So to sum up I'd propose: Main Characters: Marten, Faye, Dora, Hannelore, Marigold, Claire, Tai, Bubbles, Roko
Secondary Characters: Pintsize, Renee, Brun, Elliot, Clinton, Sven, Steve, Winslow, Angus, Momo, May, Spookybot maybe?
Maybe something like "Other Family and Friends" for people like Wil, Penelope, Cosette, Emily, Padma, Jimbo, etc, to include exes, friends who no longer show up, and whatnot.
And then "Minor characters" for people like the 'punk haired robot', the three annoying girl roommates, etc, all the ones that have only one or two tropes, though maybe they should just be axed entirely.
Edited by BioYuGi
Spookybot is becoming enough of a main character that throwing them in the "other" gulag with the rest of the characters that haven't shown up in like five years seems wrong.
Similarly, a lot of characters in the "main" section... haven't shown up in like five years. Padma, Gabby, Angus, Natasha, and several of the "family" characters who never appear outside of the odd cameo. When was the last time *Raven* was a major player?
I gotta make a list, but yeah this is definitely a first-draft fix we got right here
okay, here's a problem I'm noticing; dividing characters up by workplace. yeah it's sorta grandfathered in at this point, but it makes it really hard to separate main characters from minor characters, especially when those lists include former employees who don't show up any more. we could get away with it when Coffee of Doom was the place where most of the main cast was, but now we've got that, Secret Bakery, the Library, the Robot Fighting Ring(?!), the non-profit, Cubetown...
Marten's Band. Marten hasn't been playing music occupationally or even recreationally in a while but we have a section on the main page devoted to two characters that don't really show up any more, or at all in Natasha's case.
and the "friends and family" section is just goofy at this point; we've got Claire's mom and brother who are both established and complex characters outside of their relationship to her, rubbing elbows with Hannelore's mother and her roomba, who both have four tropes between them.
Yeah that is a good point, Spookybot has had so much of a presence they should be on the main page. And yeah definitely there's no sense in grouping people by workplace anymore.
And I checked the wiki to see some things out of curiousity. As we near comic 5000, here are the last appearances of some characters:
Raven - 2079, Penelope - 3200, Steve - 4500 (just a cameo), Cosette - 4170, Brun - 4443. Yeah, you can see how relevance faded over time.
I'd agree Spookybot can go back on the main page. Melon and Millefeuille feel recent enough I think they could go there as well, and while the three female roommates are also kind of recent, they're far more minor so I'd say they stay on the other page.
Meanwhile on the main page, While Moray, Evan, and Elizabeth get enough comics to get a mention I don't think we even need to mention "Ol Boaty" or Reeves who was in two pages. May's Support Group was barely a thing, Punk Robot literally has no name and gordon's just been there for gags. So yeah, I think lose all the workplace divisions, it doesn't do much anymore.
I'll admit to a fondness for Punk Robot, if only because I wrote a few of his tropes, including the Small Role, Big Impact one; dude's asking about robot tattoos is probably all that's keeping Faye and Bubble's business afloat. BUT he doesn't need to be on the main page. but yeah, if we were still dividing characters by workplace we should've added a "Union Robotics" section and thrown Sam in there too. I do not recommend doing any of that.
so May's support group, Marten's band, and the Robot Fighting Ring can safely go on the Other page, for sure (Rest In Piss Corpse Witch). Meanwhile Spookybot, Melon, and Millefeuille could probably come back to Main as supporting characters.
speaking of, the big change I would recommend is a "Supporting Cast" section right under the main cast section, where we can stick folks like May, Clinton, Winslow, Emmett, as well as the few I mentioned previously. "Other friends and family" needs to be divided between who's appearing regularly (and for that matter, Bubbles needs a promotion) and who's a drop in or no longer relevant (like Faye's sister and her robo-racist girlfriend). maybe don't get rid of workplaces entirely, but some pruning is definitely in order
I'm QUITE perplexed by the Marigold Section. WHERE does she is represented as SKINNY? She always had Faye body shape and Faye was NEVER seen as skinny...
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Have you not read the comic from the beginning on the website? Jeph has gone through insane Art Evolution since he first started drawing the comic, and many of the characters looked completely different. Even Faye was drawn as thin in those first comics (see strip number 4), before Jeph changed his mind and started drawing her progressively curvier over time. Since it wasn’t really discussed in dialogue, he could basically let the characters pretend she was never drawn skinny in the first place. Marigold was the same story: he first drew her as a skinny girl, then very quickly changed his mind and drew her as plump. Once again, the characters just pretend she always looked like that.
Edited by TheBigBopper
Hm not really... When Marigold first appeared she was already curvier than average, Compare her to Hannelore or Dora.
You think so? I'm looking at strip 1416 (that was waaaay long ago!), and Marigold looks almost as skinny as Dora when they're next to each other in the third panel. I think maybe her hips are a bit wider than Hannelore and Dora, but her waist is tight and her stomach is completely flat. Her bust size is also merely the same as Dora's. Lastly, part of why she doesn't look as lanky as Dora or Hannelore in this part is that she's shorter than them. I think it's not going too far to call this Early-Installment Weirdness version of Marigold "thin" or "skinny", and she could not be considered "curvy" or "thick" by any stretch of the imagination. Jeph clearly started with a very different idea of how he wanted her to look, before he redesigned her into the Big Beautiful Woman we know and love.
Edited by TheBigBopper
Yeah, Marigold's early appearances: https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1457
definitely had her as 'weedy', like the kind of nerd who *forgot* to eat because they were too busy compared to the one who would eat too much crap.
and comparing her to Dora and Hanners isn't really fair, because those two are beanpoles
"Other Important characters" vs. "Minor characters":
In the former section, characters like Ellen, Scott, Corrine and Lydia haven't been seen in the comic in many many years, which IMO makes them more like "Minor Characters" (then again, I have a hunch that The Three Bros have been seen more often than Scott, to name one). New sections needed, perhaps?
Why is Hanners not considered a main character? And why is Marigold considered one? The cast page lists Hanners 5th and Marigold drops below Sven.
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I would also like an explanation. On one hand, the fact that Marigold comes after Sven on the official cast page shouldn't be interpreted as a ranking of the characters, since it looks to me as if Jeph just listed characters in the order he introduced them. One result of this is that character's anthro PCs tend to follow before the next human character: i.e., Marten, Pintsize, Faye; and Hannelore, Winslow, Sven. On the other hand, to categorize Marigold as a main character while leaving out Hannelore defies common sense. Hannelore was a member of the core group before Marigold, and they are both prominently featured in character arcs as well as the merch and advertising. They're both main characters if you ask me.
Sven, Steve, and Raven (at the least), all appeared before Hanners, so the cast page isn't straight list in order of appearance.
Out of curiosity, would the rest of the fighting ring robots warrant their own collective folder? Jeffrey deserves mention as something like a Small Role, Big Impact for giving Bubbles the idea to open up to Faye (which may or may not have put Spookybot on their trail) and otherwise being very limited in his appearances, and Punchbot is one hell of a Bunny-Ears Lawyer for being a CPA despite a hobby that involves being repeatedly punched in the head.
I don't know that they deserve individual folders, but maybe together...?
Beatrice Chatham : Word of God: Her first name has only been mentioned in annotations.
I deleted this line because Beatrice Chatham's first name actually was mentioned in the strip itself.
Since when is Marten an Author Avatar? Wasn't it established that he is, to the surprise of many, explicitly not one?
deep in though- ow!
Regarding Marten and sexual promiscuity tropes like The Casanova and Really Gets Around; they do not apply. Having a one night stand does not result in either of those tropes. Having one long term relationship, one short relationship, and a single one night stand (that he feels very uncomfortable about) does not result in either of those tropes. Having a one night stand does not result in either of those tropes. The main character having more relationship focus does not result in either of those tropes. For that matter, having relationships does not result in either of those tropes. Neither does Ship Tease. This is not even ambiguous; having 3 sexual relationships over an estimated 2 year period does not make a person either of those tropes. Looking at the trope descriptions should make this very obvious.
Comparisons to other cast members should be irrelevant, but since they're being used I'll point out that having three sexual relationships while most other cast members have had one or none still does not particularly stand out. The tropes refer to characters that have not just more, but a lot more. And by the way, Steve was with Ellen, Tortura, Meena, and now Cosette, three of those being sexual relationships (Ellen was underage), the same as Marten.
Edited by 169.231.13.188 I rarely visit the forums to avoid the cynicism ooze. Hide / Show Replies
Those are nonsensical entries. Those tropes aren't relative to other cast members, and even if they were, Marten is nowhere near a qualifier for those.
Given the guy who added them was suspended, I feel like we can pull it.
Edited by 156.33.241.9 Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Just FYI, Trans Equals Gay does not mean "trans person who happens to be attracted to someone who is the same biological sex as themselves" which was how it was being used for Claire on this page, so I took it off. Plus it's been implied she's actually bisexual (or possibly pansexual), and if she's only attracted to men then she's actually heterosexual as she's a woman.
Edited by Katsuhagi
So now when you try to edit the Character page, it warns that the page is too long and needs to be split. So, what's the best way to do this?
If we want to consider "Main Characters", that might be better served as like "Major Characters" and Minor Characters. It's really weird that Claire is not listed as a main character when she's had far more prominence than half that list at this point. Now part of this is due to the shifting cast, yeah. But at the very least I'd say "Major Characters" would be Marten, Faye, Dora, Hannelore, Marigold, Claire, Tai, Bubbles, and maybe Roko. Even if they haven't been there from the start, they have a lot of focal points on them. Pintsize has been there from day 1 but he's never really been a 'main character', I'd say.
Pretty much everyone in the 'Coffee of Doom' section is obsolete. Raven, Penelope, and Cosette have not made appearances in over thousands of comics. Penelope was made Assistant Manager and stopped showing up after another hundred or so comics. Dale does not even work there anymore, the only employees at this moment are Dora and Hannelore, with Claire as a temp.
Similarly, in the Secret Bakery, Padma's gone, Elliot, Renee, and Jim still show up.
Emily and Gabby are gone. Natasha and Amir are gone.
Apart from the 8 major characters I listed, I'd say Pintsize, Renee, Brun, Elliot, Clinton, Sven, Steve, Winslow, Angus, Momo, and May have enough prominence or focus to be noted as like 'secondary'. Everyone else after that, the parents, the exes, the situational characters, or characters that just don't show up anymore, could be shifted to their own 'minor characters' page. Especially since some of these groupings like May's Support Group are only two people long.
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