Ambiguous Name (New Alt Names crowner 10/5/2015): Mac Guffin Girl

Ah, I see what you're saying. Not sure if I agree with it, though. Can we get some other opinions in here?

Bump. Can we get some more opinions on Tro's suggestion here? I vote to just continue as we were, but I'll admit I'm really tired of this thread and want to finish it up.

I'd like to hear more opinions on my suggestion not to mash "Macguffin person is sought for a passive mundane quality like beauty or wisdom" and "Macguffin person is sought due to their role in the hero's bio" together for no apparent reason.

I can get behind that.

It would also be less work to leave a bunch of examples on the supertrope rather than making a new page and doing a bunch of cross-wicking, no?

We should probably get a crowner, then, but I don't know how to word what you guys want on it.

edited 2nd Aug '15 3:31:25 PM by Discar

As far as I understand, it's kind of like this:

• Make one trope for both "MacGuffin person sought for their personal traits" and "MacGuffin person sought because of their role in hero's bio" (your suggestion)
• Make two sister tropes: one for "MacGuffin person sought for their personal traits" and the other for "MacGuffin person sought because of their role in hero's bio" (my suggestion)
• Make no new tropes, and just put all examples of "MacGuffin person sought for their personal traits" and "MacGuffin person sought because of their role in hero's bio" in the supertrope's example section (troacctid's suggestion)

edited 3rd Aug '15 4:31:19 AM by Rjinswand

I didn't say we shouldn't have subtropes, I just think having a supernatural Mac Guffin Person subtrope makes an "any non-supernatural" Mac Guffin Person subtrope redundant, since it would just be the supernatural one, but Averted.

Also, shouldn't we be doing the supertrope first before worrying about subtropes? MacGuffin Girl hasn't even been dealt with yet and Living MacGuffin still has that confusing description. We can always split off new subtropes in YKTTW later if we need to.

edited 3rd Aug '15 2:13:27 PM by troacctid

For the record, it wasn't my suggestion, it was Jovian's way back when.

And MacGuffin Girl has been dealt with: It's going away. Holy Child, The President's Daughter, and MacGuffin Girl are such a rat's nest of tropes that it was decided to redirect them all to the supertrope and split off completely new subtropes with actual clear descriptions. Everyone agreed that Living MacGuffin would work fine as a supertrope (albeit with a few tweaks to the description; this is what we have at the moment), though if you think it needs a rename, we can get a crowner for that too.

Bump. Guys, anything?

Well, what do you think about my crowner suggestion in 231?

I thought it was fine, but tro disagreed, and I wanted to hear his response.

So we definitely want the Humanity Ensues subtrope (AKA former definition of MacGuffin Girl) at the very least, and really, I don't see a reason to rule out any subtropes that may or may not warrant a future YKTTW. I think some form of The President's Daughter could be a subtrope too, although really, if you think about it, the core trope there is probably closer to Kidnapped Princess.

You're treading old ground here. We did the crowner pages ago about getting rid of all the current tropes and starting over, because no one ever uses them correctly, or even really knows what the correct uses are. The new tropes are:

• Sandbox.Living Mac Guffin: A MacGuffin that is a person.
  • (name chosen): Sandbox.Mac Guffin Person Reveal: The Reveal that the MacGuffin they've been looking for has been with them all along, in the form of one of the characters.
  • (name chosen): MacGuffin Turned Human: An inanimate MacGuffin embodied in, or transformed into, a person.
  • (name chosen): Sandbox.Mac Guffin Hostage: A person who is a MacGuffin because they're important (they're the president, a rich businessman, a top scientist, etc) or related to someone who is (family, Love Interest, True Companion, etc).
  • Sandbox.Mundane Mac Guffin Person: A Mac Guffin Person who's sought after for some mundane trait (beauty, wisdom, etc) turned Up To Eleven.
  • (name chosen): Sandbox.Mac Guffin Super Person: A Mac Guffin Person who's sought after for some unique power or status they have (eg, they're The Chosen One or an Apocalypse Maiden), usually with world-shaking consequences.

Now, if we want to get a new crowner to shuffle those around a bit, that's fine. Rjinswand wants to split Mundane MacGuffin Person between "Personal trait" and "connection to the hero." You were saying something about merging Mundane MacGuffin Person and MacGuffin Super-Person. But bringing back anything with the names of the previous tropes is a bad idea. Even just using the previous names to talk about them is difficult, because it's hard to tell what definition you mean.

See, there you go, that's several new tropes that we should be making. No reason to toss those out and say we should make no new tropes, or that we should only make one or two new tropes that aren't those ones.

Because Holy Child, The President's Daughter, MacGuffin Girl, and Living MacGuffin are supposed to cover all those possibilities... somehow. But no one knows how, and every single one is used as every single other one all over the wiki. So it was voted to nuke the first three and unofficially voted to make the fourth into a supertrope.

I'm sorry, but this really feels like you coming in at the last minute and trying to change all the decisions the thread has already made.

I do think we need a supertrope for The Hostage as well. Mc Guffin Hostage can be a subtrope of it, but I think that particular one will get a lot of misuse unless we make a supertrope for it.

So that would be like a sister trope to the supertrope? So Mac Guffin Hostage is a subtrope of both Living MacGuffin and The Hostage at the same time?

Not quite. You can be a subtrope of two tropes at the same time without those tropes being sister tropes. The Hostage and Living MacGuffin would be like two parents contributing to their baby trope. They aren't siblings to one another, but they are both parents.

edited 9th Aug '15 12:02:10 PM by shimaspawn

What exactly would be the subtropes of The Hostage, then? Other than Mac Guffin Hostage, obviously. I'm looking over I Have Your Index, but having a little trouble figuring out which ones would fall under the purview.

I'm seeing a lot of related tropes. I'm not sure how many other subtropes it would have, but it doesn't need multiple subtropes to be a valid supertrope. Besides, I'm hoping the YKTTW will help with that. We have a lot of tropes in there that use The Hostage, and we have Hostage Situation, though that's more for taking a group of people hostage.

Pregnant Hostage would be a subtrope. Hostage for MacGuffin would be a trope that uses The Hostage, though it's not quite a subtrope.

edited 9th Aug '15 2:04:00 PM by shimaspawn

Alright. But can we launch Mac Guffin Hostage while The Hostage YKTTW is going? Because it doesn't absolutely need the supertrope in order to exist.

Speaking of which, calling "not it" on the YKTTW. I'm terrible at those.

Yeah, we can launch it. I can start the YKTTW.

Where are we on this? ~Rjinswand, did you want to make a crowner for that?

I'm not sure what to do about troacctid's suggestion. He didn't provide a better phrasing; should I include the phrasing I wrote, or just not include that option at all?

I'd say just not include it, since that's not what he was saying, as he explained.