00:04:09 - Small Town with a Dark Secret 00:05:10 - Daddy's Little Villain 00:08:18 - Mad Scientists 00:11:42 - Human Weapons 00:13:45 - Flanderization 00:14:47 - Villain Protagonist 00:18:16 - Prophecies 00:19:07 - No Killing Policy ╰----> 01:32:27 - What Measures a Mook? 00:25:11 - Blue/Orange Morality 00:27:43 - Decoy Protagonist 00:31:02 - Clones/ Evil Clones ┣----> 01:42:37 - Cloning Blues ╰----> 03:01:14 - Tomato in the Mirror 00:34:46 - Power Incontinence/"I can't control my powers" 00:38:31 - Power Born of Madness 00:41:35 - Red Shirts 00:44:31 - Badass Longcoat 00:46:21 - Death Flags 00:48:55 - Affably Evil 00:53:27 - Godzilla Threshold ╰----> 01:45:30 - When Gods Fight Each Other 00:56:22 - Cloudcuckoolanders 00:59:18 - Body Swap 01:01:22 - Multiverse ╰----> 01:56:23 - Terrible Future 01:06:08 - Hero with Evil Powers 01:10:33 - Characters Trapped in Virtual Reality 01:12:02 - Evil vs. Evil 01:16:28 - Did You Just Punch Out Cthulu? 01:17:58 - "Hero Goes Into Villain's Mind" (called Mental World on TV Tropes) 01:20:51 - Stupid Evil 01:21:43 - Lawful Stupid 01:24:20 - The Power of Love 01:28:47 - Tsundere/ Yandere 01:30:14 - Manic Pixie Dream Girl 01:31:11 - Save Nature 01:33:23 - Honorable Assassin 01:35:16 - Enemies to Lovers 01:36:34 - Nightmare Fuel 01:38:40 - Dead All Along 01:41:00 - Evil Gods 01:42:59 - Villain Can't Lose 01:45:22 - Badass Teacher 01:45:50 - Hero Complex ╰----> 01:48:26 - Hero Syndrome 01:49:20 - I Know a Guy 01:50:02 - Hive Mind 01:52:25 - Knight of Cerabus 01:54:41 - Personality = Element 01:57:57 - Adult Kid from the Future 02:01:50 - Evil = Sexy, Good = Prudish 02:02:25 - Tragic Backstories (02:03:58 - Tom Bombadill tangent) 02:05:15 - The Heroes are Already Max Level 02:07:54 - Heroes with Bad Publicity ╰----> 02:13:13 - Heroes on Trial 02:12:20 - Green Gore is Good Gore 02:12:53 - Comic Relief 02:13:43 - Unreliable Narrator 02:16:50 - Liar Revealed 02:20:11 - Fetch Quests 02:22:07 - Homoerotic Undertones 02:22:37 - Gender Bending 02:25:40 - Harem 02:25:57 - The Scrappy /The Wesley (lol 02:29:51 - Ryker Not Sitting on Chairs Normally) 02:30:01 - Sympathetic Villains 02:31:51 - Shut Up Hannibal! 02:33:25 - Undying Loyalty 02:34:57 - The Starscream 02:39:24 - Humans are Cthulhu / Earth is Space Australia 02:41:15 - Self Inserts < (wedged in there) 02:45:51 - Idiotic Villains 02:48:57 - You Killed My Father 02:49:40 - Found Family 02:50:19 - Final Girl 02:50:33 - Evil Sounds Deep 02:51:10 - Badass Normal 02:52:36 - Sacrificial Lambs 02:53:24 - Corruption Arcs 02:54:09 - Brick Joke 02:54:50 - Banality of Evil 02:57:45 - Badass and Child Duo 02:58:54 - Time Loops 02:59:57 - Complete Monster 03:01:02 - Reincarnation 03:01:59 - Non Binary Aliens 03:02:40 - Bare Your Midriff 03:03:25 - Reluctant Villains
A common death flag is a character that's "just two days away from retirement" or showing his war-buddy a picture of his girl that he's going to propose to as soon as he gets home. A lampshade is hung on the latter one in Fullmetal Alchemist with Hughes showing Mustang a picture of his girl and saying that he can't wait to get home to marry her. Mustang tells him to put that picture away, does he WANT to die? Hughes survives the war and marries his woman and becomes the BEST husband and dad...
The absolute best death flag trope imo was in Akibaranger, where the main cast is actively doing their best to avoid beating the season finale boss because they've realised that they're in a show and that the world functionally ends the moment a show is finished. In response, the author keeps forcing the boss to say increasingly obvious and cliched death flags until the narrative weight requiring him to die is so great that his own attack misfires and kills him despite the heroes trying to save him.
The homestuck problem is that homestuck is made entirely of tropes to an entirely comical degree and this leads to homestuck syndrome a phenomenon where readers correlate any and every trope and writing convention with homestuck. To the point where it is a meme within the Fandom
In RWBY, I knew Pyrrha's fate as soon as I heard her name. She was based on Achilles and he did once disguise himself as a redheaded woman named Pyrrha, but I didn't know that at the time. What I did know was the idea of a Pyrrhic Victory, a victory, but one with a cost so great that one may be hesitant about calling it an actually victory.
Actually, the Pyrrhic victory thing has nothing to do with Achilles, instead it refers to Pyrrhus of Epirus, a king enemy of Rome during the republican period
@@falquicao8331 I'm aware that the two things aren't connected. I was saying that I was aware of the Pyrrhic Victory concept and connected that with the name of Pyrrha and that's how I guessed she would die.
One of my favorite uses of a body swap is actually from a Gravity Falls fanfiction. The show's body swap episode is pretty standard, but this fanfic adds in the fact that they also swapped perceptions. For example, at one point Dipper needs to think, and he grabs a pen and starts clicking it, but because he's in Mabel's body it annoys him instead of helping him. I think it added a nice twist on the original, instead of just shenanigans it's a chance for the characters to better understand each other. The story's called The Man Downstairs. The premise is a massive spoiler, and it's also very dark, but it's pretty good.
With regards to the bit about evil races: Interestingly, Tolkien apparently came to dislike the idea that orcs were all irredeemably evil and decided against it in a letter. Also, goblins are just orcs in the books, so they also fall under that banner. Here's the quote I found: "[Eru/God] gave special 'sub-creative' powers to certain of His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subject to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they 'fell', as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things 'for himself, to be their Lord', these would then 'be', even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other 'rational' creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least 'be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even 'mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making - necessary to their actual existence - even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.) But whether they could have 'souls' or 'spirits' seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible 'delegation', I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them." Basically, what this appears to be saying is that the very creation of orcs, through torture and dark magic, was evil, but even they aren't completely beyond redemption and have thought. We can see that a bit in the discussion of the orcs at Cirith Ungol, where one of them talks to the other about retiring to a land without "big bosses" with a few other soldiers, though of course not long after they get into a fight that gives Sam a chance to rescue Frodo. The orcs do have minds and free will, but have been driven into evil by a character that essentially is LotR's equivalent of Satan, and after a fall so far, it isn't surprising that we don't see many rise back up again, especially since they're so hated by elves, humans, and dwarves. I do dislike the lack of diversity among the humans who stood against Sauron, though, and think that's a valid point.
So at this point it’s basically like the culture of the orcs is so toxic that change would be very difficult to affect. But if I’m theory some friendly old widow found a baby orc and raised it that orc wouldn’t grow up in that environment and therefore have more of a chance to choose goodness?
As far as the Southrons and Easterlings, it's even implied with Faramir's speech about that one Haradrim who got pincushioned in front of Frodo and Sam, that the vast majority of them are essentially conscripts that have been forced into fighting for Sauron... "What lies drove him from his home?" Honestly, given Tolkien's personal experiences of fighting in WW1 and living through WW2, a lot of the humans who fought against the Forces of Good can read very similarly to the perception of the average German soldier: They're normal people fighting for the wide range of reason any army fights (patriotism, conscription, vainglory, being actual pirates who are understandably miffed at the guys who kicked their ass over the whole piracy thing, a few who just want to murder people...) who happen to be under the command of someone who's genuinely evil. The *really* problematic example are the people who Saruman recruited to fight against Rohan, because they're a gorram displaced indigenous minority with real grievances against the Rohirrim.
Death tags are amazingly fun when you're crewing a larp; players start sweating buckets when a beloved NPC starts showing them pictures of their kids, or telling them about the yacht they're buying when they retire in three days.
When you messed up your kids so bad that one of them screams at thunderstorms to hit them with lightning and the other one pulls straight-up mafia tactics on one of her closest friends to get her to do what she wants. A+ parenting, there.
@@maddie9602 and the worst part is he'd think that those things were signs that he was successful as a parent. especially how azula treated her friends.
@@gameinsane4718 when Ty Lee was in the circus and didn't want to leave to join Azula's crew, and Azula intimidates her into cooperating by setting the net on fire while she performs
Personally I keep the "Fire Lord Ozai Scale of Bad Fictional Parenting" where 1 Ozai is the top end of the scale. I know of only one (1) fictional parent who is arguably worse at parenting than Ozai, and he's in the Girl Genius webcomic that Red recommended.
My favourite death flag is probably in How I Met Your Mother, where there's a subtle numeric countdown throughout the episode and when it hits zero, one of the main characters parents dies. It's brilliantly done
I remember catching that countdown on a rewatch and getting super invested in it, not remembering how the episode ended and being really struck by it. Still my most vivid memory of that series to this day.
It’s not even subtle, once you read the episode title, you instantly see the numbers, and it doesn’t help that as the numbers tick down the music and the tension in the show gets higher and more. Like the fact one of the numbers quite literally walks in front of the camera, then the next in the sequence is directly announced
I think the red scare was a big part of what made Hiveminds popular, Hiveminds are a fantastical shorthand for like worst case scenario totalitarian regimes while at the same time theyre in visceral philosophical opposition with free will and individuality. It's like the brutalism of villain tropes, a well oiled hivemind is cold and efficient with individual mooks as cogs in the machine.
Red: "Villain Protagonists are fun to watch fail where hero protagonists are fun to watch succeed." Me: "And the times when we get Villain Protagonists that succeed the result is usually a tragedy." *looks at Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along and the first part of Megamind*
IMO Dr. Horrible is a great Sith origin that wasn't in a Star Wars. Were the death of his one-sided crush (a thing he loves) becomes the sacrifice that cements him as fully villious.
One of my favourite examples of “what measure is a mook” is in order of the stick where most the the non-player character races were literally created by the gods for easy XP for PCs and one of the main villains (a goblin cleric) has an plan to give the God of goblins limited control of a dangerous god-killing abomination to negotiate for the monster races’ right to exist without being murdered by adventurers.
@@TheSchultinator now is a pretty good time tbh. There are only 24 episodes of campaign 3 (as opposed to over 100 for both 1 and 2) and now it's on a month long hiatus because they are airing a prequel of sorts so you can catch up. There are some tie-ins to previous stories but not enough to make it incomprehensible and I enjoy the characters very much. Or you can ignore the streams entirely and just watch campaign 2 (which is a lot of people's favourite) from the beginning
Don't Fear The Reaper is a trope on Tv Tropes, based around the idea that the Grim Reaper/Personification of Death, rather than being villainous/malicious, is actually kind and/or friendly.
"What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man" - Death, Reaper Man Discworld's Death, I feel, is the platonic ideal of this trope
I like when "Humans are Space Orcs" stories rely less on humans or Earth just being inexplicably exceptional in some way and are more focused on things that our species has evolved to do which actually make us exceptional within our own biosphere. Good example is how we're basically the track & field superstars of the animal kingdom, with downright ludicrous endurance, due to things like overactive sweat glands and upright bipedalism. Sure we're not the fastest by any stretch, but make the race long enough and a reasonably fit human can leave the vast majority of species in our proverbial dust. Or how, while we obviously can't regrow limbs and such, but compared to endotherms of similar size and weight we're basically god damn Wolverine and can resist going into shock even after injuries that would be catastrophic to most animals. But we usually don't think of "super walking" or "super scabbing" as very impressive, so yeah.
@@nibblitman Totally. Though one of the few animals that can keep up with us relatively well are wolves, which likely was a big factor in our two species developing such a close symbiotic relationship in the form of dogs (another big factor was definitely that both humans and dogs can pack-bond with god damn anything).
My brother once observed of us humans, "We climb better than anything that can run as fast as us. We can run faster and further than anything that can climb as well." He had said we were the best all terrain vehicle we've ever seen. Star Trek is one setting that has that focus for Humans, but I have never seen a story that focused on it. Humans are more violent than any Vulcan and more logical than any Klingon. They are essentially second best at everything, and thus can find common ground with anyone. Which means Humanity can find common ground with EVERYONE. Humans are what makes a Klingon/Ferengi alliance possible.
1:00:00 My favourite use of the body swap trope was in the Futurama episode The Prisoner of Benda, where they invented a system of body swapping rules to provide a conflict for the episode, and Ken Keeler had to publish a new mathematical theorem (Keeler's Theorem) to prove what the solution to the predicament was, and the best part is that it makes a cameo on a whiteboard in the show itself.
While they didn't create the theorem, they did the same set of rules in the Stargate body swap episode. The big revelation was that they needed to swap two more people to get everyone back, just like in Futurama.
"Non-binary aliens" reminds me of a hill I will die on that I've never really discussed w/ anybody so idk how much ppl would agree with me but. Most so-called non-binary aliens are actually just genderless aliens. And yes there is a difference. Because in a species with no binary to speak of, what binary, pray tell, is that "non" prefix divorcing them from? (Tho I will still project myself onto them 99% of the time. This goes doubly for robots, I love them so much.)
As an Enby, I also love and project onto most androgynous characters, and I agree that a distinction needs to be made between non-binary and gender-less or, more typically, mono-gender species
Star trek Enterprise had a rather bad episode in season 1 where they met a species with 3 genders (all needed for reproduction) and the 3rd one was oppressed by the males and females.
Yeah, agender is a type of nonbinary (and also me), but it usually looks like the writers just have No Clue it's a thing. Oh well, at least they are trying
What? I... don't think I understand like 60-70% of What you are trying to say at all. Would xenomorfs (aliens) fit under the category of non binary or gender less or both given the nature of species itself?
Interesting idea for a trope: The "Why won't you die?!" Trope. The idea of a character that just won't die, or keeps getting written into the story over and over.
To be Fair to the "Legend of Monkey" Show Genderbending Trippitaka, That's actually technically a Cultural reference, since in Eastern Theater Trippitaka was usually played by a Woman (Even though the character was still a Man)... I don't recall if that tradition was Respected everywhere in Asia or just in Japan, but I remember it being referenced in some anime that I can't currently remember beyond that factoid. Kinda a Peter Pan deal, where it's become tradition for the Actor that plays Mr. Darling to also play Hook, a Tradition that Started because the Dude that played Hook Couldn't be bothered to show up so they had to find someone to Fill in, and they had a perfectly Good Adult man that wasn't being used in any of the same scenes right there in the play already.
I'm pretty sure Avatar referenced that! Though I'm not sure it's the anime you're talking about since whether or not Avatar is an anime depends on who you ask 😅
@@KazooKid0214 Avatar was not the reference I was talking about. But now that you mention it, the Ember Island Players Casting a Girl as Aang Could very well be a reference to this! (And Maybe Toph as a Giant Burly dude?)
@@kgmotte2363 I think Aang being played by a female actor definitely is a reference to that. Toph being a big dude though is a different thing entirely. It's a reference to the fact that the character was originally going to be exactly that - a big strong guy. One of the female writers went to the creators about it and argued for the character to be a girl and the rest is history. The Ember Island Players Toph is a funny injoke for the creators themselves. (The Earthbender you see in the intro is also supposed to be the original Toph)
Another one would be Midori from Norwegian Wood. Funnily enough she kinda works because it's clear she has a very complex inner-personal life, but she does kinda show up out of nowhere like 'hi main character, I'm here to make your life more interesting'
@@jimluebke3869 Oh I didn't even think about Gigi and the French version was a good decade before Fahrenheit 451. Though these are both great early examples of the trope.
Red, I don’t think you understand that your trope talks are inspiring me to learn more and more to make my pet project better and better! I’m very intrigued with what you have to say on tropes so this kinda 3 hour lightning round super fun!
The hero with bad publicity trope is the entire plot of "Wicked" the musical. Elphaba is constantly trying to do good things, but they either always come out terribly or can be twisted to be used against her. I love that musical and I had no idea the whole plot was basically this trope.
2:00 Cute how Red is still surprised that people like listening to her ramble. I've sent clips of OSP to friends and they all react to Red the same way. "She is delightful. I could listen to her all day." 17:30 As a Vegeta fan, we still hold out hope that one day our guy will walk away with a pure W. No crash and burn. Just win.
I like the power of love when it's not inherently romantic love, like in Frozen when "an act of true love" turned out to be about the sisters and not a love interest.
Dick Dastardly was primarily from the wacky races. He later had his own show, Dastardly and Muttley. He was voiced by Paul Winchell who also voiced Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh movies.
On the Subject of the Clone Trope: "I was laboratory born, raised in a silent cell The tapes gave me direction, a fragile patterned shell. They programmed me for service; I was sold away one day To a world I understood as ‘ship,’ with a preset part to play. The years passed by uncertainly; I existed but to serve. Content, and yet not happy, in a world that I deserved. And then one day you found me in my safely shallow land You offered me my freedom, but I did not understand. I gambled for your offer, never thinking I could choose The game for you diversion, my life if I should lose. Your winning took my contract, and with it came my soul I followed where you led me then, but you could not make me whole. Still you changed me and reshaped me, in the chaos time we shared You asked me more than I could give, hurt more than I could bear And then one day you left me, with no choice but human chance I stole your tapes, and knowledge came, sore bitter in the trance. The questions I’d not dreamed of all found answers on that day One point, in fact, still bothers me and will not go away. The programming that made you real taught me right from wrong But does knowing make me human-or was I human all along?" Tapes - Dominic Bridwell
Isn't it strange? Feels like I'm lookin' in the mirror What would people say if only they knew that I was Part of some geneticist's plan Born to be a carbon copy man There in a petri dish late one night They took a donor's body cell and fertilized a human egg and so I say I think I'm a clone now There's always two of me just a-hangin' around I think I'm a clone now 'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down Look at the way we go out walking close together I guess you could say I'm really beside myself I still remember how it began They produced a carbon copy man Born in a science lab late one night Without a mother or a father Just a test tube and a womb with a view I think I'm a clone now There's always two of me just a-hangin' around I think I'm a clone now 'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down I think I'm a clone now And I can stay at home while I'm out of town I think I'm a clone now 'Cause every pair of genes is a hand-me-down Signing autographs for my fans Come and meet the carbon copy man Livin' in stereo, it's all right Well I can be my own best friend and I can send myself for pizza, so I say I think I'm a clone now Another one of me's always hangin' around I think I'm a clone now 'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down I think I'm a clone now I've been on Oprah Winfrey, I'm world renowned I think I'm a clone now And every pair of genes is a hand-me-down I think I'm a clone now Thats my genetic twin always hangin' around I think I'm a clone now 'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down
The Body Swap in Stargate SG-1 is pretty good, because it's live action and far enough in the series the actors have to really work to make it convincing.
It was at this point in the stream that I realized I was saying, "Oh like that one time in Stargate." frequently. Apparently SG-1 was just a sci-fi trope of the week kinda show. Lol
Farscape and Xena both did pretty good ones too - it was a lot of fun to watch Lucy Lawless playing a different character. And Buffy did at least two body swap stories - one was just the monster of the week - a mother living vicariously through her daughter a little more literally than usually happens - but the other did some good character work and was a major turning point in a supporting character's arc.
My 'favourite' version of "Stupid Evil" is the villain who just keeps on pushing, and pushing, and pushing a hero who is orders of magnitude more powerful than them, but has no intention of actually killing them, because it raises a very pertinent question of "What happens if the hero actually breaks", because you eventually realise that if the villain is too successful, they're just straight-up _dead._ A good example of this would be the comic version of Dr. Eggman. Ol' Robotnik goes out of his way to torment Sonic and make his life hell, and he won't ever let Sonic actually die because if he did, Eggman would be _bored._ The entire war between them is a game to him... but if Sonic _did_ get pushed over the line, Eggman would be dead before he even knew what happened.
49:48 Shoutouts to Red for making a stream so engaging that I forgot I had tea sitting on my kitchen counter until a villain making tea was mentioned. Edit: 1:03:03 Guess I wasn't the only one who forgot about tea.
I would like to say in my opinion, the Borg especially from Star Trek Voyager were a terrifying presence for me in the show. More akin to a fear of natural disasters. It’s even stated in the show, travelers view the Borg as akin to a storm, you just change course and pray. That makes them terrifying. But also they get a more in depth look at how they function and think. I really like the Borg, they are great example of hive mind done well. Thank you for reading.
Regarding the mention of clones in the "Jerk Gods" section, I absolutely LOVE how they handled that in Young Justice. It's revealed that a character has been cloned a couple times, and sure there's a fair amount of angst about it initially, but it doesn't take too long for them to get that they have zero reason to antagonize each other and just 100% treat each other as family with a lot of cute sibling dynamics and it's great.
What I consider an excellently done Decoy Protagonist is Simon/Kamina of Gurren Lagann. Kamina is essentially the archetypical Shonen protagonist, to the point that he outshines the actual protagonist Simon (who is first perceived as the sidekick to Kamina.) What's interesting is that narratively, Kamina is only arguably protagonist of episode one, once they get on the surface, narratively Simon becomes the protagonist. It his growth as a character that's the focus, Kamina is just so much of a showboater that he steals the attention from Simon, even from the audience (that's not to say Kamina isn't a fun character in his own right but narratively his purpose is to support Simon, he doesn't have much going for himself in a *leading* role.)
He's almost more of a caricature of the archetypical Shonen protagonist which makes his relationship with Simon and the other members of "Team Dai-Gurren" really interesting since he really functions more as a mentor than anything else, spouting corny platitudes like "believe in the me that believes in you" and quite literally beating sense into Simon when he sees that he needs it. He believes in everything he says no matter how ridiculous it sounds to the point that he becomes the moral core of the group even whether or not he's around.
@@naughtiusmaximus5954 That's kind of what I mean, at first glance he comes off as the Shonen protagonist when he is in fact an Obi-wan in a deconstruction/reconstruction.
My favorite mirror match in literature comes from the old Bionicle books. There was a chapter where the Toa had to fight shadow versions of themselves and had the absolute worst time. Then someone had the genius idea to switch who they were fighting, just like you said, and they won by being smart with their elemental pairings.
If you ever do a full Trope Talk on Human Weapons, I would reaaaally recommend looking at Gunslinger Girl. There's... A lot going on there with the morality of the situation, mostly framed through the handlers interactions with the cyborgs they've been assigned and how each treats them etc etc.
@@brightestlight9462 No, it's just that she thinks of Teen Titans when she hears the name Jinx instead of Arcane/League of Legends... since Teen Titans is a classic show that a lot of kids grew up watching while Arcane only came out a few years ago and is only 1 season long atm
My stance on "Save Nature" stories is that a lot of them either don't actively explain *how* to save nature outside of, like, recycling sometimes (in a way making it sound like its solely the viewers fault if you don't recycle because you're killing baby seals or whatever), or rightfully pins the blame on super-powerful companies but also either doesn't actually defeat the company and instead just pushes them out of X area or are completely defeated by a band of plucky tree-loving teens in a way that makes no logical sense, and then right after the writers attempt to once again shame you by saying "well, if only *someone* actually cared about the trees and bears", like it still comes back to being our fault actually. Though, it is, we're the ones consuming the things that companies are putting out, but throwing away less trash isn't going to make the landfills go down, its just going to fill up slower. That the BBEG companies are often flanderized as "oh, we pollute and destroy the environment because we can" and not really the real reason of "we're a short-term-profit-minded thing and as long as we have it now we don't care and also its super expensive to be more healthy for the environment because the technology is still not quite there to be cheap and evironmentally friendly" also kinda kills them for me. Its just a fact of life that things require resources to make, so its a matter of finding that balance to be able to provide for all of humanity while also not eating literally everything. Which I don't think we really can do, as the human population is so massive it seems like its always on the tipping point of overflowing and dooming the species as well as every other species. Also, the fact that it seems like everytime one of these stories happens, there is a / are obviously First Nations-coded spiritualistic person who kinda come off as kinda demeaning? Then again, I'm not First Nations so I have no claim on what's insulting or not for them.
I hope Red reads this, because there is an awesome webcomic called "Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes" which does some of the mentioned tropes really, really well. Like, the idea of an "always chaotic evil" race. By what measure is a 'monster'? Prophecy. And even a paragon, both deconstructed, and played straight but in an unexpected way. I'm also going to spoil something real quick, so be warned. One thing that Goblins does really interestingly is prophecy. Prophecies are always accurate, and always come true, but not necessarily in the way you or the characters expect. For example, one goblin named Saves a Fox thought she would defy destiny by killing the fox she was supposed to save. But another goblin named Dies Horribly (who is understandably more than a little nervous and cowardly) tells her that the fox was suffering from a disease and that by killing it Saves a Fox had, in fact, spared it days of horrible agony. There have been a couple of ominous prophecies hanging over the plot that have yet to be resolved, but the story is still keeping us guessing on whether they'll be as bad as they seem, since... Well Dies Horribly actually did live up to his name. But he also managed to survive it. So just because the prophecies are set in stone, doesn't mean we know exactly what is going to happen.
"Maybe Team Rocket got interesting" oh Red they always were. Their backstories came from the first season! Jessie's mom was a high ranking Rocket who vanished during a mission to find Mew, leaving Jessie bouncing around foster homes and eventually from career to career that she could never hold down, until finally she joined the same team as her mother. James ran away from an abusive fiancee (she had a full on torture chamber and his parents literally forced him into the room with her. Also she looks exactly like Jessie with curly hair), leaving behind an absolute fortune and a faithful hound, and Meowth was abandoned as a kitten, grew up on the streets, and learned to talk to impress another Meowth who immediately rejected him as a freak.
2:10:40 “The hero with bad publicity” trope can also be applied to characters who get the credit taken from them either because of ridiculous happenstance or because the hero is somewhat indifferent on who gets credit.
accidentally left my youtube on autoplay while I was asleep and woke up to this, love this video, watched the whole thing and this is my first impression! subbed!
The book series length I'm always most surprised with is the horus heresy stuff. 54 novels, 24 novellas and 47 audio dramas. And some people have read all of that. + it has the seige of terra which has 8 more entries and is basically the same series.
@@tomfordgunningham465 ya forgot the games and he's an official character in the dm guides for a while. No I consumed almost nothing but know a few people who have consumed all of it to the point I think my first dm put drizzt or someone like him in our campaign but it ended too soon for us to realize it.
Funny thing about power born of madness trope is that it feels more realistic but it's not, in martial arts getting your opponents mad is a legit tactic because it makes the more rash and less aware of the traps you set up.
Okay, so can you do a “wait what?” Series to go over weird choices writers have made? I have always found it super weird that Iroh and Ozai never really interacted in Avatar. Yes, Iroh is kind of a “main secondary” character. The focus is more on the younger characters development and Iroh is there mostly to serve Zuko’s development…..but Iroh was Ozai’s older brother and a major plot point is that Ozai took Iroh’s place as fire lord. I don’t recall ever hearing what Iroh thought about this and I just find that really weird. I find it really weird that these two people who grew up together, we have no real knowledge of what their dynamic is besides Iroh saying things like “I know my family…” and “I know my brother….” Seems weird and it would be cool to see you explore why they would kind of write Iroh out of the childhood scenes and never have him confront or deal with Ozai in any way.
I think a good part of that is the Iroh had already moved on. After he lost his son he didn’t care about losing the throne. After he came to peace with his lot in life, he became kind of ambivalent towards his brother. He would have been miserable on the throne, so he doesn’t hold it against him, but he doesn’t owe any gratitude to Ozai either. After Zuko was banished I think he came to the conclusion that both he and Zuko would be better off never seeing Ozai again
I mean ATLA hardly utilized Ozai to begin with. In fact now that I’m thinking about it, the only characters he really interacts with are his children and Aang
One of my favorite D&D campaigns had an entire half-year arc about the "always chaotic evil" trope and what the implications of that would actually be, with a demon character having to choose between helping his new friends (the party) and retaining his demon powers, because we applied descriptive alignment to "always chaotic evil", meaning that a demon who stops being chaotic evil stops being a demon and loses most of their demonic abilities.
one of ours had a background thing of a character who came from the land of the unicorns, and so was mostly unfamiliar with evil, as unicorns are a non-trivial CR creature that can detect evil at will, and so presumably anyone evil there was quickly 'persuaded to leave' (possibly from this plane of existence if they proved unwilling to get jogging).
It's interesting. "Always Chaotic Evil" (or Lawful Evil, or Lawful Good, or whatever) is a pretty cool concept when applied to creatures like demons which represent the "essence" of that alignment - they literally are always chaotic evil, it's a part of their very being, and they have to work around it. It's when it's applied to normal mortals that it becomes a big problem.
I've proposed the idea of a redeemed devil (in the context of DnD) to a few people, and they've said something similar, that a redeemed devil isn't a devil, but Zariel retained her celestial powers (or at least stayed on the same power level) so it doesn't really make sense that a redeemed devil would be weaker imo
@@patchwilliamson That sounds more like a "rule of cool" violation to me. I'd just say whatever features need to be cut/weakened to make a devil function as a player race, that's what you lost when you stopped being a devil. But regardless, it's true that this way of handling alignment change for creatures that embody specific alignments is not RAW, it's homebrew, so it might not work perfectly with everything that exists in the actual game (like fallen angels for example).
A relatively recent example of kind of a hive mind was the season of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic with Queen Chrysalis. You get both the drones, the evil hive queen, AND then after she is defeated we get to follow a drone unconditioning and becoming pastel, it's great. Plus her song slaps.
The thing with human are space orks is that it's kinda hard to make without making other aliens look like children , Children of time is possibly the one example that kinda works , Since in that book we are functionally giants with large steel ships and explosive weapons , and thunder based computers , Yet we get defeated by getting outsmarted ...
5:58 I believe you’re talking about “Kitten” who’s the daughter of Killer Moth from Teen Titans. She’s definitely spoiled rotten and has it in her mind to take Robin to Prom as her “Date”. That was part of one of the episodes from that show but the only reason Robin went along with it was to prevent Killer Moth from unleashing a swarm of moths on Jump City and the only way to prevent that from happening was to go with Kitten to her High School’s Prom. That didn’t sit well with “Starfire” who’s romantically interested in Robin.
With dragons I've frequently heard that their early emotional development has a significant impact on scale color, though that may be a more flavourful touch than anything else.
The decoy protagonist has a perfect example in Starwars the Sequel trilogy. Fin is 1000% more interesting but gets forgotten for Rey to take his protagonist place ; ____ ;
I'm on the complete opposite side with multiverses, I love them. However, that's probably part of my world-centric enjoyment of media, and the same reason I enjoyed Mortal Engines and prefer the star wars prequels. Also, a big part of it is that I enjoy reading *about* multiverses, and haven't really engaged with multiverse media directly.
Since you said you've never heard of a side character revealed to be dead all along who just sticks around afterwards, I'd like to inform you that this exact thing happens in the book The Raven Boys
I will say that Legend of Korra did handle the Hero with Bad Publicity thing very well. Because she's hot-headed and has a tendency to publicly put her foot in her mouth, or cause collateral damage while saving the day. And the bad publicity isn't the whole of it, it just gives the public a mixed perception of her instead of "Yay the Avatar!"
The Incredibles movie also comes to mind in connection with this trope! In that storyline, collateral damage caused by heroes whilst "saving the day" and a general public fear of their powers led to their being stripped of any public honors & essentially put into witness protection. TBH this attitude to 'exceptional' minority people who aren't well-understood always seemed sadly consistent with real-world history to me? I'm not sure it requires 100% bland stupidity on the part of the normies, more a mix of ignorance and prejudice...
Just on time loops, one of my favourite loops was done in Stargate SG-1. Where the characters were trapped in a time bubble of sorts and everything outside the bubble progressed as normal, they didn't do anything with it in the end, but the concept is good for "villain has trapped hero in a loop so they are occupied while the villain does their thing"... Also done by doctor strange Vs dormomue
You know, part of "stupid evil" that I find REALLY funny comes from villains doing something evil instead of just being *reasonable* . Sometimes a villain can get what they want without evil, but if they do that, then they're less *evil,* you know? I once played a minor villain in a Regency-era Changeling The Dreaming LARP, and I got to do *one* mean thing across the entire 7 game runtime. XD Essentially, I was trying to seize control of the barony the game was in, and fully intended that I would be defeated in that regard since I am not a cunning planner... But then 3 out of the 4 other claimants to that throne were completely unacceptable to the council deciding who would take the throne, and the last guy I was able to very easily make a deal with, leading to me actually winning. XD I actually thought to myself "I'm supposed to be the bad guy, I should utterly backstab that guy and take what I want and trigger an epic showdown of some kind... But he's willing to literally give me what I want if I do one reasonable thing for him. Only someone who is Stupid Evil would do the evil thing instead of just negotiating to a mutual win!" The one mean thing I got to do was between game 1 and 2, where a guy playing a lawyer had politically swept my leg and set up a council to decided who got the throne instead of me basically jacking the whole thing, and set it up behind my character's back... And I tried to get revenge. Essentially, I used my entire Downtime to research his Dark And Tragic Backstory, then published it all in the local newspaper, which would basically ruin him. ...But the player had already quit the game before I even finished the plan, so the practical effect was that I scared off a now-NPC. XD
I haven't watched much anime (esp. in the last few years) nor consumed many media that had Yandere in it but the only time I liked what they did to that archetype was in the otome game "Amnesia". Its Yandere might be the only male one (in stories for androsexual girls and women). Either way, the producers approached it from a primarily psychological angle. What makes him a Yandere is his obsessive love, fear of losing the Heroine or having her be hurt and the moral conflict on measures to protect the Heroine. The murderous side that so many identify with a Yandere is only hinted at in ~two bad endings but the worst ending has him imprison the Heroine and her losing her sense of self - something you would expect from a psychological thriller, maybe. Apart from being intensily engaging, his route taught me a lot about abusive relationships even though I didn't know what these were at the time of playing... Edit: Changed spelling.
@@BJGvideos I 'censored' it for fear that my comment might automatically be deleted. Also, I didn't/don't think that anything I wrote might be triggering. Also also: There are text blockers for YT comments? I didn't know they even existed. I changed the spelling now, though.
@@BJGvideos Um, are you sure these text blockers for triggers even exist? Can you name me some kind of source that talks about this or is what you say just hearsay? I just find it so difficult to even imagine that there is this kind of app, program etc. on websites (bc I'm sure it is deeply complicated to create or implement something like that) and want to make sure nobody is spreading false information.
Since I started reading Comic Aurora, I've noticed the use of many of the tropes covered in trope talks, so I'm here quietly checklisting what we've seen happen in Aurora
1:55:43 it would be interesting to explore powers effecting personality instead of the other way round. Like “I was a perfectly normal person until I got these shadow powers that work best/I can take greatest advantage of when I am wearing all black” kind of a deal.
a good case of a reluctant villain is taylor from Worm she got into a teenage villain group as a spy but the villains were the only people to actually treat her like a friend and the only experience she had with the heroes was pretty bad so she decided to join them for real
As I recall, the people labelled "heroes" and the people labelled "villains" are separated more by how good their PR is and/or how photogenic their powers are than by the sorts of things they actually do (particularly with no witnesses around).
@@rmsgrey Yeah, hero and villain are literally political labels, rather than motive based Heroes are capes aligned with the US govt Parahuman Response Team (I think that's what PRT means?), which includes good people and also people who want to be dicks and be government protected while doing so Villains are anti-PRT, which includes bad people and also people who want to do good without needing government oversight, or who are anti-cape regulation and stuff Man, Worm goes hard
@@rmsgrey well it's more like heroes aka wards and the protectorate work for the law and against criminals you can be a hero that doesn't work in those groups but that's a vigilante it's not an issue of pr Taylor was a villain and had great PR its more about if you follow the law
Dear Red thank you for talking about the cool thing we like cause we don't always have people around to discuss it with Sincerely random people on the internet
It's a real shame they only made the first half of that film, it was really odd to cut things off just as Shrike caught up to Hester & Tom on Airhaven.
In the body swap section, my favorite example is the episode of Justice League Unlimited where Lex Luthor and The Flash swap bodies. The voice actors got to play the other characters, it's great.
I loved Superior Spiderman. I knew they would eventually pull Peter back. And Doc Oct would probably go back to his villain spot but the fun I had was Doc Oct commenting on Peter's life how his POV on the spiderman lifestyle would flavor it. And all the big thing Doc Oct did to change Peter's Status Quo when Peter comes back. I got super frustrated and angry that when Peter did come back, the writing staff slowly and annoyingly backtracked ALL OF THE STUFF Doc Oct did. And they did it stupidly. Doc Oct made a legal lab for Peter work and own, but Peter burns it down for basically out of spite.
2:47:48 Reminds me of Brennan Lee Mulligan on Misfits & Magic. "I made this guy to be a heavily flawed character with a LOT of issues, but that was not one of them."
Power of Love often feels more thought out when it's not romantic love. Platonic, sibling, or parental love giving a character the drive to power through struggles, in my experience, uses character relationships more effectively, particularly if the relationship existed prior to the start of the story and developed during the story. Unfortunately, my brain is empty of examples.
Your Name handles body-swapping very well, rather than using it as a gag it's a part of the whole plot, and there are real stakes, not to mention the romance between two people who technically don't "know" each other. Needless to say, it's pretty much my favorite anime movie.
Yeah but did the movie *really* need a meteor plot? Like, couldn't the whole movie only have been about these two people who switch bodies, learning about each other and falling in love because of this experience? If you needed an excuse to make them lose contact, it could have simply been that them switching bodies at one point happens less and less, until they eventually don't
@@floricel_112 I agree with you on that. The meteor plotline was rather sudden, and it would have done better with either more exposition on that or something else entirely. Leaving it be with just the switching bodies might have ended up being a little lackluster though, unless of course it's done differently. One thing that might have worked would be to lose the connection the way they did (from a character being dead all along and the other having to save them), but making it something more believable and foreshadowed, rather than a meteorite. In the end, though, even the best movies have their flaws and sometimes simplicity is key.
I usually hate no-killing policies when they're explicitly stated. Usually they're implicit with the hero being the good guy, but when they're tested, its often that writers accidentally write stories that are in favor of the death penalty when they stretch the no-kill rule to test the hero.
I'm not in a position to check, but there must be a trope for all the instances where "normal kid/person finds a robot/alien/escaped lab experiment and has an adventure where they become best friends, only for the robot/alien/lab experiment to tragically leave for home/sacrifice themselves because this normal person needs to end with a normal life and that's not going to happen with a cool pet/friend robot/monster."
Animorphs does a very interesting thing with the all evil species trope. The "evil" aliens are the Yeerks (body snatchers) controlling the Hork Bajir (kind unwilling hosts), the Taxxons (who ALL joined the voluntarily and are giant cannibalistic centipedes) and humans (some voluntary, most not). The heroes kill them because they have no choice, but they certainly feel no sadness for the taxxons. However ..(spoiler) .. eventually it is revealed some yeerk scientists had deduced the "andalite bandits" were actually humans because they noticed they killed FAR less humans than aliens. maimed them, sure, but rarely killed them. They fell into thinking of them as the "evil species to mow down" and the bad guys took advantage (or not really, it's complicated)
A Trope you should have broken down: Koi and Dragon. Wherein an unassuming character obtains ultimate power through sheer force of will and perseverance. A couple examples of this that I can think of is probably Goku and Saitama.
1:06:08 This trope is (in my opinion) excellently done in the anime "Devil is a Part-timer" because its kindof a reverse isekai where the big bad is about to be defeated by the chosen one in a universe where there's magic and demons. But then he and his top demon general go to basically modern Japan. And completely lose their powers bc theyre based on feeding on the fear of the people around him. It basically turns into a slice of life where he chills out and gets a part time job at the copyright-nondescript McDonald's (named MgRonald's). He really only gets his powers back and uses them when someone from the other universe comes in and starts causing devastation to try to kill him. He never ends up using his powers for evil bc he likes his current life. This is all based on the first season, I havent seen the second season yet so I cant speak for that.
What I would do for a story that invokes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl setup with the intention of getting the protagonist to realize that he does not need to date the MPDG to have a fulfilling life. Maybe the MPDG is a lesbian (or hell, even Ace) and may come around to being legitimate friends with Protag-kun, but is literally *incapable* of feeling romantic or sexual attraction towards him. Maybe he can realize that it's *okay* that he's good friends with her; that their relationship doesn't *have* to be romantic or sexual to be fulfilling; and that falling into the trap of thinking that he *needs* to be that way with her is probably unhealthy for both him and their relationship.
So flanderization is the comedic equivalent of the Legolas effect. One character with particular talents to contribute to the party, but those skills are gradually amped up to such an absurd degree at some point you wonder "why are the rest of them even there?"
In the LOTR books orcs and goblins are the same species. Goblin is just the hobbit word which is why they are referred to as such in the hobbit. Orc is the human word, so in lord of the rings they are exclusively referred to as Orcs. The movies changed this but in the books both orcs and goblins made sense both being evil because they were the same species.
I’m curious how ‘Spiderverse is amazing’ can be squared away with ‘the multiverse is terrible’. Is it more ‘multiverse without consequences’ is terrible? Does it need to be plot or does character consequence matter?
I think the threat level itself doesn't have to be multiversal, because everything after that becomes inconsequential, and numbs you to other lesser threats. "Oh this guy can rob a bank or steal a purse? Yeah but he can't delete an entire existence, so it's not that important". Not to mention it doesn't really make sense for a villain that's potentially strong enough to tear down the multiverse to be beaten by a hero or heroes that are supposedly leagues under him? And if they DO manage to beat the villain, that means the heroes themselves are now strong enough to tear down the entire existence or beat the one who can; but regardless of that, every other villain they've had before becomes inconsequential by default. There's also the scale itself. "The multiverse is in peril". Like what the fu- does that mean conceptually? How is it any different from a universal or planetary threat? Yeah they can potentially destroy more stuff, but how much do you care about all that other stuff? You care about Earth because know Earth, even if it isn't explained to you, because you *live* on Earth. You barely know anything about the rest of the universe, and even then most of it is empty space with the occasional extraterrestrial threat that plans on destroying or conquering Earth, like Brainiac, Darkseid, Galactus or Thanos. And the multiverse, you only know as much about it as the author reveals to you, and in mist cases the difference is minuscule and the rest is exactly the same: maybe the status quo is different, but people fundamentally still live the same. So for the average reader, a multiversal threat is the same as a universal or even planetary threat, because while you can say more than Earth is being destroyed, they still only care about Earth. Besides, I'm not that compassionate to worry about the fate of other universes, or even capable of comprehending such a scale to begin with. Plus it feels detached from what the average person experiences. Yeah the multiverse was saved and the average Joe can continue their average lives, but while the heroes are saving the multiverse, the average Joe is still getting mugged by a lesser villain the heroes are too busy to deal with, and the average also Joe isn't made aware of the fact because of comic book law, so as far as they're concerned their lives didn't change at all. They were still mugged
@@floricel_112 Multiverse of Madness does the stakes quite well, as whilst the entire thing is a universe hopping, alternate doomed reality visity comic-book shennanigans set-piece generating roller coaster, the stakes are very simply 'the bad guy wants to kill an innocent teenager', and, without spoilers, character motivation is central to the entire thing.
The Spiderverse is interesting for a multiverse subset because while theoretically infante, it's still constrained by it's Spideriness. So there are certain elements of loss that persist across all realities. Not necessarily identical, but dead mentors abound. Every Spider has pain points, you can't escape to a perfect reality.
I think it falls more under "any trope can be executed well" - a multiverse can be used well to tell a compelling story with real stakes; the problem is that it's almost always used as an excuse to write whatever you feel like without having to tie it into the existing continuity, nor worry about its effect on future continuity, and without having to admit that you're just having fun messing around with your non-canon fanfic of your own setting because it really is happening for reals, just somewhere else in the multiverse than anything that actually matters to the main plot.
Multiverses are useful as a source for characters, specifically taking a familiar character and showing alternate varients that they could have been. (Evil heros especially "nazi worlds", good bad guys, or getting demoted to a nobody or a nobody is now somebody) This is a goldmine for character development, especially when you are running from your "friend" who is coming to kill you for real. The other common usage is as a non cannon safety bubble like Zombie universes that dont fit the normal storyline. Spiderverse is good because it sources characters from the multiverse (and sends them back) but it doesn't do the rick and morty "jump universes cause the old one got trashed" actions have no consequences which kinda ruins the concept of stakes in your narative.
With the multiverse stuff, I think Multiverse of Madness actually manages to avoid it because they made a really good decision about where to pitch the stakes- the entire plot is about how killing 1 person for 'the greater good' is still evil, even if they are a stranger from another multiverse, and those are the entirety of the stakes if the villain's plot goes to plan. 1 person dies. The end. So when you get the 'oh, well it's an infinite multiverse, nothing really matters if it happens outside the main universe' stuff, you have the counter 'well, that 1 person that the hero spends the entire movie trying to save would be dead, so...' The threat of other universes not really mattering is still present in the MCU, but they managed to write their way around it in the big film about the concept just by not having the stakes be meaninglessly big, which i generally think contributes to the whole 'anything can happen and it doesn't matter' problem. That, or you go the other way and have Owlman.
Throwing in my two cents: I think there are another two things they did well. One, the trip to the incursion universe helps give perspective on just how bad that would be. That can help sell the audience on "oh, this is bad, we don't want this happening," because now they have an anchor point for what an event like that would entail. Think back to how Red's talk on world destruction, and how the stakes need to be made personal to have a significant impact. Two, they emphasized how, even though they may all be the "same" person, everyone in each universe is still unique in a way. While Wanda has kids in other worlds, those aren't *her* kids, they are the kids of another Wanda who isn't interchangeable. When she's brought to them at the end, they're terrified of her, because to them, she's a scary doppelganger of their mom, who was just thrown across the room by this intruder. This brings mainline Wanda to the truth that she can't brute-force her way to what she wants, while also giving each world a sense of meaning, since they can't be replicated or copied, so to speak.
This trope "Mental Illness as Superpower" like in "Heroes", "Split" or "Constantine" is an increasingly terrifying trope to me that I would love to see a talk about. Or I'd like to hear from someone smarter than me how much damage it really does.
I did like one of the DC multiverse storylines where alternate batman (owlman) becomes aware of the multiverse, realises the multiverse means nothing he does would ever matter, then post existential crisis realises that the logical thing to do is destroy the entire multiverse, simply because its the only thing he can do that would actually have any meaning 🙃
00:04:09 - Small Town with a Dark Secret
00:05:10 - Daddy's Little Villain
00:08:18 - Mad Scientists
00:11:42 - Human Weapons
00:13:45 - Flanderization
00:14:47 - Villain Protagonist
00:18:16 - Prophecies
00:19:07 - No Killing Policy
╰----> 01:32:27 - What Measures a Mook?
00:25:11 - Blue/Orange Morality
00:27:43 - Decoy Protagonist
00:31:02 - Clones/ Evil Clones
┣----> 01:42:37 - Cloning Blues
╰----> 03:01:14 - Tomato in the Mirror
00:34:46 - Power Incontinence/"I can't control my powers"
00:38:31 - Power Born of Madness
00:41:35 - Red Shirts
00:44:31 - Badass Longcoat
00:46:21 - Death Flags
00:48:55 - Affably Evil
00:53:27 - Godzilla Threshold
╰----> 01:45:30 - When Gods Fight Each Other
00:56:22 - Cloudcuckoolanders
00:59:18 - Body Swap
01:01:22 - Multiverse
╰----> 01:56:23 - Terrible Future
01:06:08 - Hero with Evil Powers
01:10:33 - Characters Trapped in Virtual Reality
01:12:02 - Evil vs. Evil
01:16:28 - Did You Just Punch Out Cthulu?
01:17:58 - "Hero Goes Into Villain's Mind" (called Mental World on TV Tropes)
01:20:51 - Stupid Evil
01:21:43 - Lawful Stupid
01:24:20 - The Power of Love
01:28:47 - Tsundere/ Yandere
01:30:14 - Manic Pixie Dream Girl
01:31:11 - Save Nature
01:33:23 - Honorable Assassin
01:35:16 - Enemies to Lovers
01:36:34 - Nightmare Fuel
01:38:40 - Dead All Along
01:41:00 - Evil Gods
01:42:59 - Villain Can't Lose
01:45:22 - Badass Teacher
01:45:50 - Hero Complex
╰----> 01:48:26 - Hero Syndrome
01:49:20 - I Know a Guy
01:50:02 - Hive Mind
01:52:25 - Knight of Cerabus
01:54:41 - Personality = Element
01:57:57 - Adult Kid from the Future
02:01:50 - Evil = Sexy, Good = Prudish
02:02:25 - Tragic Backstories
(02:03:58 - Tom Bombadill tangent)
02:05:15 - The Heroes are Already Max Level
02:07:54 - Heroes with Bad Publicity
╰----> 02:13:13 - Heroes on Trial
02:12:20 - Green Gore is Good Gore
02:12:53 - Comic Relief
02:13:43 - Unreliable Narrator
02:16:50 - Liar Revealed
02:20:11 - Fetch Quests
02:22:07 - Homoerotic Undertones
02:22:37 - Gender Bending
02:25:40 - Harem
02:25:57 - The Scrappy /The Wesley
(lol 02:29:51 - Ryker Not Sitting on Chairs Normally)
02:30:01 - Sympathetic Villains
02:31:51 - Shut Up Hannibal!
02:33:25 - Undying Loyalty
02:34:57 - The Starscream
02:39:24 - Humans are Cthulhu / Earth is Space Australia
02:41:15 - Self Inserts < (wedged in there) 02:45:51 - Idiotic Villains
02:48:57 - You Killed My Father
02:49:40 - Found Family
02:50:19 - Final Girl
02:50:33 - Evil Sounds Deep
02:51:10 - Badass Normal
02:52:36 - Sacrificial Lambs
02:53:24 - Corruption Arcs
02:54:09 - Brick Joke
02:54:50 - Banality of Evil
02:57:45 - Badass and Child Duo
02:58:54 - Time Loops
02:59:57 - Complete Monster
03:01:02 - Reincarnation
03:01:59 - Non Binary Aliens
03:02:40 - Bare Your Midriff
03:03:25 - Reluctant Villains
Thank you!!!!
Madlad
god damm man tysm
You are over powered... but blessed.
You are an amazing human being many thanks friend.
A common death flag is a character that's "just two days away from retirement" or showing his war-buddy a picture of his girl that he's going to propose to as soon as he gets home. A lampshade is hung on the latter one in Fullmetal Alchemist with Hughes showing Mustang a picture of his girl and saying that he can't wait to get home to marry her. Mustang tells him to put that picture away, does he WANT to die? Hughes survives the war and marries his woman and becomes the BEST husband and dad...
Until.... Ya know. Sigh.
@@rajabuta Yeah... I know. It still makes me sad.
@@kakashidragon87 God. FMA is so good. Has lots of emotionally charged moments. And well set up.
Oh, and the author is making a new manga series too.
The absolute best death flag trope imo was in Akibaranger, where the main cast is actively doing their best to avoid beating the season finale boss because they've realised that they're in a show and that the world functionally ends the moment a show is finished.
In response, the author keeps forcing the boss to say increasingly obvious and cliched death flags until the narrative weight requiring him to die is so great that his own attack misfires and kills him despite the heroes trying to save him.
@@andrewcapra7153 yeah, but.... It's a parody show so it kinda doesn't count 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
In true OSP fashion, the lighting round is three hours long.
lighting round, long tournament
The homestuck problem is that homestuck is made entirely of tropes to an entirely comical degree and this leads to homestuck syndrome a phenomenon where readers correlate any and every trope and writing convention with homestuck. To the point where it is a meme within the Fandom
That explains a lot
you could rearrange homestuck and get almost any other story
@@StellarRetribution but you can't rearrange any combination of other stories to get homestuck
@@Maxusxavier you would hypothetically have to rearrange almost every other story possible in order to do so
This is why "Is that a Homestuck reference??" Is such a meme
In RWBY, I knew Pyrrha's fate as soon as I heard her name. She was based on Achilles and he did once disguise himself as a redheaded woman named Pyrrha, but I didn't know that at the time. What I did know was the idea of a Pyrrhic Victory, a victory, but one with a cost so great that one may be hesitant about calling it an actually victory.
Actually, the Pyrrhic victory thing has nothing to do with Achilles, instead it refers to Pyrrhus of Epirus, a king enemy of Rome during the republican period
@@falquicao8331 I'm aware that the two things aren't connected. I was saying that I was aware of the Pyrrhic Victory concept and connected that with the name of Pyrrha and that's how I guessed she would die.
@@kakashidragon87 task failed successfully
Did Red talk about RWBY? If so, where
Doesnt help that her last name literally derives from Nike, Goddess of Victory. Not a lot of creativity on the part of the writers.
One of my favorite uses of a body swap is actually from a Gravity Falls fanfiction. The show's body swap episode is pretty standard, but this fanfic adds in the fact that they also swapped perceptions. For example, at one point Dipper needs to think, and he grabs a pen and starts clicking it, but because he's in Mabel's body it annoys him instead of helping him. I think it added a nice twist on the original, instead of just shenanigans it's a chance for the characters to better understand each other. The story's called The Man Downstairs. The premise is a massive spoiler, and it's also very dark, but it's pretty good.
Red: "Please don't spam the chat with trope"
Chats: "I'll pretend i didn't hear that"
"I'll pretend i didn't hear that"
"I'll pretend i didn't hear that"
"I'll pretend i didn't hear that"
New OSP segment: "Tropettaka" where red talks about all the tropes in journey to the west
oh bra-vo. well played.
Can they get the voice of Alucard from Hellsing Abridged to come on with them? So it can be Tropettaka Talk-a with Taka?
Yess
Oeh that would be awesome
M-Preg is thousands of years old. I hate that I know that because of that one episode.
With regards to the bit about evil races: Interestingly, Tolkien apparently came to dislike the idea that orcs were all irredeemably evil and decided against it in a letter. Also, goblins are just orcs in the books, so they also fall under that banner. Here's the quote I found:
"[Eru/God] gave special 'sub-creative' powers to certain of His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subject to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they 'fell', as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things 'for himself, to be their Lord', these would then 'be', even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other 'rational' creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least 'be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even 'mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making - necessary to their actual existence - even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.) But whether they could have 'souls' or 'spirits' seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible 'delegation', I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them."
Basically, what this appears to be saying is that the very creation of orcs, through torture and dark magic, was evil, but even they aren't completely beyond redemption and have thought. We can see that a bit in the discussion of the orcs at Cirith Ungol, where one of them talks to the other about retiring to a land without "big bosses" with a few other soldiers, though of course not long after they get into a fight that gives Sam a chance to rescue Frodo. The orcs do have minds and free will, but have been driven into evil by a character that essentially is LotR's equivalent of Satan, and after a fall so far, it isn't surprising that we don't see many rise back up again, especially since they're so hated by elves, humans, and dwarves. I do dislike the lack of diversity among the humans who stood against Sauron, though, and think that's a valid point.
So at this point it’s basically like the culture of the orcs is so toxic that change would be very difficult to affect. But if I’m theory some friendly old widow found a baby orc and raised it that orc wouldn’t grow up in that environment and therefore have more of a chance to choose goodness?
@@discreetscrivener7885 It appears possible, though unfortunately unlikely. It would be interesting if it happened.
>goblins are just orcs in the books
Was about to say this, thanks. Bugs me to hell when people make that mistake.
As far as the Southrons and Easterlings, it's even implied with Faramir's speech about that one Haradrim who got pincushioned in front of Frodo and Sam, that the vast majority of them are essentially conscripts that have been forced into fighting for Sauron... "What lies drove him from his home?"
Honestly, given Tolkien's personal experiences of fighting in WW1 and living through WW2, a lot of the humans who fought against the Forces of Good can read very similarly to the perception of the average German soldier: They're normal people fighting for the wide range of reason any army fights (patriotism, conscription, vainglory, being actual pirates who are understandably miffed at the guys who kicked their ass over the whole piracy thing, a few who just want to murder people...) who happen to be under the command of someone who's genuinely evil.
The *really* problematic example are the people who Saruman recruited to fight against Rohan, because they're a gorram displaced indigenous minority with real grievances against the Rohirrim.
Death tags are amazingly fun when you're crewing a larp; players start sweating buckets when a beloved NPC starts showing them pictures of their kids, or telling them about the yacht they're buying when they retire in three days.
“Vi and Caitlyn are destined to be besties” history will say they were good friends
I like how Ozai is such a bad parent he doesnt even qualify for "good villainous parenting"
When you messed up your kids so bad that one of them screams at thunderstorms to hit them with lightning and the other one pulls straight-up mafia tactics on one of her closest friends to get her to do what she wants. A+ parenting, there.
@@maddie9602 and the worst part is he'd think that those things were signs that he was successful as a parent. especially how azula treated her friends.
@@maddie9602 there’s a lot of “Azula radiating evil” as part of her existence of a character… which one is the mafia tactic scene?
@@gameinsane4718 when Ty Lee was in the circus and didn't want to leave to join Azula's crew, and Azula intimidates her into cooperating by setting the net on fire while she performs
Personally I keep the "Fire Lord Ozai Scale of Bad Fictional Parenting" where 1 Ozai is the top end of the scale. I know of only one (1) fictional parent who is arguably worse at parenting than Ozai, and he's in the Girl Genius webcomic that Red recommended.
My favourite death flag is probably in How I Met Your Mother, where there's a subtle numeric countdown throughout the episode and when it hits zero, one of the main characters parents dies.
It's brilliantly done
oh i never noticed that, but it has been a few years since ive done more than catch episodes on rerun
I remember catching that countdown on a rewatch and getting super invested in it, not remembering how the episode ended and being really struck by it. Still my most vivid memory of that series to this day.
It’s not even subtle, once you read the episode title, you instantly see the numbers, and it doesn’t help that as the numbers tick down the music and the tension in the show gets higher and more. Like the fact one of the numbers quite literally walks in front of the camera, then the next in the sequence is directly announced
How... is the solo red segment NOT called "Red Solo Cup"? Lol
The greatest slap champion
It's kind of already taken by Jon Solo. I mean, I doubt it's patented or anything, by Jon I mean. Still... A bit rude.
@@justinanderson267 lol I was not aware. This makes sense
because that song was awful.
"let's have a party"
Wordgirl is the best example of an entire cast of affable villains and the hero actually having a good time with them
Doctor Two-Brains still being friendly, but the Evil Mouse Brain demanding he do crimes to get cheese is peak comedy. Wordgirl is so good.
I think the red scare was a big part of what made Hiveminds popular, Hiveminds are a fantastical shorthand for like worst case scenario totalitarian regimes while at the same time theyre in visceral philosophical opposition with free will and individuality. It's like the brutalism of villain tropes, a well oiled hivemind is cold and efficient with individual mooks as cogs in the machine.
Red: "Villain Protagonists are fun to watch fail where hero protagonists are fun to watch succeed."
Me: "And the times when we get Villain Protagonists that succeed the result is usually a tragedy." *looks at Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along and the first part of Megamind*
IMO Dr. Horrible is a great Sith origin that wasn't in a Star Wars. Were the death of his one-sided crush (a thing he loves) becomes the sacrifice that cements him as fully villious.
One of my favourite examples of “what measure is a mook” is in order of the stick where most the the non-player character races were literally created by the gods for easy XP for PCs and one of the main villains (a goblin cleric) has an plan to give the God of goblins limited control of a dangerous god-killing abomination to negotiate for the monster races’ right to exist without being murdered by adventurers.
OOTS does have a lot of characters who are net evil/bad in order to do good for their people.
That story is eventually revealed (although there were already hints in the original telling) to be an... oversimplification.
It’s great that Red realizes that a decent portion of her audience probably watches critical role.
But it is bold of her to assume any of us are caught up on it.
Critical roll is on Thursday? Whelp never goi g to catch that live. Thursday is Pathfinder night.
@@Berathan-dnd well, one of their catchphrases is "Is it thursday yet?" :D
I'd like to but have no idea where to start
@@TheSchultinator now is a pretty good time tbh. There are only 24 episodes of campaign 3 (as opposed to over 100 for both 1 and 2) and now it's on a month long hiatus because they are airing a prequel of sorts so you can catch up. There are some tie-ins to previous stories but not enough to make it incomprehensible and I enjoy the characters very much. Or you can ignore the streams entirely and just watch campaign 2 (which is a lot of people's favourite) from the beginning
Don't Fear The Reaper is a trope on Tv Tropes, based around the idea that the Grim Reaper/Personification of Death, rather than being villainous/malicious, is actually kind and/or friendly.
And it's one of my absolute favorite tropes
@@Dracosfire14 Same!
"What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man"
- Death, Reaper Man
Discworld's Death, I feel, is the platonic ideal of this trope
I really like this trope
I like when "Humans are Space Orcs" stories rely less on humans or Earth just being inexplicably exceptional in some way and are more focused on things that our species has evolved to do which actually make us exceptional within our own biosphere. Good example is how we're basically the track & field superstars of the animal kingdom, with downright ludicrous endurance, due to things like overactive sweat glands and upright bipedalism. Sure we're not the fastest by any stretch, but make the race long enough and a reasonably fit human can leave the vast majority of species in our proverbial dust. Or how, while we obviously can't regrow limbs and such, but compared to endotherms of similar size and weight we're basically god damn Wolverine and can resist going into shock even after injuries that would be catastrophic to most animals.
But we usually don't think of "super walking" or "super scabbing" as very impressive, so yeah.
Yeah there is a Man v Horse race that people win more than most folks would think they do.
@@nibblitman Totally. Though one of the few animals that can keep up with us relatively well are wolves, which likely was a big factor in our two species developing such a close symbiotic relationship in the form of dogs (another big factor was definitely that both humans and dogs can pack-bond with god damn anything).
My brother once observed of us humans, "We climb better than anything that can run as fast as us. We can run faster and further than anything that can climb as well." He had said we were the best all terrain vehicle we've ever seen.
Star Trek is one setting that has that focus for Humans, but I have never seen a story that focused on it. Humans are more violent than any Vulcan and more logical than any Klingon. They are essentially second best at everything, and thus can find common ground with anyone. Which means Humanity can find common ground with EVERYONE.
Humans are what makes a Klingon/Ferengi alliance possible.
The "Went Too Far" trope is one I like. Where a character, usually a hero, hits too hard or uses too much power and immediately regrets it.
This trope is exactly why im excited for the Irredeemable show.
1:00:00 My favourite use of the body swap trope was in the Futurama episode The Prisoner of Benda, where they invented a system of body swapping rules to provide a conflict for the episode, and Ken Keeler had to publish a new mathematical theorem (Keeler's Theorem) to prove what the solution to the predicament was, and the best part is that it makes a cameo on a whiteboard in the show itself.
While they didn't create the theorem, they did the same set of rules in the Stargate body swap episode. The big revelation was that they needed to swap two more people to get everyone back, just like in Futurama.
"Non-binary aliens" reminds me of a hill I will die on that I've never really discussed w/ anybody so idk how much ppl would agree with me but. Most so-called non-binary aliens are actually just genderless aliens. And yes there is a difference. Because in a species with no binary to speak of, what binary, pray tell, is that "non" prefix divorcing them from? (Tho I will still project myself onto them 99% of the time. This goes doubly for robots, I love them so much.)
As an Enby, I also love and project onto most androgynous characters, and I agree that a distinction needs to be made between non-binary and gender-less or, more typically, mono-gender species
Star trek Enterprise had a rather bad episode in season 1 where they met a species with 3 genders (all needed for reproduction) and the 3rd one was oppressed by the males and females.
Yeah, agender is a type of nonbinary (and also me), but it usually looks like the writers just have No Clue it's a thing. Oh well, at least they are trying
@@anonymousperson4214 I'm a writer with a clue, or at least an eagerness to learn. Anything you'd like to see from such a character?
What? I... don't think I understand like 60-70% of What you are trying to say at all.
Would xenomorfs (aliens) fit under the category of non binary or gender less or both given the nature of species itself?
Interesting idea for a trope: The "Why won't you die?!" Trope. The idea of a character that just won't die, or keeps getting written into the story over and over.
To be Fair to the "Legend of Monkey" Show Genderbending Trippitaka, That's actually technically a Cultural reference, since in Eastern Theater Trippitaka was usually played by a Woman (Even though the character was still a Man)... I don't recall if that tradition was Respected everywhere in Asia or just in Japan, but I remember it being referenced in some anime that I can't currently remember beyond that factoid.
Kinda a Peter Pan deal, where it's become tradition for the Actor that plays Mr. Darling to also play Hook, a Tradition that Started because the Dude that played Hook Couldn't be bothered to show up so they had to find someone to Fill in, and they had a perfectly Good Adult man that wasn't being used in any of the same scenes right there in the play already.
I'm pretty sure Avatar referenced that! Though I'm not sure it's the anime you're talking about since whether or not Avatar is an anime depends on who you ask 😅
@@KazooKid0214 Avatar was not the reference I was talking about. But now that you mention it, the Ember Island Players Casting a Girl as Aang Could very well be a reference to this! (And Maybe Toph as a Giant Burly dude?)
@@kgmotte2363 I think Aang being played by a female actor definitely is a reference to that. Toph being a big dude though is a different thing entirely. It's a reference to the fact that the character was originally going to be exactly that - a big strong guy. One of the female writers went to the creators about it and argued for the character to be a girl and the rest is history. The Ember Island Players Toph is a funny injoke for the creators themselves. (The Earthbender you see in the intro is also supposed to be the original Toph)
It’s funny that you mentioned Peter Pan because Peter Pan is also usually played by a woman.
Wait that's why they're played by the same guy? I thought it was just Symbolism
So when Red was describing Manic Pixie Dream girl, I realized that probably a decently early example is Clarisse from Fahrenheit 451.
I just started that book and that seems pretty accurate
Another one would be Midori from Norwegian Wood. Funnily enough she kinda works because it's clear she has a very complex inner-personal life, but she does kinda show up out of nowhere like 'hi main character, I'm here to make your life more interesting'
The title character from "Gigi" is practically the ur-example.
Didn't that one win Best Picture?
@@jimluebke3869 Oh I didn't even think about Gigi and the French version was a good decade before Fahrenheit 451. Though these are both great early examples of the trope.
Mary Poppins is my go to early example
Red, I don’t think you understand that your trope talks are inspiring me to learn more and more to make my pet project better and better! I’m very intrigued with what you have to say on tropes so this kinda 3 hour lightning round super fun!
The hero with bad publicity trope is the entire plot of "Wicked" the musical. Elphaba is constantly trying to do good things, but they either always come out terribly or can be twisted to be used against her. I love that musical and I had no idea the whole plot was basically this trope.
2:00
Cute how Red is still surprised that people like listening to her ramble. I've sent clips of OSP to friends and they all react to Red the same way.
"She is delightful. I could listen to her all day."
17:30
As a Vegeta fan, we still hold out hope that one day our guy will walk away with a pure W. No crash and burn. Just win.
I like the power of love when it's not inherently romantic love, like in Frozen when "an act of true love" turned out to be about the sisters and not a love interest.
Final Fantasy 6 has a good version as well, where the main character finds the love she's been looking for by being "mama" to a village of orphans
Dick Dastardly was primarily from the wacky races. He later had his own show, Dastardly and Muttley. He was voiced by Paul Winchell who also voiced Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh movies.
On the Subject of the Clone Trope:
"I was laboratory born, raised in a silent cell
The tapes gave me direction, a fragile patterned shell.
They programmed me for service; I was sold away one day
To a world I understood as ‘ship,’ with a preset part to play.
The years passed by uncertainly; I existed but to serve.
Content, and yet not happy, in a world that I deserved.
And then one day you found me in my safely shallow land
You offered me my freedom, but I did not understand.
I gambled for your offer, never thinking I could choose
The game for you diversion, my life if I should lose.
Your winning took my contract, and with it came my soul
I followed where you led me then, but you could not make me whole.
Still you changed me and reshaped me, in the chaos time we shared
You asked me more than I could give, hurt more than I could bear
And then one day you left me, with no choice but human chance
I stole your tapes, and knowledge came, sore bitter in the trance.
The questions I’d not dreamed of all found answers on that day
One point, in fact, still bothers me and will not go away.
The programming that made you real taught me right from wrong
But does knowing make me human-or was I human all along?"
Tapes - Dominic Bridwell
Wow!
Isn't it strange? Feels like I'm lookin' in the mirror
What would people say if only they knew that I was
Part of some geneticist's plan
Born to be a carbon copy man
There in a petri dish late one night
They took a donor's body cell and fertilized a human egg and so I say
I think I'm a clone now
There's always two of me just a-hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down
Look at the way we go out walking close together
I guess you could say I'm really beside myself
I still remember how it began
They produced a carbon copy man
Born in a science lab late one night
Without a mother or a father
Just a test tube and a womb with a view
I think I'm a clone now
There's always two of me just a-hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down
I think I'm a clone now
And I can stay at home while I'm out of town
I think I'm a clone now
'Cause every pair of genes is a hand-me-down
Signing autographs for my fans
Come and meet the carbon copy man
Livin' in stereo, it's all right
Well I can be my own best friend and I can send myself for pizza, so I say
I think I'm a clone now
Another one of me's always hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down
I think I'm a clone now
I've been on Oprah Winfrey, I'm world renowned
I think I'm a clone now
And every pair of genes is a hand-me-down
I think I'm a clone now
Thats my genetic twin always hangin' around
I think I'm a clone now
'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down
Holy shit
I love these lyrics! Where can I listen to this song? Google didn't help
@@spanisharmadas Look on yt for: tapes finity's end
The Body Swap in Stargate SG-1 is pretty good, because it's live action and far enough in the series the actors have to really work to make it convincing.
It was at this point in the stream that I realized I was saying, "Oh like that one time in Stargate." frequently.
Apparently SG-1 was just a sci-fi trope of the week kinda show. Lol
Farscape and Xena both did pretty good ones too - it was a lot of fun to watch Lucy Lawless playing a different character.
And Buffy did at least two body swap stories - one was just the monster of the week - a mother living vicariously through her daughter a little more literally than usually happens - but the other did some good character work and was a major turning point in a supporting character's arc.
My 'favourite' version of "Stupid Evil" is the villain who just keeps on pushing, and pushing, and pushing a hero who is orders of magnitude more powerful than them, but has no intention of actually killing them, because it raises a very pertinent question of "What happens if the hero actually breaks", because you eventually realise that if the villain is too successful, they're just straight-up _dead._
A good example of this would be the comic version of Dr. Eggman. Ol' Robotnik goes out of his way to torment Sonic and make his life hell, and he won't ever let Sonic actually die because if he did, Eggman would be _bored._ The entire war between them is a game to him... but if Sonic _did_ get pushed over the line, Eggman would be dead before he even knew what happened.
So the first one is turning the town red, and this one says “my city now”. So at what point will it be your evil empire with the hedgehog flag
I'll give it... 3 more solo streams like this. Any with Indigo and/or Blue will lower the count by one. Or accelerate it. One of the two.
49:48 Shoutouts to Red for making a stream so engaging that I forgot I had tea sitting on my kitchen counter until a villain making tea was mentioned.
Edit: 1:03:03 Guess I wasn't the only one who forgot about tea.
I would like to say in my opinion, the Borg especially from Star Trek Voyager were a terrifying presence for me in the show. More akin to a fear of natural disasters. It’s even stated in the show, travelers view the Borg as akin to a storm, you just change course and pray. That makes them terrifying. But also they get a more in depth look at how they function and think. I really like the Borg, they are great example of hive mind done well. Thank you for reading.
Regarding the mention of clones in the "Jerk Gods" section, I absolutely LOVE how they handled that in Young Justice. It's revealed that a character has been cloned a couple times, and sure there's a fair amount of angst about it initially, but it doesn't take too long for them to get that they have zero reason to antagonize each other and just 100% treat each other as family with a lot of cute sibling dynamics and it's great.
What I consider an excellently done Decoy Protagonist is Simon/Kamina of Gurren Lagann. Kamina is essentially the archetypical Shonen protagonist, to the point that he outshines the actual protagonist Simon (who is first perceived as the sidekick to Kamina.) What's interesting is that narratively, Kamina is only arguably protagonist of episode one, once they get on the surface, narratively Simon becomes the protagonist. It his growth as a character that's the focus, Kamina is just so much of a showboater that he steals the attention from Simon, even from the audience (that's not to say Kamina isn't a fun character in his own right but narratively his purpose is to support Simon, he doesn't have much going for himself in a *leading* role.)
He's almost more of a caricature of the archetypical Shonen protagonist which makes his relationship with Simon and the other members of "Team Dai-Gurren" really interesting since he really functions more as a mentor than anything else, spouting corny platitudes like "believe in the me that believes in you" and quite literally beating sense into Simon when he sees that he needs it. He believes in everything he says no matter how ridiculous it sounds to the point that he becomes the moral core of the group even whether or not he's around.
@@naughtiusmaximus5954 That's kind of what I mean, at first glance he comes off as the Shonen protagonist when he is in fact an Obi-wan in a deconstruction/reconstruction.
Spoiler alert
Danganronpa V3?
maybe Martin Septim and the PC in Oblivion? We're the player, but it's Martin's story. He defeats Mehrunes Dagon, not us.
My favorite mirror match in literature comes from the old Bionicle books. There was a chapter where the Toa had to fight shadow versions of themselves and had the absolute worst time. Then someone had the genius idea to switch who they were fighting, just like you said, and they won by being smart with their elemental pairings.
If you ever do a full Trope Talk on Human Weapons, I would reaaaally recommend looking at Gunslinger Girl. There's... A lot going on there with the morality of the situation, mostly framed through the handlers interactions with the cyborgs they've been assigned and how each treats them etc etc.
Chat: Jinx is a daddy's little villain!
Red: I don't remember Jinx's father being a character in Teen Titans
Wrong Jinx XD
has red not seen arcane?!?!
@@brightestlight9462 No, it's just that she thinks of Teen Titans when she hears the name Jinx instead of Arcane/League of Legends... since Teen Titans is a classic show that a lot of kids grew up watching while Arcane only came out a few years ago and is only 1 season long atm
@@SirGrimlyI think it’s less of that and more that Red was already talking about Teen Titans beforehand
@@hogndog2339 Congrats on letting the joke fly over your head.
“NOTICE ME REDPAI”
No.
@Rhombushead 2
Okay
Welp
mmmm... Red Pies. 🤤
@@Solo_Sessums yes
My stance on "Save Nature" stories is that a lot of them either don't actively explain *how* to save nature outside of, like, recycling sometimes (in a way making it sound like its solely the viewers fault if you don't recycle because you're killing baby seals or whatever), or rightfully pins the blame on super-powerful companies but also either doesn't actually defeat the company and instead just pushes them out of X area or are completely defeated by a band of plucky tree-loving teens in a way that makes no logical sense, and then right after the writers attempt to once again shame you by saying "well, if only *someone* actually cared about the trees and bears", like it still comes back to being our fault actually. Though, it is, we're the ones consuming the things that companies are putting out, but throwing away less trash isn't going to make the landfills go down, its just going to fill up slower.
That the BBEG companies are often flanderized as "oh, we pollute and destroy the environment because we can" and not really the real reason of "we're a short-term-profit-minded thing and as long as we have it now we don't care and also its super expensive to be more healthy for the environment because the technology is still not quite there to be cheap and evironmentally friendly" also kinda kills them for me. Its just a fact of life that things require resources to make, so its a matter of finding that balance to be able to provide for all of humanity while also not eating literally everything. Which I don't think we really can do, as the human population is so massive it seems like its always on the tipping point of overflowing and dooming the species as well as every other species.
Also, the fact that it seems like everytime one of these stories happens, there is a / are obviously First Nations-coded spiritualistic person who kinda come off as kinda demeaning? Then again, I'm not First Nations so I have no claim on what's insulting or not for them.
Im so glad chaos still reigns and the queen still has her crown
I hope Red reads this, because there is an awesome webcomic called "Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes" which does some of the mentioned tropes really, really well. Like, the idea of an "always chaotic evil" race. By what measure is a 'monster'? Prophecy. And even a paragon, both deconstructed, and played straight but in an unexpected way.
I'm also going to spoil something real quick, so be warned.
One thing that Goblins does really interestingly is prophecy. Prophecies are always accurate, and always come true, but not necessarily in the way you or the characters expect. For example, one goblin named Saves a Fox thought she would defy destiny by killing the fox she was supposed to save. But another goblin named Dies Horribly (who is understandably more than a little nervous and cowardly) tells her that the fox was suffering from a disease and that by killing it Saves a Fox had, in fact, spared it days of horrible agony.
There have been a couple of ominous prophecies hanging over the plot that have yet to be resolved, but the story is still keeping us guessing on whether they'll be as bad as they seem, since... Well Dies Horribly actually did live up to his name. But he also managed to survive it. So just because the prophecies are set in stone, doesn't mean we know exactly what is going to happen.
I never like prophecies, but this is something I'm gonna need to check out
I definitely didn't expect to read a goblin webcomic for two hours tonight
"Maybe Team Rocket got interesting" oh Red they always were. Their backstories came from the first season! Jessie's mom was a high ranking Rocket who vanished during a mission to find Mew, leaving Jessie bouncing around foster homes and eventually from career to career that she could never hold down, until finally she joined the same team as her mother. James ran away from an abusive fiancee (she had a full on torture chamber and his parents literally forced him into the room with her. Also she looks exactly like Jessie with curly hair), leaving behind an absolute fortune and a faithful hound, and Meowth was abandoned as a kitten, grew up on the streets, and learned to talk to impress another Meowth who immediately rejected him as a freak.
2:10:40 “The hero with bad publicity” trope can also be applied to characters who get the credit taken from them either because of ridiculous happenstance or because the hero is somewhat indifferent on who gets credit.
accidentally left my youtube on autoplay while I was asleep and woke up to this, love this video, watched the whole thing and this is my first impression! subbed!
The Drizzt books are up to almost 40 entries now.
No, I haven't read them. I'm as surprised as the rest of you.
The book series length I'm always most surprised with is the horus heresy stuff. 54 novels, 24 novellas and 47 audio dramas. And some people have read all of that. + it has the seige of terra which has 8 more entries and is basically the same series.
@@tomfordgunningham465 ya forgot the games and he's an official character in the dm guides for a while. No I consumed almost nothing but know a few people who have consumed all of it to the point I think my first dm put drizzt or someone like him in our campaign but it ended too soon for us to realize it.
Funny thing about power born of madness trope is that it feels more realistic but it's not, in martial arts getting your opponents mad is a legit tactic because it makes the more rash and less aware of the traps you set up.
A couple trope talks I would be interested in seeing full videos for:
-Morally gray characters
-Foils
-Betrayals
I'm so fascinated by red seemingly having near enciclopedic knowledge of tropes
Okay, so can you do a “wait what?” Series to go over weird choices writers have made?
I have always found it super weird that Iroh and Ozai never really interacted in Avatar. Yes, Iroh is kind of a “main secondary” character. The focus is more on the younger characters development and Iroh is there mostly to serve Zuko’s development…..but Iroh was Ozai’s older brother and a major plot point is that Ozai took Iroh’s place as fire lord. I don’t recall ever hearing what Iroh thought about this and I just find that really weird. I find it really weird that these two people who grew up together, we have no real knowledge of what their dynamic is besides Iroh saying things like “I know my family…” and “I know my brother….”
Seems weird and it would be cool to see you explore why they would kind of write Iroh out of the childhood scenes and never have him confront or deal with Ozai in any way.
I think a good part of that is the Iroh had already moved on. After he lost his son he didn’t care about losing the throne. After he came to peace with his lot in life, he became kind of ambivalent towards his brother. He would have been miserable on the throne, so he doesn’t hold it against him, but he doesn’t owe any gratitude to Ozai either. After Zuko was banished I think he came to the conclusion that both he and Zuko would be better off never seeing Ozai again
I mean ATLA hardly utilized Ozai to begin with. In fact now that I’m thinking about it, the only characters he really interacts with are his children and Aang
"I came into this stream with an honest to god plan." Dear GOD.
One of my favorite D&D campaigns had an entire half-year arc about the "always chaotic evil" trope and what the implications of that would actually be, with a demon character having to choose between helping his new friends (the party) and retaining his demon powers, because we applied descriptive alignment to "always chaotic evil", meaning that a demon who stops being chaotic evil stops being a demon and loses most of their demonic abilities.
one of ours had a background thing of a character who came from the land of the unicorns, and so was mostly unfamiliar with evil, as unicorns are a non-trivial CR creature that can detect evil at will, and so presumably anyone evil there was quickly 'persuaded to leave' (possibly from this plane of existence if they proved unwilling to get jogging).
It's interesting. "Always Chaotic Evil" (or Lawful Evil, or Lawful Good, or whatever) is a pretty cool concept when applied to creatures like demons which represent the "essence" of that alignment - they literally are always chaotic evil, it's a part of their very being, and they have to work around it. It's when it's applied to normal mortals that it becomes a big problem.
I've proposed the idea of a redeemed devil (in the context of DnD) to a few people, and they've said something similar, that a redeemed devil isn't a devil, but Zariel retained her celestial powers (or at least stayed on the same power level) so it doesn't really make sense that a redeemed devil would be weaker imo
@@patchwilliamson That sounds more like a "rule of cool" violation to me. I'd just say whatever features need to be cut/weakened to make a devil function as a player race, that's what you lost when you stopped being a devil. But regardless, it's true that this way of handling alignment change for creatures that embody specific alignments is not RAW, it's homebrew, so it might not work perfectly with everything that exists in the actual game (like fallen angels for example).
@@righteousforest5538 Oh, I didn't mean as a player race, but I do think there's a difference between "fallen" and "corrupted"
So, this, the Magic, and Mentors Tier list need to be added to the Streams playlist.
A relatively recent example of kind of a hive mind was the season of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic with Queen Chrysalis. You get both the drones, the evil hive queen, AND then after she is defeated we get to follow a drone unconditioning and becoming pastel, it's great. Plus her song slaps.
The thing with human are space orks is that it's kinda hard to make without making other aliens look like children ,
Children of time is possibly the one example that kinda works ,
Since in that book we are functionally giants with large steel ships and explosive weapons , and thunder based computers ,
Yet we get defeated by getting outsmarted ...
5:58 I believe you’re talking about “Kitten” who’s the daughter of Killer Moth from Teen Titans. She’s definitely spoiled rotten and has it in her mind to take Robin to Prom as her “Date”. That was part of one of the episodes from that show but the only reason Robin went along with it was to prevent Killer Moth from unleashing a swarm of moths on Jump City and the only way to prevent that from happening was to go with Kitten to her High School’s Prom. That didn’t sit well with “Starfire” who’s romantically interested in Robin.
With dragons I've frequently heard that their early emotional development has a significant impact on scale color, though that may be a more flavourful touch than anything else.
The decoy protagonist has a perfect example in Starwars the Sequel trilogy. Fin is 1000% more interesting but gets forgotten for Rey to take his protagonist place ; ____ ;
The best decoy protagonist is the most popular one: Marion Crane from Psycho
I'm on the complete opposite side with multiverses, I love them. However, that's probably part of my world-centric enjoyment of media, and the same reason I enjoyed Mortal Engines and prefer the star wars prequels. Also, a big part of it is that I enjoy reading *about* multiverses, and haven't really engaged with multiverse media directly.
The best “daddy’s little villain” of all time is Señor Senior Jr. from Kim Possible, imho
Since you said you've never heard of a side character revealed to be dead all along who just sticks around afterwards, I'd like to inform you that this exact thing happens in the book The Raven Boys
Casually doing 3 hour podcast stream at random days, we love that.
A moment of appreciation for red (or maybe someone else from osp crew idk) painstakingly dividing this pile of video into segments for us
I will say that Legend of Korra did handle the Hero with Bad Publicity thing very well. Because she's hot-headed and has a tendency to publicly put her foot in her mouth, or cause collateral damage while saving the day. And the bad publicity isn't the whole of it, it just gives the public a mixed perception of her instead of "Yay the Avatar!"
The Incredibles movie also comes to mind in connection with this trope! In that storyline, collateral damage caused by heroes whilst "saving the day" and a general public fear of their powers led to their being stripped of any public honors & essentially put into witness protection. TBH this attitude to 'exceptional' minority people who aren't well-understood always seemed sadly consistent with real-world history to me? I'm not sure it requires 100% bland stupidity on the part of the normies, more a mix of ignorance and prejudice...
I take it as a challenge, to work into my story somewhere the quote "oh ok I didn't actually get stabbed, whatever"
Just on time loops, one of my favourite loops was done in Stargate SG-1. Where the characters were trapped in a time bubble of sorts and everything outside the bubble progressed as normal, they didn't do anything with it in the end, but the concept is good for "villain has trapped hero in a loop so they are occupied while the villain does their thing"... Also done by doctor strange Vs dormomue
I love coming home and seeing these solo streams posted so I can watch them through out the next few days.
You know, part of "stupid evil" that I find REALLY funny comes from villains doing something evil instead of just being *reasonable* . Sometimes a villain can get what they want without evil, but if they do that, then they're less *evil,* you know?
I once played a minor villain in a Regency-era Changeling The Dreaming LARP, and I got to do *one* mean thing across the entire 7 game runtime. XD Essentially, I was trying to seize control of the barony the game was in, and fully intended that I would be defeated in that regard since I am not a cunning planner... But then 3 out of the 4 other claimants to that throne were completely unacceptable to the council deciding who would take the throne, and the last guy I was able to very easily make a deal with, leading to me actually winning. XD
I actually thought to myself "I'm supposed to be the bad guy, I should utterly backstab that guy and take what I want and trigger an epic showdown of some kind... But he's willing to literally give me what I want if I do one reasonable thing for him. Only someone who is Stupid Evil would do the evil thing instead of just negotiating to a mutual win!"
The one mean thing I got to do was between game 1 and 2, where a guy playing a lawyer had politically swept my leg and set up a council to decided who got the throne instead of me basically jacking the whole thing, and set it up behind my character's back... And I tried to get revenge. Essentially, I used my entire Downtime to research his Dark And Tragic Backstory, then published it all in the local newspaper, which would basically ruin him. ...But the player had already quit the game before I even finished the plan, so the practical effect was that I scared off a now-NPC. XD
I haven't watched much anime (esp. in the last few years) nor consumed many media that had Yandere in it but the only time I liked what they did to that archetype was in the otome game "Amnesia".
Its Yandere might be the only male one (in stories for androsexual girls and women). Either way, the producers approached it from a primarily psychological angle. What makes him a Yandere is his obsessive love, fear of losing the Heroine or having her be hurt and the moral conflict on measures to protect the Heroine. The murderous side that so many identify with a Yandere is only hinted at in ~two bad endings but the worst ending has him imprison the Heroine and her losing her sense of self - something you would expect from a psychological thriller, maybe.
Apart from being intensily engaging, his route taught me a lot about abusive relationships even though I didn't know what these were at the time of playing...
Edit: Changed spelling.
When you censor words like that, people who have text blockers can't pick it up. So please don't do that. Write the words.
@@BJGvideos I 'censored' it for fear that my comment might automatically be deleted. Also, I didn't/don't think that anything I wrote might be triggering.
Also also: There are text blockers for YT comments? I didn't know they even existed.
I changed the spelling now, though.
@@EleiyaUmei Idk how text blockers work or if they work on this site but I know that it's important to write words out for that reason.
@@BJGvideos Um, are you sure these text blockers for triggers even exist? Can you name me some kind of source that talks about this or is what you say just hearsay?
I just find it so difficult to even imagine that there is this kind of app, program etc. on websites (bc I'm sure it is deeply complicated to create or implement something like that) and want to make sure nobody is spreading false information.
The inclusion of "my city now" pleases me immensely. I dont think I've ever heard OSP reference madoka before, correct me if I'm wrong?
They referenced it in the Magical Girl Magic System ranking, specifically mentioning how it's a deconstruction
I guess is a followup on "paint the town red"
Since I started reading Comic Aurora, I've noticed the use of many of the tropes covered in trope talks, so I'm here quietly checklisting what we've seen happen in Aurora
1:55:43 it would be interesting to explore powers effecting personality instead of the other way round. Like “I was a perfectly normal person until I got these shadow powers that work best/I can take greatest advantage of when I am wearing all black” kind of a deal.
a good case of a reluctant villain is taylor from Worm
she got into a teenage villain group as a spy
but the villains were the only people to actually treat her like a friend and the only experience she had with the heroes was pretty bad
so she decided to join them for real
As I recall, the people labelled "heroes" and the people labelled "villains" are separated more by how good their PR is and/or how photogenic their powers are than by the sorts of things they actually do (particularly with no witnesses around).
@@rmsgrey Yeah, hero and villain are literally political labels, rather than motive based
Heroes are capes aligned with the US govt Parahuman Response Team (I think that's what PRT means?), which includes good people and also people who want to be dicks and be government protected while doing so
Villains are anti-PRT, which includes bad people and also people who want to do good without needing government oversight, or who are anti-cape regulation and stuff
Man, Worm goes hard
@@rmsgrey well it's more like heroes aka wards and the protectorate work for the law and against criminals
you can be a hero that doesn't work in those groups but that's a vigilante
it's not an issue of pr
Taylor was a villain and had great PR
its more about if you follow the law
This just in: Red and the Multiverse are destined to destroy each other
Sworn Enemies
Dear Red thank you for talking about the cool thing we like cause we don't always have people around to discuss it with
Sincerely random people on the internet
Red talking about Mortal Engines and Anna Fang made me go "Oh, oh no you don't know what happens in the books do you"
It's a real shame they only made the first half of that film, it was really odd to cut things off just as Shrike caught up to Hester & Tom on Airhaven.
In the body swap section, my favorite example is the episode of Justice League Unlimited where Lex Luthor and The Flash swap bodies. The voice actors got to play the other characters, it's great.
I loved Superior Spiderman. I knew they would eventually pull Peter back. And Doc Oct would probably go back to his villain spot but the fun I had was Doc Oct commenting on Peter's life how his POV on the spiderman lifestyle would flavor it. And all the big thing Doc Oct did to change Peter's Status Quo when Peter comes back.
I got super frustrated and angry that when Peter did come back, the writing staff slowly and annoyingly backtracked ALL OF THE STUFF Doc Oct did. And they did it stupidly. Doc Oct made a legal lab for Peter work and own, but Peter burns it down for basically out of spite.
2:47:48 Reminds me of Brennan Lee Mulligan on Misfits & Magic. "I made this guy to be a heavily flawed character with a LOT of issues, but that was not one of them."
Power of Love often feels more thought out when it's not romantic love. Platonic, sibling, or parental love giving a character the drive to power through struggles, in my experience, uses character relationships more effectively, particularly if the relationship existed prior to the start of the story and developed during the story. Unfortunately, my brain is empty of examples.
Your Name handles body-swapping very well, rather than using it as a gag it's a part of the whole plot, and there are real stakes, not to mention the romance between two people who technically don't "know" each other. Needless to say, it's pretty much my favorite anime movie.
Yeah but did the movie *really* need a meteor plot? Like, couldn't the whole movie only have been about these two people who switch bodies, learning about each other and falling in love because of this experience? If you needed an excuse to make them lose contact, it could have simply been that them switching bodies at one point happens less and less, until they eventually don't
@@floricel_112 I agree with you on that. The meteor plotline was rather sudden, and it would have done better with either more exposition on that or something else entirely. Leaving it be with just the switching bodies might have ended up being a little lackluster though, unless of course it's done differently. One thing that might have worked would be to lose the connection the way they did (from a character being dead all along and the other having to save them), but making it something more believable and foreshadowed, rather than a meteorite. In the end, though, even the best movies have their flaws and sometimes simplicity is key.
I usually hate no-killing policies when they're explicitly stated. Usually they're implicit with the hero being the good guy, but when they're tested, its often that writers accidentally write stories that are in favor of the death penalty when they stretch the no-kill rule to test the hero.
I love your Trope Talk videos, so listening to this was a treat! 🤩 Thank you for that, Red! Looking forward to the next Trope Talks. 😊
I'm not in a position to check, but there must be a trope for all the instances where "normal kid/person finds a robot/alien/escaped lab experiment and has an adventure where they become best friends, only for the robot/alien/lab experiment to tragically leave for home/sacrifice themselves because this normal person needs to end with a normal life and that's not going to happen with a cool pet/friend robot/monster."
The iron giant trope
Jamie's Got Tentacles
Animorphs does a very interesting thing with the all evil species trope. The "evil" aliens are the Yeerks (body snatchers) controlling the Hork Bajir (kind unwilling hosts), the Taxxons (who ALL joined the voluntarily and are giant cannibalistic centipedes) and humans (some voluntary, most not). The heroes kill them because they have no choice, but they certainly feel no sadness for the taxxons. However ..(spoiler)
..
eventually it is revealed some yeerk scientists had deduced the "andalite bandits" were actually humans because they noticed they killed FAR less humans than aliens. maimed them, sure, but rarely killed them. They fell into thinking of them as the "evil species to mow down" and the bad guys took advantage (or not really, it's complicated)
A Trope you should have broken down: Koi and Dragon. Wherein an unassuming character obtains ultimate power through sheer force of will and perseverance.
A couple examples of this that I can think of is probably Goku and Saitama.
Magikarp as well.
oh, so that's what Magikarp is?
@@Domesthenes... I can't believe I forgot about that. Those two were actually based on the legend this trope references.
1:06:08
This trope is (in my opinion) excellently done in the anime "Devil is a Part-timer" because its kindof a reverse isekai where the big bad is about to be defeated by the chosen one in a universe where there's magic and demons. But then he and his top demon general go to basically modern Japan. And completely lose their powers bc theyre based on feeding on the fear of the people around him. It basically turns into a slice of life where he chills out and gets a part time job at the copyright-nondescript McDonald's (named MgRonald's). He really only gets his powers back and uses them when someone from the other universe comes in and starts causing devastation to try to kill him. He never ends up using his powers for evil bc he likes his current life. This is all based on the first season, I havent seen the second season yet so I cant speak for that.
Theres a second season?
@@PikaPenny17 yea just came out a year ago I think
@@bulletmonkeyxp I did not know this. Thanks. I know what I'm watching now.
@@bulletmonkeyxp Apparently, it actually debuts July 14.
What I would do for a story that invokes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl setup with the intention of getting the protagonist to realize that he does not need to date the MPDG to have a fulfilling life. Maybe the MPDG is a lesbian (or hell, even Ace) and may come around to being legitimate friends with Protag-kun, but is literally *incapable* of feeling romantic or sexual attraction towards him. Maybe he can realize that it's *okay* that he's good friends with her; that their relationship doesn't *have* to be romantic or sexual to be fulfilling; and that falling into the trap of thinking that he *needs* to be that way with her is probably unhealthy for both him and their relationship.
So flanderization is the comedic equivalent of the Legolas effect. One character with particular talents to contribute to the party, but those skills are gradually amped up to such an absurd degree at some point you wonder "why are the rest of them even there?"
In the LOTR books orcs and goblins are the same species. Goblin is just the hobbit word which is why they are referred to as such in the hobbit. Orc is the human word, so in lord of the rings they are exclusively referred to as Orcs. The movies changed this but in the books both orcs and goblins made sense both being evil because they were the same species.
I’m curious how ‘Spiderverse is amazing’ can be squared away with ‘the multiverse is terrible’.
Is it more ‘multiverse without consequences’ is terrible? Does it need to be plot or does character consequence matter?
I think the threat level itself doesn't have to be multiversal, because everything after that becomes inconsequential, and numbs you to other lesser threats. "Oh this guy can rob a bank or steal a purse? Yeah but he can't delete an entire existence, so it's not that important". Not to mention it doesn't really make sense for a villain that's potentially strong enough to tear down the multiverse to be beaten by a hero or heroes that are supposedly leagues under him? And if they DO manage to beat the villain, that means the heroes themselves are now strong enough to tear down the entire existence or beat the one who can; but regardless of that, every other villain they've had before becomes inconsequential by default.
There's also the scale itself. "The multiverse is in peril". Like what the fu- does that mean conceptually? How is it any different from a universal or planetary threat? Yeah they can potentially destroy more stuff, but how much do you care about all that other stuff? You care about Earth because know Earth, even if it isn't explained to you, because you *live* on Earth. You barely know anything about the rest of the universe, and even then most of it is empty space with the occasional extraterrestrial threat that plans on destroying or conquering Earth, like Brainiac, Darkseid, Galactus or Thanos. And the multiverse, you only know as much about it as the author reveals to you, and in mist cases the difference is minuscule and the rest is exactly the same: maybe the status quo is different, but people fundamentally still live the same. So for the average reader, a multiversal threat is the same as a universal or even planetary threat, because while you can say more than Earth is being destroyed, they still only care about Earth. Besides, I'm not that compassionate to worry about the fate of other universes, or even capable of comprehending such a scale to begin with. Plus it feels detached from what the average person experiences. Yeah the multiverse was saved and the average Joe can continue their average lives, but while the heroes are saving the multiverse, the average Joe is still getting mugged by a lesser villain the heroes are too busy to deal with, and the average also Joe isn't made aware of the fact because of comic book law, so as far as they're concerned their lives didn't change at all. They were still mugged
@@floricel_112 Multiverse of Madness does the stakes quite well, as whilst the entire thing is a universe hopping, alternate doomed reality visity comic-book shennanigans set-piece generating roller coaster, the stakes are very simply 'the bad guy wants to kill an innocent teenager', and, without spoilers, character motivation is central to the entire thing.
The Spiderverse is interesting for a multiverse subset because while theoretically infante, it's still constrained by it's Spideriness. So there are certain elements of loss that persist across all realities. Not necessarily identical, but dead mentors abound. Every Spider has pain points, you can't escape to a perfect reality.
I think it falls more under "any trope can be executed well" - a multiverse can be used well to tell a compelling story with real stakes; the problem is that it's almost always used as an excuse to write whatever you feel like without having to tie it into the existing continuity, nor worry about its effect on future continuity, and without having to admit that you're just having fun messing around with your non-canon fanfic of your own setting because it really is happening for reals, just somewhere else in the multiverse than anything that actually matters to the main plot.
Multiverses are useful as a source for characters, specifically taking a familiar character and showing alternate varients that they could have been. (Evil heros especially "nazi worlds", good bad guys, or getting demoted to a nobody or a nobody is now somebody) This is a goldmine for character development, especially when you are running from your "friend" who is coming to kill you for real.
The other common usage is as a non cannon safety bubble like Zombie universes that dont fit the normal storyline.
Spiderverse is good because it sources characters from the multiverse (and sends them back) but it doesn't do the rick and morty "jump universes cause the old one got trashed" actions have no consequences which kinda ruins the concept of stakes in your narative.
With the multiverse stuff, I think Multiverse of Madness actually manages to avoid it because they made a really good decision about where to pitch the stakes- the entire plot is about how killing 1 person for 'the greater good' is still evil, even if they are a stranger from another multiverse, and those are the entirety of the stakes if the villain's plot goes to plan. 1 person dies. The end.
So when you get the 'oh, well it's an infinite multiverse, nothing really matters if it happens outside the main universe' stuff, you have the counter 'well, that 1 person that the hero spends the entire movie trying to save would be dead, so...' The threat of other universes not really mattering is still present in the MCU, but they managed to write their way around it in the big film about the concept just by not having the stakes be meaninglessly big, which i generally think contributes to the whole 'anything can happen and it doesn't matter' problem. That, or you go the other way and have Owlman.
Throwing in my two cents: I think there are another two things they did well.
One, the trip to the incursion universe helps give perspective on just how bad that would be. That can help sell the audience on "oh, this is bad, we don't want this happening," because now they have an anchor point for what an event like that would entail. Think back to how Red's talk on world destruction, and how the stakes need to be made personal to have a significant impact.
Two, they emphasized how, even though they may all be the "same" person, everyone in each universe is still unique in a way. While Wanda has kids in other worlds, those aren't *her* kids, they are the kids of another Wanda who isn't interchangeable. When she's brought to them at the end, they're terrified of her, because to them, she's a scary doppelganger of their mom, who was just thrown across the room by this intruder. This brings mainline Wanda to the truth that she can't brute-force her way to what she wants, while also giving each world a sense of meaning, since they can't be replicated or copied, so to speak.
This trope "Mental Illness as Superpower" like in "Heroes", "Split" or "Constantine" is an increasingly terrifying trope to me that I would love to see a talk about. Or I'd like to hear from someone smarter than me how much damage it really does.
I did like one of the DC multiverse storylines where alternate batman (owlman) becomes aware of the multiverse, realises the multiverse means nothing he does would ever matter, then post existential crisis realises that the logical thing to do is destroy the entire multiverse, simply because its the only thing he can do that would actually have any meaning 🙃
Red, I love your trope talks. They have helped me renew my interest in writing. thank you.