Fantasy casting on character sheets

Many anime and video game pages have character sheets that list voice actors for characters. Of course I see this as a good thing, though too many of them list the voice actors as tropes, and there are at least thousands of wicks that need namespace shifting.

The issue that bothers me is that voice actors are also listed on character sheets for works of fanfiction that must only exist in written form. I have no idea whether or not such fantasy casting is permitted. I suspect that they aren't (except under Actor Allusion, Hypothetical Casting and other tropes that could actually appear in such works), but the only clue I know comes in the form of a comment on the Sengoku Basara character sheets:

It also appears that many character sheets for fanfics have been created by their own authors. If we can't let them have their fantasy casting, we should at least provide them with a considerate explanation.

I have no idea why work pages should get material that isn't in the work itself.

The Sengoku Basara note exists because there was a certain editor who had this bizarre obsession with putting his own dream cast voices on anime and video game pages.

edited 26th Jan '14 3:00:33 AM by lu127

That seems absurd on its face. The actor that you would like to be cast in a role is so utterly irrelevant to the wiki that it defies belief.

edited 26th Jan '14 6:53:27 AM by Fighteer

If the fanfic itself claims the character has that voice, I'd consider adding something about it, including context about it just being the fanfic claiming it. If it's not present in the source material, no.

I, for one, believe that fanfiction authors should at least have a right to imagination. The voice actors are general guidelines for the readers of the fanfiction to imagine what the characters sound like in any language. For example, if I said on a character sheet for my fanfiction that the Japanese voice of a certain character is performed by, say, Aya Hirano, it's a signal for the reader to imagine said character sounding like, say, Haruhi Suzumiya or Konata Izumi or Misa Amane or Lucy Heartfilia, for example. Just saying.

Is it written in the actual fic or on the TV Tropes character page?

Hypothetical Casting as dictated by Word of God (I'm assuming this is what you're talking about) sounds like something that goes on a Trivia subpage, and not main work pages or character sheets. It's not really a trope as such.

True, that. However, we don't want the Trivia sections to become abnormally large owing to the hypothesised resulting sudden influx of fanfiction voice actors into the Trivia sections of the fanfiction works in question.

Also, lately, when writing fanfiction works I've been putting voice actors in at the end of each episode, including guest performers.

edited 28th Jan '14 9:18:45 PM by ryanasaurus0077

Actors go under the character description anyway, which is essentially trivia.

If they're in the fic, I don't think there would be anything wrong with listing them as Hypothetical Casting.

edited 29th Jan '14 12:24:16 AM by AnotherDuck

Point taken.

Real people, including actors, are not tropes. Equally, fanfic authors do not earn special privileges to declare things about their work that are not evident in the work itself. If a fanfic contains Hypothetical Casting as an In-Universe phenomenon, that of course is tropable, as it would be in any work. The author daydreaming about her favorite character being voiced by George Clooney, however, is utterly irrelevant.

edited 29th Jan '14 6:26:34 AM by Fighteer

By that argument, most of the examples under Literature should be cut, because they're about the authors fantasising, not In-Universe discussion.

Hmm, I may be wrong. Reading Hypothetical Casting, it's seemingly written about the phenomenon applied by authors to their works, but if that's true, then it's not an objective trope; it's Trivia.

edited 29th Jan '14 6:58:34 AM by Fighteer

The page could probably tolerate a split:

• trivia trope: Word of God or Word of Saint Paul casts actors for their work.
• work trope: characters discuss who should be cast for them in a semifictional adaptation of their life.

edited 29th Jan '14 6:58:37 AM by crazysamaritan

It's that second, In-Universe version that I was thinking of as an actual trope, yes.

edited 29th Jan '14 6:59:12 AM by Fighteer

The page itself is using both for the examples. I think I can manage doing a Ykttw for the work trope version.

The only challenge is the name, and probably needs a TRS for that... what name would the in-universe trope use?

• Hypothetical Casting
• Cast Myself As Game
• The Actor Playing Me