OK, opening and clocking.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Simply rewriting it would suffice, I guess?
We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.
Exactly; I suggest rewriting the lead from "a character who speaks only to a few selected individuals" to "a character who is capable of speech but remains mute by choice".
edited 13th Jan '17 6:37:54 AM by JustTroper
Definitely the first thing to do is remove that bolded paragraph from the bottom of the page. It's only purpose is to make the trope too narrow.
Ye who would Tope Meaninglessness. Ye who ignore All We Have. I say to you You Shall Not Pass!!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
You have three agreements to your proposal, including me, and no opposition. Go ahead and post your proposed rewrite of the trope here on the thread.
Zzzzzzzzzz
This thread was clocked nearly a month ago. The proposed rewrite never materialized.
Locking for lack of activity; no action is to be taken on the basis of this thread.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I think the description of this trope (i. e. that a mute-by-choice character "has a few selected characters whom he/she will speak to") is very narrow in comparison to Elective Unintelligible and Elective Broken Language, and not all the entries listed fall under this specific requirement. Perhaps we could make it more general, so it would include all instances when a character is physically capable of speech, but chooses not to speak (i. e. both those who speak only with a few selected individuals and those who, say, gave a vow of silence)? I attempted a YKTTW
for this more general case, and the consensus was that there was not enough distinction, and it would be better to rework Elective Mute.
edited 12th Jan '17 5:58:42 AM by JustTroper