Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25626-20170606204630

Jonathan created the "Minor Fictional Characters in "Death in Vesunna"" last year. The Admins put a stop to it, since we haven't ever discussed creating an MFC page for short stories.

We'd begun a discussion here but reached no resolution. With some time since that event, and since I just stumbled on to the Vesunna page, I'd like to review the question.

We do have some articles that really are minor characters. They really didn't contribute that much to the overall piece. They didn't participate in the main events of the story, didn't help or hinder the protagonist or antagonist, and had no more depth than U.S. Soldier Who Wanted Confederate Tobacco on Page 145 of The Grapple. Consequently, their articles are a few sentences and are of dubious value or quality. So I am willing to consider a single page for minor short story characters is a worthwhile idea.

What I would propose, though, is a much large catch-all "Minor Fictional Characters in Short Stories" page, akin to the Minor Fictional Characters in Crosstime Traffic one, rather than pages dedicated to each story. We're still dealing with short works, and even a ruthless culling may yield one or two minor characters from each story. We would leave out POV characters, even if they are one scene wonders, and focus on those characters we'd reckon as minor in a much larger work.

In addition, I'd still like to float the idea of a page dedicated to all characters in the really short works, such as "The Mammyth" or "Half the Battle", where the characters just aren't that developed, even if they are the protagonist. Other candidates would be the stories that appeared in the "Probability Zero" section of Analog, which are all two-pages at most. Other candidates might be stories where a whole bunch of characters are involved, but they all do essentially the same thing, like "In This Season", where three families all meet a golem, and then take a boat to neutral territory, but aren't doing anything really unique on an individual basis. Redirects would be left in place, but otherwise, all pertinent info would be on e.g., "The Mammyth Characters" page. 