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

I just called the crowner without reading the last page, since the votes are clearly for creating a supertrope with subtropes to cover the misused examples. Is this still the preferred plan of action?

Yep. There was just some argument on whether Living MacGuffin already counts as the supertrope.

I made a topic about Living MacGuffin and was redirected here. Now I cannot remember when I was ever directed to a topic where people actually cared what I had to say so if you don't like it...blame Larkmarn?

Anyway, Living Mac Guffin says that the person must be desirable and cannot be a Damsel in Distress. The problem here is that a MacGuffin is simply something that is wanted but does not do anything. A person does not have to do anything to be kidnapped or put in danger, so that should not be a critical part of the trope. That or it should not be part of the Mac guffin "family".

It was never intended to exclude damsels in distress, it was just trying to point examples of the subtropes to their respective pages and did so in an unintentionally confusing way.

So the "A living being, free (or at least in no danger), who serves as the MacGuffin" part can be removed and the distressed damsels removed in the name of clean up can be put back on the page?

Well I think we should do that. There's a competing opinion in the thread that the unintended restrictions created by the poorly written description are actually a vital part of the definition, and therefore instead of making a few minor changes for clarity, we should get rid of it entirely, then create a new trope for the same meaning but with a worse name, and then do a wiki-wide cleanup project to change the hundreds of wicks to the new name.

I really think that we should lump all of these tropes together. In my mind, a MacGuffin, whether living or not, is something that is key to the plot and a lot of people are after. Quite frankly, The President's Daughter, MacGuffin Girl, and Living MacGuffin, are all that. Not to mention, the individual pages for the tropes aren't all that long either.

edited 5th Nov '13 10:27:59 AM by SilverWings

The names are still to be determined. There's nothing saying we can't use Living MacGuffin for the supertrope. It will just have to be completely rewritten.

Which, by the way, I am for. Living MacGuffin as a supertrope with a completely different description.

I would rather not use Living MacGuffin as the supertrope. store. There is enough confusion already. Keeping the name will not stop misuse elsewhere.

Nobody's actually looked at the wicks for Living MacGuffin. Why don't I go ahead and do that? Just going to count the ones that would fit with it as the supertrope.

MacGuffin that is alive:

1. Aachi and Ssipak
2. Characters.A Certain Magical Index England
3. Action Duo
4. Ancient Keeper
5. DamselInDistress.Anime And Manga
6. Argai: The Prophecy
7. Manga.Attack On Titan
8. Characters.Attack On Titan The104th Trainee Corps
9. Aunt Dimity
10. A Wild Sheep Chase
11. Betty and Veronica
12. Characters.Bioshock Infinite
13. Characters.Blaz Blue Calamity Trigger 1
14. Bookworm Adventures
15. Characters.Burn Notice
16. Candide
17. Baccano.Characters Who Appeared In The Anime
18. PlayingWith.Cousin Oliver
19. Dead Leaves
20. Demonbane
21. Characters.Disney Princess
22. Characters.Downton Abbey
23. Dragon Nest
24. Dubious Company
25. Elianto
26. Characters.Eureka Seven AO
27. Characters.Fairy Tail Others
28. Characters.Farscape
29. Final Fantasy VII
30. Characters.Firefly
31. Characters.Fresh Pretty Cure
32. Characters.Fringe Observers
33. Characters.Goof Troop
34. Halo: A Fistful of Arrows
35. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
36. Holding Out for a Hero
37. How I Met Your Mother
38. Incarnations of Immortality
39. Characters.Inglourious Basterds
40. LaconicTropeDistinctions.J-R
41. Kill Bill
42. Characters.Kingdom Hearts Heroes
43. MacGuffin.Literature

...and specifically not in danger:

1. Damsel in Distress

Insufficient context/not sure:

1. Characters.Akira
2. Characters.Breaking Bad
3. Characters.Breath Of Fire IV
4. Characters.Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant
5. Characters.Con Air
6. Characters.Eberron
7. Garrett, P.I.
8. Characters.Grimm
9. Immortal
10. Characters.Jeeves And Wooster
11. Johnny Mnemonic
12. Kitty Norville
13. Characters.Lives Of The Mayfair Witches

If we define it as the supertrope, that leaves us with basically no misuse at all. (So I would argue keeping the name will absolutely stop misuse elsewhere.)

edited 6th Nov '13 6:13:23 PM by troacctid

Ey, that's a lot of misuse.

I am considering Living MacGuffin for the supertrope now, only for the name. Hmm.

Final Fantasy VII has Sephiroth who is an antagonist through most of the game. After going AWOL for several years, Sephiroth suddenly reappears to murder the President of Shinra and blaze a trail of death across the world. The other characters are chasing after him. He has certain qualities that make him important, and that's why he's being chased.

edited 6th Nov '13 3:51:09 PM by crazysamaritan

Bump. Let's try and brainstorm names for the tropes suggested here (which won the crowner). There's been talk about making Living MacGuffin the supertrope. We've heard the arguments for it; are there any against it?

There's dispute about whether it's already the supertrope as written, but I don't believe anyone's raised objections to rewriting it unambiguously as such.

All right, let's get some sandboxes up.

It could benefit from a full rewrite if anyone's up for it, but so could a lot of other tropes. I tweaked the description to fix the portions that were incompatible with it as a supertrope. We'll need to make sure references to it on related tropes are in line, but the description itself should be stable now.

I'd say the biggest item on the agenda is MacGuffin Girl. Its name is bad, but the rest is fine. I move for a rename crowner.

What do you mean, rename crowner? MacGuffin Girl—like the rest—are getting redirected to the supertrope, and then we're launching all the subtropes suggested here. Do you mean rename crowners for the subtropes?

He means rename crowner for MacGuffin Girl.

I dispute that renaming that trope is compatible with the current crowner.

We have a sandbox for the supertrope.

Mac Guffin Person is a redirect to Living MacGuffin, not a trope.

edited 30th Nov '13 7:40:12 PM by StarSword

Right now, they're all just placeholder names. In fact, we're probably going to just end up using Living MacGuffin as the supertrope. I'll change that now.

edited 30th Nov '13 7:45:40 PM by Discar

Bump. So...are we good with the placeholder names after all? Should we start up their sandboxes as well?

Well, new tropes can go through YKTTW and get name suggestions there. That doesn't need TRS. I just assumed we were moving the existing pages, since they're already there and nobody seems interested in writing up and sponsoring full reboots.

The current crowner is fuzzy on the details, so it's unclear exactly which actions to take where; an additional rename crowner would give us something more specific to go on. But if we think what we have now includes a mandate to rename, then the thing to do is move on to alt-titles, aye? That's what we normally do.

What is unclear about "Make a supertrope with a number of subtropes, and redirect all current tropes to a disambiguation."? Seriously, this is not complicated.

Also, we run new tropes through TRS all the time in situations like this, when we decide to split off subtropes or otherwise untangle a rat's nest. Sending them to YKTTW will just result in them getting lost and forgotten; we need to do it here. The only ambiguous part here is the names.

I'll get to work on the subtrope sandboxes shortly.