Salvageable, or to be cut?: Characters.Yume Nikki

This page was cutlisted, but I'm reluctant to cut such a large character page without prior discussion. It is a bit of a mess. I haven't played this game, but I understand it's quite minimalistic. Is there sufficient content to justify the existence of a character page, or is this page pointless?

I've played it, and I personally think there's no point in a character page. The protagonist is the only one who could possibly merit a list of tropes. All the other characters are minor, and pretty much only qualify for Appearance Tropes as they have no dialogue and very little in terms of actions. Heck, even the names are just fanon.

But we'll see what other people say.

edited 9th Apr '11 9:24:06 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

I don't see a reason to cut it, looking at the page. Appearance tropes are tropes, too. It looks kind of stubby, because of all the characters who have empty listings right now, but it's had 11 edits from four different contributors in the last month, not counting the page-blank and restore-content pair from vivinyan and Fast Eddie. That's not bad performance.

Madrugada: The problem is that there's nothing to say about those characters. They're not simply empty — what the page currently contains is absolutely every detail available on them (and even the names are just fan nicknames.) The game has no dialog and virtually no text, of course, but even beyond that, almost none of the characters listed actually take any actions — most of them are simply immobile. They have no characterization and, essentially, amount to little more than fancy-looking furniture.

For example, Uboa is a fan nickname for a scary face that flashes on the screen during one of the game's Easter eggs (something like a 1/64 chance of appearing under certain very specific circumstances.) That's it — that's his sole canonical appearance, and there's absolutely no other references to him anywhere in the game. This is typical for the other characters in the list — generally, they're parts of the scenery, appearing in only one area, which fans of the game have dissected in Wild Mass Guessing to try and figure out their significance (hence, inventing fan nicknames to refer to them.) They're not really characters, though — nobody except the protagonist has any characterization at all.

Cutlist it. The game doesn't really give enough information on any characters aside from the protagonist to actually produce a list of tropes for them. It's bad enough that (given that all the names there aside from the protagonist's are fan nicknames) someone reading it who isn't already familiar with the fandom's various nicknames for things probably wouldn't be able to identify anyone on that list aside from the main character, even if they've completed the game already.

Also, the categories only seem to represent random fan theories. There's absolutely nothing in the game to indicate that Uboa is a 'good guy', say — it's just a scary face that flashes on the screen for a few seconds.

edited 9th Apr '11 6:37:55 PM by Aquillion

Seriously, it may be too much to call them "characters" (besides Madotsuki). Many are not more than decorations (like the Onsen guy, who does absolutely nothing (like many characters there) and is only considered a character because he has an eye and a mouth) while others trigger an effect for no discernible reason (like a girl with a perpetual grin, who pretty much acts as a teleporter).

tl;dr: What Aquillion said.

edited 9th Apr '11 5:50:55 PM by Nyarly

The characters other than the PC really are just scenery shaped like characters. They literally don't say or do anything and they don't have names.

Wait... why the hell are "Romantic" Two-Girl Friendship, Three Amigos and Love Triangle listed on there (under "Others"?). Love Triangle doesn't explain which characters it refers to, "Romantic" Two-Girl Friendship refers to the protagonist and another female character you briefly interact with (if you can even call it "interact"), and the characters listed under Three Amigos are never seen together.

edited 10th Apr '11 3:32:46 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

The page appears to be mostly or entirely composed of Fanon. We've already established this.

The one remaining mystery is why so many tropes have been made up for this thing.

Delete. The main page can comfortably contain the character tropes.

^^^Oh, wow. I didn't even notice. It's worse than I thought.

^^Because the game takes place in a character's dreams, making it bait for practitioners of Armchair Psychology.

edited 10th Apr '11 9:29:45 AM by INUH

I think, we can be glad that there is no Rape as Backstory entry under Madotsuki.

Maybe we could keep the more icon-like such as Uboa? But most characters are hardly characters.

Uboa may be iconic, but he is possibly even less of a character than some of the other... entities in the game. He is a scary face that flashes briefly on the screen. He has no characterization; he doesn't do anything.

This is nothing but Memetic Mutation, Fanon, and Wild Mass Guessing. I say move the few actual characterization tropes over to the main page and cut this.

Has this not been cutlisted yet?

Edit: Apparently not. I went ahead and did it myself - now we'll wait and see if the inscrutable will of the cutmasters agrees with this thread.

edited 25th May '11 7:27:57 PM by nrjxll

Aaaaaand the page has been cut.

Calling for a lock.