Named after a city: The Sandiego

Time to Guess The Trope again. Apparently named after the fair city in California, of course this trope is about the 1858 hurricane. Or the California Surf museum. Or perhaps famous actor Lew Ayres, who is from there?

Well, guess not. Instead it refers to a video game character from a series that ended a decade ago. More importantly, said character doesn't actually do what the trope is about until the later games in the series. In earlier games, she's just a regular thief, and not even a speaking character. That doesn't strike me as helpful.

But the trope has a perfectly viable redirect: Beyond The Impossible Thief - so I suggest swapping the trope with its redirect. It's not a very strong trope (61 wicks). The inbound count is not relevant since you can't tell how many of the inbounds are actually from this trope, and how many are from the redirect.

Its not even The Carmen Sandiego! Which at least more people would probably get. Yes, definitely swap with the redirect

(BTW, the Rockapella version of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" is now playing in your head)

Damnit Setsuna.... now you got me going on that.

I am on the fence on that redirect we do not need another snowclone.

The Carmen Sandiago is definitely not a good name for this trope. We certainly don't need to be adding more The Character Name tropes.

A simple swap with the redirect should suffice here. EDIT. Wait, snowclone. Bad. Hmm, a better name is needed.

Further EDIT: Hang on, why on earth does the name on the page spell the word Sandeigo, when the page name in the URL clearly has the i and the e the correct way around?

edited 17th Jul '11 4:16:48 AM by CaissasDeathAngel

I don't think Beyond The Impossible Thief is a bad snowclone. Its a very accurate description of the concept

While I have no objection to this particular snowclone, I would be interested in hearing alternatives. Thief Of The Impossible might work?

(edit) wait, turns out we already have a trope for Impossible Thief. As near as I can tell, the sandiego is The Same But More of that one, and indeed the same examples tend to be on both pages. Can someone please explain the difference, or should we merge the two?

edited 17th Jul '11 5:44:53 AM by Spark9

In theory, the Impossible Thief commits robberies that are well, impossible, for whatever reason. The Sandiego commits impossible robberies of things that have a grand physical scale — landmarks, buildings, moons... just for the hell of it.

That was the theory. I would have no objections to folding them back together into one for "robber who steals things that are normally impossible to steal." since there's no indication that The Sandiego was ever run through YKTTW. Interestingly it appears that it's Impossible Thief that is the newer page.

edited 17th Jul '11 7:20:35 AM by Madrugada

Impossible Thief draws a distinction based on the thief's attitude. It looks like there are two tropes, but currently there's little rhyme or reason behind an example being on one page or the other(and some are on both).

I'm not sure if that really counts as two distinct tropes. One is "thief who steals impossible things", and the other is "thief who steals impossible things for the challenge, and sometimes puts them back when done".

I guess I could've been clearer(that's what happens when you spend forever revising one sentence and forget to read the whole thing over again when you're done) - I was trying to say that while there are two tropes, there's no agreement on where the diving line is.

There is now a single proposition rename crowner for this trope here.

Thanks, but if I want to the article merged with Impossible Thief and cutlisted, should I vote up or down on the "rename" crowner?

Sorry, it looks like I made a mistake in choosing what crowner to use. I would prefer that this page action crowner be used instead since it includes a cut option.

Maybe a page action crowner would be better, so we can choose between renaming this one or just merging it with Impossible Thief.

Haha, ninja'd. Crowner hooked.

edited 17th Jul '11 11:00:20 AM by MetaFour

Thanks :)

I'm going to have to weigh in against merging. The way I originally understood it, an Impossible Theif steals things that shouldn't be possible due to circumstance(like the pair of panties in the page image) while The Sandiego steals things that shouldn't be possible by their nature(like the Great Pyramid of Giza). The Impossible Sandiego, of course, would do something like steal the Loeuvre in broad daylight during the one moment nobody was looking at it.

As for Beyond The Impossible Thief, while the snowclone fits perfectly, it makes it seem like Impossible Thief But More. If we're going to go with the former, then the latter's going to need a name change as well(Ridiculously Good Theif?).

edited 17th Jul '11 12:05:50 PM by BioTube

The city is San Diego, not Sandiego.

I thought we agreed last time The Sandiego stole the intangible (time periods, history) while Impossible Theif stole tangible goods, despite the laws of physics suggesting they shouldn't be able to.

Looks like we never got around to the clean up on it.;

and : I'm not convinced that's a big enough difference to have two separate pages for. I thought tropes weren't supposed to be that narrow? Maybe we should simply have one page, and state at the top that there's type A (stealing physical things in an impossible way) and type B (stealing abstract concepts etc). I've seen plenty of tropes with a type-A/B/C that still use a single page.

Bump

These tropes are redundant. They should be merged, and a class system put in place scaling the thieves on an impossibility spectrum.

It looks like the majority of The Sandiego's examples would fit Landmark Thief if we're open to retooling slightly.

edited 23rd Aug '11 8:26:52 PM by Bailey

Seeing as the trope is not in fact named after San Diego, can we change the title here? There's a problem here, but being "named after a city" certainly isn't it.

Really, there is so much of a hate for this kind of trope name that they 'bring' in the ridiculous excuse that "it's named after a city"? To my knowledge, the city is named 'San Diego'.

edited 23rd Aug '11 8:53:36 PM by SilentReverence

I would recommend renaming it to "The Carmen Sandiego", especially since Beyond The Impossible Thief soubds like The Same But More of Impossible Thief

edited 23rd Aug '11 9:15:56 PM by SantosLHalper