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openCreators Pet misuse/lines on minor characters(?)
CreatorsPet.Marvel Universe has these examples which seem indicative of wider misuse. (Creator's Pet only applies to minor characters getting unfair exposure/favoritism as main characters are expected to get such exposure/favoritism, and that they're hated by fans as opposed to becoming big in response to fan demand.)
- Doctor Doom rivals the Sentry below when it comes to the sheer number of writers who love making a pet of him. Most recently it's been Jonathan Hickman who inexplicably chose him to be the literal God-level Big Bad of his Secret Wars (2015) story (supplanting several more powerful characters in the process such as Apocalypse, The Maestro, and even Thanos), but Hickman is just the latest in a very long line of writers to lovingly use Doom as a borderline Villain Sue. From David Michelinie and Bob Hall on The Avengers to Hickman (again) during his Fantastic Four run and Steve A. Roman for his Chaos Engine novels, when it comes to villains writers love slipping into the old leather pants, none tops Doom. Jack Kirby even created an author device, the Doombots, explicitly for the purpose of handwaving away any of Doom's less impressive showings, making him one of the oldest examples of this trope in the House of Ideas. Big Bad of his series, and one of main villains of the setting, means misuse. And I believe they got so big because they're too popular to count.
- The Sentry from in everything after his debut miniseries. A Superman expy with mental issues, the original miniseries by Paul Jenkins was well-received. However, when the character was incorporated into the wider Marvel Universe by Brian Michael Bendis, he ate up focus in every book he appeared in, which was a lot, despite doing very little and generally existing as a cheap way to resolve plots thanks to being a God-Mode Sue, e.g. he's better at molecular manipulation than Molecule Man. His plots revolved around the never-ending conflicting stories of what he and the Void were, from super-powered evil side stuff to the literal angel of death. Worse still is the way he was retconned into importance when he died, with various heroes waxing poetic about how wonderful he was and how he'd made their lives better in flashback retcons. The hamfisted attempt at Alas, Poor Scrappy was not well-received. Seems more valid. But if they started out popular/a title character not sure if they were ever minor enough a character to count.
My issue is given how comic work I'm not sure how to define a character as too major to count. Normally I say if their name is in the Comic Book namespace, they're too major, but The Sentry entry gives a counterargument to that.
The Creators Pet cleanup thread has been inactive for a few months now, so I'm asking here first.
openAnime without description
Shine Post has no description. It also only has 3 tropes so the image is actually half the page, and I'm not sure if that expy list passes bar, so should I send this to the Cut List?
openNeed help with Expy trope on FFXVI's char page Videogame
Clive's section lists two characters that he's an Expy of, yet the trope page states that an Expy can only be of *one* character. Composite Character also does not apply as FFXVI is only inspired by and not an adaptation of ASOIAF/GoT.
openSomeone removed a bunch of examples without explanation
I just noticed that on the 29th of March, helo1939 removed
the Alternate Continuity, Contrasting Sequel Setting, Expy, Franchise Codifier, and Genre Shift entries from My Little Pony Tales, as well as a chunk of the description describing how it differed from My Little Pony 'n Friends, without an edit reason. Weirdly, they haven't removed the corresponding examples from Contrasting Sequel Setting and Franchise Codifier's pages, though I haven't checked the others. Do they have a weirdly specific agenda where they want to pretend the original cartoons don't exist or something?
EDIT: They also removed all references to other MLP cartoons from the subpages.
Edited by NitroIndigoopenOverzealous deletions or not?
There's been a couple of Expy deletions that seem questionable. For example:
However, looking at the recent posts in the Expy Cleanup thread
, there seems to be no prior discussion to check if the examples are indeed valid or not. Is this a case of overzealous deletions? Benefit of the doubt may say that some examples fit other tropes better than Expy, but it seems like they just acted on their own.
Some of the Genshin Expy examples have a trend of the developer (miHoYo) basing the name, appearance, traits and even hiring the same voice actors of an older character into their newer copy, even if it's in a different game (i.e. Raiden Mei to Raiden Ei and Yae Sakura to Yae Miko). Yes, the devs have been doing this for some of their characters for a long time and even up to this day, and if you're familiar with the works involved, they're unambiguous. I think at least some deleted examples are still valid, but the fact that it was not discussed in the thread raises some eyebrows.
In fact, if you know DMC behind-the-scenes, there's another supplementary material (3142 Graphic Arts artbook page 200) where a staff mentioned that Dante was imagined as Cobra when they made his fighting motions with a certain weapon.
I just assume that the entire paragraph was deleted because other tropers added a bunch of anime and manga characters in comparison, which does make the Expy example invalid, but the Cobra one should've at least been kept because it's been confirmed.
It makes one wonder if the Expy Cleanup thread is deleting some Expy examples even if they can actually be valid, especially the second scenario I mentioned above. It really seems like clean-up efforts like these are best handled by tropers who are more familiar with the works.
I remember there's an Improper TRS Cleanup thread
which pointed out that some tropers are overzealously deleting things, though that thread seems to be inactive for a while now, so I'll ask here in ATT instead.
openEdit War on Characters / Honkai Star Rail: Jarilo-VI
An Edit War happened on Characters.Honkai Star Rail Jarilo VI. Courtesy link here
.
- On May 17
, as part of a move from the page's redirect "Belobog", zero5889 was the one who added the current iterations of these Expy entries. (It's worth noting that they were initially under Company Cross-References before being
moved
to Expy by Dante Vin, but that's irrelevant here.)
- Clara is effectively the mortal, red-clothed counterpart to Nahida, the Dendro Archon of Genshin Impact, both being cute little girls with white hair, who walk barefoot, and act as Morality Pets to humanoid robots with misanthropic tendencies (i.e., Svarog and Scaramouche/Wanderer).
- Much like Klee of Genshin Impact, Hook is a cute little girl associated with fire and prone to mischief.
- On May 22
and May 23
, Lyendith and Katie69 removed these entries with these edit reasons respectively.
- "They don’t have much in common outside of superficial traits"
- "this is a massive reach"
- Today
, zero5889 just added these entries back with only minor changes and with no edit reason.
openEdit War on SuperMarioBros movie
Troper Doctor Sleep originally added the following Deconstructed Character Archetype for Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie:
"Bowser's violent tendencies and delusion that Peach would be into him are deconstructions of video game protagonists like Mario. He gains rewards by destroying anyone and anything that's different to himself and looting their kingdoms for treasure all so he can impress a princess that he sees as little more than another trophy."
This was later deleted with the reasoning that Mario's archetype (in most games) is as a working class hero who rescues a princess—without expectation of a relationship in return—from a villain, which has nothing to do with Bowser being a bully and feeling entitled to Peach.
Doctor Sleep later readded
this entry under Corrupted Character Copy, with some wording alterations (notably still insisting that Bowser is a deconstruction of Mario.) Setting aside the fact that this is misuse because Bowser is not an expy of Mario, is this an edit war?
For the record I think to suggest Bowser in the movie is a "deconstruction of protagonists like Mario" at all is incorrect. Mario as a protagonist does not attack all things different from him, he defends peaceful creatures from harmful ones. He does not do all of this to impress Peach, he usually does it for the motivation that it is simply the right thing to do. And Bowser in the movie does not rove around looting other worlds (he loots just one, because it specifically had something he wanted, and then he heads straight to the mushroom kingdom for Peach.) He is not motivated to attack things because they are "different from him", he attacks things because he is an ill-tempered bully. His entitlement to Peach is not based on him seeing himself as a "hero" to impress her, it is based on wanting to conquer everyone as husband and wife. In the movie, as in the games, he is simply the bad role model to Mario's good one, not an evil version of Mario.
openNot So Similar must be intentional?
From Not So Similar:
- Dragon Ball:
- Piccolo and Vegeta, two evil aliens who first opposed and then became friends with Goku. Piccolo initially saw Goku as an obstacle to Take Over the World, Vegeta just had an obsession with becoming the strongest and Goku's existence just got in the way. Also, Piccolo's friendship was genuine, even if he hated to admit it. Vegeta didn't bury the hatchet until the entire universe was at great stake. Piccolo at one point has to explain Vegeta's own problems to him. Zig-Zagged: by Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return! and Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods he appears to actually enjoy Goku's company and they're able to hang out in social settings with little conflict.
- Surprisingly, Goku Black is one to Turles, despite both being Evil Knockoffs to Son Goku, as well as the former being an expy to the latter. Both have a dark motif, but Black thinks he's doing the right thing, while Turles relishes in his villainy. Also, Black has absolute disdain for Saiyans while Turles takes pride in being one. Their body structure is quite different too, as the former is thinner, while the latter is much bulkier.
These sound incidental as opposed to deliberate. Piccolo and Vegeta might count as they interact, but not sure if "Piccolo at one point has to explain Vegeta's own problems to him" is them calling out their differences. Goku Black and Turles seem definitely unintentional as the latter was only in a Non-Serial Movie around 20 real life years prior to Black's arc, so no interaction or reason to think it was deliberate.
Does Not So Similar require it be clearly intentional such those should be cut? It's counterpart Not So Different was renamed "Not So Different" Remark because it's supposed to be in-universe comparisons, so does/should that also apply to Similar?
Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaughtresolved One question: Is there a Good Counterpart trope for Corrupted Character Copy?
Basically an Inverted Trope of Corrupted Character Copy: an Expy or (most likely) parody of a villainous/antiheroic character which is actually heroic, and not an in-universe example like the Good Counterpart, or the same character but in an adaptation like Adaptational Heroism.
Edited by UzarNaimBer15open CharClone and ShanaClone's worthiness
During the discussion on Slender Man Stand In, Expy tropes in general seem to be outdated and are being questioned of their stay. Among the tropes I wanted to ask was Char Clone and Shana Clone. Char Clone seems to be a specific type of character based on Char Aznable from Gundam while Shana Clone seems to be a variation of Tsundere but with red hair and at times, fiery powers. In terms of long-term staying power, do these tropes have a chance of a potential cleanup or is it too early to tell?
openYear-and-a-half long Edit War
The quote on Overused Copycat Character, as you can see by its edit history
, has had a pothole to Rei Ayanami Expy added and deleted for over 6 years straight. However, I want to focus on the latest few edits.
(Dates are in American format.)
- 5/24/20: I remove it.
- 4/11/21: Not Gonna Do A Lot 4 readds it.
- 9/1/21: Adept removes it.
- 10/14/22: Not Gonna Do A Lot 4 readds it.
These edits are so far apart that I’m wondering if it still counts as an Edit War. At the very least, we need to curb this, possibly by just moving the quote to Rei Ayanami Expy since that page doesn’t have one.
Edited by PurpleEyedGumaopenPossible FanMyopia shoehorn?
So recently 2HeadedMoonOctopus
added an entry comparing the voice of the character Ashera from Xenoblade Chronicles 3 to Bayonetta, due to both being bombastic British women (and given that Xenoblade has a British dub, the entirety of its cast sounds that way):
- I Am Very British: She has a Received Pronunciation accent that, along with her snarky attitude, makes her sound a lot like Bayonetta when speaking.
I then changed the entry to say that she sounds like a Gender Flip of the character Dunban, because the Bayonetta comparison comes off as shoehorning a personal subjective opinion onto an objective page; Bayonetta is a character from a completely unrelated franchise, whereas Ashera is very explicitly an Expy of (and is also implied to be Ambiguously Related to) Dunban, being a conservatively-dressed dark-skinned Western Samurai who shares many of his special moves, quotes, and overall fighting style.
2HeadedMoonOctopus then reverted my change back to saying that Ashera is similar to Bayonetta
, claiming "Dunban is a lot more straight-laced and formal. Ashera brings Bayo to mind much more" as their edit reason.
Subjective opinions aside (contrary to the edit reason, Dunban is considered quite hammy in his own right, and while Ashera's dialogue makes her The Berserker, her delivery is still fairly prim and proper), does this constitute Fan Myopia? While I don't disagree that some people do indeed think they sound somewhat similar, this is the first time I've ever heard of anyone comparing their voices like that, and Bayonetta is not the only hammy British women in gaming. It absolutely would not have been a deliberate reference on the dubbers' part, and any further comparison would fall within the realm of YMMV. Also, I don't think it's typical for other character pages to bring up comparisons to unrelated characters or franchises if the work doesn't outright reference them in some way. Most people who play this game and think of another character will probably think of Dunban before Bayonetta, just because Ashera is blatantly based off of him and not her, even if their delivery may not be 100% the same.
Edited by AlleyOopopenAvoiding warring
At Danganronpa — Monokuma I've noticed this example. (added
by Phediuk)
- Evil Counterpart: On a meta-level, to Doraemon, who is a seemingly-omnipotent robot who helps children. They even share the same Japanese voice actress.
Soon afterwards, IkeaHan has restored it
but as Corrupted Character Copy.
While Corrupted Character Copy would allow cross-franchise comparisons, it still doesn't address the ZCE (As Expy subtrope, it would need quite a lot of context), which I've brought up here
and Synchronicity agreed.
Would need consensus because I can't hide/remove it again. I don't know much about Doraemon to tell if there's anything besides "animal robot with same voice actor" for the comparison.
Edited by AmonimusopenRestoring a Deleted Entry Western Animation
When I found out a character in The Dragon Prince was inspired by C-3PO, I added an Expy entry to their folder which was deleted soon after by another troper.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Characters.TheDragonPrinceXadia#edit33992672
I messaged them with a link to the interview
that states C-3PO was an influence but they haven't replied or reversed the edit themselves. What should be done? Do I just restore it myself, or should another, since I'm unsure if that might qualify as an edit war?
open Sweetness Aversion misuse (widespread)?
Sweetness Aversion is when audiences have a negative reaction to overly saccharine works. It was formerly Tastes Like Diabetes but was changed to separate the negative audience reaction examples from others. But the Sweetness Aversion sub-pages look like they were moved without cleaning up misuse as almost all fail to explain the negative reaction to it or play with it which YMMV can't be.
Some examples from SweetnessAversion.Western Animation:
- Lady Rainicorn from Adventure Time looks like a toy
◊ but is really a Badass Adorable. Not this if positively received as described.
- Animaniacs:
- Mindy. Between "Wakko's Wish" and the Buttons and Mindy episode "Mindy in Wonderland," one could vomit from the sugar overdose. Especially with the line "Fuzzy Bunny," and, "'kay I love you bye bye." Might count, might be a parody.
- "Baloney And Kids" parodies this with the namesake Barney clone. Deliberate parody. Does that fit something else?
- "Valuable Lesson" features Moral Guardians making the Warners watch an expy of The Smurfs with a lesson on being angry as an example of the kind of program Animaniacs needs to be. Same as above.
- Arthur becomes this during Kate and Pal's episodes. The series could be seen as becoming something of it as a whole thanks to the new animation. '''ZCE as to how it's such and the negative reaction to it.
- Batman: The Animated Series Baby
◊ Doll
◊ seems this, but is really a 30-year-old insane woman who merely acts like a little girl thanks to her massive issues stemming from being a Former Child Star whose body never matured past childhood. Double misuse it it was one of the saddest, best received work from the show.'
- ChalkZone is considered by many to be the sweetest and cutest of all the Nicktoons. This initially hurt its reception amongst viewers though as many it was too saccharine, but the show has earned itself a decent-sized fanbase over the years. Largely valid. But is the last part Natter?
- Hasbro's My Little Pony cartoons are famous and notorious for this, but reality is a bit murkier... Valid the franchise was considered this, but this seems wishy-washy on it. Does it count if it was wasn't actually that saccharine but still perceived as such?
- The original 1980's cartoons had this to an extent (lord knows the theme songs did), at least until the villains showed up. The Movie was probably the most diabetes-laden part of G1, even with the villains. (Y'know, the one with the ever-spreading, all-consuming, Hate Plague-inducing, eye- and mouth-spawning living ooze that is frequently compared to the Shoggoths from the Cthulhu Mythos.)
- It's mostly in the Direct-to-Video Generation 3 (early 2000's) that the My Little Pony cartoons acquired the reputation for tasting like diabetes. This generation contained, arguably, some of the cutest ponies in the show, and had a very feminine look towards it, as well as heart-warming friendship moments being used to their fullest. This got taken Up To Eleven when the already-cute characters were retooled into the "Animesque" style fans dubbed "G3.5". But even these two eras have their share of adventuring (in particular, the hot air balloon they take to the place they need to go always seems to end up with ponies needing to be saved from plummeting to their deaths, and never get into water in G3: the Inevitable Waterfall is a certainty!) Valid if it was big part of audiences feeling the franchise was such.
- Unintentionally subverted with one specific part of G3.5, Newborn Cuties, and not in a good way. They obviously try to go for this, but instead, the peculiar art style and poor animation leaves the "cuties" looking very unsettling. Behold.
Can't be played with so this seems like a unrelated complaint.
- Unintentionally subverted with one specific part of G3.5, Newborn Cuties, and not in a good way. They obviously try to go for this, but instead, the peculiar art style and poor animation leaves the "cuties" looking very unsettling. Behold.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic from mere subject matter alone is a very adorable and sweet show, so there is no shortage of diabetes and Narm Charm is in abundance. But that hasn't stopped it from playing around and lampooning itself to lessen the diabetes. While the show has diven into the sugar sweetness with no hint of irony whatsoever, it will sometimes throw lampshades on this as a source of comedy. Fluttershy's cute shyness is sometimes played up for jokes. Pinkie Pie's singing and overly cheerful demeanor has irritated characters on many occasions, Spike mocks Twilight's excessively sentimental wrap-up in an episode, The Cutie Mark Crusaders react to Big Macintosh's and Cheerilee's sappy love talk with visible disgust, and Rainbow Dash is utterly terrified of extreme cuteness. Not an examples as this has broke the franchise stigma of being this such it achieved mainstream popularity/acceptance. Cut or worth noting it playes with this expectation as part of the series. If the latter should it just be added to the franchise wide examples saying it broke that?
Almost all the other examples have these issues? Should we just cut examples that don't mention the negative audience reaction? Or is this something needing a proper cleanup?
open Rude Troper?
Earlier today I was looking at some of the edit history of Characters.Young Sheldon Other Characters; I sometimes do that when a page I'm following is edited, which happened today
, though I usually check about a few edits. While doing so, I found an edit reason
from another troper and I was wondering if it was rude, more specifically on the first part (i.e. "As you were already told,..."). What do you all think?
I would have sent a rudeness notifier. However, that was because of a couple experiences with said troper. When I sent her a Administrivia.Word Cruft notifier a while back for a Double Standard: Rape, Female on Male entry on Friends.Tropes A To Enote I can't directly link to her edit though here
is my edit in which I removed the word cruft (i.e. "There is another example"), she started claiming she crosswicked it and basically blamed whoever originally wrote it, or at least it kinda came off that way. Another time, she gave me this condescending explanation over the trope Expy. (I can't directly link to the edits in question which caused that to happen, though they both were made on Characters.The Bad Guys Movie.) The reason I didn't report this earlier? I was unsure if it was rude or not because some text-based messages don't always come off the way they're supposed to. In fact, that may apply to the edit reason I mentioned earlier, which is why I wanted to ask you all what you think.
EDIT: I gave this a better title.
Edited by RandomTroper123openQuestion about something being listed on a franchise page.
So on Sherlock Holmes, there are these listed in the Live Action TV folder that I question being there:
- House (or House M.D.) owes quite a bit to Holmes. Besides the acknowledged parallels — Greg House/Sherlock Holmes and James Wilson/John Watson — there are a number of references and running jokes that pay homage to Sherlock Holmes, such as House's address being 221B (Baker Street), the name of the man in "No Reason" who shoots House, named as "Moriarty" (although never onscreen), a book by Dr. Bell, the inspiration for Holmes, being given to House as a gift, an episode where House writes the phrase "The game is a itchy foot" on an envelope, and the fact that the very first patient that he treats in the pilot episode is a woman named "Adler". On that note, one episode had Wilson tell another character about a woman named Irene Adler, who he described as being essentially the same as the original Irene Adler—then subverting it by admitting that he made it up. Finally, in the series finale House fakes his death, just like Holmes did via the Reichenbach Falls incident.
- Psych features an amateur detective with phenomenal powers of observation and his less-able, though still clever, partner, who are retained as consultants by a skeptical police department. If it's not officially a Holmes adaptation, it may as well be.
Do these really belong? They seem more like Sherlock Homage than actual adaptations. At the very least the Psych one flat out admits it's not this. However, since this is public domain I could be wrong and they belong there the same way a parody film like They Might Be Giants does.
Sorry if this is not the place to take this but I didn't know where else to ask this?
Edited by BullmanopenEdit War on Laconic Page
The other day on Laconic.Practically Joker, Mechanicalman 450 added "or Captain Ersatz" to the description
. However, I deleted
it under the edit reason, "I didn't see anything [on the main page] stating this can apply if the character is a Captain Ersatz.". However, they brought it back
under the edit reason, "An expy and captain ersatz are similar to each other, with the key difference being that an expy uses a character as a starting point before going in it's own direction, while a captain ersatz is the same character with the serial numbers filed off.".
EDIT: I slightly trimmed this.
Edited by RandomTroper123

I originally asked in the Expy cleanup, but got no response. So I think I might ask here.
A while back
, I made a post regarding Expy examples on various character pages for Ys, So I'm gonna repost but removing some because they were moved to Expy Coexistence
Characters.Ys Seven (Aisha)
Characters.Ys (Ys Origin / Yunica Tovah)
Characters.Ys IX Monstrum Nox (Aprilis)
Edit: Decided to add this as well. Characters.Ys VIII Lacrimosa Of Dana (Party Members / Ricotta)