Last Post Standing, the sequel

[Neon_Knight]

You want something truly japanese?

A Widget (WJT) is marketed as a Weird Japanese Thing, relatively offbeat and is compared to what is considered mainstream or popular (at least, for North American/Western European audiences). This has become more inclusive as anime and manga have developed a more mainstream presence, but usually exploits culture differences. The Widget Series often consists of Surreal Humor or a Gag Series, or in darker cases, Surreal Horror.

Sometimes they have small, short releases to test the audience, although they may have a guaranteed viewing among otaku.

Japanese cultural differences are the reason this trope exists and the reason it's not more popular. Japanese storytelling conventions embrace a number of elements that are much less commonly found in media produced by most other societies – some common examples include extreme absurdist humor (with a particular penchant for untranslatable puns) and a fondness for ambiguity and open-ended conclusions. Simply put, Japanese culture can be refreshing to an outsider, but too much may cause a feeling of overload.

Until around the introduction of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball to American pop culture in 1996, most anime was out of the American mainstream, with only (very) few exceptions, principally ones that were and are considered to be of extraordinary quality in storytelling or artistry (such as AKIRA) – and every anime could be considered a Widget Series. Or something worse. Incidentally, even now many Japanese series are never ported over precisely because the original creators know it's weird and don't think there's a large market for it.

A weird series doesn't have to be Japanese to qualify as a Widget: some European, North American or Australasian series, like the ones from the examples below, are weird enough to compare with their Japanese brethren. Terms you'll likely see in this page include:

WTF (A Weird Thing from France)
W(H)AT (A Weird (Humorous) American Thing)
Wabbit (Weird British Thing)
Wicket (Weird Canadian Thing)
WART (Weirdly Awesome Russian Thing)
STANZA (Strange Thing from Australia/New Zealand/Australasia)
EIEIO (Excessively Irish Example of Intentional Oddity)
WST (Weird Scandinavian Thing) and WIT (Weird Icelandic Thing).
PEGS (Peculiar & Eccentric German Subject)
WOK (Weird Occurrence from Korea)

If it doesn't make sense in its own culture, it's most likely a case of What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?. This trope may sometimes (but not always) overlap with Cliché Storm. Not to be confused with the 1990s animated series Widget the World Watcher, which despite the name isn't quite weird enough to be a Widget Series. See also Values Dissonance and Humor Dissonance.

Note: Keep in mind that this trope is cultural, and is subject to the aforementioned Values Dissonance; what may seem normal or only marginally strange to one culture may come off as mind-blowingly weird to another, and vice versa. If an example here strikes you as not as unusual as the entry makes it out to be, you may want to take it to the discussion page instead of instigating an Edit War.

[Gustavo6046]

Dunno what that is. We're cool down here in Brazil. We made a hodge podge of stuff. We like everything, from anime to Burger King to movies to random secks jokes and stuff. Don't ask, just Brazil.

[EvilGrins]

We made a hodge podge of stuff. We like everything, from anime to Burger King to movies to random secks jokes and stuff. Don't ask, just Brazil.

Sounds like California.

[Neon_Knight]

I've known Kamen Rider Black RX thanks to a brazilian channel way before Saban's Masked Rider was ever created.

[Gustavo6046]

We don't have alligators!

Oh wait, that's your Florida.

I've known Kamen Rider Black RX thanks to a brazilian channel way before Saban's Masked Rider was ever created.

Known a what?

Also, for a second I read Karen. Damn murica memes getting to me

[Neon_Knight]

You have before you three series. The first, Series A, was the first known use of a trope, but it may or may not have been intentional. The second, Series B, was the first intentional use of the trope. The third, Series C, does not claim originality, and may in fact have ripped off series B, but was much more popular than Series A or B and is the template that all later uses of this trope follow.

Series A is the Ur-Example.

Series B is the Trope Maker.

Series C is the Trope Codifier.

In other words, if in tracing the history of a trope, one example stands out as the template that many, many other examples follow, that's the Trope Codifier.

The Trope Maker is frequently also the Trope Codifier, but not always. In particular, when the Trope Maker is a work of outstanding quality, the Trope Codifier may often be a story that shows how lesser authors can do a good imitation. Conversely, a great writer may gather up many old tropes and polish them to a shine, codifying them for later generations. Occasionally somebody rediscovers a Forgotten Trope.

The Trope Codifier may be the first theme park version or Pragmatic Adaptation. If the trope is Older Than They Think, the Codifier is usually mistaken for the Trope Maker. Really old tropes may have been codified every couple of centuries for millennia, as successive codifiers show how to adapt the age-old trope to their times. With the advent of television, a trope related to television may be codified by a new show every decade or two after the associations with previous codifiers have died out.

Important: "Trope Codifier" does not mean Most Triumphant Example. It means "Example that has fingerprints of influence on all later examples of the trope". The true marker of a Codifier is that it invents some unique spin on the trope that all later examples have some reaction to. Take, for example, Werewolves. There were earlier examples of werewolf stories, but it is with 1941's The Wolf Man that we first see werewolves as an infection (previously, it was a curse or part of a Deal with the Devil), silver vulnerability (previously, it was vampires or ghosts who were usually associated with weakness to silver), made the werewolf a human cursed to turn into a wolf-man (previously, all kinds of variations were available, from wolf that turns into a man, to man who was permanently turned into a wolf), and tied the wolf to the night of the full moon (previously, they either focused on the three nights around the full moon, or had little to do with the phase of the moon). Almost all later examples of Werewolves bear some of these subtropes, which originated with The Wolf Man, or at least discuss them in order to explain why Our Werewolves Are Different. Thus, we can state with confidence that it is the Trope Codifier.

Examples should be of Trope Codifiers that aren't Trope Makers themselves.

Related to Older Than They Think. If a Trope Codifier is particularly influential, and the Trope Maker a little twisted you may have an Unbuilt Trope. Even the Trope Codifier itself may qualify as Unbuilt Trope because it tends to frequently contradict modern interpretations of said trope (and indeed most Trope Codifiers often have several major Unbuilt Tropes). There may also be a Series D which is the Trope Namer, which is a series that uses the trope so commonly, so appropriately (or inappropriately, as the case may be), or so memorably,note that it provides a name for the trope.

Also see Most Triumphant Example.

[Gustavo6046]

Roger, Dumb Leader.

[EvilGrins]

Roger, Dumb Leader.

Hey, be nice you poopie-head.

[Neon_Knight]

Sprites and textures are expensivenote . Original ideas for monster types are even more so. As a result, there is a tendency to keep the number of distinct enemy types small. In an RPG or similar game where the player is expected to become more powerful over the course of the game, this is a problem, as the monsters stop being challenging about the time you Get on the Boat.

The solution many games go for is to have a small set of monster types, but have them appear with different graphics. Often, this change of design will be accompanied by a new adjective to go with their name. If the monster was based on a mythological or cryptozoological creature, subsequent names will be alternate names for the creature (Bigfoot to Sasquatch to Yeti), or the name of a similar creature (Basilisk and Cockatrice). Typically, all such monsters will be vulnerable to the same strategy, or a variation thereupon, but later colors will tend to be more powerful. Elemental variations are a common version of this trope as are variations in size and adding or removing features like horns, wings, or crowns.

Underground Monkeys are often Palette Swaps, meaning only the colors change but models are recycled, but they don't have to be. As long as they're recycled versions of previous enemies, the changes between the different versions could be anything. You might have normal Goombas, winged Goombas, big Goombas... Even King Goomba is a type of Underground Monkey.

Results in the somewhat strange phenomenon that as you travel a diverse world, rather than simply seeing a diversity of creature types, you also see the same creature types, in a diversity of versions: in The Lost Woods, you find the Wolf, the Giant Rat, and the Forest Dragon; in the Slippy-Slidey Ice World, you find their icy counterparts Arctic Wolf, the Snow Rat, and the White Dragon; in the Temple of Doom, you'll face their dark counterparts, Dire Wolf, Plague Rat, and Zombie Dragon.

The most common Underground Monkeys are those whose names begin with one of fire, ice or lightning. In games which play Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors, the colors may also indicate elemental weakness. Underground Monkeys commonly have a Group-Identifying Feature to distinguish them from regular monkeys.

Contrast Artifact Mook, which is when an enemy appears in places and quantities that defy its original context.

Named for a Running Gag in RPG World, wherein the Underground Monkey is suspected of being attracted by Genre Savvy characters.

Not to be confused with actual monkeys living underground, such as beneath Dusty Dunes Desert or under the sewers.

[Gustavo6046]

*Spawns 200 bots, proceeds to give a simple order to them all.*

[Neon_Knight]

One of the oddities creating art is the nebulous relationship between the fans of the media and the creators of that media. In theory, the creators, producers, and distributors are the ones calling the shots; they decide what's happening in the work, and the fans follow as they will. But that's a bit naive; it's the fans who keep the ratings up, the sales high, and the money flowing in. And if you displease the fans, they can just go elsewhere and take their money with them. The existence of things like Fanon Discontinuity, Dork Age, Author's Saving Throw, and Fanon means that any property successful enough to cultivate a group of intensely devoted fans is going to be at least partially concerned with satisfying their wishes; to some degree, you have to give the people what they want.

So, just give the fans exactly what they want, and everything will work out. Right?

Wrong. Generally speaking, the more intensely devoted fans in a fandom are usually outnumbered by the casual fans. But the more devoted a fan becomes, the more active (and louder) they become in the fandom. So while a few million casual fans might enjoy an episode of a show without ever making that fact widely known, a handful of devoted and occasionally unhinged fans are screaming about how the show is Ruined FOREVER, which can be seen and heard by everyone... including the people making the show. The creators may then start pandering to these voices exclusively, believing them to be the voice of everyone watching (which these fans will often claim to be) — but "everyone" in this case may in fact consist only of a handful of people, and what this minority wants and what the less-noisy fans want can differ drastically.

This presents a major problem. The property can end up becoming a private club, accessible only to a select few. Excluding the casual fans means they'll simply drift away to find something else to spend their time on, and raising the entry bar too high means you run the risk of locking out new fans who may have been interested in the property, but now find it too difficult to access. While the vocal minority might now be satisfied (and you can't even count on that), they rarely translate to enough ratings and/or sales to justify the property's continued existence — and to make matters worse, even this hardcore minority that you catered to may begin to drift away for numerous reasons (changing tastes, burnout, lessened interest, etc). This results in diminishing returns, ending in eventual cancellation if unchecked.

Furthermore, the overall quality of the property can begin to suffer if you just listen to the vocal minority; just because someone is intensely committed to a particular work of fiction doesn't necessarily mean they know what makes good fiction work. The hardcore fans are generally fascinated by the backstory, mythos, trivia, and continuity which can build up around a franchise, but this doesn't necessarily make riveting entertainment to anyone less interested in all of this stuff. And if you somehow get the story's continuity tangled up or make any mistakes in your established lore, this makes things worse; not only have you lost the interest of the people who don't care about this stuff, you've annoyed the people who do, and it's now guaranteed they won't be shy about saying so.

In many cases, pandering to the base rarely succeeds in making anyone happy, not even the fans it's supposed to win over. This is because what most devoted fans ultimately want is the same as the casual ones: interesting and engaging stories, not just constant pandering. There's a certain kind of irony here: by trying to give the fans what they say they want, you fail to give them what they actually want.

A wise producer understands a simple rule that helps them avoid all of this; generally speaking, you've got the hardcore minority regardless — they'll usually keep following the story, even if they're dragged in kicking and screaming. You need to win over the undecided. A good producer understands that for every one fan who writes a frothing invective on the Internet or a rabid email, there's probably ten fans who are perfectly content with what's happening.

On the flip side, tropes are not bad; pandering to the base can and indeed in many cases does work out just fine. Sometimes giving the fans what they want is the same as giving the wider audience what they want as well. And while they can at times be annoying, the fans are still part of your audience, and if you're deliberately pissing them off, you're still pissing off a potentially significant segment of your own audience, who will desert you if you go too far; make them angry enough, and they may become so loud that they scare away more casual fans or potential new fans. Furthermore, relying on the approval of the silent majority over the noisy fans presents its own pitfalls — in particular, you might not actually have that approval. The fan criticism you're receiving may have a point.

Compare Vocal Minority, which usually is the bases being pandered to. Sometimes the base in question is the Lowest Common Denominator. Can result in The Chris Carter Effect, Better on DVD, Continuity Lock-Out, Continuity Porn. Compare/contrast Running the Asylum, which is sometimes the writers pandering to the fans, and sometimes pandering to themselves. Can also result in fans screaming Ruined Forever as well as an Unpleasable Fanbase. When the pandering actually does work, it's And the Fandom Rejoiced.

This phenomenon is sometimes called "fanservice", but don't confuse this with our definition of said trope (although the two can often be related, depending on what exactly the fanbase being pandered to is demanding).

Not to be confused with Panda-ing to the Audience; this trope has nothing to do with pandas.

[Gustavo6046]

Nebulous? Can I eat them clouds?

[JimmyCognitti]

[Gustavo6046]

ow my head

[OjitroC]

Been eating too many clouds?