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.
A Trope Talk
discussion several months back, however, raised concerns that the usage of the trope didn't match the description, and that the trope was actually being used as "any large cast of characters". Furthermore, as Rust Beard pointed out in the thread, everyone seemed to have their own version of what they believed the trope was.
I decided to start a collaborative wick check, which was done by me, War Jay 77, Rust Beard, and Orbiting, to see what kinds of use the trope got. The results were, to put it mildly, not very good. Here's the quick results:
- 0/84 wicks, or 0%, were used correctly
- 64/84 wicks, or 76.19%, were just "any large cast of characters"
- 3/84 wicks, or 3.57%, were other kinds of misuse
- 16/84 wicks, or 19.05%, were ZCEs, and
- 1/84 wicks, or 1.19%, were unsorted
Yes, that is correct. There were 0 correct uses of this trope in the wick check. Evidently this trope is suffering much worse than was initially thought.
As for possible solutions, Crossover-Enthusiast pointed out in the Wick Check Project thread that while "work has large cast of characters" could be People Sit on Chairs, the idea of, in their words, "work has large cast, so the perspective switches frequently" might be worth sending to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard. I am personally in favor of doing that, and disambiguating Loads And Loads Of Characters into other tropes about large casts of characters. What does everyone else think?
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 16th 2022 at 5:43:03 AM
the Retromancer
Cast Calculus is pretty much what I had in mind. We can give it some work using what's currently at Loads And Loads Of Characters and some of WarJay's ideas and make it a general analysis of how the character count impacts the work both from production and audience points of view.
Edited by Amonimus on Feb 23rd 2022 at 9:11:10 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
Yeah, a general analysis page is what I was thinkin'.
Current Project: The Team
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
I think it's safe to call the crowner now or soon. It's been three days (to my knowledge) and it seems pretty stable.
TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
(she/her)
Indeed. Calling crowner in favor of disambiguating.
Macron's notes
Cake's just a shot away. (he/him)
I cut the subpages. I didn't touch the video examples.
Update: I moved them to Cast Calculus for now. I also starred the thread.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 25th 2022 at 2:19:21 PM
You can't always get what you want.
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
Looks like we've got 7270 wicks to go through. Hoo boy.
Cake's just a shot away. (he/him)
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Yeah, but most of them can probably just be deleted, so this will probably be more time-consuming than outright difficult, similarly to how many wicks had to be cut when Ear Worm was made IUEO (at the time, I think Ear Worm had around ten times as many wicks as it does now).
Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 5th 2022 at 11:47:28 AM
You can't always get what you want.
Cake's just a shot away. (he/him)
The original page was moved to Sandbox.Loads And Loads Of Characters. I'll go update the indexing.
Edit: Done. I also added a note to the discussion page since I neglected to do that when the crowner was called.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 5th 2022 at 11:57:16 AM
You can't always get what you want.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Do we need a crowner on the recent suggestions by WarJay, Amonimus and Nen_desharu to take what's salvageable in Sandbox.Loads And Loads Of Characters and incorporate it into Cast Calculus?
Edited by MarqFJA on Mar 26th 2022 at 5:24:17 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Cake's just a shot away. (he/him)
I don't think so. Anyone who's cleaning it up can just decide it on a case-by-case basis.
Dr. Zeppo
What if we create categories for the number of characters in the work/franchise, and then we can figure out a lower bound for qualification for this trope?
The answer to life and everything is in this place As are the numbers most favored by Two-Face
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
It's been disambiged...
Current Project: The Team
You are very late to the party my guy.
Jawbreakers on sale for 99ยข
Cake's just a shot away. (he/him)
I added a to-do list to the header and pinned it. The OP's original contents have been moved to a folder.
You can't always get what you want.
I cleared out the remaining wicks in the Lots And Lots Of Characters redirect. 6707 wicks left
The Main/ namespace is done. Wicks down to 6310.
Just stoic wisdom.
The rate at which this trope's wicks are being cleaned is quite fast, having gone down almost 1.5k wicks in under a week. Might be one to pitch in on as a group project (from which I'll recuse myself given my, uh, propensity for mistakes).
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
Although, with tropes like these where every wick needs to be cut and a majority of examples lack any sort of interesting context, there's not a lot of room to mess it up.
Current Project: The Team
Cake's just a shot away. (he/him)
As I've previously said, it's not uncommon to take a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to ZCEs during TRS cleanup since there's no way to tell whether a ZCE is valid (unless the editor is familiar with the work), so we delete it in case it's misuse.
You can't always get what you want.
Just stoic wisdom.
Props to whoever's clearing this bad boy at record pace; it's going to hit 1.6k remaining wicks soon!
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail
Just stoic wisdom.
Only about 400 wicks left; thank you to whoever's been removing loads and loads of wicks!
Edited by Yindee on Jun 5th 2022 at 6:49:12 AM
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail
What do we do with the Italian translation, Tanti Tanti Personaggi?
(she/her)
Bring it to the Italian Translation thread?
Just stoic wisdom.
I think other than Italian, this page is pretty much done?
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail
Crown Description:
What should be done with Loads And Loads Of Characters? The previous crowner led to an impasse.
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There's Cast Calculus as well
Kirby is awesome.