Example Removal sounds an good idea. Mary Sue is basically complaining about characters, after all.
Cure Candy
Many of the Mary Tzu examples though are Historical Ability Upgrade which I think is very worthy of a trope.
Like well Romance Of The Three Kingdoms and the Sengoku era examples.
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!
Historical Ability Upgrade certainly sounds like a trope, but there is no reason whatsoever why it needs to be connected to Mary Sue.
Cure Candy
Using Romance Of The Three Kingdoms as an example... (Fanboy showing)
Well because they are in the books they get attributed tactics and inventions far beyond actual history (many times outright stolen from other people who actually did it) made as close to perfect as can be, even losses are never their fault. Why? Romance Of The Three Kingdoms was written by a descendant of a Shu official (you could say it's a Door Stopper Fan Fic). So Mary Tzu could be named Mary Shu really.![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Sun Tzu got it too as well as Nobunaga Oda etc.
Patton did it too they showed his famous slap But In A Good Way other than that he is mr perfect on the field of battle and just skipped over his rather disastrous final month of the war doing some really stupid things.
Then there is Thrawn in Star Wars Expanded Universe which the fact that other writers treated him like a Mary Tzu that his creator made jokes about it.
edited 22nd Aug '11 2:49:14 PM by Raso
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!
Raso, again, you have this bad habit of focusing on individual examples. This thread is about the Mary Sue tropes in general, not Mary Tzu or specific examples from it. I agree that a Historical Ability Upgrade could result in a Mary Tzu, but they are not one and the same.
(Sorry if this was overly rude - I just don't want to get derailed)
Cure Candy
Your saying Example removal I am saying that on a few of these there are legit non YMMV examples that are lampshaded or flat out are and intended to be.
Any Canon Sue of their respective Sue tropes should stay. (no opinions it must be fact Word of God, Lampshaded, Historical etc)
Canon Sue even states
edited 22nd Aug '11 3:31:32 PM by Raso
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!
I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that if Word of God calls a character a Sue, then that example should be kept?
Example Sectionectomy does not work that way. And Canon Sues are the worst of the lot - the term originated in fanfiction, it's most obvious in fanfiction, and a case can be made that it cannot exist outside of fanfiction. I strongly suspect that the day Mary Sue really began to turn into "I don't like this character" is the day someone came up with the idea of a Canon Sue. The canon "examples" will not stay if the fan examples are cut.
Now, whether a full Example Sectionectomy should be done is open to debate - I feel it's needed, but others have disagreed. I am utterly amazed, though, that these tropes are not listed as Flame Bait.
And I really need some other tropers to start participating in this thread, people.
edited 22nd Aug '11 6:45:29 PM by nrjxll
There haven't been any flame wars. If they begin, we'll cut the examples. There isn't really all that much to talk about, here.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
But the term is inherently Complaining About Characters You Don't Like. I wasn't under the assumption that a Flame Bait banner required literal flame wars to have occurred - only that the article's subject made it likely to happen, which is certainly the case here.
Also, have you read these pages recently? I have, and all the ones with examples need a serious natter clean-up if nothing else.
edited 22nd Aug '11 7:42:23 PM by nrjxll
Together Forever...
Make the examples limited to fanfiction and in-universe.
Just clean up the natter, as you would in any other article.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
We can clean it up, but it will come back, and it will keep coming back as long as we have tropes that are basically "attack character here" without any kind of real restraints.
Let me bring up a slightly controversial analogy - during the Great Troper Tales Debate, one of the pro-cutting arguments was that the pages provided an extremely poor introduction to the wiki. To paraphrase, someone whose first sight of TV Tropes was a Troper Tales page could quite likely develop the impression that the site was overrun by perverted psychopaths and/or egotistical blowhards. I think someone whose first sight of TV Tropes was a Mary Sue trope would likely get the impression that the site is full of "Nerd Rage" and Fan Dumb (arguably, in some cases that's not such a wrong impression, but it should be).
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Same potentially goes for all the pages in the Bad Writing index. Technically, all of these pages have "complaining" (though a constructive sort of it, where you explain why is something bad to makes it clear what to avoid when writing) as the point of their examples.
True, and the Bad Writing index as a whole has come under fire in the past for that.
Frankly, I'd like to strip the examples from those tropes as well: given that I view TV Tropes partially as a resource for aspiring writers, I certainly find the descriptions useful on how avoid making those mistakes myself, but the examples make no discernible positive contribution. There's no need to have a "here's what not to do" list pick out specific targets. However, I'm focusing here because Mary Sue has underwent such severe Trope Decay that it isn't really helpful in any way. When the term has become all but meaningless, it's not really easy to avoid it. * In short, I feel that these pages are doing nothing but allowing people to complain.
To clarify, I've never advocating cutting the tropes, just the examples. I do wonder whether we can't condense some of the subtropes, though.
We're providing terms for a specific character type with each of the subtropes. They're useful. I don't care about the examples. If they are a problem, cut 'em.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
What would be your definition for "problem"? I say they have one now, others apparently disagree.
Causing natter is a problem. Edit wars are a problem.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
This is going to be so much fun.
Page lock them?
Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.
Delete all examples, page lock them, and put a ban on any more Sue Snoclones.
I want to get this clear: do we/I actually have permission to do an Example Sectionectomy here?
Cure Candy
They arnt causing any problems so why? I mean they are YMMV but thats the whole point of YMMV.
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!
Read. The. Pages. If you still think they aren't causing problems after that... I don't know what to say.
Anyway, the question is for Fast Eddie: he apparently said I could earlier, but I wanted to be very clear on this, as one person was already banned for chopping the examples without permission.
This is going to be so much fun.
If he has a go signal, wouldn't it mean that it's fine?
Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.
I read the pages and there wasn't that much of a problem there.
Crown Description:
Mary Sue is a term that has decayed so greatly and whose defintion is so contested that it has degenerated into a glorified Complaining About Characters You Don't Like, so collecting example for Mary Sue and its sub-tropes is pointless and does nothing more than lead to natter, edit wars, and flame wars.
Link to the previous thread on this topic.
Okay, let's give this a second try. The last thread died without doing anything, but it wasn't because people disagreed that there was a problem. I maintain that having these tropes as simply subjective - not example-free, on the Darth Wiki, or even just as Flame Bait - is a very bad idea and not in keeping with the site's policy on bashing. I also maintain that we have way too many subcategories of what's a very vague trope to begin with.
One thing I wanted to check was how the ratio of canon to fanfic examples stacked up on the actual tropes, as I and several other people have questioned the worth and/or existence of Canon Sue. From the index, omitting non-straight versions like Parody Sue and including 30-Sue Pileup:
Okay, that was less scientific then I hoped, but it is not fun to read these pages. Overall, it looks like there's way more canon examples then fan ones, including one that consists entirely of canon examples.
I also included the "Related" pages for each Sue trope:
edited 22nd Aug '11 2:10:13 PM by nrjxll