...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Concepts Are Cheap
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Can't think of a convincing personal motivation for your hero? No problem. There are lots of useful words out there. Useful words like "freedom", "justice", "peace" or "mankind"! Or "love"! Or "hope"! Or "good"! Yeah! "Freedom" stirs up lots of warm fuzzy feelings in people. Better yet, any villains who oppose our freedom-loving hero must be, by definition, evil. Better than that, freedom is an abstract. If nothing specific is added, a reader can fill in the blank with whatever they want. Concepts Are Cheap is the natural result of writers stuffing their narratives with lots of glossy one-size-fits-all words, rather than inventing motivations which emerge organically from the character's experiences. Like a cheap meal, it leaves you empty two hours after you've finished the work. Sure, the hero might have just told the villain that "freedom" is better than "tyranny" and then struck him with his laser sword, thus (violently) winning "freedom" for all "mankind". But why? Why did he care? Why should we care? And would anyone but a Card-Carrying Villain say that tyranny is better than freedom? Values Dissonance can hit with some of these concepts. For Science! was a cheap concept in The '50s (positive or negative, depending on the sanity of the scientist), but there are enough people real and fictional who claim that taking a stand for it does mean something (again, for good or ill). Compare Meaningless Meaningful Words, For Great Justice. Contrast Justice Will Prevail. Unrelated to High Concept. |
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| Concepts Are Cheap / int_10bc0a19 | type |
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Night Watch, wherein a rant by Sir Samuel results in the rebels fighting for truth, justice, freedom, reasonably-priced love (as the seamstresses objected to the inclusion of "free love")... and a hard-boiled egg, because at least the egg can be had by morning. Not that he gets to eat it. | |
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Adventure Time gleefully plays this straight with Finn, who loves to boast about his defense of "honor" and "justice" without actually having any idea what those things mean ("I swear." "Swear to what?" "I swear to justice!") and fighting evil monsters 'cuz they're "evil". Character Development means he's a lot less prone to this in later seasons, but he still won't object to randomly punching monsters. | |
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Watchmen: Rorschach and Ozymandias, in very different ways and results, devote their entire lives to their ideals, at the cost of distancing themselves from the morality (and, in Rorschach's case, hygiene standards) of everyday folk. Ozymandias firmly believes that Utopia Justifies the Means and that a few million deaths to prevent the rest of the global population from dying is an acceptable sacrifice, while Rorschach believes that not even Utopia justifies the means, and that global extinction under the truth is better than peace through a lie. | |
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Parodied in Megamind with the "You can't trap justice..." riff. | |
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In the original Wild ARMs, Calamity Jane refuses to accept that Cecelia and friends are fighting for some vague "save the world" mishmash and demands they solidify their reasons. | |
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Played with in Wild ARMs 3. Idealist Virginia is constantly harassed by Goldfish Poop Gang leader Maya Schroedinger, who demands to know why she keeps traveling and fighting. Although Maya ostensibly is only motivated by greed and jewels, in the end she claims that that ideal also includes the planet she lives on - a blue-green jewel. | |
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Justice League of America: Villain Prometheus was designed as a sort of reverse Batman, whose parents were Bonnie and Clyde-like criminals gunned down by the police before his eyes. Why did he take on the Justice League? Because his parents' death instilled in him a deep and abiding hatred of justice. It's entirely possible it was meant to be as trite as it sounds, but most writers (and readers) don't treat it that way. In the mini-series "Justice League: Cry for Justice", suddenly, every single major character spends the entire series demanding "justice" without ever bothering to define what it means or how it's different from what the other heroes are already doing. Their actions are also closer to that of another concept altogether. Prometheus himself is the villain of the piece, funnily enough. |
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In Metal Gear Solid 2 The Patriots spend roughly a half-hour at the end of the game lecturing Raiden on the failures of "freedom" and how human beings don't deserve it. The Patriots bring up a lot of actually good points about crowd mentality and convenient self-deception, but they jump completely into the bad guy camp the moment they start talking about how bad freedom is. | |
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In the mini-series "Justice League: Cry for Justice", suddenly, every single major character spends the entire series demanding "justice" without ever bothering to define what it means or how it's different from what the other heroes are already doing. Their actions are also closer to that of another concept altogether. Prometheus himself is the villain of the piece, funnily enough. | |
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Metal Wolf Chaos has propaganda broadcasts from the Government Policy Promotion Department, making pronouncements like "A heart of Justice is a heart that loves Freedom." This is when they're not promising to execute everyone who's even tangentially connected to Metal Wolf. | |
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Mohinder's voice-overs at the beginning of each episode of Heroes can be summed up thusly: "Destiny, blah, blah, fate, blah, blah, life and all its mysteries, blah." | |
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Mobile Suit Gundam 00 skillfully uses this trope as a plot point. As season 2 begins, Celestial Being managed to end war by making themselves the entire world's common enemy, which is not what they hoped for, also everyone is being oppressed by the A-Laws who are an expy of the Titans from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. | |
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Discussed and invoked in Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel. Robophobic detective Elijah Bailey scoffs at the notion that law-enforcement robot R. Daneel Olivaw has a "justice circuit," saying that justice is too abstract a concept to be programmed into a robot. When asked to define justice, Daneel says "That which exists when all laws are enforced." While that would not be many humans' concept of justice, it is perfectly adequate for a law-enforcement robot to function. | |
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Don Quixote is a deconstruction of this trope: In the first part of the novel, he wants to be a Knight Errant For Great Justice. In reality, he is The Hedonist and all his efforts are really guided to live his dreams, but he doesn't accept it because he is a hypocrite. In the second part of the novel, his motivation changes For Happiness. But this time Don Quixote is an honest man who must admit at the end of the novel that his efforts didn’t help anyone and his Chivalric Romance dreams were shallow. | |
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Discworld: Remarked on in Interesting Times when Rincewind explains why he doesn't support "worthy causes". He says they're much easier to pick up than another chance at life is, so why would he lay down his life for a cause? Night Watch, wherein a rant by Sir Samuel results in the rebels fighting for truth, justice, freedom, reasonably-priced love (as the seamstresses objected to the inclusion of "free love")... and a hard-boiled egg, because at least the egg can be had by morning. Not that he gets to eat it. Reacher Gilt in Going Postal loves to talk about freedom, but he really means "freedom for me". He certainly has no intention of letting Moist be free to run the post office while he has anything to say about it. Moist reads Gilt's statement to the Times and is awestruck at how Reacher has made the Concepts be Cheap. |
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Both played straight, and often subverted, in World of Warcraft. The factions both have guiding principles that they claim to strive towards: like honor, hope, peace, freedom etc. But, much like real-world politics, it is not at all uncommon for characters to talk about these principles...while doing the exact opposite. On occasion however, characters absolutely will live up to the principles they talk about. Because of this, fans often spend a LOT of time discussing who is for real and who is blowing hot air. This is one reason why in nearly every expansion you'll see some segment of the fans saying "the writing is bad". Also, this trope is frequently lampshaded by NPCs (sometimes almost to the point of Breaking the Fourth Wall). The game is actually on the idealistic side though: with the caveat that sometimes the "good guys" are a bit less than perfectly good. | |
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Batman: The Brave and the Bold's version of Batman loves making pithy one-liners about "justice". This usually fits the show's comic tone, though it was rather jarring in the "Tornado Tyrant" episode where Red Tornado tried to explain good and evil to his son, when he could have just said "Evil people like stealing trucks and talking about crime, good people like punching those people and talking about justice, the end." | |
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Metal Gear: In Metal Gear Solid 2 The Patriots spend roughly a half-hour at the end of the game lecturing Raiden on the failures of "freedom" and how human beings don't deserve it. The Patriots bring up a lot of actually good points about crowd mentality and convenient self-deception, but they jump completely into the bad guy camp the moment they start talking about how bad freedom is. In Metal Gear Solid 3 The Boss uses the word "loyalty" several times in the game to mean very different things, demonstrating her belief that because the friends of today may be tomorrow's enemies (and vice versa), "loyalty" as a concept is completely useless. |
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Parodied in Grand Theft Auto III on the Chatterbox radio station. A guy by the name of "Jeff" calls in, advertising a rally at Liberty City Park. However, when the show's host asks what the rally's actually about, Jeff responds with an escalation of otherwise meaningless phrases and appeals, including "for justice" "for the future", and "for hope". The host continues asking, only to be met with more cheap concepts and pleas for attendance, until it turns out the guy doesn't know what it's about. | |
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In The Dark Knight Trilogy much of the plot is about Bruce exploring, discovering and refining his concept of justice and his boundaries (for example, Lucius challenges him on his decision to implement a nigh-omnipresent security system throughout Gotham and Bruce decides to retire it after the current crisis). | |
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Discussed in The Fall Of Supervillainy as part of The Supervillainy Saga between Gary Karkofsky AKA Merciless The Supervillain without MercyTM and Jack Hellraiser AKA the Trench Coat Magician. They are both anarchists but neither of them agree upon what that means. Gary doesn't mind being a Bourgeois Bohemian as long as he fights against the system while Jack thinks that you should live the punk life. They both also agree to work for the President of the United States because he's their friend, Ultragod. | |
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In third edition Dungeons & Dragons, clerics can choose to devote themselves to some broad concepts rather than a deity. This allows the cleric to act pretty much however he or she wants as long it can be said to not violate the concept rather than worry about how his or her patron deity feels. Of course, some deity’s concepts can be just as cheap as those of a patronless cleric, too. | |
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Fallout 3 gives us the DJ Three Dog who spouts off fighting the good fight while simultaneously being really really vague on what the good fight was. | |
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In Dynasty Warriors, Wei, Wu, and Shu, all like to go on about "Ambition", "Family" and "Benevolence" in all situations respectively, but Jiang Wei of Shu especially keeps talking up a "land of benevolence" while constantly waging expensive and futile wars. | |
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Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Avatar must bring "balance" to the world, but every Avatar (and their friends/allies) have their own interpretations of what balance is, and inevitably, some people disagree and try to resist them. Avatar Wan thought it meant keeping humans and spirits separate for their own safety, Kuruk interpreted balance as letting people solve their own problems and not interfering unless absolutely necessary, Kyoshi believed in ruthlessly enforcing peace, Roku wanted the four nations to maintain their own distinct identities, Aang eventually decided that balance meant accepting the changing world and encouraging unity and understanding between the nations, and Korra reopened the spirit portals and is trying to rebuild the Air Nomads to heal the world after the War. Then there are the villains and their interpretation of "balance". For Sozin it was a Fire Nation led hegemony, for Amon it meant bender genocide, Unalaq believed in unified physical and spirit worlds ruled by him, Zaheer just wanted total chaos, while Kuvira sought complete control and subjugation under the guise of unity. |
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Makoto Naegi in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc genuinely believed in hope as a valuable concept, and it paid off in the final trial against the Big Bad's Despair Gambit. The second game's Ultimate Lucky Student, Nagito Komaeda, Naegi's Oddball Doppelgänger, seems intended to satirize the idea by using the word in the context of doing horrible things like arranging for a murder to occur or helping the culprit to see whose hope was "stronger" under the guise of fighting for hope in general (instead of some specific hope). All while proving again and again that the he's more infatuated by the idea of hope, rather than having any hope of his own; Naegi may have been a Humble Hero, but he never went around calling himself 'trash' the way Komaeda does, and while while he was always sure to Turn the Other Cheek by sending blame for people's misconduct towards The Mastermind, he never reveled in seeing followers of despair get punished. | |
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Remarked on in Interesting Times when Rincewind explains why he doesn't support "worthy causes". He says they're much easier to pick up than another chance at life is, so why would he lay down his life for a cause? | |
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Reacher Gilt in Going Postal loves to talk about freedom, but he really means "freedom for me". He certainly has no intention of letting Moist be free to run the post office while he has anything to say about it. Moist reads Gilt's statement to the Times and is awestruck at how Reacher has made the Concepts be Cheap. | |
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V for Vendetta: V fights for "freedom" not in the form of a vague generality, but in the form of smashing the Norsefire regime and creating a state of anarchy that may or may not be an improvement. | |
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The BioShock games are against extremism and utopias but never quite defines coherently what particular ideas are utopian in relation to, or what ideas are extreme in relation with, mostly because it categorizes extremism as a separate notion rather than a point in a particular spectrum. | |
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Angela: Asgard's Assassin: its main character Angela, and by extension all Angels of Heven (this is the in-comic spelling), says her culture centers around materialism and Equivalent Exchange. Justice? Honor? Family? All those big and important words they translate to Nothing or to put it more flowery: | |
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Parodied in Magick Chicks, where Tiffany forgets exactly how to be heroic more than once. | |
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Eagles' "Desperado" comments on this trope somewhat, in how romanticized the concept of "freedom" is: And also from the jaded song "The Sad Cafe": |
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Spoofed on Chibi-Robo! with Space Hunter Drake Redcrest, who claims to fight for justice, then admits he doesn't really know what it means. It even pops up in the vocal version of his theme song. | |
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This is a common criticism of Pokémon: The First Movie: the rather forced moral in the English dub is that "fighting is wrong", in a series all about fighting. (It Makes Sense in Context; the fighting in question is to the death and tied to Mewtwo's hatred of humans, while the series' regular battles are usually friendly and result in nothing more than Non Lethal KOs. Nonetheless, many fans agree that the film would have been better off with no such moral.) | |
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Gargoyles protect humans —even those that hate and persecute them— because, well, because it's what gargoyles do. It gets to the point that it feels like they do it because they have nothing better to do, as they don't have jobs. | |
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Abraham Reyes from Red Dead Redemption gives speeches that have him throwing around rabble-rousing buzzwords such as "Freedom" and "For the people!" And while the people drink it up, it's obvious to Marston and the player that he's nothing more than a self-important blowhard. You only get to see how fake he really is in the epilogue, when a newspaper blurb spells out to you that he's become a dictator. | |
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Superman: Back in the day Superman spent a lot of time demolishing substandard ghetto housing, exposing political corruption, and standing up for the rights of immigrants and the little guy. He was a New Deal superhero! But politics is bad for sales, so Superman started to fight for the magnificent generality of "truth, justice, and the American way" (the last part added in the 40s for the radio program), and as long as he limits himself to hitting supervillains in the jaw, it doesn't matter. No two people can agree on what Superman "really stands for" anymore, but they all agree it's very heroic. "The American way" part is also often dropped in modern stories, although it's usually only Americans who complain about this. | |
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Danganronpa: Makoto Naegi in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc genuinely believed in hope as a valuable concept, and it paid off in the final trial against the Big Bad's Despair Gambit. The second game's Ultimate Lucky Student, Nagito Komaeda, Naegi's Oddball Doppelgänger, seems intended to satirize the idea by using the word in the context of doing horrible things like arranging for a murder to occur or helping the culprit to see whose hope was "stronger" under the guise of fighting for hope in general (instead of some specific hope). All while proving again and again that the he's more infatuated by the idea of hope, rather than having any hope of his own; Naegi may have been a Humble Hero, but he never went around calling himself 'trash' the way Komaeda does, and while while he was always sure to Turn the Other Cheek by sending blame for people's misconduct towards The Mastermind, he never reveled in seeing followers of despair get punished. A villainous version appears in the form of Monokuma and series Big Bad Junko Enoshima, who you can guarantee will say "despair" at least once per sentence during her villainous lectures regarding despair after she's revealed. |
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The Fifth Element: After the Big Bad Zorg is failed by a group of warrior aliens and forced to compromise on a deal, he launches into a monologue about his dislike for warriors and their causes. | |
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Pokémon Black and White: Long ago, a legendary dragon was controlled by twin brothers, until arguments between the two caused it to split into twin dragons of Truth and Ideals. In both games, one of these dragons teams up with the Anti-Villain N in order to change the world, while the other teams up with the Player Character in order to protect it. However, which person ends up with which dragon varies between versions. That is, the same conflict is described in Black as the player fighting for Truth in order to defeat a champion of Ideals, and in White as the player fighting for Ideals in order to defeat a champion of Truth. | |
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In Robin Hood, the main character would often use King Richard as his rallying cry, but opposed the Crusades. Therefore, the storylines ran on an odd paradox: King Richard was good, but his actions were bad. Many of the storylines revolved around trying to bring King Richard home, yet when the outlaws travel all the way to the Holy Land, Richard is revealed to be a rather weak, misguided King, raising questions as to why Robin was so slavishly devoted to him in the first place. The King even tries to have Robin and the gang executed, but by season three, everyone has reverted back to the mind-set of King Richard = good, peace, justice. | |
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In Dragon Ball Super, three fighters from the Second Universe, the magical girls Brianne, Kakunsa, and Rozie, contantly talk about how they fight for "Love," and "Love" is unbeatable. The Pride Troopers of Universe 11 also often talk about "Justice." | |
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The defining concept for the Marines in One Piece is "Justice", to the point that the kanji for "justice" is emblazoned on the backs of their uniforms. However, each Marine (aside from the corrupt ones who are simply in it for themselves) has their own interpretation of the concept, from the more heroic interpretations, to interpretations that justify committing genocide, or killing Marine POWs for being weak enough to be captured. | |
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The Fairly OddParents!: The Crimson Chin uses "Justice!" as his vague but enthusiastic rallying cry. | |
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Brought up in the Oglaf page “Laridae�, when a young man wants to become a paladin and a champion of justice because a hook-handed man killed his parents. The gate guard points out that he's confusing justice with revenge, and should find a definition of justice that is more than just furthering his own needs and goals. Years later, after finishing his training, the now-paladin is no longer interested in vengeance upon finding the hook-handed man. | |
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Spider-Man: In lesser stories, "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" becomes this. It was never really Peter's Badass Creed as later comics made it out to be. It was just a caption voiced by the narrator in Amazing Fantasy #15 in classic Stan Lee dated Purple Prose. But the attempt to make this Spider-Man's ethos often leads to much fuzziness about what powers and responsibilities mean, leading to much Informed Attribute. Peter fights crime for the grand glorious cause of Responsibility: he has the power to do it, so he has to do it. (It does spin out of his Backstory, but still.) This may mean that he was doomed to become a superhero no matter what: he was introduced as a young genius almost on par with the other super scientists of the time like Hank Pym, Reed Richards, and Tony Stark. Thus, he had great power, and thus, great responsibility. | |
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This is enormously subverted in Fate/stay night, as the protagonist's dream is to become a superhero who can save everybody. He is confronted about the flaws of this in the Unlimited Blade Works route by Archer, who is his future self who followed this ideal to the bitter end and gained nothing in return but betrayal, misery, and disillusionment. He points out that the protagonist's ideal of being a hero is too vague; there is no reason for it, no feasible plan to accomplish it, and that it is not even his own ideal - only sacrifice and more conflict can result from it. There is nothing in that ideal, as it is one that can only save everybody in his sight - but as one cannot look at oneself, it can't even let him save himself in the end. Angst and turmoil all 'round in this one. Kotomine also points out how Shirou's desire to save everyone is inherently flawed; saving someone requires they be in danger, so Shirou's desire can only be fulfilled so long as people are in danger. The trope is reconstructed by showing that while simply throwing the words around with no meaning is indeed cheap, the base concept of trying to save people is indeed beautiful. Shirou then decides to avert Archer's biggest flaw in order to not become his future self: Being a perfectionist. You can't save everybody, but trying isn't a bad thing at all. |
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In Metal Gear Solid 3 The Boss uses the word "loyalty" several times in the game to mean very different things, demonstrating her belief that because the friends of today may be tomorrow's enemies (and vice versa), "loyalty" as a concept is completely useless. | |
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Warhammer 40,000: Many Space Marines aren't too concerned with the minutiae of any particular war, fighting solely for the "honor" of their Chapter, their Chapter's Primarch, or just The Emperor himself. There are exceptions of course, like in Dawn of War II where the Blood Ravens are fighting for the survival of their Chapter, but they are few and far between. Imperial Guard regiments are fighting for their lives most of the time, but any other motivation is usually limited to just obtaining "glory" for their homeworld: "For Cadia!", "For Valhalla!", "For Tanith!", etc. Subverted with the Tau. You'd think that "For the Greater Good!" would fall head first into this trope, but it turns out the Greater Good is actually a highly defined social structure. Said structure involves a rigid caste system where every Tau is assigned a role they're expected to perform from birth to death, and puts non-Tau members at the bottom of the hierarchy, but it's the thought that counts, right? The Imperium of Man and the Force of Chaos both over-emphasis high concepts (Daemons and the Chaos Gods basically ARE concepts given solid metaphysical forms) and encourage acting on them for their own sake. Naturally, both factions are ridiculously kill happy, anti-intellectual, fanatical, and short-sighted, unless they stray from dogma and adopt more practical ways. |
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In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Cassandra wonders what the Inquisition will stand for after the Big Bad is defeated. The Inquisitor can remark that it's a little optimistic to be thinking about such matters when they haven't won yet. Cassandra's concerns are quite understandable, since she used to be a member of an organization that stood for justice and order that eventually became more concerned with its own power. Since said organization the Seekers was descended from the original Inquisition, her fears that the same fate might befall the Inquisition have merit. In the end the Inquisition either follows the same path as the original in becoming an arm of the Chantry or declares its success and disbands. | |
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Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End falls into this. After two films of moral grey, it decides that the Pirates are heroic, and the East India Company are evil. Both sides have been shown doing awful things, but the Pirates fight for their 'freedom' to do awful things. Therefore, they're the good guys. | |
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American Psycho: Patrick Bateman in The Film of the Book gives a monologue on the important problems that we need to face, eventually dissolving into a bunch of vacuous rhetoric. Naturally, he doesn't actually care about these things (being a shallow sociopath, a racist, and a serial killer), so his speech is just a huge Lampshade hung on the use of this trope. | |
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Braveheart speaks a lot about "OUR FREEDOM!" with only a couple of lines giving context they were fighting for ("beg forgiveness for a hundred years of theft, rape, and murder"note The thirteenth century was a fairly peaceful one for Anglo-Scots relations; shortly prior to the war, there had even been talks of uniting the two countries via royal marriage—300 years before James VI/I. A few unfortunate deaths in the Scottish royal family changed that.). Although movie-Wallace's crusade just started out as an act of personal revenge against the man who killed his wife, then somehow morphed into "Freedom for Scotland". | |
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Evita: Late in the film, when Eva is dying, she and her president husband Juan start talking about how their "dream" may never come to pass. It's never really revealed what this dream was supposed to be, unless it turns out it was "Enjoy the perks of the Presidential office."note In real life it was to reform Argentina-the film doesn't really get into this. | |
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Explored in Vagabond, where much introspection is done about Mushashi's desire to become "invincible under the sun," what that even means and whether or not the lives he takes to get to that point are worth it. | |
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In Moulin Rouge!, Christian spends the film chasing after abstract concepts. The movie does very little to explore what these ideas mean in the first place. He believed that because he and Satine believe in Freedom, Art and Love, the universe has to bend around them and that he never has to make any tough choices. Also, it doesn't ever seem to occur to him that these concepts aren't always compatible with each other. For instance, for his play to succeed, he would have to avoid falling in love with the investor's love interest. He also doesn't respect Satine's freedom to love someone other than him, seeing her attempt to break up with him as a result of being manipulated the whole time. | |
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In Dragon Age II, Isabela expresses this belief while discussing mage freedom with Anders. | |
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Also parodied in the Family Guy episode "It Takes A Village Idiot, and I Married One", where Lois runs for Mayor - she quickly learns that making rational arguments and fully-explained proposals makes undecided voters fall asleep or get angrily confused, and resorts to exactly these kinds of platitudes, including responding to completely unrelated questions with "Jesus" and "9/11". | |
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The Tick doesn't let the abstract concepts worry him, being an Idiot Hero. "Let's hang ten for Justice!" and "Spoon!" appear equivalent in his mind. | |
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In Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou this is a recurring theme with Sword Phantom Claude, who has come to believe that while superhumans may claim to fight for peace, justice, and freedom for all mankind, it is impossible to be an Ideal Hero who truly fights for all three. | |
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The Sword of Good is dripping with this trope, as the protagonist Hirou wields the eponymous weapon and teams up with the Forces of Good to defeat the Bad Races led by the Lord of Dark. These are their literal, in-universe names. But as the Lord of Dark points out, the prophesied "Choice Between Good and Bad" isn't a matter of merely saying "Good", but of knowing which is which. The so-called "Forces of Good" only uphold the malignant status quo, which the so-called "Lord of Dark" is overthrowing for the benefit of everyone — the Sword only comes into its true power when Hirou realizes this. | |
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Concepts Are Cheap | |
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Wild ARMs: Played with in Wild ARMs 3. Idealist Virginia is constantly harassed by Goldfish Poop Gang leader Maya Schroedinger, who demands to know why she keeps traveling and fighting. Although Maya ostensibly is only motivated by greed and jewels, in the end she claims that that ideal also includes the planet she lives on - a blue-green jewel. In the original Wild ARMs, Calamity Jane refuses to accept that Cecelia and friends are fighting for some vague "save the world" mishmash and demands they solidify their reasons. |
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| Wild ARMs (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Concepts Are Cheap / int_f8bd2d94 | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fa5e90fd | type |
Concepts Are Cheap | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fa5e90fd | comment |
City of Heroes (and its sister game City of Villains) love seeding Heroes and Villains with motivations no thicker than 'Justice' or 'Villainy', and sometimes gleefully rolls characters around in the stuff. With a few exceptions, the entire Longbow faction is essentially Democracy! The Malta Group want you to Beware the Superman and reinstate the Super Registration Act! The Crey Corporation is Capitalism! The Regulators, like Back Alley Brawler, say Drugs Are Bad, m'kay! Positron and Vahzilok are For Science!! Eventually subverted by a bunch of different characters, albeit mostly in the supplemental material. | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fa5e90fd | featureApplicability |
-0.3 | |
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| City of Heroes (Video Game) | hasFeature |
Concepts Are Cheap / int_fa5e90fd | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fbc32f7e | type |
Concepts Are Cheap | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fbc32f7e | comment |
My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic's supposed theme, believing, is constantly being thrown about. However, its message is ridiculously weak and vague. | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fbc32f7e | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
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1.0 | |
| My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic / Fan Fic | hasFeature |
Concepts Are Cheap / int_fbc32f7e | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe6cdec | type |
Concepts Are Cheap | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe6cdec | comment |
While Nickelback isn't among the most highly esteemed of bands, their song "If Everyone Cared" draws particular ire for its vague, feel-good message; what everyone's supposed to care about and do as a result is never explained. | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe6cdec | featureApplicability |
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| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe6cdec | featureConfidence |
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| Nickelback (Music) | hasFeature |
Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe6cdec | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe8ef766 | type |
Concepts Are Cheap | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe8ef766 | comment |
Captain America: Periodically, Captain America will become disillusioned when he realizes that even he doesn't really know what representing "America" really means. | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe8ef766 | featureApplicability |
1.0 | |
| Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe8ef766 | featureConfidence |
1.0 | |
| Captain America (Comic Book) | hasFeature |
Concepts Are Cheap / int_fe8ef766 |
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