Talk:Paper Mario (character)

Mentions

Referencing the other games Paper Mario appeared in, even cursorily, ought to be at least mentioned, if not covered in great detail. Using only Paper Jam content makes it sound more like Paper Mario was created from wholecloth (metaphorically) than having been established prior. I liked how Anonymous added it, and was planning to do that myself. Phineas81707 (talk) 21:24, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Well there's the "Mario was previously depicted as Paper Mario in the four Paper Mario series games." blurb at the beginning of the page, but it sounds strange and doesn't explain to the reader why the article is set up to only talk about Paper Jam (spoiler: it was a community vote.

I agree in that there should probably a blurb among the lines of "Mario was depicted in this form in the previous paper mario games but this article only deals about his appearance as an individual character in Paper Jam [because]. The Transformers Wiki frequently "talks to the reader" to explain its coverage decisions (for example). Why can't we do that, again? --Glowsquid (talk) 21:42, 25 February 2016 (EST)

The proposal about how to cover these subjects is here, btw. Basically, the previous Paper Marios were using the paper stuff as a style but it was still regular Mario, whereas in M&L:PJ, we now have a separate Paper Mario character interacting with regular Mario. This follows the same logic as Metal Mario (form) and Metal Mario (character). It also avoids retroactively claiming the Paper Mario series was set in a pocket dimension paper world that didn't exist until the writing of M&L:PJ, which is breaking policy against speculation and stringing games together into a cohesive narrative that doesn't actually exist. It's also the easiest yet still consistent way to deal with all the info from both M&L:PJ and all the Paper Mario games. For full explanations for all these points, see the proposal. Anyway, I rewrote the intro to make it a bit more clear how we're making a distinction, but without getting into a fourth-wall-breaking discussion of our policies or whatever. - Walkazo 22:30, 25 February 2016 (EST)

"But there is no indication that those games took place within the book"

Doesn't every Paper Mario game start off with a book?