Talk:Ryu and Ken

I'm not itching to do anything major with this, but I feel like this is at least worth discussing before we even get into "should we do something about this or not":

Incredibly popular as Street Fighter is, I'm not sure if using it as the main frame of reference gets across the varying "clone character" types well enough. It's not quite Small Reference Pools, but there are people who've never played them, and a trope description that isn't too contingent on having played a specific set of games is good to have in my opinion.

What're you guys thoughts on all this?

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I like the name as-is. It's meant to cover a specific character niche mostly seen in video games or video game-adjacent media, and Street Fighter as well as Ryu and Ken themselves are fairly iconic. I also don't really think that non-fans needing to rely on a description is that big of a deal, since that's the purpose of a description in the first place: getting someone unfamiliar with the lingo up to speed about a trope name that catches their eye.

Then again, I've never been a fan of stripping references from trope names (Within reason, I'll always stand by Nakama getting changed to True Companions, for one), so there might be some bias there.

Street Fighter? I thought they were from Fist of the North Star - Ken's the protagonist, and Ryu trained Ken.

Maybe the trope should get a less-confusing name after all...

(goes and looks at the trope)

Okay, somebody please explain to me how this is not a duplicate of Palette Swap.

Looking at most of the examples (as well as Ryu and Ken's relationship as fighters), this trope is meant to be about characters with similar fighting styles with subtle to distinct differences, and are often paired together as friends, rivals, family, lovers, what-have-you, while Palette Swap is about reused character designs with a color change to make them distinct from one another, maybe a few new tricks in the case of enemies/bosses in a RPG.

Whether we keep the trope name or go for a new one, I'd be up for rewriting the description in order to better clarify things.

Sounds good - thanks for the explanation and the offer.

Yeah, Ryu and Ken started as outright palette swaps before undergoing Divergent Character Evolution steadily over each game.

EDIT: Also feel like the "not that Sakura" additions sorta highlight (what I believe to be) the issue at hand.

I don't know much about the topic, so I'll abstain.

Sorry I'm late on this, so I'll keep it brief; I haven't played any of the Street Fighter games, so I can't say I'm that familiar with the subject.

It's been a few months. Did we ever decide whether to rename this page?

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Oh, and how does this trope interact with Ditto Fighter?

A Ditto Fighter can take on the moves of anyone; essentially making themselves into a clone of another fighter at will. Meanwhile in this trope, the fighter in question only "imitates" one specific fighter, and often not perfectly. My go-to example is Sophitia and Cassandra from Soul Calibur. They're sisters who (presumably) trained together, so use the same weapon, and fight with the same martial-arts style, yet still have distinct personalities and divergences in terms of moves. They work very well as [[The Rival]] due to their similarities (like in the case of Ken and Ryu). Could be used as a [[Mirror Boss]].

If you hadn't brought up Fist of the North Star, I would say this is a more than fitting name (maybe go with "The Ken to the Ryu" to denote the relationship).

I think you have little idea of how much Street Fighter is influential to motivate this trope naming. Basically all fighting games after SF2 imitated its mechanics and character archetypes, including and specially Mortal Kombat. Not to mention the concept of combo, which came from a glitch who was kept on the final version by the developers. Street Fighter 2 is for fighting games what Birth of a Nation is for movies or the Epic of Gilgamesh is for,ahn, the action genre.

I'm guessing from your reply that the trope is named after a tabletop game or a video game of some sort, since you mention "fighting games". Maybe there should be a mention of that in the description somewhere.

Undoubtedly, however, Fist of the North Star is older than SF, and is a juggernaut of a franchise in its own right (100 million issues sold is nothing to sniff at). It is not inconceivable for a person to be more familiar with FotNS than SF, particularly in anime/manga circles. The question is valid.

I have no context so will be neutral here. My apologies.

Did we ever come to a consensus on this? We did clear up a couple of related issues, but it appears that the main issue of "trope named after characters that have the same names as characters from a better-known and older franchise" is still on the table.

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I will assume you're talking about Sakura. Honestly, I think we should take the sub-types of the page because they're muddling things. Sure, there is Sakura/Akuma/Dan archetypes but I think those are too rare to trope. And they're not necessary for the trope to occur, so they're not part of the definition anyway.

No, we're talking about this trope. "The Sakura" is pretty obviously The Chick and does not need a separate trope.

Explain then who are those older, better-known characters named Ryu and Ken that are not from Street Fighter.

They're listed in the trope description, and have been for a year now. They're also mentioned in this very thread.

Ok, now I have to admit I never heard of this character called Ryu from Fist of the North Star because I never read beyond the first fifteen chapters. I was going to say no way it's more popular than Street Fighter but I guess this is a matter of perspective.

Honestly, the best idea I can come up is renaming the trope "The Mario and The Luigi", if Kenshiro and Ryu are that iconic. I want a third opinion before agreeing though.

I assume you mean the Donkey Kong characters, but I'm not certain of that. Considering that The Other Wiki has disambiguation pages for both "Luigi" and "Mario", that would just kick the can down the street.

Why are we restricting ourselves to possible trope names that people who don't play video games will never understand? Can we come up with a trope name that doesn't use character names at all?

Because "Characters With Similar But Slightly Different Powers" is a mouthful. Trope names tend to be shorter. Also, we have tropes like Rei Ayanami Expy that people need to read the page to understand. I dunno how further simplify the name of a trope that isn't one simple character archetype because it involves two characters with slightly similar powers and how attend this supposed need for universality.

"Rei Ayanami Expy" is Exactly Whaat It Says on the Tin - an Expy of Rei Ayanami. "Ryu and Ken" is not about characters named Ryu and Ken. It's a bad name.

I agree that trope names tend to be shorter. Let's come up with one instead of setting up a False Dichotomy to attempt to keep a bad name.

Proposal: Change the trope name to "Two Characters, One Powerset".

It's short and self-descriptive.

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I will abstain from this.

I am okay with this new name.

I'm okay with it.

I'd rather keep the original name. The new name is ridiculously dry, unwieldy as hell, and is honestly the reason why I ditched TV Tropes in the first place: I really hate sucking the fun out of trope names just because they aren't immediately clear (which can be rectified with a single click if a potential reader is confused).

How is it unwieldy?

@Utini501, I'm still waiting for an answer to this question.

It's been a week. I'm going to proceed on the assumption that the proposed name is not unwieldy after all.

You know, I will allow myself to change my vote. I really never was on the idea of changing the trope name, I find the new name un-intuitive, and I like the current name and I'm still not convinced by Robkelk's argument that is not like other tropes named after fictional characters. I want to keep the old name.

Robkelk's argument that is not like other tropes named after fictional characters

I'll thank you to not put words in my mouth.

I said it was not the same as a single specific trope that you pointed out. I did not say what you claimed.

MOD: Please discuss the matter without making false claims.

@ HLIAA14YOG @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

What part of the proposed name is unintuitive? How is it confusing? (which is the same question, re-phrased.)

Works for me!

I will explain: same powerset also applies to a palette swap, and it would make things confusing. The reason Ryu and Ken are used as trope namers is because those characters share most moves, but not all of them, and have different stats. They're similar but different. Mario and Luigi share similar movies but Luigi tends to jump higher and have less inertia, to use an simple example of the trope(there is a lot of stuff to make Ken distinguishable but even that changes from game to game of the Street Fighter series, but I'm not going to write five paragraphs into this).

If I might interject, Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter makes perfect sense at the name as is, to be fair. They started out nigh identical save a minor change in clothing and while they have diverged somewhat over time, they retain mostly identical movesets, though each has their own unique skills and specialties regarding the moveset that still act as a small but crucial distinction.

The trope in is about two characters joined at the hip for some narrative reason that while largely similar, still have crucial differences, specifically regarding abilities. With this in mind, "Two Characters, One Powerset" by @Robkelk is not entirely bad either.

That all said, the key difference is while they may have the same powerset, it's how they best utilize it that is the defining factor.

Typically, as Street Fighter has progressed, Ryu has tended more towards being more specialized in use of his fireballs and spinning tornado kick. While Ken has the same moves, he more focused on improvement to his Shoryuken (jumping uppercut). Both trained under the same master and have access to same base abilities, but each has specialized into a key niche within said powerset.

Therefore, a slightly more precise name for identifying this key distinction between two characters would be ideal. So if we MUST rename the trope, a somewhat more precise version of Rob's suggestion would be best IMO.

Now, while not strictly relevant to the discussion, Sakura (Ryu's fangirl) was brought up, and while she falls outside the trope definition for many reasons, her abilities are best described as "a reasonably good while still quite different approximation" of Ryu's skills. Specifically, while her skills follow the base forms of Ryu and Ken's base moveset, her fireballs are totally different (hers have less range as the grow in power, Ryu and Ken have no range limit), her Shoryuken is quite different (the timing, range, and hitboxes are quite different), and her spinning kicks are best described as a degraded form of Ryu and Ken's own versions of the same.

That said, she's more of a "Shotoclone" due to how much her abilities were developed independently and how despite basing them off Ryu's they work in practice much differently.

I don't mind much either way, but lean towards keeping the current name. I didn't know who Ryu and Ken were until I was pinged in this thread, but Street Fighter is well enough known to make sense as the source of a name for a trope that's common in fighting games.

I lean towards the need for a new name (if only because of the Fist of the North Star confusion) but unsure as to a new name. I'm not too fond of "Two Characters, One Powerset" for the same reasons put forth by GethN7.

I wouldn't mind "The Mario and The Luigi" as they are simply so well known and iconic now there is as much chance of ambiguity as if I'd said "Mickey and Donald".

If we need something completely different, how about "Ascended Clone"? It hopefully conveys the idea of their initial similarity, and the divergent growth?

The problem is that we have Divergent Character Evolution to describe clones who stop being clones. The thing with Ryu and Ken is that examples are also valid for characters who already start with some noticeable differences. Tails always played different from Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, he never was a clone despite being pretty identical.

Just had a look over Divergent Character Evolution and now I'm wondering if most examples in Ryu and Ken wouldn't be better suited getting folded into that one. Is there a significant case for these being two separate tropes?

Kinda sorta. Thing is, Ryu and Ken are still quite similar, and even now, being able to play well as one means the other is going to be just as easy to pick up aside from some niche differences. Narratively, they still have strong connections to their martial art school, their interpersonal relations, and still coexist largely as they did since their characters were first plotted out.

Divergent character evolution is when they become quite different over time, and in this case, a lot is still held in common by both characters.

Much like "Made of Iron" could be described as "Plot Armor at half strength", this trope is like a half strength implementation of Divergent Character Evolution

I'm going to vote no. Even though I don't know who Ryu and Ken are, having trope namers give us a little more personality. I don't want ATT to be see as an encyclopedic documentation of media. I want this place to be seen as fun, and keeping the original name helps. "Two Characters, One Powerset" is just too formal to me.

I believe that there's a misunderstanding here that needs to be cleared up.

Quoting from All The Tropes:Naming a Trope:

Goal: Clear, concise, and witty. Acceptable: Clear. —Fast Eddie

Which makes "clear trope names" a TVTropes policy as of when we forked the project. Considering that many of the mods before I became one have a distaste of following TVTropes' lead (and especially the lead of that particular person), the fact that this hasn't been changed is rather important.

Here's the wording of the specific policy clause that's in contention here as it read when we forked from TVTropes:

Avoid "Trope Namer Syndrome": Don't name the trope after a fondly-remembered character, work of fiction, or plot device.The wiki, as a whole, tries to appeal to a wide variety of people. Tropes named after specific characters have a tendency of falling flat even to people who are fans of the works which said characters appear in. The vast majority of them end up as rename proposals in the Trope Repair Shop. So, please, save us all some time, and try to come up with something using the preceding tips.

And here's the wording that exists now:

Avoid "Trope Namer Syndrome": Don't name the trope after a fondly-remembered character, work of fiction, or plot device.The wiki, as a whole, tries to appeal to a wide variety of people. Tropes named after specific characters have a tendency of falling flat even to people who are fans of the works which said characters appear in. The vast majority of them end up as rename proposals in the Trope Talk forum. So, please, save us all some time, and try to come up with something using the preceding tips.

The only change in a decade is the name of a forum. The intent of the policy has remained the same for the entire life of this wiki.

So this isn't me trying to drain the fun out of the wiki. This is me following a policy that @GethN7 saw fit to keep in effect a decade ago when the ATT fork began. If you don't like the policy, see All The Tropes:How to Get a Rule Changed.

Oh well. To be honest I don't mind either way. I don't want to be one of those people who rigorously sticks to the rules and enforces them on everything. On the other hand, rules are usually there for a reason...

Seems like a reasonable rule. Even though it's not my personal preference, go ahead with the rename.

I'm not suggesting to keep the name because I like Street Fighter. I'm doing it because it's influential. Ryu and Ken inspired lot of other creators to create characters that play similarly with slight differences on videogames. Videogaming is a new media and it's seminal works and series are still on living memory, but I'm not a supporter of this name because I like the series

We have tropes like "The Ophelia" because Ophelia from Hamlet inspired a lot of characters since the play was written; the same with Ryu and Ken. I think this analogy is valid.

Valid point. Frankly, I'm fine with going either way on this, I have no real skin in the game aside from wanting to make sure we have a consensus on something.

I prefer keeping the current name, but if it's a watertight reason you need, I'm having difficulty coming up with one. I'll abstain.

It make sense to go with 'Two Characters, One Powerset' since it help describe the trope better. Ryu and Ken are iconic characters from Street Fighters but most people might not get the reference if they are unfamiliar with the franchise. There is also how 'Two Characters, One Powerset' has a broader appeal.

I'm not seeing a consensus either way on the renaming question. We can let this run as long as we all remain civil (and that includes me); maybe a choice will become clear later, but for now it's status quo.

(blows dust off thread)

So, have we come to any consensus yet? (Letting a proposal sit untouched isn't consensus, it's either apathy or being busy with other matters.)

Now that I am coming back to it, I see that All The Tropes:Naming a Trope says:

Avoid "Trope Namer Syndrome": Don't name the trope after a fondly-remembered character, work of fiction, or plot device.

Thus, the statement that "it's influential" is an argument to consider a particular work a Trope Codifier, not a Trope Namer. And we should be having the same discussion about The Ophelia.