badly needs editing: Loads And Loads Of Characters

The description for this is just... bad. The sentences don't flow into each and overall it feels "butchered", as if someone just went through randomly deleting lines or moving them. I assume this actually happened at some point, possibly when it was being discussed for repair a while ago. Anyway, I think it's unreadable now, but I'm not a good enough editor to fix it.

I agree, the description doesn't feel that great. In fact, you could say that it's trying to be a Self-Demonstrating Article.

...Because it has a lot of letters.

But yeah, I'd say cut more than an angry barber, why is so much needed for a trope whose title is Exactly What It Says on the Tin?

I think its mostly the case that there is a lot of different options and related concepts to Loads And Loads Of Characters, and various editors along the way have added to that list. It would probably benefit by taking the first paragraph and making it the initial definition, then making a list of those options and concepts.

The paragraph that needs to stay most intact is the one about what qualifies for the trope. It came about from an older discussion from people adding an example with a cast of 4 or 5 with another half-dozen people who show up Once a Season, which is not really what the trope is about.

I cleaned it up a bit, removing some of the unnecessary bits. How's it look now?

Looks much better. Now the examples need to be gone through to clean up the ones which cite some astoundingly high number of characters, most of whom are minor or short-term, rather than main, recurring characters.

I was reading over this, and thought of a potential idea for a split in this trope.

There's a distinct difference, to me, between works that have loads of characters interacting within a single work (e.g., Catch 22, Lord Of The Rings) versus loads of characters in a larger universe where works focus on only a few people at a time or where there's a high attrition rate (e.g., Doctor Who, Discworld, Heroes). The latter kind for me are interesting; the former, on the other hand, can be quite difficult to keep up with and make me wish that grep existed for books and movies.

Anyone else have similar thoughts?

Edit: Also, how the heck does one add a "Split This Thing" to a page that already has a "Badly Needs Editing"?

edited 19th Feb '11 9:27:10 PM by CodeMan38

I dunno, Doctor Who's a possible exception, but most shows with characters that enter and leave still utilise a large cast.

edited 30th Mar '11 1:22:39 PM by OldManHoOh

I don't think that these are different tropes. If the latter variation would apply to all works that have Character Of The Week new characters in every episode, that is already covered by that index, the fact that this gives us a large number of characters is just a logical side-effect.

It should only apply to works that have an unusually large character per content ratio, and that is the same for Long Runners and single unit stories.

Clock set. If there's more to do, get on it. If it's done, holler for a lock.

Locking for lack of action.