Fountain of Expies, Mountain of Problems

From what I gather, Expy was originally supposed to be a character who an author reuses in their own works. I'm guessing that Captain Ersatz was originally supposed to mean a character who is a copy of a character from another work, basically how Expy is used now.

So a case of Expy losing its original meaning overtime leading to a lot of rampant misuse.

At this point, Expy has been so misused that I don't know if we can restore the old definition. That's why I think the only way to fix it is to require some kind of confirmation that the Expy was deliberate.

I think requiring Word of God in every case would get a little silly. Like, would you need Word of God to confirm that Dark Helmet from Spaceballs is a Darth Vader Clone?

But I guess that's where the "character parody" concept could be split off.

Yeah, that's the thing. They're not trying to hide the fact that the character is a Vader parody, because that's the entire point of the character and of the movie. It's different than just basing a character off Vader and playing it straight. That's why I think Parody characters and Expy characters aren't the same thing, and also why I think the parody character concept is way more tropeworthy and easier to pin down than the Expy character concept.

i added Fountain of Expies to Tropes Needing TRS based on the discussion in this thread

yeah my entry is specifically "fountain of expies sub-tropes" but since it needs a place to be alphabetized i put it under that

Edited by NoUsername on Nov 14th 2021 at 2:13:54 AM

Well, it's the subtropes that really need more work since they're so specific... But eh.

I think we should fix Expy first and then focus on the Fountain of Expies subtropes. If we do require some confirmation for an example to be an Expy, then many of these subtropes will go away because they don't have enough confirmed examples.

I think the Fountain of Expies tropes would be much easier to clean up first as we could detach some of them from the context of being Expies, then we could focus on Expy itself.

The issue is that right now what counts as an Expy comes down to personal interpretation. Everyone is going to assume that their entry is a valid example. I think it would be easier to establish a strict criteria for what is and isn't an Expy, then it becomes easier to remove examples.

It's not about interpretation at all. It's literally about the intention of the creator. The issue is, the creator's intention isn't always obvious.

That's what I meant. Creator intention isn't always clear so what is and isn't a valid example can come down to individual interpretation.

Darth Vader Clone got taken to TRS! We can figure more things out with the help of that thread.

I was out of town for the weekend and found this discussion about The Fantastic Faux after the fact, and I think it's relevant to the questions raised here: what do we do if a creator denies inspiration, but everyone thinks they're an expy anyway? How does this affect the direction we want to take the Fountain of Expies tropes in?

I think for the character to be in Fountain of Expies, they need to be an Expy, meaning be "deliberately similar to a character in another work". If they're only coincidentaly similar, it's probably not this trope.

Remind me, was there an Audience Reactions version of Suspiciously Similar Substitute? I remember some time ago YMMV pages had entires with the main cast compared to characters from another work.

e: Is it Surprisingly Similar Characters? Can't the "non-Expes" go there or is there a problem with it?

Edited by Amonimus on Nov 28th 2021 at 7:58:42 PM

There was Counterpart Comparison, but that was cut.

Also, I wouldn't use Surprisingly Similar Characters because it's JFF, and would still need to be cut from the page regardless.

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 28th 2021 at 12:00:23 PM

Question as someone who was not involved with this discussion past my hiatus (or the Darth Vader Clone TRS)—now that that TRS has decided to disambiguate, what's next? Are there other Fountain of Expies tropes that are going to go once that trope is done? If so, which one(s)?

The whatever you feel like is the worst, I assume, the TRS needs the wick checks to proceed anyway.

Yeah, the only reason DVC was done was because I made a check for it.

Like I said before, I think we should tackle Expy before we tackle anymore Fountain of Expies subtropes. That being said, if we are just going after Fountain of Expies subtropes, why not Char Clone? On the DVC thread, it was generally agreed that it was an archetype trope that was misclassified as an Expy trope.

Oh OK, I wasn't here for that discussion so that's alright.

Maybe once the Audience-Alienating Premise wick check is done I can do one for Char Clone.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jan 20th 2022 at 3:28:59 PM

Another possible trope to look at is Fauxba Fett, since it was pointed out that it was redundant with The Expy With No Name.

Actually that one might be better since I don't know a lot about anime.

While Bobas Fetts and Noname have many differences, if it's just Bounty Hunter + 24-Hour Armor on it's own may not be good enough for a trope.