Misused: Loads And Loads Of Characters

To-do list:

• Move the wicks to one of the tropes on the Loads And Loads Of Characters disambiguation if they fit, and delete them if they don't. For reference purposes, here's the disambiguation page's trope list:
  • Cast Calculus: Choosing the right cast size and splitting traits between them.
  • Cast Herd: Large cast split into groups.
  • Cast of Snowflakes: All characters are visually distinctive, even minor ones.
  • A Day in the Limelight: An episode focused on a secondary character.
  • Ensemble Cast: The story spends a roughly equal amount of time on all or most of the characters rather than having a single protagonist.
  • Four Lines, All Waiting: A large cast means that there are multiple simultaneous plots in a single episode/work.
  • Girl of the Week: A new Love Interest shows up every week, and is usually gone by the end.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: A Crossover between three or more continuities you'd never think would ever meet. Ever.
  • Monster of the Week: Facing an unrelated monstrous threat once per weekly episode.
  • Rotating Protagonist: Each character (supporting or minor) has equal or significant screentime as with the main characters.
  • Victim of the Week: Someone gets killed or otherwise messed with every episode.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 16th 2022 at 5:43:03 AM

Opening. I don't see anything to do here other than disambiguating and possibly Yarding any ideas that come up, since you didn't find a single valid example.

~War Jay 77 mentioned in the meta thread that conforming the trope to the misuse could be one option. They explained as well how the concept wasn't chairs. I'm pinging them over to the thread for their thoughts.

Well, I'll hear what she has to say regarding that. Maybe that would be worth doing; it would mean less work.

I think the trope is more about having "large amount of main characters". If every Monster of the Week counted then every episodic show would be hit with this trope.

For example, the work that serves as the page image is indeed an Rotating Protagonist+Ensemble Cast+Cast Herd with about hundreds of people given a lot of focus.

The problem is still how many is tropeworthy and what to do if not disambiguating between the mentioned three.

I'll also note that medium should be considered here as well; a show like Modern Family would have more room to juggle its many main characters than a movie like Love Actually does.

Edited by Synchronicity on Feb 9th 2022 at 9:53:14 AM

Well, only something that's Chaptered / sectioned, can have a Rotating Protagonist...

And Ensemble Cast is a supertrope of that. There's nothing keeping an Ensemble Cast from being only an ensemble of two characters?

Not sure if Rotating Protagonist is A Day in the Limelight + Ensemble Cast, where even minor characters get into the rotation, but the description / laconic imply that?

I'd say it's fairly common to have a main cast of 5 to 7 characters.

Edit: Another thing to consider is how long a franchise has been around. A show that's been airing for a few years is probably going to add a new character to the main cast.

Edited by RustBeard on Feb 9th 2022 at 9:14:36 AM

yeah I think if we're trying to salvage this trope without altering the definition too much a couple of things need to be addressed. The current definition is too tv focused with the use of "appear in one episode". Books, songs, epic poems, films, serialized comics, etc. all exist which makes the determination of what "loads" means much harder to determine, unless the goal is to keep this tv only, but I don't think it should be. related, how are we defining "loads and loads":

• are we talking about primary protagonists/antagonists/cast members only? if so:
  • unless they are Game of Thrones, The Wire, The Walking Dead sprawling epics, most TV shows don't feature more than 6 mains (like Friends)
  • but again that's just TV shows and it is far more common for books and serialized works to have more mains, especially as people die, defect, join, etc. Consider X-Men or One Piece
• if we are only focusing on main characters, this feels like it would overlap quite a bit with several other Ensemble Tropes, depending on the number we land on. I feel like this was part of the misuse issue to begin with: people treating it as a repository for any large cast of characters that didn't have any defined dynamic in the "group" sense
• if we aren't just focusing on mains, but also prominent secondary characters, how are we determining what prominent means?
• given the disparities across medium, should there be different criteria for different mediums i.e. TV counts if it's over 7, but for everything else it has to meet another threshold (this feels overly complicated imo, and I don't recommend)

that said, I don't think the trope is anything but chairs in its current existence and would rather disambig

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 12:44:53 PM

If the largest amount of misuse is for "any large cast of characters", can't we just make that the proper definition of the trope? Considering we have 0 correct uses of the trope's original definition, maybe we should change it to what the majority already thinks it is per the wick check.

The issue with redefining it to fit the misuse is that "work has a lot of characters" without any additional context isn't tropeworthy.

Personally, I think making it into a disambiguation might be the best option.

See, why I personally think a story with a large cast is tropeworthy is that it's an intentional writing choice that does affect the narrative.

Smaller casts have more time to develop everyone, but at the same time they make the world feel smaller and might not always be appropriate for the world the story is trying to convey. A larger cast means less screentime and development for certain characters, at the benefit of fleshing out the world more and making things seem more grand and colorful. If every character is named and given some basic level of characterization, it expands the world further but might leave interesting characters in the dust if they're not relevant enough. I'm thinking of works like My Hero Academia and Warrior Cats, that have a massive and colorful amount of characters, but said characters only get screentime if they're important- it's a trade off, and it's an inherent part of having a massive cast. The current definition is just one potential consequence of having a massive cast of characters.

It's a creative decision that has an impact on the way the story is told and how the audience perceives it. That sounds like a trope to me.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:21:59 PM

I will add my support to disambiguate. There is scope for "Episodic work without a core of regulars who appear in every episode" but it would have to be made from scratch. This trope is a relic of the time when it was accepted to have tropes tat were "Something common... but a lot of it!" with descriptions went on without defining what the trope actually was.

I'd say that "work has a large amount of characters" is tropeworthy if we're talking about prominent characters. If we also include one off characters and minor characters, then it becomes chairs.

Well, that's where I disagree for the reasons I said above, but it does depend on what "prominent" means. Using the Warrior Cats example, later books have several pages dedicated to the allegiances, even though a lot of those characters don't do much of anything. These are minor characters, but they stick around through arc after arc, having lives in the background, growing up, having families, doing Clan work, and dying. These characters are part of the world, having background character lives, minor but always present. I wouldn't count them if they just showed up for one book and disappeared into the aether. As individuals they're irrelevant, but as a whole, these background cats make the story what it is, for better or worse. It would be a fundamentally different story without this big a cast.

Now, in a show like Friends where characters can pop into existence just for an episode and leave? I wouldn't count those characters because they aren't actually part of the cast in any real meaning of the word. The cast are the six friends and their acquaintances. They're the characters who matter.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:34:30 PM

That sounds to me like "A Day in the Limelight for Worldbuilding X times". There could be something, but for now I don't see it. Maybe something about shaping the world's perspective through b-plot characters.

Well, to me it's less about what those characters do and more about why they're present and what impact that has on the storytelling. Choosing to make a large cast of named and recurring characters does change how the story is told and received, just as having a Minimalist Cast does. Because it has such an impact, I do find it tropeworthy, because it's a creative choice that ultimately shapes how the audience see the world.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:40:02 PM

Yeah, I think the concept is tropeworthy. I just think we shouldn't count one off characters or background characters. Otherwise every Police Procedural or Villain of the Week show would count as Loads And Loads Of Characters.

Loads And Loads Of Recurring Characters?

Again, I suppose it really depends on what you consider to be an important character. I'd agree that one-off characters shouldn't count, but recurring characters (even if they're recurring background characters) should.

Ech, if we start considering a rename we may as well just do one of the slash-heavy options anyway because of all the wicks we'd be dealing with. I'm choosing my idea in part because I want to avoid all that hassle.

x4 I get the overall point in terms of "this is a specific choice made for worldbuilding purposes" but I feel like that's better covered in Ensemble Cast since that trope's description provides info as to the significance the larger cast has to the way the story is told.

And I feel like we have to clarify what qualifies as "a lot" if this trope is kept (to separate out works like Friends which would fall under Ensemble Cast since you don't feel it should qualify), but any line we draw is going to be arbitrary. And if the line we have to differentiate it from another trope is meaningless, then to me that's a sign that it's not so different from that trope

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:01:21 PM

I guess that's fair. I don't think an Ensemble Cast could never count for this, but that the Ensemble Cast would have to be particularly large, hence why I singled out Friends, which has an average-size cast for a sitcom with a continuity if you don't count one-off Girl of the Week types.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:02:57 PM

Well, we could work with the episodic / chaptered nature? If a single season / novel / collection cannot allow every character to appear at least... twice?

Then there's a lot?

Or something like "there's not a lot" if everyone can appear once and half of those can appear twice?

Edited by Malady on Feb 9th 2022 at 11:05:57 AM

Problem is, literally zero of the wicks we collected follow that pattern. If we want that to be a trope, we'd be better off starting it from scratch at TLP.

See I don't think Friends is even emblematic of a smaller cast. Because while there are certainly partners of the week, there are also several recurring character because they date or associate with one of the main 6 for several episodes, even an entire season. Or are recurring background characters like Gunther, the guy at the coffee shop they all frequent and rarely talk to but is there for the entire run of the show. Why wouldn't they count?

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 9th 2022 at 2:06:29 PM