Talk:Dazzler

Dazzler was not created by Chris Claremont or John Bryne. She was created by a comittee of editors and writers, and Claremont and Bryne were asked to put her in a story. Can people stop undoing my edits. Thank you

I removed the following from the article because I don't think RPG stats belong in Wikipedia. Since large numbers of these "vital stats" sections have been added to various articles, I'm using Talk:Strength level (comics) to discuss this issue in general. Bryan 08:12, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Real Name: Alison Blaire
• Group affiliations: X-Men, Gladiators (former)
• Aliases: Dazzler, Disco Dazzler, Lightengale, Sandy Blossom
• Height: 5 ft. 8 in.
• Weight: 115 lbs.
• Eyes: Blue
• Hair: Blond
• Source of powers: Benevolent mutation.
  • Energy Projection: Vast
  • Other powers: Alison is blessed with the ability to transform sonic vibrations into various types of light. Her powers encompass the entire spectrum of light and range of sound, but she prefers to use music to create her lightshows. She can create many things with her light, such as the typical lightshows she uses at performances, tight laser beams that can cut through steel, a protective laser force field, and with great effort, even holograms. Her potential to convert sound into light is infinite, with the one restriction being that she cannot, for unknown reasons, use her own voice to create light.
    • Strengths: Her body, especially her eyes, protects itself against any injury that would be caused by the light she generates, or any bright light. Loud noises also do not affect her, due to her absorption of them. She can also store sound to use in the future.
    • Weaknesses: When in a vacuum, there is no sound present, and the Dazzler cannot gather sound in order to use her powers. She also gradually loses any stored sound she has, leading to a total loss of power.

Why not? Some people want to know basic information about the characters, such as powers and how they're used. I can understand removing height, weight, etc, but I think the description of the powers is very useful and encyclopediac (Sp?) If I wanted to know who a character was, I'd certainly want to know what exactly she could do with her powers. PMC 00:58, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The major problem I have with these stats blocks is that they're based on information from a roleplaying game. Even if that game was "official", it's not like it's particularly binding on the authors of the comic or any other derivative works; they don't have to "roll for success" or anything like that when they have their characters do stuff. As such, trying to create some sort of objective ranking of what these characters can do is quite futile - all one can do is come up with a subjective opinion of how strong they are, at some particular time. Consider for example how Superman's abilities have changed over time; originally he couldn't fly, had no special vision powers, etc. Later on, all kinds of wacky abilities got added and subtracted and changed over time. He's died, split into four versions, ressurrected, been retconned multiple times... Superman isn't consistent within his own comic, and he isn't consistent across media; various cartoon, movie, and television show versions of him all have different levels of strength and different abilities. It all depends very heavily on who's writing the story and what the plot requires.

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea in general to describe a character's powers in the article on them. However, trying to reduce it all to a single stat block like this is misleading at best; it's only a snapshot of a particular person's opinion of the character at a particular point in time. That's why I didn't simply delete the stat blocks, but instead moved them to talk:. Some of the information from them can be incorporated into the text of the article. Bryan 03:07, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What are you talking about? This isn't from an RPG, this is derieved straight from the comic. I don't even know if there are any X-Men RPG's. As well, your comparison to Superman is fairly worthless - Superman is a DC Comics character; Dazzler is a Marvel Comics mutant, and Marvel characters are generally consistent in their powers. As far as I know, the Dazzler has always been posessed of the powers listed here; there have been no major changes. The same goes for most Marvel characters - Wolverine has always had a healing factor and claws, Spiderman has always had webs and wall-crawling, and Storm has always been a weather-witch.

A power stated in a Marvel book is likely to remain, and thus it makes sense to include such information in quick blocks - what if someone didn't really care about the character's life history and only wanted a quick reference to what a particular character was capable of? Much easier to give them a quick summary at the bottom of the page. One of the main things people want to know is what a character can do with their abilities. They usually don't want a full life history, and certainly don't want to dig through a whole article just to find tidbits on the powers. Giving a quick, concise definition of abilities is very useful, and should be retained. PMC 03:57, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean "derived straight from the comic"? Derived how, and by whom? Marvel characters do change too, for example Wolverine got the adamantium ripped out of him a while back, and Angel/Archangel had his wings amputated and replaced. I used Superman as an example simply because everyone knows him and how he's changed over the years. Bryan 04:22, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Folks - Bryan started this discussion over on Talk:Strength level (comics) and that seems like a more reasonable venue than this one. I'm copying the conversation to there and adding to it. - UtherSRG 04:37, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)