Fountain of Expies, Mountain of Problems

Again, as a non-anime fan, none of that actually means anything to me. I know what a Tsundere is because it shows up outside of anime as well, but if you asked me to define any of the "types" you just listed, I'd never be able to.

We really need to keep an eye out for Fan Myopia here is all I'm saying. You may be right, but unless we also do a check of Tsundere, it'd be hard to know for sure.

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There's also an issue of how to avoid Expy being too big in terms of subpages etc.

I think this is being understated a bit.

The novels ran from 2002 to 2012, and got three anime adaptations, a manga, multiple OVAs and a movie (along with a bunch of other series making Shout Outs to it). A Certain Magical Index was called "the new Shana" to the point of having gag shorts where Shana herself shows up to complain about it. She's still a headline character in games like 2014 Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax (and its 2019 followup which doesn't have its own page), and is in fact the oldest character in those games (aside from the protagonist of the Virtua Fighter games showing up as a Guest Fighter).

But Shana is also known as a franchise long stuck in licensing hell. All media were licensed for English release, but Cut Short very quickly (I'm not sure if the anime dub even got all the way through the first season). Fan Translations of the novels halted after the licensing announcement too, and didn't resume. And unfortunately the anime suffers from Adaptation Explanation Extrication to the point where some plot elements don't make sense unless you've read the novels. AFAIK J-Novel Club still gets regular requests to translate them, but say it's not cost-effective because Shana is too big a franchise and too little-known outside Japan.

I'd say so. E.g. the anime adaptation of Mushoku Tensei is getting a fair amount of attention right now, but no one's added Eris Greyrat.

But even if this were a Dead Horse Trope, I don't see why that's a reason to redefine it.

Edited by Prime32 on May 6th 2021 at 10:24:57 AM

Because the current name/definition makes no sense to those who is not familiar with the character. If the character archetype actually exists, it's probably better to frame it in a way that isn't too reliant on knowledge on a particular work.

We used to have a trope called White-Haired Pretty Boy that was trying (and failing) to describe "Kaworu Nagisa Expy", which I understand is quite common in Japanese media (a white/silver haired, often [but not always] morally grey character who develops a close bond to the male lead). TRS turned it into White Hair, Black Heart, which doesn't hit all the points of the greater character archetype.

It's telling when characters from a variety of mediums inspire an entire archetype, and often, this archetype becomes quite broad as times pass and can even inspire more archetypes. It's pretty similar to Tropes in Aggregate because it's hard to detect unless you analyze multiple characters.

Edited by ccorb on May 6th 2021 at 9:20:36 AM

Rock'n'roll never dies!

And yet it is that very vagueness that makes these concepts poor as tropes. If we have established that these "archetypes" involve a number of common tropes, then why not just list those tropes? If we must have the archetypes, restrict them to fanspeak articles with no wicks or examples.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Right—something I've noticed from lurking on clean-up threads that touch on Expy tropes is that a lot of times when people think they've found an example of an Expy they're just...noticing that tropes exist (this is especially noticeable when characters are listed as being expies of multiple other characters)?

I also think that if any TRS-type effort does happen for Shana Clone or any of the other, similar tropes mentioned in this thread, there should at the very least be an attempt at a more indicative name. As someone who isn't familiar with the vocabulary of Japanese media beyond, like, "shoujo/shonen", I can at least sort of figure out what Stock Light-Novel Calamity Princess is referring to, but as a trope name, Shana Clone could be about virtually anything.

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Yeah... maybe we should do a No New Stock Phrases sort of rule. No New Fountain of Expies Subtropes, and turn the main page into an index instead of a trivia item.

Edited by ccorb on May 6th 2021 at 11:03:25 AM

Rock'n'roll never dies!

I am actually of the opinion that for an expy trope, naming them directly after the character is better than word salads.

Now if they are deexpyfied, renames are in order.

Huh. I still see that discussed pretty often as an archetype outside TV Tropes, but it's generally agreed that Kaworu is only a Trope Codifier, and that the Trope Maker is Ryo from Devilman (who isn't mentioned in that archived page at all, and was bisexual despite the page claiming that's a later addition). I've even seen "family trees" indicating who took inspiration from who.

The issue is that there is a distinction between a recurring character type and a direct homage to one iconic and influential character. In the case of something like Char Clone, the Gundam franchise is expansive enough that by itself contains numerous examples to the original (masked, dangerous, enigmatic enemy rival with an agenda distinct from just harassing the hero) but is so specific you can pick up on outside franchise examples that are both an obvious reference or maybe unintentional (like Zuko from Avatar). Vader Clone is similar with Star Wars.

In the case of Shana Clone, it's hard to say if the original was so iconic that it produced numerous clones or if it was the culmination of several different characters that inspired a trend together. Most fandoms would like to think their show/movie is more unique and influential than it really is.

Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!

Yeah, but determining whether a character is a deliberate homage to another specific character, or unintentionally using the archetypes popularized by that particular character seems to veer into troping authorial knowledge and/or intent: we can't always assume that the creator of character B is even aware of character A, even if the two have numerous similarities. And as I mentioned before, these "X-expy" tropes are almost always inherently Fan Myopic.

I seem to recall a discussion that suggested limiting Expy to works within the same franchise or created by the same creator, while moving "external" examples to Captain Ersatz if the similarities are obvious enough.

Well in this case, there were multiple characters popular around the same time but they all directly referenced Shana (by casting Shana's VA and using her Catchphrase).

I do remember hearing that Expy was originally supposed to be for when a creator reuses one of their characters, at least on this site. Off site, I think Expy means a fan character clearly modelled off a Canon character.

This is all missing the point. [Character] mimics [Other Character] is a piece of trivia but it isn't really useful as a trope. For one thing, it inherently denies context. For another, it causes shoehorning and leads to trope decay as people decide it's a positive thing for their work to have a particular kind of character in it whether it does or not.

Regardless, the trope Expy should be broad enough to cover all cases without specific examples getting their own articles. See The Same, but More Specific.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Like I said earlier, the expy tropes that seem to be in best shape to me are either ones that might actually just be character archetype tropes in disguise, or blatant parodies of a concept that get a unique spin and context with each work that parodies them.

Like, I'm pretty sure a lot of these tropes are just normal tropes, but tropers misidentify where the trend started or why it started, or they otherwise just assume that these characters are all intended to mimic a popular character when it might actually just be a recurring archetype they codified.

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i see, so it's more of an issue of a popular work in japan that's had trouble getting localized, like with the Pretty Cure franchise? doubled up with Seinfeld Is Unfunny i'd assume, just going by its entry on that page. it would make sense that there are probably more examples of shana clone than the page would imply and they're only going unnoticed because shana isn't that well-known of a character by modern-day anime fans, at least outside of japan. that being the case i wouldn't mind for the trope to be renamed in more generic form while still indicating that shana was the Trope Codifier if not the Trope Maker

Well it would make more sense for Expy to be trivia, but at this point I wonder if it would make any difference. The misuse seems to be so widespread. Maybe we should just cut it and redirect to more appropriate pages.

This.

It was mentioned earlier but Stock Shōnen Hero is a good example of this — it's listed as ripping off Goku on Fountain of Expies, but it very clearly is a Stock Character that Goku codified instead. The five other kids on the page image are obviously different enough from Goku to not be expies, but they all have several traits in common.

FYI, Fountain of Expies itself has an unopened TRS thread contesting the expyness of the other four women in the image. But maybe "lady knight" is worth troping?

I think there is a problem caused by a mismatch between Tsundere as a trope on this wiki and its use in fanspeak, and Shana Clone is trying to cover up for it.

In discussions I see online outside the wiki, a tsundere usually means a particular love interest that is hardly ever seen outside Japan: a haughty but insecure girl who is attracted to the lead but can't admit it, and it comes out as actual violence, hitting him at the slightest provocation. This caters to an audience that wants to be hurt and humiliated by a pretty girl.

We define a tsundere more broadly, as love interest that cannot admit their feelings, and this is something found in romances from all over the world. So Shana Clone functions as a trope that is closer, but not quite matching, the fanspeak use. It may be worth launching a Classic Tsundere trope that has the most iconic elements of the Japanese use: Zettai Ryouiki, twintails, angrily lashes out at "perverts", and maybe a few others. It would make a package that is not dependent upon a particular character.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

Watch this clip and note that it's from a series that was broadcast in 2007.

Edited by Prime32 on May 6th 2021 at 9:24:00 AM

Like I was trying to get at, something like Char Clone is a specific character archetype that is repeated throughout a rather large franchise, and also manifests in other works that are obviously trying to emulate it. If there were enough examples that spread beyond that specific genre then the trope has evolved from a niche subculture concept into a generally acknowledged archetype, and is probably not something TV Tropes is well equipped to deal with. Imagine if Gundam came out today for the first time and people started proposing Real Robot Genre, there would probably be opposition saying it is not sufficiently different from Super Robot to warrant a separate trope.

The rest of the internet also doesn't really have its' stuff together either, they aren't unified in definitions and terminology and we are the ones screwing it up. TV Tropes just has a different perspective when it comes to cataloguing these ideas. Sometimes it gets too broad (tsundere has been misused as "mean to nice within a few seconds" while ignoring the romantic aspect of it) and other times too narrow. We do try to pick up on terms that are being tossed around in various subcultures, but then we get fans insisting a random fan meme is tropeworthy by itself.

Personally I think Shana Clone as a term is just too niche to really warrant it being a clone. I think it's more flexible as a character archetype, especially if we can predate examples earlier than Shana.

Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!

I question some of the examples in that trope and its siblings. In particular Bang Shishigami is listed there, and he's a scruffy man who quotes things like Kamen Rider Stronger. Likewise the protagonist of The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World is listed as "playing this hilariously straight". Surely they're borrowing from Toku superhero tropes that far predate Goku? And even Toku gets a lot of its hamminess and posing from Kabuki Theatre, though it's hard to figure out the ancestry there. The Trope Maker for some of these might well be Ishikawa Goemon or something.

EDIT: From the Kabuki Theatre page

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to express frustration that some potential Trope Makers have so little information available in English.

Edited by Prime32 on May 6th 2021 at 11:58:51 AM

Using tropes inherited from older forms of fiction doesn’t preclude them from being the codifier for something else tho. James Bond inheriting The Casanova from Casanova or whoever doesn’t mean he ain’t the codifier for Tuxedo and Martini.

Hence why Ur-Example, Trope Maker, and Trope Codifier are different things.

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