Unsuitable First/Third Person Pages

I like these pages, and they are fun. However, some of them seem completely unnecessary.

I agree with Laculus. I think that Deadpool, The Joker, Doctor Doom, and maybe Lex Luthor should have their own pages. Sinestro and Thanos should not. Mostly because non-comic fans have actually heard of the first four.

Anyone who assigns themselves loads of character tropes is someone to be worried about.

Just followed the link to the discussion for the Dr. Doom page, mainly because I was hoping the discussion would be telling me that first-person pages were being done away with. If I wanted to read your fanfic, I'd be reading your fanfic, not TV Tropes. They just come off as stilted and jarring in tonal shift at best, outright useless at worst. Too many of the tropes listed on these pages don't even bother with examples, instead just being the character nattering on about how awesome they are.

I have to say that there have been multiple times when I have seen the Dr. Doom page potholed where I went "Oh man! I haven't ever read the Doom page, this is gonna be great!" only to get to the page and remember why I've never read it.

In short, man, I hate those first person pages ;)

Proudly serving your non-specific heroic needs since 1976.

I respectfully disagree. When I discovered them, these pages quickly became one of my favorite parts of the wiki, and broad statements about "fixing" them (as opposed to changing them back or deleting them, which I can understand) and their implicit stupid, broken uselessness irk me. Since they've come this far, I would suggest the alternate Self-Demonstrating Article approach, but in any case, to be even shorter, I like these pages.

edited 29th Apr '11 2:16:47 PM by Caswin

Multi-franchise characters should have trope pages because they don't fit into a single work, overarching work. For instance, The Joker is not just a Batman villain, just as Doctor Doom is not just a Fantastic Four villain. Sinestro, meanwhile, is a near-exclusive Green Lantern villain, only venturing outside that work in the sorts of Crisis Crossover where everyone is doing it. Thanos might deserve his own page, assuming that he doesn't have a single, overarching parent series.

However, first-person articles should only be used where they actually add something to the page - to, again, use one of my favourite examples, the Doctor Doom page is particularly fun because of the guy's unique brand of hamminess that makes him an ideal narrator for an article all about him (and it's amusingly in-character for him to be doing it, too - no mere nebbish 'troper' is worthy of cataloguing the mighty deeds of DOOM). Otherwise, it's a bit pointless. I mean, we don't do the Batman page in first-person, do we?

edited 30th Apr '11 3:24:10 PM by Iaculus

What's precedent ever done for us?

If you look at The Joker you'll notice that it's also largely a list of works that he appears in. This is because comic books are hard to list as works at times and it's often easier to organize them by the characters they centre around simply because there are fewer characters than titles. It's like cataloguing books by series.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Personally, I think Doom is the exception that tests the rule. Most of these pages don't work, in one way or another, but Doctor Doom does, because he has a perfect combination of traits:

• Distinctive character voice that's easy to imitate.
• It's fun to imitate that voice, and a great source of comedy gold.
• Consistent character voice. Pretty much EVERY writer writes him the same way, and the few exceptions REALLY stand out.

I don't really think even "breaking the fourth wall" has any relevance. Doom seldom if ever breaks the fourth wall, though he does talk in third person. Deadpool does, but I still don't think he's good for the first-person approach, because his shtick is basically throwing out non-sequiturs. Easy enough to do that, but not so conducive to imparting information.

Jet-a-Reeno!

@Thnikkafan: You do know that Theres No Such Thing As Notability, right?

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

That's not what No Such Thing As Notability means. It means that we aren't going to cut an example because the work it's from isn't "notable" enough.

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

I'm going to be contrarian and assert that the Sinestro one is the only article that works. Deadpool is crazy, Doom is egotistically bombastic. Those don't work as a trope page. Sinestro's "This is the truth, accept it" tone works.

This is starting to go down a "Want to be excessively serious" path. Leave 'em alone. They're fun and funny.

There is a difference between "funny" and "childish".

He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also

And it's very much a subjective difference. Don't try to make this into a fight over where that line is for someone else.

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

Since no one else seems to be doing it, I will try to make a Crowner, What are the options again?

He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also

Er... How do you make a crowner?

He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also

Can't you just make 2 copies of the page? I hate these types of articles myself, but if others really love prattling on about their fanfiction right in the Wiki, let them. However, give people like me the ability to see a less annoying page. Perhaps link to the "Normal" article first with an option to switch to the "in-character" version...?

Alcatraz Series: Unsuitable or not? (I'd argue "unsuitable," on the grounds that I have a harder time understanding the page when it's written like this.)

edited 5th May '11 5:06:18 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

We have the Self-Demonstrating namespace. The self-demonstrating versions can be moved there and clear, easily readable versions put in whatever namespace the page should be in (Comic, Main, whatever)

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

What about G La DOS? She's no comic book villain, and she's pretty much limited to her home series. Also she both has her own page and a section on the Portal character page. Does she do frequent fourth-wall referencing? (never played Portal)

Please help out our The History Of Video Games page.

No, and I don't like that G La DOS has a page at all, even if it's Just for Fun. About the only reason it was done is because her name is a Wiki Word and thus caused a bunch of redlinks. I'm all for cutting it.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

She did a lot of fourth wall stuff recently with the Potato Fools' Day ARG, jumping into a bunch of other games (Bit Trip Beat, Defense Grid The Awakening, etc.) and messing with them in various ways.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Another vote to keep them from me. Move them to another namespace if we have to.

I agree: the First-Person pages seem...incongruous, to me, when compared to the general accepted style for other articles on the Wiki.

But how are Third-Person pages a problem?

It (writing that way) seems to be an outlet for tongue-in-cheek humor when it comes to certain pages (Contributor pages and Unpublished Works pages specifically). I use it liberally on my own Unpublished Works page, and I personally find it easier to be more objective writing that way than in first-person.

I suppose this could be grounds for allowing a character page for her.

I didn't write any of that.

Actually it isnt. Grounds for creating a character page would be the character having been around for a very long time and having been featured in multiple forms of media.G La DOS has neither.

He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also

Regardless of accidental wiki-working, G La DOS is a very popular character, at least in geek circles. And let's face it, TV Tropes basically is a geek circle made of other geek circles.

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...