Character named trope, continued: Agent Mulder

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 Mulder character would be like.

Checked pages A through H to find wick misuse. The following pages use Agent Mulder in reference to the character instead of the trope:

• Anal Probing, Beethoven Was an Alien Spy, Shout-Out.Castle, Christmas Episode, Distressed Damsel, Exploding Fish Tanks

Again, not rampant, but it's linked from fewer pages than Scully and I think it's enough to suggest that we have a problem.

FYI There's 67 articles from A to H (excluding H, including H, 87). With 6 misuse, that's less than 10% (8,955% without H, 6.8 including H, and considering your other TRS thread, you did include H), which frankly I find far from worrying.

edited 10th Oct '11 11:28:23 PM by Ghilz

I still think the trope name is competely opaque unless you know the character. And aren't we trying to kill all the character-named tropes?

True, but 6,8% is a trivial number of misuse frankly.

Anything below 10% is generally incidental. All tropes that haven't been recently cleaned are generally worse than that no matter how clear the name. That's actually a great indication that the trope is being used well to have a misuse level that low.

That said, most of your misuse isn't. Just because the trope namer is acting in his named role in an example doesn't mean we can't link the trope to him.

• Anal Probing isn't misuse, Agent Mulder is serving the role of Agent Mulder in that example. The fact that he's the trope namer is incidental.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy, also not misuse, just happens to be the trope namer as well. The example is saying that it's too much to believe for even the character that believes anything. Textbook correct example.
• Christmas Episode, also not misuse. Using to point out that the character believes everything.
• Distressed Damsel, also not misuse. Explains why he rushes into everything.

Only the Shout-Out and Exploding Fish Tanks are actually misuse. Which makes it about 3%. That's fantastically low. That's doing great!

edited 11th Oct '11 6:56:17 AM by shimaspawn

Bump. There's a lot of discussion on Scully's page suggesting it should be renamed; why not this one too? Discuss.

No misuse. Trope namer is an example. Very good wik count.

edited 12th Oct '11 9:42:25 AM by shimaspawn

^ Did you read any of the discussions on the Agent Scully thread? There's some Fan Myopia going on there, and I'm bumping this to see if any of the people who suggested as such for Scully agree on Mulder. IMO it wouldn't make sense to rename one but not the other.

I did, and none of that means that there's a reason to rename this one. It's got an almost unheard of level of misuse. This trope is doing awesome. You need arguments as to why we should break something that's doing awesome.

Well, we renamed Ted Baxter when that was a very healthy page with tons of wicks and referrals with no significant misuse. That page was even more popular than this one.

With the direction this wiki is heading in, the "character names as trope titles" just appear to be on the way out. I'll say this even as a big fan of The X Files, as much as any one character may embody a certain archetype, using the character name to identify the trope just doesn't work when not everyone is familiar with either the character or the show he came from.

edited 12th Oct '11 10:25:35 AM by SeanMurrayI

As with Agent Scully, we've falsely called every example that applies it to a trope rather than Agent Mulder the character as "correct use."

Some bad examples:

• American Gods: The character delivers a poetic monologue about things she believes, including some deliberately contradictory things. This does not make her mystic, crazy or gullible.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The detective from Angel, if I remember correctly, believed in the supernatural but not to an excess, not to the point of being mystic, crazy or gullible.
• Distressed Damsel: Refers to "rushing headlong into danger," not beliefs.
• Innocent Innuendo: Mulder the character, irrelevant to the trope.
• Government Agency of Fiction: Mulder the character, irrelevant to the trope.
• Strawman Emotional: Potholed from "Every single emotional character" (in an example that goes on to discuss belief).
• The Only One: Mulder the character, irrelevant to the trope.
• Exploding Fish Tanks: Mulder the character, irrelevant to the trope.

But even if there were ZERO misuse, this would be a trope needlessly named after a character.

I've never understood why "no misuse" (which doesn't even apply here, rather, it's "not up to my personal arbitrary standard of enough misuse") automatically makes a name good.

If someone not familiar with the work a trope is named for would have to look up the trope to associate the name with it, the name has failed at its job.

Yeah, people need to get the memo that "misuse or GTFO" is not policy.

It doesn't make it 'automatically good'. The default action is 'do nothing'. If you want something to be done, showing that there is a genuine problem needs to happen.

Misuse and Lack of Use are the two biggest types of problems, and the only truly quantifiable ones, so they tend to get the focus.

Since we have neither in this case, getting a rename through will be difficult at best.

I just feel that the TRS needs to focus on tropes with actual problems rather than ones that are working just fine. We have so many tropes with actual issues that just renaming because we don't like a name should be at the bottom of our priority lists.

Find something with misuse, no wiks, or a confusing definition. Those are what we should be focusing on. Not things like this.

edited 12th Oct '11 4:25:31 PM by shimaspawn

So is this "do nothing"?

I intensely dislike this name, along with Agent Scully, but it's probably not worth holding forth on as long as we have more crucial issues in TRS.

Close then?

Yeah, for now. It needs revisiting later, though.