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Zyffyr Since: Apr, 2010
2021-04-11 19:09:26

When there is a relevant subtrope, you should never use the parent trope.

Kuruni (Long Runner)
2021-04-11 20:37:05

They're actually different tropes. Weapon Of Choice is about a character using a specific weapon to reflect part of their character, while weapon tropes like Cool Sword is about the weapon itself.

So if Bob has a Cool Sword as Weapon Of Choice, his Weapon Of Choice example should be about why he uses the sword, and his Cool Sword entry should be about why the sword is cool.

Of course, I think Weaponof Choice is often misused as "They use this weapon, the weapon trope exist, that's all."

Edited by Kuruni
antenna_ears Since: Apr, 2020
2021-04-11 22:06:33

^ Yeah, the name just isn't indicative of the personality part. I love Fatboy Slim as much as anyone else, but maybe Personality Weapons might be a better name, like Personality Powers?

edit: Nvm, if we started changing all the trope names that don't really indicate the trope, we'd be here all day.

Edited by antenna_ears
AnomalousEvolution Since: Apr, 2020
2021-04-11 23:39:18

Thanks, the lot of you. Looking over Weapon of Choice and its subtropes, I’m starting to wonder if some rewriting is needed... weapons as indications of personality is a sound concept, but troping the weapons and personality implications separately doesn’t seem... quite right. I suppose I could drop it off in Tropes Needing TRS.

Edited by AnomalousEvolution
SeptimusHeap MOD (Edited uphill both ways)
2021-04-12 01:50:52

This entire index has had problems for a while. In the case of Weapon Of Choice many "subtropes" are not actual subtropes; I'd use the supertrope for the cases mentioned in the OP.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Kuruni (Long Runner)
2021-04-12 02:53:15

^^ "but troping the weapons and personality implications separately doesn’t seem... quite right."

Well, if the entries end up too similar, then I agree with Septimus above. But since the focus of the tropes are different, they can be different as well (as mentioned above, Bob's Weapon Of Choice entry should be focus on how he like sword (...well, sometime they just like it), while the Cool Sword entry should be focus on why his sword is cool).

GnomeTitan Since: Aug, 2013
2021-04-12 03:56:15

I agree that we have two problems here:

One is that Weapon Of Choice is poorly named. The trope page explicitly says that it's about a person's weapon of choice reflecting their personality, but the name invents misuse as "Character X prefers to use weapon Y" which is either a ZCE or PSOC or both.

The other is that the subtrope-supertrope relation is unclear. Weapon Of Choice could, for example, have a subtrope about how having a battleaxe as a weapon of choice reflects on your personality, but there could also be a trope about other aspects of battle axes, and that would not be a subtrope of Weapon Of Choice. It's too easy to get that relation wrong.

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