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openNo Title
owenfan put an example in the western animation page of expy with a link to Your Mileage May Vary(edit reason: none). I removed it(Edit reason:"first line is Expy: "Short for "Exported Character", an Expy is a character from one series who is unambiguously and deliberately based on a character in another, older series" Note the "unambiguously".e"). Owenfan put it again(edit reason:none) Link: Western Animation
openNo Title
Recently, I had argued for the cutlisting of a trope called Batman Clone, and the mods evidently agreed, as Bobby G (I think) cut the example and locked the page. Well, Iqbal (who launched it initially) re-created it just as Batman Expy.
Edited by JordanopenNo Title
In 11 aug, in DigimonTamers, i removed an Expy example with "feels like" wording with the Examples Are Not Arguable edit reason. 19 aug, Lord Crayak put the example again... with "feels like" wording again.
openNo Title
Example comparing eight of the ponies in My Little Pony to the Powerpuff Girls in Expy.Western Animation added again. Opinions?
openNo Title
Just for clearing confusion: From Characters.RWBY edit by Wyldchyld: "[Expy] isn't for anything a fan might think is similar, it needs to be deliberate."
Question is, is he right or wrong? Because if he's right then there outta be many cleanups in pages.
openNo Title
22 jan, Wyldchyld removed an expy example in Bleach: Wandenreich with "Expy needs to be deliberate, not fan associations." In the same day, El Hombre De Los Moleculos put this again with "It's...pretty damn deliberate. You'd have to be blind not to see the intent. So, don't be an obnoxious trope nazi." as edit reason. 23 jan, wyldchyld removed this again with "Taken to Discussion page." as edit reason. In the same day, El Hombre De Los Moleculos put this back with "Taken out of the discussion page, and where it belongs. Once more, stop being an obnoxious trope nazi. This site doesn't revolve around your own personal sensibilities." as edit reason.
openNo Title Anime
On Characters.Bleach Vandenreich El Hombre De Los Moleculos insists on putting the following entry:
- Expy: He bears more than a passing resemblance to Jim Gordon. The similarities mostly end there, however.
The first time Wyldchyld removed it due to "Expy needs to be deliberate, not fan associations."
El Hombre put with back with the following edit reason: "It's...pretty damn deliberate. You'd have to be blind not to see the intent. So, don't be an obnoxious trope nazi."
Wyldchyld pulled the entry to the discussion page.
Now El Hombre put it back, outright ignoring the discussion. Edit reason: "Taken out of the discussion page, and where it belongs. Once more, stop being an obnoxious trope nazi. This site doesn't revolve around your own personal sensibilities."
EDIT: Ninja'd by MagBas
Edited by shadowblackopenNo Title
Question about an example on Demon Aid: Is this a correct use of Expy?
- Expy: Pretty much from the second his design was shown, readers were calling Luft an expy of Makoto from Gina's previous series. Sure enough, by the end of the first chapter, he's already got Esta locking lips with him.
Luft looks nothing like the character he's being compared to, and the author has given no indication that they're connected that way.
The reason I'm leery about this is, Makoto (from the author's previous webcomic) caused a metric crapload of ship-warring nastiness and the wording of the example looks a bit like a stealth attempt to import that drama onto this page. (The same user added a more direct example on the YMMV page, but that's for complaining, so I let it stand.)
I created the page and have been worried about Red String's drama bleeding into it, so I may be interpreting this in a biased way, so I wanted another opinion or two.
Edited by DracMonsteropenNo Title Western Animation
On Expy.Western Animation, Alternative Cola readded a bad example
.
It was pulled a month ago with the reason "i questioned in the "is this an example" thread. This was the answer." and... well, knowing Naruto and Avatar it's just an awful example.
openNo Title
I have a question about how entries should be added on pages like this: Video Games where a lot of work examples are listed. It's clearly not (entirely) alphabetical. Is there some kind of rule when adding a new example? On the top or bottom of the page, or just whereever you want? Or should you in fact aim to put things in alphabetical order. It seems to work a little in this example, but other pages are completely random with that.
Edited by alamanopenNo Title
pootawn
went through all the League of Legends character pages and changed all instances of Captain Ersatz to Expy, with the reasoning "Captain Ersatz is a deliberate copy of a specific character made to avoid copyright issues while still basically transplanting the character into the new canon. These League characters are created to be similar to their inspirations, but they're still very much designed as individual characters with original aspects, so Expy is the correct trope here." I'm pretty sure those guys were created with the Dota characters in mind, though, so I'm wanted to know if this was kosher or not.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Can someone help me parse this example from Doctor Who S6 E3 "The Invasion"?
- Expy: Professor Watkins and his niece Isobel stand in for Professor Travers and his daughter Anne who had appeared earlier. The did not want to pay the writers of the earlier characters. Also possibly the sewer-lurking Cybermen for the subway-lurking Yeti — there's a rumour that this story was originally planned as a direct sequel to "The Web of Fear", before the writers of the two previous Yeti stories fell out with the showrunners over the editing of "The Dominators" and the IP ownership of the Quarks.
- I don't think Expy really applies here, as they are more Suspiciously Similar Substitutes. If I'm right, the whole first part of the example (Travers and Anne/Watkins and Isobel) can be removed.
- I don't know exactly what is meant by "The did not want to pay the writers of the earlier characters," but I don't believe it's accurate in any case. A BBC episode intro by the actor who plays Vaughn in the serial states that the actors who played Travers and Anne weren't available at the time the serial was filmed, so they were Put on a Bus and the parts were slightly rewritten for Watkins and Isobel instead. Can I remove that part of the example on those grounds (if the whole Travers-Anne/Watkins-Isobel shouldn't be removed entirely)?
- As for the second part, I don't know anything about the "rumour" about the writers of the earlier serial The Dominators, but accuracy aside, is the Cybermen/Yeti an example as written?
At the very least, if nothing gets removed, I'm going to separate this into two sub-bullets, since it's two separate examples.
Thanks in advance to any who reply.
openNo Title
Okay, Gaston Rabbit made a small alteration(to be more exact, altered the word "Rodents" to "Mammals") in Video Games with "Half of those aren't based on rodents." as edit reason.
Opinions?
openNo Title
The page for Expy says: Remember that an Expy must be a clearly deliberate reference on the part of the author; superficial or random coincidental similarities (even very striking ones) do not qualify, so if you aren't certain, they probably are not an Expy.
My one big question: how do we know that it is deliberate?
(Sorry, I have a thought that you might've been asked this a lot, but I never get an answer from this)
openNo Title
Sorry to make new query for this, but I have some clearer questions this time
From Expy cleanup thread
, what counts as Ex Py is "an unambiguous, deliberate copy of another character."
Several questions
- Is that a new definition? I believe it wasn't like that long ago.
- Dunno, but to me "unambiguous" is still ambiguous. As long as someone made a counterargument or if evidences aren't convincing, it doesn't count - wouldn't it make it really inflexible?
- Does "incidental" mean "two characters share a lot of traits to a high degree"?
- From "copy", it says that similar hairstyle or outfit isn't enough to make an expy. Do we have a trope for similar hairstyle/outfit itself?
- "another" makes an expy be a copy to only one character. What's the trope for someone mixing traits from a lot of characters? (Composite Character sounds like it's limited to adaptations, unless it can be broadened)
openNo Title
Is there such a thing as a triple subversion, or does that just wrap back around to regular subversion?
There's a fight scene in Gravity Falls I'm thinking of when I ask this. The trope is Curb-Stomp Battle. Dipper, 12-year-old boy, has to fight Rumble McSkirmish, an Expy of Ryu from Street Fighter, who he unleashed from the arcade game Fight Fighters.
- First Subversion: We expect going in that Dipper is going to get his ass kicked because there's no way he can win this fight, but at a critical moment, he manages to land a flying uppercut that lays Rumble out on his back. It's played as a Hope Spot and depicted in slow motion to maximize the awesomeness of the moment.
- Double Subversion: This accomplishes f*ck all. Rumble gets a tick to his HP bar of about 2%, then goes right back to effortlessly beating Dipper's ass until he's a broken pile of limbs on the ground.
- Triple Subversion: Rumble's victory seals his doom, however, because by defeating Dipper, Rumble finishes the "game". He's immediately pixelized and returned to the arcade machine to await his next New Game, with a Big "NO!" to accompany his departure. Dipper actually wins the Curb-Stomp Battle by being on the receiving end of the beatdown.

suedenim is waging a one-troper war against examples on Captain Ersatz - many of which are actual examples of the trope. She keeps saying "these are Expies" in her edit reasons, but... an expy is a character similar to another character by the same writer. That, and she seems to think that Expy is basically "Captain Ersatz as regarding objects or concepts of Shows Within a Show."
I really don't mean to complain, but she's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, there are some examples that don't belong, and she's taking out some natter, but she's going a little too far.