Character named trope: Agent Scully

A wick check showed that, while not rampant, articles are using links to this in reference to the character instead of the trope.

I don't follow The X Files so I have no idea what an Agent Scully character would be like.

Can you publish that check? And for the Agent Mulder TRS as well, of course.

Wick check for A-H found Agent Scully misused in reference to the character, instead of the trope, on these pages:

• He's Dead, Jim, Captain's Log, Alien Autopsy, All Myths Are True, Shout-Out.Castle, Christmas Episode, Distressed Damsel, Government Agency of Fiction, Hollywood Atheist

That's a pretty non-trivial amount of misuse.

edited 10th Oct '11 10:43:11 PM by Twentington

You need to give more detail than that. A lot more would be preferable, but if absolutely nothing else, we need to know out of how many.

Also misused in Trivia.Johnny English, Martyrdom Culture, Mother Nature, Father Science, Occult Detective (but in the El Goonish Shive mention, not in the X-Files mention), Overcome Their Differences, Red-Headed Hero, Revealing Cover-Up, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Spot the Imposter, The Only One. That's at least 19 so far out of 200+.

As an example, Martyrdom Culture says "At least according to Agent Scully of The X-Files" in the intro.

edited 10th Oct '11 11:23:21 PM by Twentington

The A to H wick check is EXACTLY 10% Misuse (9 outta 90).

Your last bad wick, The Only One, is wick #204, fyi

edited 10th Oct '11 11:27:10 PM by Ghilz

Last I heard, ten percent misuse is considered "normal".

At the same time, the name says nothing about the trope. I've seen about .75 episodes of X-Files, and that was over ten years ago. I have no idea of Scully's character, much less what he has to do with anything.

Of all the wicks where misuse is claimed so far, I'd challenge that, at least, five of them are correct use while one more is a bit of a gray area.

All Myths Are True, Hollywood Atheist, Mother Nature, Father Science, and Spot the Impostor all describe the character Agent Scully exhibiting behaviors or traits that are fitting with the trope archetype Agent Scully as all these examples detail how the character is being The Skeptic. Spontaneous Human Combustion, on the other hand, links to the trope while pointing out that the character is actually doing something against her established archtype. That is all in reasonable use of the trope.

Overcome Their Differences might be a little more debatable, but as both Agent Mulder and Agent Scully are opposing character archetypes and the characters do overcome their differences in spite of this, I'd say it's another correct wick.

edited 11th Oct '11 7:22:44 AM by SeanMurrayI

Twentington's misuse check is highly questionable. He seems to be flagging any example with the trope namer in it as misuse even when the character's role as Agent Scully is relevant to the example. It's only when the trope namer is not serving in that capacity that a Pot Hole is misuse.

He's inflating things to make them seem worse than they are.

I still think the name is, ya know, kind of USELESS unless you're an X-Files fan. Which I'm not.

See the problem now? It may pass the One Mario Limit and it may not be egregiously misused, but the name still means bupkis unless you're one of the cognoscenti.

Which is why I didn't grasp that some of the "misuses" I'd caught were not misuses at all.

edited 11th Oct '11 12:03:20 PM by Twentington

The Skeptic and The Believer are already redirects. Both those names are fairly clear, and if even the creators of The X Files were to summarize the show's main characters for people unfamiliar with it, those would likely be the terms they would use. And they probably have done that, too. Would that make them preexisting terms?

edited 11th Oct '11 1:01:55 PM by SeanMurrayI

Then why not just swap with the redirects?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think part of what makes the Agent Scully is his/her dogged refusal to give up the "there's nothing weird going on" mindset in a universe where weird stuff is very much going on, and because of that I'd lean toward something more than just The Skeptic...maybe Blindered Skeptic, Tunnel Vision Skeptic, or Chronic Skeptic.

edited 11th Oct '11 1:24:36 PM by Willbyr

Because there's nothing wrong with the main titles. They're being used correctly and well, and are catching on outside the wiki. There's no reason to change them.

If you really don't like those names, then use The Believer / The Skeptic when you add examples. Just don't "fix" existing wicks to use those.

Ninja'ed

edited 11th Oct '11 1:25:07 PM by Discar

I would like to rename it, honestly, but it does appear to be performing okay. Unless there's some evidence of underuse there doesn't seem to be grounds for renaming. And with over 250 wicks that sounds difficult.

edited 11th Oct '11 1:27:53 PM by Arha

It's difficult to say. The mindset of the Trope Namer, I would argue, would be more accurately summarized as "there is a scientific/rational/logistical explanation for what is going on", rather than a refusal to acknowledge that any of it might be weird.

edited 11th Oct '11 1:32:55 PM by SeanMurrayI

I think that Sean is close to the mindset of Scully; I'd tweak it just a bit to "Yes, this is weird, but I'm certain there's a perfectly rational explanation for it."

It's taking us several posts to figure out what the trope is with the current name, and we're the ones handling the TRS discussion. What hope to ordinary users have?

Plus, no one's given any reason why Agent Scully is a good name. I support renaming.

I also support renaming.

You have to prove that there is a problem with a name, not the other way around. Innocent until proven guilty.

edited 11th Oct '11 10:55:17 PM by Discar

What hope to ordinary users have?

At 3% misuse? I'd say pretty fucking good.

Don't fix it if it's not broken.

Where does "3%" come from? Going by this thread, 3% is the fraction of examples that use the trope for the character. That doesn't mean the others are all proper examples.

We can't know whether the others are proper examples because it's taken us a full discussion to agree on what the trope means at all. Is Agent Scully merely a skeptic? Or is she a skeptic in a setting where skepticism is unwarranted?

• Scooby Doo - Velma is listed as an Agent Scully. Since the traditional Scooby Doo plot involves supernatural phenomena turning out to be a con, she does not satisfy the more narrow definition.
• How I Met Your Mother - Robin is listed as an example, without any explanation. The show is a sitcom taking place in a normal non-sci-fi world.
• Its A Wonderful Life - George Bailey is listed as one even though he's skeptical about precisely one thing.
• Growing Up Sucks - Lists Susan from the Narnia books. Not really an example because she dismisses their actual adventures as fantasies years after the fact, rather than refusing to believe in the supernatural while its happening. (She also does the latter on one occasion, but that's not what this pothole is about.)
• Richard Dawkins - To be a proper example, this would have to read "Agent Scully: He argues against God, though God clearly exists." I don't think we want that.

Regardless, since named-after-a-character is itself a reason to rename a trope, there had better be SOME argument for the current name. Else why keep it?

edited 12th Oct '11 2:04:30 AM by Routerie

Scooby-Doo films (animated or otherwise) all involve the supernatural. As do several series. And Velma is always the last one to accept thats the supernatural (There's a reason she's not in 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo). So yes, she fits your narrow definition. Ain't seen any of the other works, so can't judge them, someone else will need to say if you are correct or wrong.

Character-named tropes are a discontinued practice because it falls under Fan Myopia. That means that yes, we have a good reason to change this one. "Abuse Or GTFO" is not a policy on this forum.