Cleanup Thread: MCU Character Pages

Are you talking about Valentina Allegra de Fontaine? Yeah, she definitely has a bit of Patriotic Fervor about her based on what we see in Wakanda Forever. She could be in on it because she wants to wield personal power as well, but I think there's a bit of American exceptionalism in there.

Edited by MatthewWayne on Apr 15th 2023 at 1:19:18 AM

Yes, I am and thanks for clarifying that for me.

Sorry about not being clear in my response to you, I’ll try and be much more clearer, direct & precise in the future!!

Edited by The10thGeek on Apr 15th 2023 at 11:19:03 AM

So the sandbox for Yelena has reached 41,235 bytes not counting the above notes and index. Permission to officially make a page?

Edited by MaxyGregoryyyy on Apr 15th 2023 at 10:01:22 PM

I think we're still debating on where to put her.

Plus, Starcrusher just said this on the last page, and I think he raised a good point:

Edited by MatthewWayne on Apr 15th 2023 at 7:06:25 AM

I’ll admit I’m slightly leaning against an allies page now because what's considered an avengers ally is too subjective. I feel like moving all of them across pages like Citizens (like Ho Yinsen and Ian Boothby), Midtown (for Ned Leeds and Michelle Jones’ character page being moved to that index) and United States Citizens (like Harley Keener and Laura Barton) could potentially be better solution because it feels they’re more objectively considered those than being an "Avengers Ally" which is too subjective

Edited by MaxyGregoryyyy on Apr 15th 2023 at 10:25:07 PM

The allies page has been pretty messy every since it's conception, and I have previously expressed my distaste for having Ho Yinsen and Ian Boothby on it. I would support moving Harley too.

Laura's a bit difficult because not only is she a a former S.H.I.E.L.D agent and wife of Clint, but she also has actually been an ally of the Avengers by giving them a safehouse to stay at.

I don't mind there being a separate page for Peter's allies, but I also would be okay with them going back to the Midtown High page too.

I feel like moving Laura to the US Citizens page with the Bartons because she's literally the only one of Clint’s Allies (which is only two btw) with the folder there while Kate Bishop’s folder leads to her own page. We could move Grills and the larpers there but it doesn’t feel right. The whole page reminds me of the Family, Allies and Enemies section of the MCU wiki pages and that section of the pages there honestly irritates me because some of the characters never even interacted like Captain America and Doctor Strange.

Edited by MaxyGregoryyyy on Apr 15th 2023 at 11:31:33 PM

Also in my opinion before we start talking about the character-specific pages (MJ and potentially Yelena), we have to deal with what to do with the Allies page first because we have to decide where these characters belong before making a page for them or keeping the page they have, y’know? Like if the page they end up being on can decide if they should have a page judging by the number of bytes on that page and index they’re placed on. I have a few ideas if y’all are willing to hear me out.

Edited by MaxyGregoryyyy on Apr 15th 2023 at 11:40:27 PM

Regarding a page for Spider-Man’s allies since that’s a current topic, in my opinion it is very poor timing to make one right now and maybe we should get back to this topic when another MCU Spider-Man movie comes out because right now, he has no allies anymore. MJ and Ned have forgotten all about him thanks to the spell, May is dead, EDITH was confiscated by Damage Control, and Karen was destroyed in the Battle of London. And this is one of the reasons why I’m not in full support of having the Allies page around anymore because one’s status as an ally of an Avenger can easily change, and thus they’re more prone to being moved around. Some of the characters in that page aren’t even active allies anymore (Betty Ross and Ian Boothby come to mind), so I feel like moving the characters there to pages where they objectively belong (because as I said the status of being an Avengers ally is subjective) and they’re less likely to be moved around as in the Avengers Allies page, characters are constantly moving in and out of it and I think that’s what makes the page a problematic mess.

While I do generally agree with you regarding Spidey, I think the situation is complicated because a number of people here are convinced that at least some of Peter's allies will inevitably come back. There's no confirmation, but moving them doesn't seem popular here.

I've mentioned my support for moving Ian Boothby out multiple times, but I'm actually going to disagree with Betty Ross. If you'd suggested it a few months ago, I'd have wholeheartedly agreed, since she hasn't appeared or been mentioned since The Incredible Hulk. But now that she's confirmed to show up in New World Order, which is a Captain America movie...there's actually credence for her staying now, if people still want to keep the Allies page around.

Look, I'm going to be completely honest here, so small rant incoming.

I'm the person who made the Allies page and I did not want to in the slightest. There was one user who continually caused problems because one group (the Avengers) had allies and another (the Defenders) didn't, and the result was several unilateral moves that resulted in hours-long arguments. Eventually, it was decided that making an Avengers Allies page was the solution - and now that time has passed, I stand by that. To be frank, it solves more problems than it causes. Yes, we have to deal with length, but thanks to that page, we finally have a way of organizing "main characters" of the various movies in a way that actually makes sense instead of just plopping major characters inside of pages with hundreds of characters and just telling people to search (I don't want to have to look for Aunt May inside of New York City Citizens). Sure, we have to decide where people go, but we have to do that anyway, and at least the major players of the franchise are placed front and center in an easily-accessible way, it's consistent with the Defenders, and overall the only major problem is length.

With that said, I don't know why we're suddenly getting picky about which characters count as Peter's allies. All of the characters in that folder, whether or not they come back, both once were Peter's allies and that's where a majority of their characterization comes from. When you think of Ned, you don't think "Midtown student", you think "Peter's Guy in the Chair". Plus, moving them anywhere else is more speculative than keeping them there because if they never appear again, the last time we saw them was playing a major role in Peter's latest adventure before circumstances made him go solo. I don't see why a page for them isn't valid.

As for Ian - I'm going to be blunt, I know some people want him gone, but in his one appearance he spent his entire screen time helping Thor out in his adventure and actually being involved in the action. I don't see a reason to move him at all.

You have a valid point about Betty Ross’ return, but we don’t know about her role in New World Order yet so maybe we should cross that bridge next time. Also, yeah I agree it’s most likely Peter’s Allies will come back to him eventually, but we can’t be absolutely sure about that yet. There’s even a chance that Ned will become Hobgoblin and be Peter’s enemy but we can’t be sure about that either.

Overall though, I’m not in favor of the Allies page anymore because it’s very problematic and too subjective. I’m willing to move everyone there into more appropriate pages where they objectively belong on my own if we’re gonna remove it, we just have to decide where each of them should go and I’m open to that discussion and have ideas of my own for that.

Haven’t chimed in here in a while, but agreeing with Star. I’m not digging through massive pages of minor extras to find important supporting cast, and these debates over who should be considered an ally is needlessly pedantic.

Here's the thing though - no one "objectively" belongs anywhere. That was the entire reason this thread was created on top of general cleanup - people kept disagreeing on where characters belonged. There were even people in this thread who disagreed on Spider-Man's location even though he is literally "knighted" as an Avenger in IW. I think that for all the issues we have with the Allies page, it solves more than it causes, and there's few issues we face with it that we wouldn't face anywhere else we put anyone.

Okay I’ll concede that those are valid points for the page’s existence and I understand its necessity now. Still, I don’t feel that it’s the right time to make a separate page for Peter’s allies as I don’t currently feel the need for it yet. Maybe we can bring that discussion back up when a new Spider-Man movie is out or when the page becomes too big again but now i think it’s better as-is. I don’t think we should remove MJ’s page to make a Spider-Man’s allies page because the Avengers Allies page isn’t too small without her and she does have a lot of tropes more than anyone else in that page and I think all-in-all those are reasons valid enough to keep her page. I remember when I supported creating an MCU character page for Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man but that got removed because the variants page had roughly the same amount of characters as his page but that’s not a similar situation here.

Why are we basing character organization on a group of characters who may or may not even be canon with the MCU at large anymore? That seems like a very poorly thought out idea, regardless of the unilateral changing. And if length issues are going to get worse, then that only makes the concept of Avengers Allies even less meaningful in my eyes. I understand that you put a lot of effort into this, but sometimes things don't work out in the long run.

Y'know, there's an easier solution here that doesn't involve the existence of the Avengers Allies page. We just clean up the New York City Citizens page. Based on my brief scan-through, most of the characters on there only have a few tropes to their name, and are based on the Netfix-verse that is undergoing a Soft Reboot anyway. We snip the characters that aren't big or worthy enough, move May and Peter's friends back, and there. Problem solved.

I'd argue that keeping Ned, MJ and Peter's other allies is more speculative. As Max previously noted, how do we know Ned won't suddenly turn into the Hobgoblin? Or that MJ comes back at all? I'm not 100% against a separate page for them, but I still don't know if it's correct to keep them associated with Peter at this point. I feel the same about Wanda, but that's a whole other can of worms.

"Involved in the action"? His role in the film literally amounted to him getting dragged around and making out with Darcy at the end before disappearing forever. He's a minor Plucky Comic Relief character at best, and certainly not a "main" character associated with Thor, which undermines your point about this page being about organizing main characters associated with individual Avengers. When I think about characters who are associated with Avengers, I think people who have continual correspondence with them, such as Korg, Laura Barton, and the Wombats. I don't think about one-off characters like Ho Yinsen, Harley Keener, or Ian. Their presence clogs up this already crowded page.

I vehemently disagree. As I mentioned before, if a page is constantly approaching length issues just by its very existence, it's not a good concept for organization overall, especially when characters who appear once within the franchise before dying or undergoing Chuck Cunningham Syndrome. If we clean up some of the other character pages regarding the MCU, maybe we can shift things around, like I suggested with the New York City page.

Because they were the main characters of the franchise for about 11 years, including at the time the page was made. Not much more to that, honestly.

Length issues get worse on every page, given that pages by default tend to grow rather than shrink. By that logic, we should've never had an Avengers page to begin with.

In all honesty, it only took me about 15 minutes of effort to make that - it took way longer to get it approved than to actually make it. Just wanted to make this clear because I'm not emotionally involved in this at all.

The thing is, that's not how that's supposed to work. If a character is legitimately a stub that's one thing, but we can't just go through and decide a character isn't worthy enough just to rearrange a page. No other franchise does that and it sets a bad precedent. Again, though, it's been a minute since I've scanned that page, but if a character isn't a stub we can't just get rid of it for the sake of rearranging things.

I'm genuinely confused by this point because you respond to the claim that your argument is speculative by then speculating about the ways it could be proven right. We don't work on speculation, we work on what happens, and what happens is for 99% of their screen time, Peter's allies serve their main narrative purpose as his allies. If they do come back and change allegiances, then we move them like we do for literally anyone else. This isn't a new concept, it happens all the time - when people come back, we adjust their page placement accordingly. It's why we kept having to move Jane Foster back to other pages when she was first announced as Lady Thor - because we didn't know where the movie was going to go with her yet.

We can agree to disagree on this one, but the entire point wasn't just to have the heavy hitters of the Avengers friends' on there (in the page's first draft, it was only Selvig and Helen Cho), but to get those who help out certain Avengers. In the process, it brought in a lot of the main characters and that's what I believe to be one of the bigger benefits of it now, but that wasn't the main purpose.

Other pages hitting this limit, especially the New York City one, are why we're in this situation in the first place - because in a massive franchise like this, we are going to have to deal with a lot of people with a lot of tropes that are eventually going to need splitting off. Again, by that logic there never should've been an Avengers page to begin with. There are a lot of pages we could remove with that logic, it doesn't make the pages themselves invalid.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Apr 17th 2023 at 2:19:01 PM

Now hold on let’s not be too hasty about removing Netflix characters in those pages. Them being non canon is just speculation at this point so let’s not make big changes out of mere speculations. If we’re gonna make big changes like these, it should be out of official confirmations, y’know?

Edited by MaxyGregoryyyy on Apr 18th 2023 at 2:32:40 AM

And...? That doesn't change the fact that the Defenders are thoroughly uninvolved with the mainline MCU outside of Daredevil, and given he's going through a Soft Reboot, there's a chance he might not even apply for the way that page is organized anymore.

It's not necessarily that they're non-canon, it's that they're going to be subject to a Soft Reboot, if they appear at all. With that in mind, trying to adhere to something based on the Netflix series seems misguided.

And no, that's not speculation because Charlie Cox confirmed it as such last year.

Then it really shouldn't be that big a deal considering other options here, right?

I legitimately don't see how deciding whether stub characters are worthy of taking up space or not on a work page is setting a "bad precedent". If a character is taking up space, and doesn't have many tropes to their name, then what's wrong with gutting them? If anything, this something that should happen more often imo.

If anything I feel it's only made the page worse. If the page deviated from its original purpose, then that indicates that this concept was flawed from the get go. Is it about minor characters who help the Avengers, or heavy-hitters who can practically be considered honorary members? Combining them both is just frustrating on so many levels. Bishops and Rooks aren't on the same level as pawns.

We have an Avengers page, and the individuals all got so many tropes that they got their own pages. These things happen. But the point is that almost all of them are unanimously considered Avengers. Meanwhile, the Allies page is a huge mess because nobody knows whether it's supposed to be for fellow superheroes or small-time people who help them out sometimes, or for random people who show up once and vanish. It's our job to figure out who or what should be there, and if they're noteworthy enough. That goes for Allies, New York, New Jersey, whatever other sub-pages exist right now. At least that's how I would like to tackle it.

Because that's not how the rest of the site works. If a character has enough tropes for a folder (which is three full-context examples), then it's not a stub, and we can't just decide to gut them for no reason. That's not how it works anywhere else so until we know the canonicity issue for certain than we shouldn't be cutting people just because we feel like it.

It never deviated from the purpose, it accomplished two purposes in one. There's no real reason why it can't have both major and minor characters as long as those character spend their screen time as an ally of the Avenger(s). When I made the page the purpose was clear that it was meant for people who are actually in the field on behalf of an Avenger or at least were at one point (hence Laura Barton), and outside of the occasional fluke like Sharon it has stayed that way with no problem whatsoever. On the few occasions where there was disagreement, it was because of a unilateral move that got reverted with no issue - Sharon, Valkyrie (who is now elsewhere) and now Ian are the only people who were ever on the page that I think ever required serious discussion. I don't particularly get what is so frustrating about having different levels of characters on the same page as long as they share a narrative purpose.

So basically, it was created to be "if you were involved in the conflict on behalf of an Avenger, you go here", and the fact that most of the people who meet that criteria are also main characters in their own right is a happy bonus but it doesn't mean that's what it is 100% of the time.

I also do feel the need to point out that a lot of the discussion about this is starting from a unilateral move that was done with no discussion, so when most of the discussion around the page is caused because people aren't following site procedure, that doesn't seem like a problem of the page itself.

I'm being completely genuine - again, we've had the occasional unilateral move to the page, but the only outright confusion I've ever seen over what the page is supposed to represent has been cleared up very easily until this particular discussion.

If it’s a soft reboot, then I don’t see why we should remove the tropes beforehand because they’re still canon. Yeah, Vanessa has been recast but that’s more because the previous actress has a scheduling conflict that made her unavailable for the role. Honestly with this Netflix thing, it’s a bridge we need to cross at a later time. Not right now, maybe at a time when Daredevil Born Again is out or even if Echo’s series is out considering how she connects with the Daredevil cast. So again, I must insist let’s cross this bridge later.

Edited by MaxyGregoryyyy on Apr 19th 2023 at 3:02:14 AM

I am going to continue this argument later, because it's past midnight here and I have classes tomorrow. But I still have problems with the Allies page that I need ironed out.

I think it's very simple to resolve this. How about instead of "Allies", we use "Supporting Cast"?

Comic book characters' pages have done this since forever. For example, we have Spider-Man, his Supporting Cast and Villains.

Edited by Nightwire on Apr 18th 2023 at 12:35:02 PM

What about "Families & Friends"? That's got to set a more solid definition, especially since we've already done that with the Stark and Pym families.

"Family and Friends" is still too limited. "Supporting Cast" is the most inclusive, since it encompasses even characters who are neither allies nor villains and who serve a more neutral or slightly antagonistic role, such as (coming back to Spider-Man's example) Peter's teachers and other schoolmates, the staff of The Daily Bugle, etc.