Over the naming of a character on the Pokemon Characters page

I brought this up in Ask the Tropers but there was no consensus. For reference, here's the page: Characters.Pokemon Protagonists And Rivals

Pokemon Let's Go features a NPC named "Green". She's based on a prototypical design for a female playable character, which was later reused for Leaf in FRLG. Leaf was technically unnamed, with in-game data referring to her as "Leaf" but using "Terry" for Blue (I can't find what the Japanese data says, so it might be different). The name "Leaf" was (semi?) canonized for a figurine, but then a few months later Let's Go featured a new name.

So, what do we do about her? Right now the page uses both names (with "Leaf" in quotation marks), but there were some edits that tried to remove Leaf from the page. Should both names be used: Green for the Let's Go design and Leaf for the FireRed and LeafGreen one?

Or maybe they should have separate folders like Kris and Lyra?

This debate has spilled onto Bulbapedia. The "same character" side appears to have temporarily won out, but someone on the "two characters" side claims to have evidence of them being separate.

As I said earlier, I don't want to be part of the same edit war on two different wikis, so I'll wait until Bulbapedia resolves this before making any related edits.

The issue is not over a single character's name, the issue is over whether the FRLG female protagonist and the LGPE NPC are the same character to begin with, or only characters based on the same unused Generation 1 design (cf. Kris and Lyra).

On the rare occasions the unused Gen 1 character is discussed on this wiki, she has always been called "Green", for lack of a better name. This will not change regardless of any decision made on this matter.

Similarly, when talking about FRLG, the female protagonist will remain "Leaf", unless the Kotobukiya figurine ends up released with a name that isn't Leaf or Blue, and the LGPE, Adventures, etc. characters are all "Green."

—-

If the two characters are unambiguously the same individual, they will share one folder under "Green (Blue)".

If the two characters are unambiguously different individuals, Leaf gets the folder on the Pokémon Protagonists and Rivals page, with Green possibly being relegated to the "other NPCs" page (unless she gets grandfathered in to a separate folder as a rival, despite not actually filling that role.)

If, as is most likely, the situation remains ambiguous, the two might still share a folder, but it should be acknowledged that it's ambiguous (removing anything about her name being "changed" in LGPE, her Put on a Bus entry, etc.)

Bump.

There is absolutely no evidence, in games or in other media, of them being the same character, and they don't have the same Japanese name. I'm prepared to separate them if no one has a problem with it.

I happened to run across the page in question when cleaning up Zettai Ryouki, but I'm not prepared to make the change quite yet. Give me at least a few days to figure out how to separate the two.

(Also making one last attempt to contact the person on Bulbapedia who started this whole mess.)

Someone reverted your change.

I'm well aware it was reverted, and the discussion page mostly turned into a "no one can prove their side" mess.

Bumping because there is now outright evidence Leaf and Green are two separate characters, thanks to Pokémon Masters.

Confirming that the evidence actually does exist this time. Feel free to split them.

Green and Leaf are currently listed under the same folder. Why not separate them like with Kris and Lyra?

No one's bothered to split them yet. You can if you want to.

I split them a few weeks ago but they were blended together again by ~acrobox. I PM'd them.

Edited by Pichu-kun on May 5th 2020 at 8:34:27 AM

thanks for linking me to these discussions. Chiming in so that the argument is in public

The soft split is the best compromise because there's no definitive evidence whether they are or are not the same character.
in fact most evidence points to them being the same. I made a chart about this in another discussion thread: https://imgur.com/a/dANXQ65
the only real point of contention is that they have different names, but the same character can have different names in different continuities.
Version names, promo names, NPC canon names etc. Pokemon plays fast and loose with names all the time.
Until they appear in the same canon together, or there's Word Of God you can't actually say. Until then, they are both just Red's female counterpart with a single design, that rounds out the Kanto starter trio.

Edited by acrobox on May 5th 2020 at 8:40:28 AM

also Bulbapedia is a fan wiki, you can't cite their decision as proof more than any other fan site, especially when they themselves say on their page that there isn't definitive proof either way.

(This was written before I saw acrobox's posts in this thread.)

Acrobox proposed the soft split in the page's discussion... 29 minutes before they split it. There was no reasonable chance for a reply, so this is a unilateral change.

Timeline summary of changes:

• Folder title initially changed to "Green (Blue)" by acrobox on November 14, 2018
• "Leaf" added to folder title by rjd1922 on November 15, 2018
• "Leaf" removed from folder title by scoooool on November 16, 2018
• "Leaf" added to folder title by rjd1922 on November 18, 2018 (EDIT WAR; cited an ATT thread but no consensus)
• Split by bwburke94 on March 6, 2019
• Merged by Nightlingbolt on March 9, 2019
• Split by Nightlingbolt on January 28, 2020 (not an edit war, as it's a self-revert)
• Merged by acrobox on February 3, 2020
• Split by Pichu-kun on February 9, 2020
• Merged by acrobox on April 28, 2020 (EDIT WAR; direct A-B-A revert order with no reasonable discussion)

Edited by bwburke94 on May 5th 2020 at 11:45:09 AM

I asked about it in ATT and the consensus was that the two should be split until they're confirmed as the same character. It's like with Kris and Lyra— it was unknown if they were the same character until Masters stated otherwise. Masters has Leaf, not Blue, which implies she's a separate character.

This was the November 2018 ATT thread I linked to above?

Yes.

there's word of god with Kris and Lyra. And we've been through this on many different discussion threads, and different threads have swung different ways. There has never been consensus on splitting or merging, though more evidence (charts, word of God etc.) points towards merging.

I did a soft split as a compromise, as yes there is no definitive answer either way.

If this is unreasonable I will stop editing the page from here on out.

Edited by acrobox on May 5th 2020 at 1:45:59 AM

This isn't a "compromise", it's an edit war.

And what Word of God are you citing?

happy to go back and revert it to talk it out more.

I mean that it would help if you laid out your arguments in a way that necessitates more than a soft split.

Most of the evidence still points in favor of them being the same. The soft split still acknowledges the potential that they could be different, but they share almost everything in common except for their names.

Their situation has also been different from Kris and Lyra from the beginning. There's not really an equivalency here.

What evidence points to them being the same? I assume you're trying to cite their design similarities again?

From what I remember, FR/LG and HG/SS are separate continuities from R/G/B/Y(which Yellow is meant to be the true version as well) and G/S/C.

Ethan is effectively two separate characters too. Gold is pretty much who was in the original, just like with Silver. They hadn't established non-colored names yet overall. That wasn't till Ruby/Sapphire as is. In addition to that, Crystal has Kris, the first playable female character. The later games removed the "only one protagonist" as a retcon, to make it more clear. This is why Leaf and Lyra are playable in the basic versions, with no "third" version in sight.

Even the anime directly has this; Jimmy is Gold's normal counterpart, based upon Gold/Silver, with Marine as Kris' normal counterpart. This is from Pokemon Chronicles, a special season full of various canon characters, to show off stuff while Ash is busy somewhere else. Generally Orange Islands stuff.

Later on during the D/P/PT seasons, they introduce Lyra, who is a separate person entirely like in the games(which again, are alternate continuities) as well, to match her new counterpart. One movie has Ethan appear(and worth noting his Japanese name is not the same name as Jimmy's either, but Ethan's specifically). In other words, despite Gold having two very similar counterparts, they're separated too.

So yeah, I'd say hard split since they're different characters overall. Note that these anime appearances are directly tied into advertising the latest games. HG/SS got barely any episodes too, while G/S/C got more with Legend of Thunder, even if it's only like one or two more, during Pokemon Chronicles.

That said, if you're going to cite word of God, you need to actually cite it that they're the same character. Keep in mind it's possible for a character to be based upon another, and it happens all the time in Pokemon. Lyra and Ethan are practically an Ash situation here.

Exactly. Saying Green/Blue (the girl) is Leaf is equivalent to saying Blue/Green (the boy) is Gary from the anime.