. Rexpy strikes me more as an appearance trope, being about monsters who resemble T-Rexes.

Fictional tino dinos are definitely a trope, so I'd say the problem with T. Rexpy is more with the name.

Yes, and there is also Prehistoric Animal Analogue for monsters that take inspiration in other dinosaurs

Letting everyone know that the TRS for Shana Clone has been launched.

Question—do we still need the TRS-style banner on Fountain of Expies for this thread? I'm not opposed to it, I just wanted to bring it to this thread's attention.

I want to do a wick check on King Koopa Copy (I have one up, actually), but I'm reading the description and I can't tell if the trope is supposed to be Bowser expies, or bosses similar to Bowser. Am I just not getting the description?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Apr 3rd 2023 at 9:11:03 AM

I think its supposed to be characters similar to Bowser, not necessarily intentional expies.

Got it. The description isn't very clear TBH—enough for TRS?

The original YKTTW was kind of a mess as well (though notably, the original sponsor seems to still be active). What I would do, if you're still not sure, is list "actual expies of Bowser" separately from "bosses similar to Bowser" and not take a stand on whether the latter is correct or not.

Edited by MorganWick on Apr 5th 2023 at 4:30:57 AM

Should I ping the original sponsor over to ask what the intention of this trope was? Or should I not do that? (I still feel bad about when I did that with the troper who launched (but didn't sponsor) Royal Bastard during that TRS thread so I'm real careful about paging sponsors of tropes considered for TRS.)

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Apr 5th 2023 at 8:29:37 AM

Is there a moratorium regarding new expy tropes. I had just grabbed this draft about Barbie expies, and I wanted to launch it just in time before the Barbie movie gets released.

I don't think theres any official ban or anything like that

That said, id personally rather not add more expy tropes to the mix

I'd say it looks fine due to Barbie's iconic status and how it's been a long-running focal point of controversy, meaning it's more often a target of parodies than neutral/positive expies and said parodies tend to boil it down to being a bad influence on girls. As long as we have My Little Phony I don't see why we can't have a Barbie trope.

It's more accurately a Bland-Name Product subtrope. Those are easier to justify and contextualize than Expy because crafting a character is much more complex than a usually-quick blatant reference to a popular brand.

yeah, barbie is the fashion doll so most take-offs of barbie are unambiguous references that can be easily gleaned even without being namechecked. as long as it gathers enough examples (which it should easily, it's a bit light right now but i think it just needs wiki magic) it doesn't really fall under the problems expy tropes usually do

That draft had issues but ironically it was too narrow because a lot of examples were parodies and the like. I think it can work if given the right definition.

This thread has mostly focused on expies based off of fictional characters. Will we tackle expies based off of Celebrities and Historical Figures?

an expy has to be based on a fictional character to begin with; No Celebrities Were Harmed and No Historical Figures Were Harmed are separate concepts. (the real-life examples on Fountain of Expies could stand to be removed.) it's generally easy to tell when a fictional character is inspired by a particular real-life figure or celebrity, especially if their likeness is in the public domain.

Edited by NoUsername on May 2nd 2023 at 8:12:06 AM