Self-Demonstrating Character Pages

Just repeating these words over and over again is not funny, sire.

Not so much self-demonstrating as just writing the page in first person.

I have a sudden sense of Deja Vu about the Pikachu page.

Yes, a previous page in that vein was deleted.

Well, the creator is Anime Vulpa Girl if it matters.

I'd say it's time to put Pikachu in his poke ball and then give it to Red Link for safe keeping.

Agreed. Added the page to the Cut List.

Several days on the Cut List and nobody cared to delete Pikachu's page or take the discussion further... oh well, I guess this wouldn't hurt.

If the Pikachu page does get deleted, could you please let me know and delete the Charizard page as well? I'm only creating it on the pretense that people are fine with Pikachu's page existing.

edited 24th Nov '14 9:30:34 PM by Darthrai

The cutlist does not work instantaneously, folks.

Well in any case, I put my Charizard page on the Cut List as well, just to be safe. I like the page and hopefully it feels in-character, but if we shouldn't have those pages then we shouldn't have those pages.

If the pages get deleted, then maybe someone should delete their entries from the index pages too, as well as their mentions on the The Incredible Hulk and Captain Falcon pages (if I don't do it first).

I have plans for a much more sensible Lucina page (we already have Henry), but I'd like to wait until I go through more of her support conversations in-game so that it's more fun to read.

edited 25th Nov '14 12:24:55 AM by Darthrai

My main problem with character pages is that people tend to link to them as if they're the original works. I've seen many potholes to SelfDemonstrating.The Joker, for example. It doesn't help that these characters don't even have their own standard work pages!

In addition, with certain characters like Deadpool, people tend to talk in-character as the character they speak simply because they're known to do that. Admittedly, I'm fine when people do this with Deadpool (since he's known for do stuff like this), but I'm concerned if other characters might get that treatment as well.

With Deadpool in particular, I hate how the SD stuff leaked out everywhere. It made the page for VideoGame.Deadpool unreadable, and randomly shows up in the middle of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Marvel Characters for both Deadpool and Doom, making it just damn inconvenient.

Overall, my problem is with SD pages for characters who don't really have a particular voice. As Another Duck put it, they're not so much Self-Demonstrating as they are just writing in the first person (and bordering on fanfiction).

Considering the site's creator said back in June that taking these through YKTTW might be a good idea... I think future ones really should go through YKTTW.

I think the pages started getting out of hand when Henry's page was created; since he was a fairly obscure character, people started making pages for their favorite characters and not just wacky iconic supervillains.

I messaged the creator of the Pikachu page to see what her input is, and invited her to this thread.

SelfDemonstrating.Henry? Ah yes, that page came up on the cutlist repeatedly. I remember asking for "no cut" twice there.

At the very least, based on just this discussion, I think we've established that we shouldn't have SD pages for characters who can't actually communicate intelligibly in their home work. That much should no longer be under discussion.

• The character just doesn't communicate verbally. At all. Examples might include Mario, at least in works like Super Mario RPG. There's literally no way to write a remotely appropriate SD page for a character like this.
• The character communicates verbally, and may or may not understand people, but is unintelligible to the average person. Pikachu would fit here. There would only be two ways to handle it:
  • An actual SD page for Pikachu would just be "Pika-Pika-Pika" several thousand times. Gratuitous, excessive, and, as Fast Eddie pointed out, really not funny.
  • A stopgap would be some kind of Translation Convention. But then, Pikachu doesn't have a translation convention in his home work, and more importantly, once you remove the Pokémon Speak, there's really nothing Self-Demonstrating about it. Writing a page in the first-person does not make it Self-Demonstrating.

EDIT: This isn't really under discussion, but this seems like the most appropriate thread for it... Can SD Character Pages have an explicit reference to the work they're from, somewhere relatively consistent, like the first or last sentence of the description?

edited 25th Nov '14 2:22:20 PM by SolipSchism

You know, I've been thinking of writing a page for Caboose from Red Vs Blue, where he paints himself as The Ace and that everyone loves him, yet making it obvious that he's just being a Cloud Cuckoo Lander idiot.

That sounds fine to me. A good idea, actually. Caboose is super awesome, after all.

...Also, something just occurred to me. Can a Self-Demonstrating character page have tropes on its example list that don't actually apply to the character, but that the character would think applies to them?

edited 25th Nov '14 2:28:47 PM by SolipSchism

That seems solid. Caboose has a distinct voice, and there's already a fair amount of meta-humor in RVB that it'd make sense. It's the ones that are basically a single character character sheet, that also happens to be in the first person that don't have a purpose.

I'm still not sure why that wouldn't fall under the "the wiki is not a place to host your fanfiction" principle.

It could at least hit the "witty" bit of Clear Concise Witty, while most SD pages miss all three.

I'd just like to point out that sometimes, the Translation Convention trope does indeed apply to Pikachu in order to understand what he's saying (Especially if Pikachu's the viewpoint character and what Pikachu's saying's important to the plot. Even the main animé did this at one point. Even the first trailer for Pokémon X and Y did this when Pikachu spoke on top of what we now know as Prism Tower).

It usually either manifests itself either as subtitles for their speech or, in the case of at least the Mystery Dungeon games and its various adaptions, as fully comprehensible speech as if we can understand them (although it's clear that the reason why we're able to understand it is because we are either playing as human-turned-Pokémon or, in at least one set of installments, beings born as Pokémon).

edited 26th Nov '14 5:58:24 AM by KarjamP

A valid point. However, it doesn't address the biggest question, which is, without the Pokémon Speak, what, exactly, is so distinctive about Pikachu or his personality that it would support an SD page? Even allowing the TC, it seems like it would still just be an ordinary single character sheet with the added gimmick of being written in first-person.

Agreed. Meta-characters (like Deadpool) or those with distinct voices (like Bizarro) make sense.

The pages that just... are a character sheet in the first person, occasionally adding in "and I'm awesome" are the worst ones, in my opinion.

So looks like Pikachu and Charizard are gone. Yay?

Anyway, would it be possible for anyone to help with Ganon's page? I tried to capture his pompous and serious but slightly teasing tone from Ocarina of Time, and as a result, his speech comes across as a little... odd. I'm a newcomer to the Zelda series, so maybe someone with better knowledge of the character can help.

Some people do consider the Pokémon Speak pages funny (case in point: the infamous SelfDemonstrating/Denning page, created by yours truly) but they seriously need to go.

edited 29th Nov '14 4:21:56 PM by bwburke94