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Made a combination of both writeups (note that I haven't played Deltarune so I'm just going off the descriptions and linked posts):
- The "Salt Route", a bizarre, alternate route thought up in a dream by Tumblr and Twitter user beabigshot
/y2_kazoo, involving the player collecting "salt stains" across Cyber City that would cause a dialogue option to appear in Spamton's fight that would let him join your party. What follows is essentially Snowgrave, but with Spamton, where the option for mercy outright disappears, making things go so off the rails the game outright softlocks after the fight with the Queen. The fandom became enamored with it from the surreal yet tragic premise and all the Word-Salad Horror it involves, leading to both shitposts and sincere fanart involving the concept.
So what should be done, to avoid trope bloat?
Put it under Fandom-Specific Plot. This seems a bit too detailed for a meme.
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I would agree with putting it under Fandom-Specific Plot. In the broadest sense of the word, anything that spreads about a fandom can be called a meme. So we should only list under Memetic Mutation things that are too short to mention elsewhere.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
Alright, will notify Matt R about this thread then.
Relatedly, is there a specific Administrivia page I can cite for examples of tropers adding entries to Memes pages that are just funny/popular quotes, and whose only explanations are about why the quote is liked/the context for it, but nothing about it's being used as an actual meme?
I recently deleted an example from the Deltarune page in the past that was Spamton's "Vacation to hell" quote and whose only explanation was where the quote came from, but nothing about how the fandom uses it as a meme. Another editor (not the person who originally posted it) then posted it with the explanation again saying nothing about how it's used as a meme, merely that it's popular because it's a Shout-Out to Undertale.
But I can't take it down a second time without causing an edit war, so I've PM'd them for now about avoiding entries that are just funny/memorable quotes. I don't know if they'll respond otherwise.
Edited by AlleyOop
So Matt R has not responded to me, and other users are continuing to edit the Salt Route entry on the Meme page, even though we've decided that it doesn't belong there anymore.
Can someone else take the entry down for? Or, do I have permission to do it myself without risking an Edit War ban over it?
Zapped it for ya!
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The classic Zero-Context Example.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Alright. I'd like to have this entry removed:
- "TOO MANY EXCESS VACATION DAYS?? TAKE A GOD DAMN VACATION STRAIGHT TO Hell" Explanation
I already deleted a version of it posted by Clint East Bacon, but The Merger Magikoopa posted it again, without doing anything to add the right kind of context. Again, I'd like to delete it, but can't without risking a ban for Edit Warring. I've messaged them about it but have gotten no response from them back. Can someone do that for me, or do I have permission to do it myself? I will add a note of some kind to prevent further quote-spamming on the page.
For the purpose of avoiding an Edit War, I'd like to get some kind of consensus about the Deltarune Salt Route and which page it better belongs on. To give some brief context, the Salt Route is an idea based off a dream a fan had about the game and shared to Tumblr about the Breakout Character Spamton, which has since spun out into a popular collaborate fan AU with its own evolving storyline elements, fanart, and headcanons. Currently, we have two similar entries for the Salt Route on separate pages, one on the YMMV page under Fandom-Specific Plot, and one under the Memes page.
Personally I'm of the opinion that the Salt Route, being a proper fan narrative with its own set of storytelling tropes, fits better under the former. Matt R contests my deletion of it from the page latter with the justification that something similar happened with "Prunsel" for Undertale (a fan character who also came from a dream). However, I'd argue that they're not quite the same, as Prunsel is a fan character, and most content of Prunsel I've come across is one-offs which are more likely to parody the game's tendency for Fandom-Specific Plot and Recurring Fanon Character than to be one in earnest. Hence, despite both being ideas from dreams who then became popular with the fandom, Prunsel's fan manifestation is closer to the conventional concept of a meme than the Salt Route AU, which I'd describe as closer to a collaborate fanfiction universe in nature. Also, the page description for Fandom-Specific Plot does acknowledge its relationship with Memetic Mutation while being distinct from it.
Regardless of what tropers decide, I think we need to pick a single page to put it on and keep it there, for the sake of avoiding redundancy through pointless splitting. Or, if we're going to have both, then at least make it so the duplicate entry on Deltarune is not quite so long and excessively verbose.
Edited by AlleyOop