Misused: Peggy Sue

Narratively, GPS is simply GDL played as if if were Peggy Sue.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

REALLY explain this, because "Groundhog Peggy Sue is simply "Groundhog Day" Loop played as if it were Peggy Sue" reads like "squares are rectangles played like a trapezoid" or "green is blue played as if it were red".

This entire thread, you've been saying "going back in time once or more to an earlier point in your timeline" contains "taking possession of your younger body", which contains "going back in time once", which contains "going back in time multiple times".

edited 11th Jul '17 10:09:02 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

What's it count as if the character thinks they only have this one opportunity to change the past, but near the end of the story they get a second do-over?

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

That's part of what we have to decide.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Got a ping about this thread because I participated in the original one.

This trope is a definitely a problem.

It seems to me we have the following related tropes pretty solid:

Mental Time Travel : The means by which time travel occurs. Basically, you are "re-living" your life.

"Groundhog Day" Loop : When the mental time travel is constantly repeating until you "get it right" (Limited to one day?)

Set Right What Once Went Wrong : The motive/goal for the time travel

Save Scumming : Which is a video game mechanic, and sort of mimics Mental Time Travel but allows for the user to pick save points to start from, etc.

Then we have the troublesome tropes:

Peggy Sue : Mental Time Travel to Set Right What Once Went Wrong usually involving going back to childhood and/or major life turning point to relive your life with prior knowledge.

Groundhog Peggy Sue : "Groundhog Day" Loop longer than a day

First problem is that the the name Peggy Sue is obscure (compare it to Groundhog Day in pop culture awareness levels).

There are also some other issues:

1: What is the difference between Peggy Sue and Mental Time Travel?

Near as I can tell, the main differences are that:

A. Peggy Sue is always mental time travel back to your own body (no Grand Theft Me ala Sam Beckett).

B. Peggy Sue is really about reliving your life. Only "doing it right" this time.

So it's basically a common fantasy "If I could redo my life." Thus it is always about transporting back to either childhood or a key moment of your life.

Prime examples would be Peggy Sue (the movie) and Tapestry (the Star Trek Next Generation episode).

So why not call it something like Re Life or Life Redo?

Then we have a pretty solid trope. It's always Mental Time Travel to your own body so you can "relive" your life.

Some issues that still need considering:

What about a movie like The Family Man which is essentially this plot line, but it's only temporary and the character has to return to his main life? So it's more An Aesop about What Might Have Been if you had made a different choice in your life. Is that also this trope? I ask because I noticed The Family Man was not on the examples list.

It feels pretty similar. It's the same "what if you could relive your life" question, but one that melancholy answers "but you can't."

Also, what if it's not really about reliving your life, but resetting to a major turning point in the ongoing plot? What I'm thinking of is the Scott Pilgram example where he gets an "extra life" and restarts at the last level. That seems more like a video game mechanic being cited rather than this trope. In fact it really feels like a rare example of Save Scumming outside of a video game.

It's purpose is different too. It's not about "what would you do if you could relive your life" it's about a "Oh no! The hero lost! What happens now?" plot twist. It's a very different storytelling trope. It seems to me to have more in common with Superman turning back time in Superman II than it does with Peggy Sue examples.

A similar example would be the Star Trek Generations where Picard is trying to save the world, and fails in the climactic fight. Only he is sucked into the nexus, and is thus able to time travel backwards to just redo the climactic fight (after recruiting Kirk to come help him). (This movie is mostly notable for the Dropped a Bridge on Him trope.)

These actually pretty noticeably different from the other Peggy Sue examples, since pretty much the whole plot of the story in other examples is all about reliving your life, while in this case it's only a small section of the film that has the time travel plot device to punch up the dramatic tension at the end.

Compare it to for example Madoka Magica. The whole show of Madoka Magica takes place within the time loop.

So maybe that should also be a requirement for Peggy Sue, the whole story (film, episode, book, whatever) has to be about the time travel (with some space granted for a short set up of the scenario). Cases where the time travel is just for a short portion of the story (like in Star Trek Generations) would not be this trope. (Since those scenarios are not about "reliving your life.")

2: Is Groundhog Peggy Sue even necessary? Is it really important to differentiate between a single day and multiple days? At which point does a story shift between the two? Can't a story be just both a Peggy Sue and a "Groundhog Day" Loop? (Like Madoka Magica which right now is on all three pages).

So based on that analysis, I think I'd lean towards narrowing the Peggy Sue trope to be about getting a "redo" on your life (either by traveling back to childhood, or by reliving a key moment - like a decision to marry), and then be renamed to reflect that focus.

I'd also suggest cutting Groundhog Peggy Sue. If I remember right, it was only created because someone felt "Groundhog Day" Loop had to be limited to a single day because of the word "day" in the trope title. With the addition of the quotes to make it clear that Groundhog Day" Loop is referring to the movie, not to a day long loop, I don't see the reason for it anymore.

edited 31st Jul '17 1:18:07 AM by Sackett

Reliving a life, it does not need to be yours. IE Quantum Leap or possibly the Star Trek TNG episode Inner Light.

Most that turn out to be yours ends up as some form of Peggy Sue.

Add to the list of questions to be resolved the fact that there appears to be major disagreement over what the definition of a subtrope is. And I say "major" because a moderator is holding an interpretation that defies all precedent that I and others have seen set by TRS and Projects threads in which supertrope-subtrope relations were central to the problem they were fixing.

edited 31st Jul '17 6:43:24 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Let me define these tropes in my own words.

• Mental Time Travel: Person A mentally "takes over" Person B's body. The two people are not from the same time period, and may or may not be the same person from different time periods.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: Repeated case of Mental Time Travel, where the elapsed time between repeats is sufficiently short (usually one day, but there is no official limit). All cases of time travel, except possibly the first and last, are to the same body and the same point in time. ^note The first and last cases of time travel are excluded to allow a GDL to take place outside the time traveler's "normal" time, through "Freaky Friday" Flip or other means. This is because works that already use time travel are likely to have a GDL plot at some point.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: A time traveler's motive once arriving in the past is to change something "wrong" (from the character's perspective) into its "right" equivalent.
  • Make Wrong What Once Went Right: Morality-inverted version of Set Right What Once Went Wrong, where the audience interprets the goal of the time traveler to be "wrong". Qualifies as a subtrope, because from the character's perspective, Nazi America (or similar) is a "right" timeline.
• Save Scumming: Video game trope where the player repeatedly saves the game so they can revert back if something goes wrong. In all but the most extreme cases, this trope is non-narrative.
• Peggy Sue: Dual subtrope to Mental Time Travel + Set Right What Once Went Wrong, with the additional restriction that the time traveler must be returning to (more or less) their own younger body. ^note I say "more or less" because I don't want to disqualify certain edge cases. Unaging immortals technically wouldn't be returning to a "younger" body, but would still qualify for the trope as long as their time travel is mental and to an earlier point in their personal timeline.
  • Groundhog Peggy Sue: Dual subtrope to "Groundhog Day" Loop + Peggy Sue, though often with a longer timespan than the standard one-day GDL. Because GDL technically doesn't have a time limit, this does qualify as a subtrope to GDL.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Reasonable summaries, with two objections:

Disagree: the Set Right What Once Went Wrong element is frequent, but not omnipresent, and implies the Mental Time Travel was intentional (usually occurs outside of the character's control). The definition I've been advocating is that the time travel sends the character into their past body, and happens once. My objection here depends on the definition described above.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

First point: SRWOWW is a motive for the time traveler, not for the time travel. Accidental time travel does not disqualify an example for SRWOWW, which further means it does not disqualify an example for one of its subtropes. What would be your example of a Peggy Sue that is not also an example of SRWOWW?

Second point: Limiting Peggy Sue (the trope) to oneshot time travel is not the same as limiting Main.Peggy Sue (the page) to oneshot time travel. Any reasonable definition of Groundhog Peggy Sue would have it as a subtrope to PS, which you seem to be blocking by limiting the trope instead of the page. If PS the trope is limited to oneshot time travel, what is its relation to GPS?

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Double post, but I have another point to make.

crazysamaritan: Throughout this entire discussion, you are the only person who has actively tried to push "one shot only" as part of Peggy Sue the trope. Madrugada has also made statements supporting this definition, but has not overly held up the thread in doing so.

Because you are also the person who started this thread, it would likely appear from a neutral perspective that you are trying to redefine the trope against consensus.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

I'm with samaritan on this, actually. Just haven't said anything due to being busy.

edited 31st Aug '17 1:56:34 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

The tropenamer herself was undecided at the start, and the trope page has collected more since then. Please remember that the moral from the tropenamer was that she didn't need to change anything.

• Peggy Sue Got Married: The titular Peggy hates her life, and while attending her 20 year Class Reunion, falls unconscious. When she awakens, she's back in high school. Can she get back home? Or will she choose to start a new life and not get married?
• Time Mix Up presents four time travelers, each from a different bad future, all start from the same origin point. While each of the four tries to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, the plot gets derailed and their plans conflicts with each other. Later, another time traveler shows up, one who comes from a future where everything went peachy and needs to maintain a Close-Enough Timeline so they don't ruin things by accident.
• The Prince Of Death takes place after Light has died. The Shinigami King, wary of Kira's presence in his world, decides to send him back to his mortal life, back in time just after he should've picked up the titular notebook. Now he's reliving the story with a new Death Note and shinigami eyes, but someone else is playing Kira.

Bonus Points! From the way back machine:

• A rare non-fic example occurs in the game Final Fight One for Game Boy Advance. It's possible to unlock Alpha Guy and Alpha Cody (i.e. Guy and Cody as they appear in the Street Fighter Alpha series) as secret characters in the game, and when playing as them, their dialog shows that the whole experience is a Peggy Sue moment for them, though there isn't really a whole lot to change.

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Madrugada answered that in Post 52 "And Groundhog Peggy Sue is not a subtrope of Peggy Sue, it's a sibling trope." I presume sibling tropes because they're both subtrope to Mental Time Travel.

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Reasonable complaint. Let's look at my opening position:

• The trope description is overly narrow; focused on this being a fanfic plot when the Trope Namer was a movie utilizing this specific Mental Time Travel. We have many examples outside of fanfic, which disprove the description's contention of this being a primarily fanfic-based plot.

I'm trying to remove the fanfiction elements of the trope definition. Link to the oldest copy of the definition.

• a Peggy Sue fic gives a character, usually at the end of a story or series, the chance to go back and relive his life with the knowledge he gained from living through his story the first time.

This is what the definition looks like with those elements removed:

• a Peggy Sue plot gives a character the chance to go back and relive his life with the foreknowledge gained from living events the first time.

That definition is written in the singular (this chance, the first time). Five other tropers explicitly agree with my reading of the definition:

• Post 41, by RallyBot2, "A character is sent back in time and inhabits the body of their own past self, retaining at least part of their future knowledge. The mechanic used for this Mental Time Travel does not allow for it to be used again, or there are major repercussions for doing so."
• Post 43, Karxrida, "I'm fine with [crazysamaritan's] definition."
• Post 46, Sal Fish Fin, "I decide to change something that happened in that time, and continue to live my life whatever happens."
• Post 50, Madrugada, "ONCE only. Whatever result they get this time is what they're stuck with. No do-overs; no take-backs."
• Post 71, Another Duck, "Because there's a narrative difference between, "You get one more try," and, "You get to try until you succeed.""

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New point, based on the example search you asked for:

• Jumanji examples:
  • In the original Jumanji movie, finishing the game sends all players back to when they were as they started playing the game. Alan and Sarah spent 26 years playing the game, making it quite a shock to return.
  • In Zathura (the film), finishing this game also sends all players back to when they were as they started playing the game. While Danny's experience is pretty straightforward (a few hours of gameplay) Walter did some Time Travel within the game, giving him a few extra years of experience.

In both of these movies, the Mental Time Travel happens at the end of the story, and is used as a Reset Button for the events of the work. While some Set Right What Once Went Wrong can happen (Alan and Sarah get Judy and Peter's parents to avoid their fatal flight), most of the events from the "playing the game" timeline are too divorced from the "not playing the game" timeline for the memories to contribute to that trope. Zathura, specifically, takes less than a day to happen. How would your definition handle this use of the trope?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The fact that the description is written in the singular does not mean that the trope is currently defined as singular.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

A comment of mine was brought up, so let me clarify. IMO, Peggy Sue should be when the travel is once-only or treated that way from a narrative perspective. GPS is when the travel is multiple times, i.e. the character knows they have multiple chances to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

For example, if 2017!Spider-Man were to suddenly wake up in the body of 1967!Spider-Man, it's Peggy Sue. If he travels back for a second time and the narrative continues from that point, it becomes Groundhog Peggy Sue. If the second travel is the end of the work, it's just normal Peggy Sue with a twist ending.

To organize my thoughts I might repeat a bit, but I wanted to add a couple of things.

First of all, this really sounds like it needs to lose the fan fiction-exclusive references and be renamed to Peggy Sue Plot, or preferably something even more clear. I don't have great ideas on that, but something like Relive Life Plot. I think it should avoid the phrase time travel, since this usually isn't explicitly someone traveling through time, but some sort of cosmic force (often not well explained) simply granting the character a second chance. It's technically time travel, but in a way that's not usually relevant to the narrative.

Second, is it necessary for there to be separate tropes for Peggy Sue and Groundhog Peggy Sue? Is it narratively important or distinct to limit Peggy Sue to a single loop? Why can't Groundhog Peggy Sue examples just be on the Peggy Sue page, but with a note on those examples that they overlap with "Groundhog Day" Loop? I feel like the most important part of "Groundhog Day" Loop is that the situation repeats, that should be able to overlap with other tropes without that making distinct tropes.

Going off a previous post to help show my perspective, this is how I see it:

• Mental Time Travel: A method of time travel. Time travel in which you do not physically travel to a location in the past, but take over your body (or someone else's) from that period.

• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The way certain time travel works. A specific set of events are relived at least twice by one or more characters.

• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The goal of a time traveler. For this one, to fix something in the past.

• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: The goal of a time traveler. For this one, to alter something that was generally considered fine to begin with.

• Peggy Sue: A plot involving a specific form of Mental Time Travel. A character is given the chance to relive part of their own life with all of the knowledge they've gained since.

I think whether or not a character intends to improve their life, or whether their chance to loops, should be more down to the examples, and not the trope's definition itself. It looks like we already have, but if someone found a story in which someone was sent back to relive their life, but they aren't explicitly trying to fix things, it seems weird to say that that doesn't have a trope page it could be put on just due to that technicality. Tropes Are Not Narrow after all.

In other words, I think the key distinction of Peggy Sue Plot is that a character is given a chance to relive their own life with their current knowledge. Anything else would just be different tropes being in play in addition to it.

edited 31st Aug '17 8:54:57 PM by Jokubas

I am not aware of a more primary source for a trope's definition than the description. If there is a more authoritative source than the description, would you please provide a link so that I can read it?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The entire problem here is that the definition doesn't match what the trope is "commonly" used as.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Descriptions aren't set in stone. They're not sacred scriptures. We've had plenty of tropes before that needed extensive overhauls of badly written descriptions.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Given the entire argument right now is about the phrasing of the description, can we get a crowner going to decide what to do?

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Sure, and we get that definition from some source, like "over 50% of the wicks use this definition" or "outside of the wiki, people use it to mean this".

I've shown that the definition needs changing because the tropenamer was not a fanfiction; the description should not be focused on that medium. I've shown the oldest version of the trope was limited to one trip to the past, that the tropenamer was limited to one trip to the past, and the description was limited to one trip to the past.

I've not seen anyone that claims this trope is character goes back to a specific point in time, in their own body giving evidence that Peggy Sue is meant to be that trope. I specifically addressed you, ~Marq FJA, on page 2; Would you agree that 66% of examples that use one trip is evidence that the examples are expected to be limited to that? The corollary to that means I have to accept that if only 33% of the works use single-trip examples, then multiple times are allowed. You never responded to that post. I've not seen counter-evidence or counter-arguments. I've responded to counter-claims with evidence supporting my position.

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I propose this crowner question:

• Is one instance of Mental Time Travel to the past (within the character's body) a valid trope? This sandbox shows 50 examples that fit the definition.

edited 8th Sep '17 6:35:52 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I feel counting examples is not the right way to solve the situation, because the trope usually being one example and the trope always being one example are entirely separate concepts.

I also contend that the phrase "...gained from living events the first time" was a generalization and was not intended to disqualify cases of repeated time travel.

As a sidenote to all this, the current description for GPS is a mess, but let's focus on the "base" PS trope for now.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

~bwburke94:

I've yet to see you explain the difference between "Groundhog Day" Loop and Peggy Sue. Both are examples of Mental Time Travel, both are to the younger body of the same character. What is their distinguishing feature?

edited 12th Sep '17 9:03:54 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Peggy Sue is (usually) for a longer period of time than GDL, and explicitly involves "make things better" as a goal.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Under that logic, the previously mentioned examples belong to "Groundhog Day" Loop:

• Tropenamer Peggy Sue Got Married, because she chose a Close-Enough Timeline.
• Time Mix Up's fifth time traveller who comes from a future where everything went peachy and needs to maintain a Close-Enough Timeline so they don't ruin things by accident.
• The Prince Of Death because Light was sent to after the major change in the timeline.
• Final Fight One for Game Boy Advance, have Guy and Cody as they appear in the Street Fighter Alpha series, but there isn't really a whole lot to change.
• Jumanji examples:
  • In both of these movies, the Mental Time Travel happens at the end of the story, and is used as a Reset Button for the events of the work. While some Set Right What Once Went Wrong can happen (Alan and Sarah get Judy and Peter's parents to avoid their fatal flight), most of the events from the "playing the game" timeline are too divorced from the "not playing the game" timeline for the memories to contribute to that trope. Simply not being sucked into the game changes Alan's life.
  • Zathura, specifically, takes less than a day to happen.

What's more, Set Right What Once Went Wrong has this paragraph: What evidence can you provide that Peggy Sue explicitly requires SRWOWW?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.