Full disclosure: I'm an occasional contributor to the site Manic Expression. I write "Chris Lang's Commentaries" and its subcolumns "Fanfic Subgenres" (detailing how tropes found in fanfic are also used in professionally published fiction), and "Why It Just Doesn't Work" (or WIJDW), where I explain why I feel certain elements of certain movies or shows just didn't work (for me, anyway).
So therefore, when I saw the trope page for Manic Expression on the FANDOM version of this wiki, and saw all these tropes for some game I'd never heard of attached to it, my reaction was "Huh?". Not being familiar with Dystopian Wars, I had to Google to find out that the game was called Dystopian Wars, and as far as I know has NOTHING to do with the site Manic Expression.
My guess is when the page was originally created, someone was using 'copy and paste' and copied and pasted the wrong tropes onto the Manic Expression page. That's the only explanation that makes sense to me. In any case, here's the tropes I removed and replaced with the examples I previously wrote on the FANDOM branch.
- Airborne Aircraft Carrier: So far, the Japanese and Prussian Sky Fortresses.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Sturginium (otherwise known as Element 270), the Ore used to make the Land ships and other huge weapons of the game.
- Attack Drone: The Covenant of Antarctica use these instead of regular fighter planes.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The small tank bases are about the size of a regular modern day tank. Medium Tanks of the setting are roughly Baneblade sized. And it only gets bigger from there.
- Base on Wheels: The American Washington Class and British Sovereign Class land ships.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Or rather, Giant Victorian Steampunk Enemy Crab. It's the Covenant Landship.
- Humongous Mecha: The Prussian Metzger robot.
- Also, the John Henry Robot is a FLYING Humongous Mecha
- If It Swims, It Flies: The French Magenta Mk 1 Pocket Battleship.
- Giant Squid: The Japanese have Giant Robotic Squids that crush ships. Does this remind you of anything?
- Military Mashup Machine: Several of the more exotic weapons in the game, most notably the Landships the various factions use.
- Spider Tank: The Japanese Taka Ashi Heavy Walker.
- As well as the Covenant's medium and small scale Walkers. Their Land Ship is more like a Crab.
- The Covenant's Mobile Airfield plays this more straight however.
- As well as the Covenant's medium and small scale Walkers. Their Land Ship is more like a Crab.
- Tank Goodness: The smallest units available are light tanks. Infantry is either non-existent or abstracted away.
- Up to Eleven: Where to begin? How about the Saint Paul's Cathedral/White House on Tank Treads? Or the Giant Robotic Squids? Or even the Giant Steampunk Enemy Crab?
In conclusion:
Dystopian Wars, the tabletop war game, has little or nothing to do with Manic Expression, the website. Certainly not to the point that it should take over this wiki's page for Manic Expression. Someone may have posted a review of Dystopian Wars on Manic Expression at some point, but that's as far as it goes.