Elemental Baggage: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

When users of [[Elemental Powers]] need to kick ass and take names, they can't always count on [[Plot Tailored to the Party|there being enough of their element of choice around to properly fight.]]

 

 

 

Of course, [[Fan Wank]] or not, it will still look like a cancerous example of [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum]] if the writers decide to do an episode where the elemental user is explicitly at a disadvantage because they can't find a large enough source of their element to control.

 

 

Related to [[Shapeshifter Baggage]] and the [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]. Often implied for [[Snow Means Cold]].

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* The Logia Devil Fruits of ''[[One Piece]]'' run off the [[A Wizard Did It]] explanation: one of powers they grant is specifically noted to be the ability to produce as mass amounts of whatever element the Logia fruit in question represents.

* Initially averted in ''[[Naruto]]'', where for a long time pretty much all the water elemental powers were shown to use existing bodies of water. Later on, it fell headlong into this trope, with huge amounts of water appearing out of thin air. Of course, since the main character regularly [[Shapeshifter Baggage|creates clones of himself out of nothing, and others have been known to increase their body mass hundreds of times or turn shadows into physical beings]], it seems like creating matter (elemental and otherwise) out of nothing is just something [[Functional Magic|ninjutsu]] can do.

** In the anime, at least, it is explained as "flammable gas", not just the oxygen.

** The manga actually says that he's breaking apart hydrogen bonds with alchemy and then igniting them. Hydrogen is highly flammable (although it doesn't burn very hot), which is why a room filled with water is actually a ''good'' thing for him. Provided he's got an alternative source of sparks, that is.

* [[Great Mazinger]] has its Thunder Break attack, in which Great unleashes a weaponized bolt of lightning at his opponent. Sometimes (typically in ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' and ''[[Mazinkaiser]]''), this includes sending a jolt up into the sky, which somehow causes a thunderstorm that sends an even bigger bolt back down for Great to use.

 

== Comic Books ==

*** And still fails to explain where the energy to move those molecules comes from, although violating thermodynamics is pretty much par for the course when it comes to super-powers.

 

* Averted in ''[[With Strings Attached]]''. John's Kansael acts as an extradimensional storage space for a lot of water, which is where he draws his water from when he doesn't have a ready source nearby. Since he doesn't do much large-scale water casting, he only ran out once, on the dead-dry Plains of Death.

 

== Film ==

* ''[[The Incredibles]]'' had Frozone using water that's either in the air or in his body, and one scene suggests that the air is too dry and he's short on body water so he's screwed, but after a single drink from a cup from a water cooler, he creates enough ice to entirely cover a man and ''stop a bullet''. On [[Fridge Logic|further consideration]], however, the primary waste produced by burning organic compounds is CO2 and H2O, so the burning building should have actually had ''[[Did Not Do the Research|more]]'' water, but maybe it was to hot for him to use his powers. After all, his power is freezing the water vapor and if the vapor he freezes evaporates instantly it's as if he didn't do anything at all, and maybe when he was in the bank he could have used his powers already and was just thirsty.

** Made worse by the fact that they feed on some of the ''least'' energetic stuff around, namely the burnt ash of their victims.

** IIRC, they were stated to have large gas-sacs inside them and small nub in their mouth capable of generating a small electric spark. They exhale the flammable gas while igniting the spark and viola: instant fire-breath. I think the gas-sacs were also supposed to be part of how they fly, big buoyancy pockets inside them let them use their wings to fly (which otherwise would be insufficient to carry their large frames)

** This could be explained as him simply spreading the flames via the flammable gasses in the air.

** And then there are the cartoons where the flame creatures even have ''sound effects'' (birds roar, [[The Coconut Effect|horses gallop]] and whinny, etc.)

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[Wild Cards]]''' Water Lily believes that she condenses water from the air, but to account for the amounts she makes, it's later speculated that she can actually subconsciously transmute air and other matter around her into water, at one point creating a large flood.

* [[Averted Trope]] pretty reliably in the ''[[Circle of Magic]]'' books and sequels. Tris may be an incredibly powerful "weather witch" but in order to summon rain, she has to ''bring'' it from somewhere, and to get rid of it, she has to send it somewhere else; tampering with the weather has a high ecological cost in this 'verse.

** Daja, the fire/metal mage, does not create fire. She ''does'' have much more resistance to heat (being able to hold white-hot metal barehanded) and is able to manipulate already produce flame and heat, but not from nothing. Also, the fire itself has to have fuel to stay lit, forcing her to add coal to the forge, it's not everlasting.

* So far averted in the [[Whateley Universe]]. Riptide, who can control water, has had enough water to really kick ass only once - a stormy, rainy day in Boston. (But she got knocked out before she could use her powers.)

** It depends on the person, lucky mutants play this straight.

** Also there are "Manifesters," who essentially create (temporary) matter, even things as complex as plants and animals, out of nothing/psychic energy. In some of the later stories Riptide is described as being a water manifester... specifically "creating" water to fuel an apparently steam/mist propelled flying board designed for her by a friend.

* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' by [[Jim Butcher]] averts this at times. While it is entirely possible to create fire, solid objects (formed from ectoplasm, they collapse when magic is no longer sustaining them), and energy through the use of a wizard's personal will, they can also channel existing energy. Emotions can also be used to power spells. Harry has frozen water by drawing heat from it to create fire and channeled the energy of a storm, but has also just created fire and tossed it around, and {{spoiler|after becoming the Winter Knight, gains the ability to create cold.}}

* Averted five times out of six in the ''[[Codex Alera]]'' series, also by Jim Butcher. Everyone has powers corresponding to at least one of six elemental "furies" of earth, air, fire, water, metal and wood. The power of people with water furies varies greatly depending on how much water is around them. Same for aircrafters, earthcrafters, metalcrafters and woodcrafters: their power is almost directly proportional to the amount of that element within easy reach. The one exception is firecrafters. Their power is countered by water, but that's just because they are elemental opposites; it has nothing to do with physics or conservation of mass or energy. A good firecrafter can make something room-temperature burst into flame instantly, as long as both it and he are dry.

** On the other hand, firecrafters are in high demand because its apparently more difficult than other disciplines.

**** Well couldn't you turn air into food then? Or dust particles? Or create an uncooked food and then cook it with magic?

*** It wouldn't surprise me if the wizards don't actually know exactly how their magic works. Dumbledore is described as doing things no one had ever done before in his fifth-year exams. Voldemort made up the whole resurrection spell. Hermione and Professor McGonagall are the kind of people who like rules and will stick to them in spite of contradictory evidence. Face it, if you can make things bigger on the inside than on the outside, brew luck, and make brooms fly at extreme velocities without so much as a single case of whiplash, who knows what's possible?

*** [[Wild Mass Guessing|Perhaps the magical world is the result of an]] [[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy|Infinite Improbability Device]]?<ref>The Infinite Improbability Device (or perhaps just a Finite Improbability Device) resulted in a highly-improbable mutation that allowed its carriers to control probability in certain predefined but as-yet undiscovered ways. The [[Magic A Is Magic A|supposed rules of magic]] are entirely arbitrary, as they are the result of Infinite Improbability, so anything that goes...goes.</ref>

* Discussed in Stephen King's ''[[Firestarter]]''. An [[Government Conspiracy|evil scientist]] muses how titular girl's talent to conjure up huge amounts of [[Playing with Fire|thermal energy]] with a barely noticeable effort is going to mess up the theories of physics.

* [[Averted Trope]] in the ''[[The Rose Of The Prophet]]'' trilogy. When a wizard travels to a desert environment he teaches some locals how to cast a spell to create mist and fog in order to allow them to help captured love ones escape. He fails to remember his teachers warning never to use the spell in dry conditions and as a result all the water has to come from somewhere. Specifically from the enemies guarding the prisoners who end up as dehydrated corpses. The wizard is understandably upset to find out he accidentally caused the deaths of a few dozen people who were just doing their jobs.

* A version of this appears in [[The Death Gate Cycle]]. The magic in the books is based on possibilities. So if a wizard is going to cast a fireball, he shapes the waves of reality to find a possible situation where a ball of flame could be hurled through the air. Or if he is being shot by an arrow, he can turn air into solid shield in front of him. No need to really know why, just that there is a CHANCE that the effect might be possible. Only limitation is that more complex spells take longer to prepare. For example in the books the main character prepares weapons with enhancement to kill with each hit. They take hours to prepare (scratching runes into metal) and even a small mistake in rune carving means he must begin everything from the scratch.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* In ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Angela's sister Alice is able to control the weather like Storm.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Which, unfortunately, doesn't explain where the energy comes from to power sonic attacks.

*** Also consider 'create food' spells, does that mean there is a 'plane of gruel'?

*** Theoretically, yes.

*** Which is often a source of spoofs in D&D parodies, as characters somehow or another wind up in a plane or demiplane of infinite food. See the [[Order of the Stick|semi-elemental plane of ranch dressing]] [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0802.html here].

* In ''[[Exalted]]'', the Dragon-Blooded don't ''need'' elemental baggage. They '''''are''''' elemental baggage, scions of a long line of elemental heroes, sons and daughters of the (obviously) Immaculate Dragons.

* In [[The Dark Eye]], most magical traditions need a small amount of one of the six elements is to summon a servant, djinn or master elemental of that particular element. If the element in question is not pure (sand instead of stone for a stone elemental) it will be more difficult, should it be purer, it will be easier (diamond instead of stone for a stone elemental).

 

== Toys ==

* Addressed during the Bohrok arc of the ''[[Bionicle]]'' comics. Gali's water-summoning abilities apparently work by forcing water vapor in the air to condense on command: she's able to summon a flood in the middle of a desert.

 

== Video Games ==

** Or Propel, which materializes things like crates and pool tables for you to (you guessed it) propel at the enemy.

*** This, however, is explicitly stated to be a form of teleportation; it's a Gravity Control power.

*** Which uses up a whole lot less ink then making it appear out of thin air.

*** Same goes for your final rosary and glaive; Her rosary contains the ice element while her glaive contains thunder. As far as techniques that have you connecting two targets on screen with a line, this just leaves the water power (which was obsolete in just about every way but one at that point) and the vine power (which was incredibly circumstantial and was mainly used for transportation).

** Ahem. Wario's motorbike. It's larger than he is, and while he can only have one out, he can get a new one instantly after it's smashed to pieces, falls of the stage or gets ''eaten'' by him.

*** Hyperactive Metabolism. Now for the [[Brain Bleach]].

* ''[[Magical Starsign]]'' does this with each character being able to manipulate a specific element, in order to put out a forest fire (On a [[Planet of Hats|Forest World]] the characters had to use their powers together in order to crush a rock, create a spring, and then spread the water.

* [[Player Character|Geralt]] takes advantage of an aversion during the boss fight in Chapter 2 of ''[[The Witcher]]''. {{spoiler|The mage [[The Dragon|Azar Javed]] specializes in fire magic. Geralt lures him to a swamp, since water is fire's [[Elemental Powers|opposite element]].}}

 

== Western Animation ==

* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Hama reveals to Katara that using the water in the air is very doable, and when Firebenders imprisoned the Waterbenders from the Southern Water Tribe, they piped dry air into their cells to make sure they couldn't do anything. However, this is a more realistic instance; when they're pulling water from the air, Waterbenders only receive small portions. And when they're pulling it from living things, things tend to wither and die for quite a large area for a relatively small amount of water. Also averted with Earthbenders to the extent that keeping refined metal between them and any earth or stone is considered sufficient to imprison them... and only two have proven common wisdom wrong (one by commanding nearby stone with his exposed face, the other by figuring out how to control impurities in the metal). Though they're sometimes shown pulling boulders out of the ground without making a hole or noticeable mark in the ground [[Fridge Logic|(closing said hole is also likely the result of Earthbending)]]. However, this is played straight in the case of Firebenders, who are capable of creating fire, though it's explained in-universe by [[Ki Attacks|chi]]; presumably, they sling around burning energy. This also explains why they can force their fire to explode at will.

** It's mostly averted though in that both Katara and Toph have been seen to run out of bendables, in one case leading to Katara doing some rapid exercise so she could sweat to make her own.

** A scene in the first episode shows Iroh running Zuko through firebending combat drills, where he explains that firebenders use their breath control to draw chi energy outwards, which manifests as flame. Most likely the creators did this to make the firebenders more threatening.

** It's also shown many times that benders are capable of enhancing existing expressions of their element: Aang uses fans (or his own breath in one instance) to create wind which he massively amplifies, and when sitting near a campfire Zuko expresses his anger by making the fire flare several meters into the air.

** Looking closely at the rings, what is noticeable is that Earth, Wind, and Water are Gold rings while Fire and Heart are Silver. The golden rings require external sources, while the silver rings come from within. Since most of their battles took place on land, The Ring of Earth has plenty of Earth to tap into; and the Ring of Wind can tap into the Air practically everywhere. As fire requires several factors to come together in order to happen naturally, a person's inner fire better suits the Ring of Fire.

* Averted in ''[[WITCH (animation)|WITCH]]'' for the most part. Taranee is shown to absorb and exert heat from the human body, which is the source of her fire as she is shown to be unable to conjure fire when the heat from her body was drained away from her in "S is for Self". Irma also needs moisture in the air to create water. Cornelia subverts this the most when her element is useless in "N is for Narcissist" where the fighting takes place in a floating fortress in the sky with no plant-life at all.

** And again in "V is for Victory" when she's resorted to using algae in the school's pool for her main source of attack, to which she is criticized for by her teammates.

** Hay Lin controls air, which tends to be in abundance everywhere. Will controls Quintessence, the mythical fifth element which can be forgiven for being conjured; though it takes the form of lightning, which comes directly from the static on her body as she is shown to be glimmering with static electricity, especially her hair which stands on end at times as well as shocking people randomly when they touch her.

** The way it works is that they're able to use the power of the Aurameres (or in their absence their own [[Life Energy]]) to amplify what they can naturally generate. So Will can turn a static spark into a lightning storm but can't use it if she can't start up the spark (like if she's wet) and Taranee can turn a small amount of her body heat/other heat released into a giant fireball but can't make one if she's too cold to release a little bit.

** Also, he never actually absorbs the material itself, mostly just replicating an appoximate amount; it's been shown that he himself is not now "made" from the material, it's just a covering that can be broken off. From the example above, Gwen tosses him a small metal marble. When je "absorbs" it, but the marble goes nowhere nor does it shrink; however, only his hand and a bit of his wrist is covered from the process. However, this does not quite work the same when he absorbs a material from a alien who can create it's own (ie, Diamondhead); when he was forced to touch a piece of crystal, he had an uncontrolled growth of crystals from his back that was seemingly very painful.

 

* In ''[[Bionicle]]'', each Toa wield an element. To control it, they need elemental energy that slowly recharges itself when not in use, or by absorbing their own element. This energy allows them to create their element out of thin air (shooting fire or water), or to control nearby supplies of it (earthquakes, wind, etc.). As soon as they run out, however, they can't do a thing.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Hyperspace Index]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Elements of Nature]]