Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sylar

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 22:59, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Sylar

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Sylar (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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The page is just a plot with little to establish notability, everything in the article is interviwews and episode reviews Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 22:10, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Science fiction and fantasy, and Television. Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 22:10, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
• Provisional Keep If you add the qualifier "heroes" to the Google Scholar search, the first six entries appear to be independent, non-trivial scholarly sources--books and journal articles. If you can examine and rebut all at least five of them, I will consider changing my !vote. Jclemens (talk) 02:38, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
• Delete: Largely unsourced fancruft. Fails GNG. If in the future sources for an article are written, a new article can be written. This has so much WP:OR/SYNTH fancruft any new article will need WP:TNT to clear the way.  // Timothy :: talk  21:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  @TimothyBlue No WP:ATD-R even...? Why delete, not redirect? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:14, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. I concur this is to weak right now, but the odds are sources may exist, he was a major antagonist (and later IIRC protagonist?) of a long-running and popular series that isn't too forgotten yet. I am swamped right now with other stuff, but I exped Siroxo or Daranios can find some stuff. A quick GScholar search suggests there is hope. Ping me if sources are found (or not...) and I'll be happy to cast a proper vote. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:14, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for the ping. I do see SIGCOV for this character in academic and educational books:

  1. Don Adams, Chapter 14 of Introducing Philosophy Through Pop Culture, Wiley. (also published by Wiley in Heroes and Philosophy) This chapter has a subsection titled "The Virtue that Sylar Lacks" and discusses the subject in depth. Examples:

     ... Since Sylar is unable to control this hunger – it rules him – Sylar is intemperate.
     Plato argued that intemperance makes one immoral. Sylar, again, is a perfect example.... Sylar does not merely kill for killing’s sake. He simply hungers for powers.... So, because Sylar’s hunger controls him, he ends up murdering everyone he can find who has powers. It is his intemperance – his inability to control that hunger – that makes him the villain he is.

  2. In Investigating Heroes, McFarland several essays seem to have SIGCOV. Here's an example from "'You're Broken. I Can Fix You': Negotiating Concepts of U.S. Ideology" by Torsten Caeners

     Sylar's trademark phrase, "You're broken. I can fix you," epitomizes central elements of the character's origins and development. To begin with, of course, it is evocative of Sylar's character, reminding the audience of his humble (and harmless) origin as a watchmaker....
     on a linguistic level, [the phrase] humanizes the watchmaker's promise of repairing a broken watch ... while, on the psychological level, it de-humanizes the victims in Sylar's mind....
     Sylar takes his name and thus his identity from an origin that implies both a certain level of activity and creativity — in that the brand really does produce watches — and constitutes a brand thus signifying fame and achievement.

  3. Lynette Porter's Tarnished Heroes, Charming Villains and Modern Monsters, McFarland

     Along the way, Sylar tries to become a less gray villain or even a hero with a decidedly shady past, but a confrontation always leads to his becoming a darker villain than ever. [Examples precede and follow]

     and

     ... reminds viewers that Evil can take many forms, from logical to threatening to seductive, in order to sway heroes from the path of goodness. Sylar more closely resembles a Judeo-Christian Satan figure through these scenes. He is persistent, intelligent, manipulative, falsely benign, seductive, alluring. He uses whatever tactic will work in order to make heroes doubt themselves or their cause. Although Sylar doesn't convince Claire to join forces with him, he does succeed in making her doubt herself and to be wary of anyone in whom she can confide. He "wins" in this encounter, although no one dies.

  4. Daniel Whiting's "Is Abrams’s Star Trek a Star Trek Film?" in The Philosophy of J.J. Abrams, University Press of Kentucky:

     Quinto, was previously best known for playing ... the serial killer Sylar in Heroes. This casting decision is extremely suggestive.... Another ... way in which Quinto’s previous role as Sylar has resonance with respect to his role in Star Trek is that, like Kirk and ... Spock, Sylar’s lineage is a complex matter.
     [extended comparison ensuses]
     ... The important point for present purposes is that the near-bewildering array of issues concerning Sylar’s lineage and the resultant uncertainty about his relationship to his apparent predecessors surely informed, or at least casts an interesting light on, the decision to cast Quinto as Spock.

  5. Saving The World by Lynnette Porter, David Lavery and Hillary Robson, ECW Press, eg:

     Sylar is faced with a similar inner conflict. He begins the series as a rather unremarkable fellow who repairs watches, a debut that matches Jon Osterman’s in Watchmen. Both Sylar and Osterman likewise gain tremendous power. Audiences do not see Sylar rise to the godlike dimensions of Osterman/Dr. Manhattan, but his power is potentially limitless. He confronts a power greater than his own, that of fate.

     and

     [Sylar, né Gabriel Gray] likes to “blow his own horn” about his achievements in order to gain his mother’s approval and lives in the gray world of mediocrity and moral ambiguity until he develops the ability to gain others’ superpowers.
     ...
     Heroes also presents some redeeming qualities in each or tries to rationalize their behavior. After all, if Gabriel hadn’t come from a dysfunctional family and desperately needed approval to feel special, he might not have turned into an (apparently) brain-eating murderer.

  —siroχo 22:58, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  @Siroxo Nice. Consider my vote now keep. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:44, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Meets WP:GNG per my reply above. —siroχo 22:59, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

• Neznám pravidla anglické Wikipedie, znám jenom českou Wikipedii. Ale Elle Bishopová byla jen vedlejší postava ve druhé řadě a v první polovině třetí řady, a přitom článek Elle Bishop se stal dobrým článkem. Sylar byl jednou z nejdůležitějších postav celého seriálu, která herce Zacharyho Quinta proslavila po celém světě a která byla zařazena mezi nejlepší fiktivní vrahy, jak je uvedeno v článku, a která zřejmě inspirovala další fiktivní postavy (kněz a vrah Guillermo Ortiz ze seriálu Doteky osudu), a článek Sylar má být smazán? Směšné… Omlouvám se za češtinu, neumím anglicky. (Překlad z češtiny do angličtiny od Překladače Google / Translation from Czech to English by Google Translate: I don't know the rules of the English Wikipedia, I only know the Czech Wikipedia. But Elle Bishop was only a minor character in series two and the first half of series three, and yet the Elle Bishop article became a good article. Sylar was one of the most important characters of the entire series, which made the actor Zachary Quinto famous all over the world, and who was ranked among the best fictional killers, as mentioned in the article, and who apparently inspired other fictional characters (priest and murderer Guillermo Ortiz from the series Touches of Fate) , and the Sylar article to be deleted? Ridiculous… Sorry for the Czech language, I don't know English.) --Marek Genius (talk) 10:55, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
• Keep Sources suggested by Jclemens and laid out by Siroxo are enough to establish notability in my view. The nomination only refers to the status of the article as it is now, which is not the decisive factor as explained in WP:ARTN. The WP:BEFORE search required for a deletion nomination should have included a thorough look at accessible sources. Daranios (talk) 15:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.