Talk:Shaman

Don't class the Paper Mario characters as Shaman
The only link that seems to be here is they look vaguely similar. That's it. That's the only evidence to suggest that Merlon, Merlee, Merluvlee, Nolrem, and all the other lot are all Shamen. No in game dialogue, no supplementary material, nothing. Just raw speculation. This, honestly, is just absurd; we're a wiki for what's concrete and canon, not for haphazard speculation. And it's especially bad in this case, too, since SMRPG and Paper Mario are two completely different series, made by two completely different developers.

I don't know what we'll disjoint their species off to if this passes, but I know this; it shouldn't be this article, because nothing states they're actually Shamen.

Proposer: Deadline: September 30th, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) - There is not one statement in these games that suggests they are shamen. Not one. This honestly only makes me question how on earth this was undetected for so long.
 * 2) - Yeah, the SMRPG characters and enemies appear to have different roles than the unrelated Paper Mario characters.
 * 3) I believe all the non-Mario-related characters and enemies belong or belonged to Square Enix, which is exactly why Paper Mario turned out to be more of a spiritual successor rather than a true sequel. Given that situation, it becomes a leap to say that Merlon and co. are directly members of the Shaman race. Due to this likely copyright barrier coupled with the fact that the Paper Mario series does not refer to the original Super Mario RPG species at all, I think the article should just be amended to only note the similar designs of these characters, and keep info a bit stricter rather than loose.

Oppose

 * 1) See my reasoning below.
 * 2) Paper Mario 64 originally began as a sequel to Super Mario RPG, and as a result, it has a lot of callbacks and references to that game. Keeping that in mind, and considering that the Paper Mario wizards look exactly like Shamans, there's no good reason to arbitrarily treat them as different.
 * 3) Per all.
 * 4) Per all, especially since they're more commonly NPCs than enemies.
 * 5) Per all.
 * 6) Per all.
 * 7) The current classification seems fine.
 * 8) Per all.

Comments
Paper Mario actually began as a sequel to Super Mario RPG. 14:05, 16 September 2017 (EDT)

We could just remove the Paper Mario stuff altogether. 14:07, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * If we do that, what species are they then? The closest match we have is Shaman. They can't be Flip-Flop Folk as the infoboxes proclaim. We can say they are those by nationality, kind of like me living in the United States and calling me an American, but I am of European descent. -- 15:52, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * My original comment was seeing if maybe we could call the Paper Mario ones, but then I wondered if they were actually called that in the game. Are they? Second question, is this page meant to be about the shaman class/trait/job/whatever as a whole? If so, I may change my vote. 21:35, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Flip-Flop Folk wouldn't even work, seeing as how over half the Shaman NPCs appeared in PM64/TTYD. Niiue (talk) 17:00, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * @Alex Why do you keep referring to this as an "enemy?" Yes, it appears as an enemy at one point in the game, but normally they're NPCs, like the one that sells items near the sea and the one that runs the jumping minigame at Land's End. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 17:30, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Because I goofed, that's why. :P 21:35, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Keep in mind that we already have a system in place if we don't know the actual species... we simply put it as "Unknown" in those cases.  ~Camwood777  (talk)  19:31, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Unfortunately, Shaman is more descriptive than unknown. The strongest piece of evidence to support the Shaman claim is what said. -- 21:31, 16 September 2017 (EDT)

One thing that *maaaayyy* need to be handled is the characters no longer resembling Shamans later on. In the early Paper Mario games, they all take design elements from the SMRPG species – hooded robes, shadowed face with visible eyes, Star Point-like jewel on the cloak etc. However their designs ended up deviating from that—see the female ones like Merlee and Merluvlee in Super Paper Mario for example, who have much less visual similarities with Shamans. That and the fact that they are implied to be not the same characters across different games, so are they different species? I admit I might be splitting hairs over this whole thing. 21:08, 18 September 2017 (EDT)

Does anyone have the Mario Story Adventure Guide (the Japanese official guide, published by Shogakukan)? I think that if a connection is officially made between Shamans and those Paper Mario characters, we should find it there.--Mister Wu (talk) 20:53, 19 September 2017 (EDT)
 * That's a good question. Note that the Japanese name is something like "Spell" (maybe slightly off), so if it indeed refers to it as that, it would be a very specific way to refer to them. What I can confirm off-hand is that the Paper Mario Player's Guide never refers to them with the term "Shaman" - the closest is "Magician" at a few points. For example, on page 38: "When you reach the end of the alley, Merlee the Magician will appear." I really take it to mean they were probably intended to be copyright-friendly counterparts of Shamen more than anything. LinkTheLefty (talk) 20:20, 28 September 2017 (EDT)