Lost in Space
There's no hard and fast rule. Generally, if a work has a character sheet, then there's little use in duplicating tropes. However, we could do a better job of pointing this out in the main page.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I think it's redundant to duplicate things, especially if the main page has a staggering number of tropes already.
If an offense come out of the truth, better it is that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
Nemesis
Once a work has a character sheet, I think most, but not all, character tropes should be moved to it. Ones that are very important to the overall work probably shouldn't be, though, and I'm fine with duplication for those.
A brighter future for a darker age.
The problem, though, is that when you move character tropes to a separate sheet you no longer have a list of tropes that appear in the work. You have two lists that need to be read together, one of whom is non-alphabetical, and if two characters have the same trope associated with them, rather than being able to read "A Trope - Char A, Char B & Char C" you have to pick it out of the three separate lists in the character sheet.
I'm for duplicates - keeps the list of tropes that appear in the work a list of tropes that appear in the work.
Things I like: Ghost In The Shell |Serial Experiments Lain |Eden: It's an Endless World! |Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri |Aeon Natum Engel
The problem, though, is that when you move character tropes to a separate sheet you no longer have a list of tropes that appear in the work.Say a work has over 500 wicks, 90% of that presumably being tropes (as opposed to users, other shows, Troper Tales, etc). Having 450+ tropes on the main page would be overwhelming and overcrowded. Look at Harry Potter, which duplicates the character tropes, and look at Monster which doesn't, and tell me which one is easier to read.
If an offense come out of the truth, better it is that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
Zzzzzzzzzz
It does require much more reading. Say that someone put an X Just X link on Action Girl. I want to see how it's used in the work. But the Work is A Song Of Fire And Ice. I've got to read the entire character sheet, hoping that I don't miss it, without knowing which characters it might apply to. Right now, it's on the main page, and it says "Arya, Brienne, all the women of House Mormont and Asha". That's a damn sight easier to find, and more helpful than combing through a character page that's longer than the main page is.
edited 11th Dec '09 7:35:35 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.Um, does your browser not have a find option? No, seriously. I'm not being sarcastic - how much more time consuming is it to type in the trope you're looking for into the 'find' bar and see which characters it pops up for? Three seconds?
Besides, I thought it was the rule of thumb to list recurring character tropes on the main page anyway. It's only those that really only apply to one or two individuals that get shunted off to the character sheet.
edited 11th Dec '09 7:31:13 AM by IceQueen
If an offense come out of the truth, better it is that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
Lost in Space
It's annoying when you're used to simply scrolling down a list. Then again, I'd assert that a Characters page actually serves a different purpose than a works page.
edited 11th Dec '09 7:30:43 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Moldova, never change.
I use find myself. I'm not going to read something like, Avatar The Last Airbender, just to find a sentence. Find saves me the trouble of doing that.
edited 11th Dec '09 7:31:23 AM by Satanic Hamster
Well, the things is... One you open two lists, they're, you know, two lists. I have to read them separately. If I've opened a long list of tabs (I usually run around 20-40 per browser window, of which I have three) I'll need to hunt my way to the character sheet to read everything related to a work if I've opened many tabs at the same time (Which as we all know is a huge problem with TV Tropes) and if you have a character sheet and a main article, referring between them requires the reader to move back and forth between the two article to read everything in one go.
Heck, I might have closed the Main Article and have to open it again (and if the character article is a long as the Touhou one, getting back to where you were once you've gone to the top and clicked the "main article" link requires you to remember esoteric spelling and/or phrases to get back to where you were in the character article. (A problem quickly solved by the addition of anchors to our wiki, allowing us to tab-open a direct link to the trope in question, but that's for the wishlist))
I'd much rather suggest that we folderize long articles, just like we do with examples.
edited 12th Dec '09 3:34:14 AM by LatwPIAT
Things I like: Ghost In The Shell |Serial Experiments Lain |Eden: It's an Endless World! |Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri |Aeon Natum Engel
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Don't want to create a new thread for this, since the question is on a related topic:
Are there certain kinds of tropes that should not be put on Character Sheets? (e.g. scene/setting tropes like Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, Furo Scene, etc.)
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Zzzzzzzzzz
I wouldn't put any tropes that aren't character-related on the character sheets, personally. Unless one character is inextricably linked to a setting.
Let me see if I can come up with an example...
I wouldn't put Malevolent Architecture on the character sheets for Harry Potter, even though Hogwarts itself qualifies.
I would put it on a character sheet for Girl Genius because Castle Heterodyne is a character as well as a building.
If there was a character listing for Ivo Shandor on the Ghostbusters character sheet, I would list it under his character, because he is inextricably connected with it — he deliberately designed the skyscraper to use that trope.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Okay. I also noticed some Sheets had Fanservice and/or Fetish Fuel listed as entries for some characters - and some of them got deleted recently. I suppose that's also a no-no?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Yes. Those subjectives have their own pages primarily so their "examples" don't clutter up the real pages.
edited 18th May '10 2:52:09 PM by FastEddie
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Responsible adult
But what if they're widely recognized in the fandom and/or by critics as being such?
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada
Those opinions — 'widely' and 'most' critics — can't be proven. They are subjective.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
♏
How is Fanservice subjective? A ten second pan across a woman's body or lingering shot of a guy's ass is pretty clearly included for a reason.
Support stupid freshness, yo.
Well ... that one, maybe. The Fetish fuel things, though ... Whether or not a fetish is being addressed in the work is utterly in the minds of the people looking for that fetish — in the same way that Ho Yay is more often than not either tongue-in-cheek or wishful thinking on the part of a shipper.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
^^ Those two go under Male Gaze and Eating the Eye Candy / Female Gaze.
edited 19th May '10 3:25:20 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
A character dresses up as a maid - OMG FANSERVICE!!!! - so she can infiltrate a manor that hires maids from an outside company. Still fanservice if it's part of the plot? Some say yes, some say no.
BTW, I'm a chick.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
On-topic question: Take an Unwanted Harem where (almost) every regular member is a Fetish Fuel Station Attendant. Do we put the entry under each character in the Sheet, or in the main article?
Random question: Can there be more than one Ms. Fanservice in a work?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Zzzzzzzzzz
1) I'd put it in the main article. It shows up all through the work.
2)Sure.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
What about when only a Cast Herd within a work exhibits #1?
edited 21st May '10 2:12:26 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Are we shunting all Character Tropes to the Character Sheets? If I missed a discussion, my apologies, but I wasn't aware that we had decided Character Tropes had no place on series pages. To be clear, I'm not complaining if that's the ruling, but I'm not aware of it and I want to be sure.