Lost in Space
For the record, I apologize for the abrupt decision, but I could have sworn that the staff and a significant body of tropers agreed that it is Flame Bait and had been editing with that idea in mind for a long time.
The main reason I'm calling it out now is because of its blatant misuse with respect to The Force Awakens.
edited 22nd Dec '15 7:31:27 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The Unknown
Meh, never liked having it anyway.
What about the other Sue tropes?
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Filthy casual
The Unknown
Oh duh.
Fixed OP, and I'd appreciate a thread title change.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
TV Tropes' Sonic Wiki Curator
Forgive me if I'm jumping the gun a bit here, but with 4,000 wicks to deal with, wouldn't this thread be more suited for the Long-Term Projects subforum?
Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.
The Unknown
Goddammit.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Nah, Long Term Projects for the truly endless tasks and ongoing ones. A task that is done after some time is not Long Term material.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
TV Tropes' Sonic Wiki Curator
Oh, okay, then. Thanks for the clarification and sorry for the confusion.
Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Past Mary Sue discussions:
- 2011 Special Efforts project: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13139070700A25495900
(crowner to make Flame Bait failed)
- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13625761360A92244900&page=1
- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13705340520A73334600&page=1
- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13809694810A06922400&page=1
Question: This includes Canon Sue?
The Unknown
Probably. I'd rather cut that one because it's honestly redundant when people already use Mary Sue for canon characters.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Lost in Space
Canon Sue is a pile of horseturds, anyway, because unless a series has multiple authors that are fighting with each other over their favorite characters, the idea that an author can write a character that is the beneficiary of undue narrative focus within the context of a fictional universe that they themselves created is illogical.
Such a character is more likely to fall into Creator's Pet than any of the Sue tropes.
edited 22nd Dec '15 11:42:31 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
During cleanup, remember that examples that are invoked/referenced still get to stay. It's basically the same idea behind Parody Sue.
Lost in Space
Invoked, referenced, or In-Universe, yes.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Got Anti-Sue. Lots of ZCE's, but also more invoked examples than I was expecting.
Canon Sue is really a subtype of Creator's Pet; for example, Eragon and Neelix are both the latter, but only Eragon is the former. Removing Canon Sue might be worth it in that case.
However, I have to come out against making the Mary Sue tropes Flame Bait; they are YMMV, but they do have objective definitions. I suggest that any Mary Sue entries in non-fan works be moved to YMMV and replaced with Creator's Pet, and that Mary Sue and its subtypes be reserved for fan works.
EDIT: also, Mary Sue and Creator's Pet aren't synonymous with The Scrappy; Luke Skywalker, for example, has a lot of Sue traits but generally isn't considered a Scrappy. Mary Sue is more a collection of narrative and character traits than an audience reaction.
edited 22nd Dec '15 1:13:53 PM by Worffan101
Lost in Space
They don't have anything near to objective definitions. That's exactly the problem. Sure, there are lists of criteria, but the degree to which any given character satisfies them is almost entirely arbitrary.
For evidence, look up any of the myriad "Mary Sue tests" around the web. No two of them will agree unless they directly copy from each other.
edited 22nd Dec '15 1:11:30 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I would argue that lists of criteria qualify as objective definitions. Maybe adding a qualifier that Mary Sue is based on a list of qualifiers, and so it is possible to have some Sue traits without being an outright Sue? Because there are some pretty unequivocal Sues out there; the male and female leads from Twilight, Superman (though less so once Kryptonite and especially Doomsday became things), and Enoby etc. from My Immortal.
It's not perfect, but what in literature is?
Lost in Space
"Universally agreed upon" does not mean objective, and the idea of Superman as a Sue is absurd.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Um...he's laughably overpowered, nobody can beat him without either being a Kryptonian or having Kryptonite, he's always treated as being moral and just...He's super-intelligent and can see through walls and has a private fortress of ice at the North Pole and is an alien who's the last of his kind; that's pretty Sueful. It's just that he's normally well-written, and his actual actions are normally moral and just, it's not just the story saying so. Though, Superdickery would argue otherwise.
But that's why these are YMMV, not main-page stuff.
Anyway, I'm arguing against these being classified as Flame Bait because I honestly think that they aren't. They're certainly less flame-bait-y than The Scrappy, IMO, because that's something where opinions often sharply differ.
Lost in Space
Mary Sue and related tropes cause more arguments than almost any other tropes that we label YMMV (as opposed to Flame Bait or Darth Wiki), and the idea of creating some kind of task force to adjudicate Suedom is ridiculous.
Those criteria you discuss are conveniently ignored by anyone who wants to believe that a character is unrealistically good or strong, because the concept is almost always used to attack an author and not as a tool of serious criticism.
Nope, this decision stands.
edited 22nd Dec '15 1:30:12 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I want to just take a moment to thank the mods for this decision. As someone who's felt for years that Mary Sue is a meaningless, worthless complaining sink, it's long overdue.
By that same token, though, I'm now sort of wondering what the point of a lot of the Sue subcategories are if we're just making it into a fanspeak page.
Lost in Space
That's a valid question, but we can settle it after we handle the de-wicking.
edited 22nd Dec '15 1:43:33 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
ÞFighteer and I have debated this before, but it comes down to...
"Do most people mean And That's Terrible when they use a Sue term?"
The answer is yes. If we put a crowner with that as the question for the whole wiki, then Yes should be the result. It would violate Tropes Are Not Bad to continue using it as a trope, even as a YMMV item.
So while I disagree because it was determined by fiat and that the concept itself is wrong.... Fixing the term is not a TV Tropes project, and cleaning up "this author is bad at writing" is a project that should have begun years ago.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Mary Sue and all of its subtropes (except Parody Sue) have just been made Flame Bait after after an Ask The Tropers conversation, and need their wicks removed. There are currently over 4,000 on the site.
edited 22nd Dec '15 10:19:31 AM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?