Misused: Peggy Sue

Endless Eight was like Star Trek The Next Generation's Cause and Effect and Star Gate SG 1's Window of Opportunity. It was localized and only those caught in the area repeated the same events, the rest of the galaxy continued on as normal, TNG was only 17 weeks, Stargate was 3 months, endless eight was 600 years.

Stargate's was stated to be directly inspired by Groundhog Day though.

edited 14th Feb '17 5:38:26 PM by Memers

I'll bump this thing to keep the discussion going.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Re-skimmed the thread, and I think the redefinition aspect has mostly been covered bar some minor aspects. What we have left to do is deal with Groundhog Peggy Sue (I think?) and decide on the name for the rename.

edited 2nd Mar '17 12:46:30 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Groundhog Peggy Sue is basically just "the same as the base Peggy Sue trope, but the time traveler returns to the same point multiple times instead of once" - I don't see the need for further discussion

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

I find that trope to be redundant to "Groundhog Day" Loop.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

No, not really. A vanilla "Groundhog Day" Loop can have all the people trapped in the loop be completely unaware of the situation, until either someone gains Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory by accident, an outsider gets drawn into the loop, or something else happens that breaks the status quo. Or it can have one or more people aware that they're looping, but completely unable to do anything about it for one reason or another (e.g. they're imprisoned and cannot escape before the loop restarts).

Groundhog Peggy Sue on the other hand starts off from the first loop like a standard Peggy Sue plot, i.e. with someone either having Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory or having undergone Mental Time Travel (deliberately or by accident) and from there actively utilizing every opporunity that comes their way to attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong / break the loop, with at least one repetition happening.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

No, it isn't; You may want to respond to Post #22.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Just because a lot of stories follow the example of the original Peggy Sue plot in that they offer only one chance does not mean that the one-chance-only aspect is integral to Peggy Sue. Unless you can prove your claims, false correlation is all I can see in them.

While I do agree that the two tropes should be differentiated, I've arrived at a very different answer in which I define the three tropes as follows.

"Groundhog Day" Loop does not require either active Mental Time Travel or Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, though it does not exclude either of them. You could easily have everyone who is stuck in loop remain completely unaware of the time-looping, and have the time loop be broken through either outside interference or one of the time-loopers unwittingly deviating from the scenario in a way that somehow breaks the loop despite them not being aware of it. Bear in mind that a "Groundhog Day" Loop could easily be limited to a specific area, such that time passes on normally outside the affected area; the result of that is that an outside could observe both the beginning and the end of the loop within his own lifetime, provided that the loop does not take more than what remains of his maximum lifespan. An example of such is Ephemeral Fantasia; an entire island was stuck in a five-day time loop for an unknown number of years while the rest of the world continued as normal (the island is apparently somewhat isolated and saw few if any visitors since the loop began), and the protagonist was dragged into it after that much time had passed from the outside.

Peggy Sue Plot requires someone undergoing either Mental Time Travel or stuck in a temporal loop while retaining their past memories of the original timeline and however loops they went through. In traditional form, the time-travelling is a one-time thing, and encompasses everything other than the time-traveller (i.e. the entire universe), rather than only rewind time for a specific portion of the world.

Groundhog Peggy Sue would then be the intersection of Peggy Sue Plot with "Groundhog Day" Loop. It applies when someone stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop either starts off with Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory or attains it during one of the loops that "Groundhog Day" Loop and Peggy Sue Plot intersect, giving rise to Groundhog Peggy Sue in the process. It also applies when someone deliberately undergoes Mental Time Travel to the past, and either has the ability to do it again if they fail to Set Right What Once Went Wrong or the time travel method he used puts him in an automatically rewinding time-loop whenever he reaches a certain point in time without having done a specific thing (typically Set Right What Once Went Wrong, but it can be something set by a different character who is responsible for setting the time-loop up; maybe they want them to recover a MacGuffin within a certain time frame that is the only chance to reach it). And it can also happen when a Peggy Sue Plot's time-travel aspect is not only repeatable, but explicitly shown to only affect a specific area, with time passing normally for the rest of the world.

Basically, the crucial difference between Peggy Sue Plot and "Groundhog Day" Loop is that the former must involve active attempts by at least one time-travelling character to change the timeline, whereas the latter does not ^note the loop could get broken because of the instigator messing up in some way, for example and also must involve multiple time loops. Peggy Sue Plot on its own would allow for multiple chances of time travelling, but all examples of such are shunted off to Groundhog Peggy Sue due to intersection with "Groundhog Day" Loop. Similarly, all examples of "Groundhog Day" Loop that involve one of the loopers attaining Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory and taking it upon themselves to break the loop are shunted off to Groundhog Peggy Sue due to intersection with Peggy Sue Plot.

edited 6th Mar '17 5:43:03 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

That's rather telling me "nuh-uh!"; what sort of "proof" can I show? Is there a way I can word examples that will convince you? Here you define Peggy Sue plots to be a subtrope to "Groundhog Day" Loop and Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. Please cite a work that fits this example here; it looks like you're trying to split based on theoretical Time Travel physics and not storytelling conventions. Whether Groundhog Day encompasses just the Earth, includes the solar system, includes the Milky Way, or includes the entire perceived universe, doesn't matter; so long as no characters outside of the Time Loop interact with it, the story isn't affected. A localized time loop is a good trope idea, but that has no direct relationship with either Groundhog Day or Peggy Sue Got Married. I note that the protagonist has a Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, making this Peggy Sue by your definition. Which means nontraditional/variants are free to use localized time loops. You haven't explained what causes them to not overlap, so I fail to see a distinction between your Peggy Sue Plot and Groundhog Peggy Sue. Now your distinction changes, but you still declare Peggy Sue to be a subtrope to "Groundhog Day" Loop.

edited 6th Mar '17 6:29:40 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

... Color me surprised at the sudden drop in this thread's activity. Are we two the only ones left who are interested in the issue? Because that wouldn't make for a good resolution; I'd very much prefer if at least one other guy comes in and tells both of us about any flaws in our arguments that we may be making and have yet to realize ourselves (which almost always happens, to one degree or another; no shame in that, the human mind isn't flawless). Who knows, perhaps it would make us realize that we have been on the same page all along, it's just that we were talking past each other and failed at properly articulating our positions to the other guy (unlikely, but it happened at least once to me).

Honestly speaking, I'm not 100% sure what the absolute best method is myself, but I'd think that taking a page from TRS procedures and performing a wick check with a sufficiently sized sample would be give a reliable assessment of whether or not the correlation is genuine.

No, I did not; that's false correlation on your part. Having a trope make use of another trope as a method to realize its concept does not automatically imply a supertrope-subtrope relationship between them; only if every example of the first trope is also an example of the second trope can you apply such a relationship. Otherwise, you may as well make Time Travel a subtrope of Functional Magic just because the latter is often used to perform the former.

I will admit right here and now that I am haven't seen much "Groundhog Day" Loop examples — in fact, the only examples that came to my memory when I considered this part of your post all come from fanfics. Nevertheless, I went through the "Groundhog Day" Loop article's long list of examples, and there is indeed one that very closely fits what I've described, though not 100%. In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect, none of the loopers benefit from the Ripple Proof Memory Effect, but with each loop they develop an increasing sense of Déjà Vu that eventually clues them in on their predicament.

Your point being what, exactly? I was clarifying the issue in case anyone (not you in particular) is under the misconception that a "Groundhog Day" Loop has to apply to the entirety of spacetime rather than a local portion of it.

Groundhog Peggy Sue, to be more accurate. Which, by my definition, is a subtrope of Peggy Sue and "Groundhog Day" Loop.

Again, what's your point? The "nontraditional/variant cases fall under a subtrope and should be only mentioned there" thing does happen with other tropes; no particular names come to my mind at the moment, but I know for certain that I've come across such tropes.

<sigh> Peggy Sue Plot doesn't require being trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. The Peggy Sue could be using a Time Machine or an equivalent (e.g. time-travelling magic) to travel back to the past to do what they are planning to do. They might manage to pull it off on the first try, or they might not. They may or may not have the luxury of repeating things yet again.

Groundhog Peggy Sue, on the other hand, requires a "Groundhog Day" Loop (whether or not the Peggy Sue has control, limited or unlimited, over when to initiate the loop-back), and at least one loop having ended in a failure (otherwise it wouldn't be a "Groundhog Day" Loop).

Do not take select portions of my explanation and interpret them out of context. You seem to be deliberately leaving off the remaining part of that paragraph: "and also must involve multiple time loops".

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I think we've been the fiercest two to argue the meaning of the trope itself. That's not a problem, so long as we each feel we are communicating. I'll agree additional perspectives would help.

---

Note that you had asked for "any possible good that results from imposing such a strict restriction on the trope" initially. I'm not very confident about the result myself, because a lot of the on-page examples are Groundhog Day Loop Applied To Fanfiction. My next post here will be a wick check showing if an example uses Time Travel once or multiple times. Would you agree that 66% of examples that use one trip is evidence that the examples are expected to be limited to that? The corollary to that means I have to accept that if only 33% of the works use single-trip examples, then multiple times are allowed.

I think you're identifying the cause of our schism. You identify a method the trope can play out, but use the words "requires someone". When you put the requirement down, it defines a supertrope-subtrope relationship between them; your claim is every example of the subtrope is also an example of the supertrope. When I'm reading a definition and the words lack Weasel Words such as "can play out by", "often seen with", or "sometimes use", my assumption is that those are requirements and the trope can only play out those ways. From the current description, these phrases are missing the Weasel Words, so I assume they are a requirement:

• the chance
• with the knowledge he gained from living through his story the first time
• a second time around (the weasel words in this sentence refer to their Plot Armor)

The trope also specifies that "Groundhog Day" Loop is for "a repeating short-term loop" and Groundhog Peggy Sue is for "loops which repeat". So when I read the description, I see no allowance for a Peggy Sue character to Time Travel multiple times. Note that I cannot find anything aside from our site that defines this plot. Well, we happen to have that episode recapped here: "Cause and Effect" and the page does say it is an example of Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory (downplayed, because close to zero information is actually kept across the loops). It is, in fact, the witting actions of Data that allows the crew to deviate from the loop. Hey! That's valid. Again, what work has a "Groundhog Day" Loop plot happening where the main characters are freed by outside interference or one of the time-loopers unwittingly deviates from the scenario in a way that somehow breaks the loop despite them not being aware of it? That your statements are becoming less concise, adding fluff that has nothing to do with our objective at hand; defining what a Peggy Sue trope is. This is where our debate circles back to what I said earlier in this post; you seem comfortable with a description implicitly defining the "traditional form", whereas I'm expecting the description to be explicit with what is required and what is "traditional". I'm afraid I cannot compromise on this point; unless we are explicit with which components are "traditional" and which are requirements, I think Poor Communication Kills comes into effect.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I think the main issue here isn't in directly defining the trope. It's whether a subtrope can include examples that would not qualify for the main trope.

The easiest solution, of course, is to state that the Peggy Sue "family" of tropes (Peggy Sue Plot + Groundhog Peggy Sue) allows cases of repeated time travel, but any repetition is to be categorized as Groundhog Peggy Sue.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Reclocking. If anyone wants to set up a crowner, now's a good time.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

I would, but I'm not convinced I can set up a crowner that isn't biased. I'm not certain I understand my opponent's perspective well enough to accurately represent or carry out their goal.

My preferred option (because we are focusing just on this page) is to define Peggy Sue as the following:

• A subtrope to Mental Time Travel; this character relives their past, and has to choose between a Close-Enough Timeline or Set Right What Once Went Wrong. The mechanic by which they make this choice does not allow them to go back multiple times.

I am reasonably willing to see a rename, but I note the previous thread on the rename went nowhere in particular. If a rename does occur, I am somewhat partial to Peggy Sue Plot. The previous TRS thread apparently concluded that this is not a pre-existing term, but I'm not certain what the best rename would be.

edited 8th Jul '17 3:08:06 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I finally found the second TRS thread.

~Ghilz and ~Manga Maniac both started their threads with the premise that the trope should be renamed, but that the definition was okay and there wasn't misuse. I started THIS thread on the basis that the trope is misused, partly because the description is unclear. In the first thread, ~Madrugada and ~Sackett both offer definitions close to my opinion. The second thread, despite including ~Marq FJA as a contributor, has no discussion of the definition whatsoever.

On a separate TRS thread, ~Sal Fish Fin also utilizes my definition.

I'm not certain I have wiki consensus, and I'd like to remove examples like these on the basis of misuse:

• In Mirai Nikki, this trope soon becomes either the main plot drive or the plot itself, depending on how you interpret it.
• In Shin Mazinger Zero, Kouji Kabuto finds himself being thrown back in time over and again by Minerva-X to prevent the End of the World as We Know It. Unfortunately, he loses nearly all his memories during the time-travel -including he being a time-traveler-, so he has failed several thousands of times. Minerva seriously wonders how many more times he can stand before his sanity or his body break down.
• Kaworu Nagisa from Neon Genesis Evangelion seems to get this in multiple media. The Super Robot Wars series gave him dialog implying rather strongly that he went from Alpha to MX and back to Alpha 3. And just to add to it, Rebuild of Evangelion has him saying that he's looking forward to meeting Shinji "this time".
• The Dragon Ball spin-off The Case of Being Reincarnated as Yamcha combines this with an unintentional Self-Insert Fic. An Ordinary High-School Student from the real world falls down a set of stairs and wakes up in the body of Yamcha. At first he's excited at the prospect of dating Bulma, but when he remembers Yamcha's ignoble death during DBZ, he resolves to train and use his knowledge of DB canon to become the strongest warrior in the world.

~Karxrida, ~Fighteer, ~Totemic Hero, ~Xtifr do any of you want to weigh in on this definition debate before the thread is closed?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

You are correct in that none of them are Peggy Sues by our current definition.

For the record, my definition is:

A character is sent back in time and inhabits the body of their own past self, retaining at least part of their future knowledge. The mechanic used for this Mental Time Travel does not allow for it to be used again, or there are major repercussions for doing so.

This does not include cases of time travel to the past where you retain your older body. This does not include Self-Insert Fics (if it's a self-insert from the character's perspective) or similar cases of a character traveling to a universe where they have knowledge of the work. It is not a requirement that the character intended to time travel, nor is it required that the character intends to make major changes to the timeline.

edited 9th Jul '17 10:36:20 AM by RallyBot2

Marq FJA and an unknown number of other contributors believe at least some do fit the current definition. I don't understand their argument well enough to make an unbiased crowner.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

crazysamaritan, I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said. I'm fine with your definition.

edited 9th Jul '17 10:41:52 AM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

I edited my earlier post to add my definition.

I've not seen/read any of these, but going by the examples:

Mirai Nikki (English title, and page located at, Future Diary) is not a Peggy Sue, as there is no Mental Time Travel, which is the one requirement we all agree on.

Shin Mazinger Zero is closest to a Groundhog Peggy Sue, but the memory-loss thing makes it strange.

Evangelion/SRW looks like general time travel screwiness or timeline jumping, not a Peggy Sue.

The Case of Being Reincarnated as Yamcha is not a Peggy Sue, as the character was not originally present in the timeline they enter.

Edit: Your definition is fine, except for the "choosing between timelines" part, which shouldn't be strictly required. We should also be clearer that the character has to be in their past body, else this would include a bunch of non-mental time travel stories.

edited 9th Jul '17 10:48:37 AM by RallyBot2

Is there a particular reason you called me in? (AFAIK, I wasn't part of this or any of the prior discussions.)

Looking at it, I'd say we have a case of people putting examples that should really go on Mental Time Travel on this one. The burning question is why there are doing this - if we could figure this out, we'd probably have a better idea on how to proceed.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Okay, I was called in so here are my thoughts with examples.

"Groundhog Day" Loop: It is July 9, 2017. I go to bed and when I wake up, it is July 9, 2017.

• I do not necessarily have to be immediately aware that this temporal anomaly has occurred
• Some event must occur in order for the time line to properly move on to July 10, 2017.
• I do not necessarily know what that event is.

Peggy Sue: Some Phlebotinum puts me in my body as it was an amount of time ago, but I remember everything up until today. I decide to change something that happened in that time, and continue to live my life whatever happens.

• I did not necessarily choose to go back in time
• I may or may not succeed in changing things.

Groundhog Peggy Sue: Some Phlebotinum puts me in my body as it was on July 9, 2007, at 10AM, but I remember everything that happens up until today. I decide to change something that happened in that time. If I do not change it, I jump back to July 9, 2007 at 10AM, and continue to do so until I change the thing.

• The jump back is not necessarily purposeful or by my own power.

Basically any instance in which there is a mental leap backward in time that is used to alter the character's present is Peggy Sue. And instance where there are multiple leaps back in time to a same or similar point in order to alter the same event in the character's past is Groundhog Peggy Sue.

edited 9th Jul '17 12:05:31 PM by SalFishFin

It's perfectly possible to have a Peggy Sue story where the time traveler remembers only part of their relative past/linear future.

As long as it's Mental Time Travel (or an effective equivalent) into a younger version of the time traveler, it qualifies for that part of the criteria, correct?

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Makes sense.

I agree.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I'm not sure who I'm agreeing with here, but as I see it, a Peggy Sue Plot requires:

• Mental Time Travel
• Retaining some or all current knowledge
• To a specific time frame in the character's past
• In order to change things and thereby affect their future/current situation.
• ONCE only. Whatever result they get this time is what they're stuck with. No do-overs; no take-backs.

The time frame can be distant or recent. It is not limited by duration. They replace themselves in the past; they are not a new person who can interact with their younger self.

edited 9th Jul '17 3:35:13 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.