Editing Talk:Birdo

== Resplit Birdo (species) ==

I have 15 rebuttals to arguments I've seen from other users against splitting [[Birdo]] and {{fake link|Birdo (species)}}.

#{{User|Rykitu}} I agree with FanOfYoshi

#{{User|Nelsonic}} Primary opinion. Per all.

===Oppose===

#{{User|Koopa con Carne}} I'd support splitting the SMB2 Birdo bosses individually, and I'd support covering other appearances of these color variants on the resultant pages [[Talk:White Shy Guy#Reverse the above proposal|in whatever manner the community decides it is done for the white and black Shy Guys]]. Outside of SMB2, non-pink Birdos barely have anything going for them collectively that warrant a separate page from Birdo. Yoshis may fulfill various [[Yoshi (species)#Super Mario World|gameplay]], [[Yoshi (species)#Club Nintendo|narrative]], and [[Yoshi (species)#Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time|speaking roles]] that set them apart from the green Yoshi. Birdos (plural) most often appear as mere duplicates of *the* pink Birdo, either acting exactly the same as her or being there just to fill in a non-speaking NPC role, and it really doesn't help how recent games follow a trend of referring to them using bracket identifiers like "Birdo (Red)". The only game I can think of that confers Birdo colors some crucial distinctions, gameplay-adjacent or not, is Mario Kart Tour, where each color Birdo is given a set of favored courses and (maybe) a special item--but that's a moot basis for a split, because that game effectively relies on giving each individual playable skin its own set of attributes distinct from the base character. To me, separating Birdo the character and Birdo the species would feel like singling out the Dry Bones character you play as in spin-offs, or [[Talk:Boom Boom (species)#Merge this with Boom Boom|extrapolating that Boom Boom is a species of its own]].

#{{User|Mario}} Probably worthwhile to check how [[Metal Mario]] is organized, which used to also try to split between character and powerup to rather confusing results, see [[Talk:Metal Mario]]. Currently, it's a much more straightforward page that focuses on Metal Mario as a more abstract concept without needing to try to distinguish between the ambiguous identities of powerup vs. character while leaving interpretation of what Metal Mario actually is up to the reader, not taking a stance, which is more in-spirit to how the developers use these character. I think that page is better for this. There was a similar case for Boom Boom as well. I wouldn't be opposed to a similar idea of Yoshi, Yoshis; Toad, Toads though the resulting pages are probably going to be huge. At least when a red-spotted Toad is there, there'll be less issue trying to sort it into a Toad species article or The Toad article or just both.

===Comments===

Since the primary argument by the supporters seems to be "consistency with Yoshi and Toad", I'd like to again point out that there are far more cases of these character/species things not being split, such as [[Wiggler]], [[Boom Boom]], [[Draggadon]], [[Talk:Koopa (Mario Party DS)#Merge to Koopa Troopa|this Koopa]], [[Talk:Hammer Bro (Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time)#Merge to Hammer Bros. (mach deux)|that Hammer Bro]], [[MarioWiki:Proposals/Archive/59#Re-merge the Mario Party Advance "generic species representative character" articles back into their respective "species" articles|the Mario Party Advance characters]], and [[Dorrie]] and [[Koopa Kid]] (those two even have unique colours like Birdo), as well as pretty much every time a generic representative of a species appears as a singular playable character or boss in a spin-off. How is Birdo different from all of those? Also, while not super common, Yoshi and Toad have had a few official mentions of the character/species distinction, such as "[[List of Yoshi profiles and statistics#Yoshi's Crafted World|There’s Yoshi, and then there are all the other Yoshis]]" and "[[List of Toad profiles and statistics#Play Nintendo|In a kingdom full of Toads, there is only one “Toad”]]", while Birdo has never had something like that to my knowledge. {{User:Hewer/sig}} 11:38, February 7, 2025 (EST)

:The key difference is that Birdo was established as a singular character first and as a species later. I know, I know, doesn't seem big, but take it from the perspective that on first introduction, those characters listed are clearly enemies and we can see multiples of them at a time, or they're the odd case of Dorrie where there was only one originally, but there were clearly multiples and they were referred to in the plural form in ''Odyssey'' (or Draggadon too). Funnily enough, I saw a jokingly-toned video recently about our [[MIPS]] page and they were complaining that we mention "multiple MIPS can be seen on [[Woody Woods]]" even though MIPS is meant to be a singular character and not a species, while we mention "multiple owls resembling [[Hoot]]" for a similar background asset. These just go to show that the order of introduction does matter to a degree, at least until it's very conflictingly shown. For example, I also mentioned the examples of multiples of [[Donkey Kong Jr.]], [[Toadsworth]], [[Petey Piranha]], and [[Toadette]], but these were almost all one-off incidents. But if these had continued to recur and conflict with what we know, then it would be appropriate to rebrand them to species or something along those lines. The point is, I think it's fair to make the distinction that there is a Birdo and many Birdos, but it's still better to keep them on the same page. (Also as a minor note, all the ''[[Super Mario Party Jamboree]]'' character bios, from wherever they were pulled, very clearly refer to the enemy characters using plurals, but Yoshi, Toad, and Birdo in the singular. Just a little something that shows the official bio collators are at least considering Birdo as the individual.) [[User:MarioComix|MarioComix]] ([[User talk:MarioComix|talk]]) 01:17, February 8, 2025 (EST)