Changes on the way the wiki covers Pink

So this is apparently a community vote according to Kocka so I'll put my elaborate take here on supporting Bowl's proposal so my vote is valid.

I support this for two different reasons. One is organisational, one is from a character perspective.

Organisational

From an organisational standpoint, I generally dislike the "siloing" of pages that describe grouped characters.

This is for several reasons:

  • It is not easy to browse. You need to scroll down to find information on a character amongst others, which is something the search box is meant to do.
  • You often get a piling-up of information (siloing) that is meant for individual characters that clogs up the rest of the page. This worsens the above issue. For example, on Elnina and Lanino's page, you have a whole paragraph and image dedicated to her unused playable state. For a Lanino fan (all 5 of you!), this is annoying and makes it harder to find what you are looking for.

The Mikes and Trashy Trio showcase good page design in this respect: Their boss fights are covered on the group page whilst being a navigation point for the other Mikes. This results in smaller pages that allow a browsing user to focus. Therefore, I would want the Pink pages to go in that direction.

The elimination of collective NPC pages was done for this reason, and the group pages should have received the same treatment.

Characterisation

Pink is not characterised as a single entity at all. Look at the boss fight and you will very quickly see why.

In the rush to get the wiki up to speed on Chapter 5, I think these details were missed. That is ok. So let me explain why Bowl's proposal is better.

Pink's ghost describes herself and her body as "we are Pink". Therefore, you have a collective with two minds. If you permit me to analyse with Dissociative Identity Disorder (and plurality in general) in mind, we can read the Ghost and Body as "alters" within a "system". In simple terms, what you have are two minds, one body. These are two separate characters in the same way Kris and the Soul are. That much is obvious; character-wise these two systems parallel each other.

Likewise, during the fight, Pink's body and ghost are described as fighting each other for control, and are clearly distinguished, even with different text boxes. The coloured text also shows a clear intent on the developer's part to distinguish which characters are speaking, implying you have two characters to analyse and understand.

Therefore, you have two characters in a single unit. Crucially, throughout the chapter, you never see these two fully integrate and merge; they have to compromise instead. What matters for the wiki, then, is that you have two distinct characters who are both shown to exist independently before the boss fight: The body is a figurine in the Light World and seen before the festival, and the ghost exists as early as Chapter 2, even seeing characterisation in having a crush on Asgore.

So from the very beginning, you have two things that would warrant some coverage. Then they receive independent characterisation later: Pink's body becomes a Darkner who wants to date people, develops feelings for Kris, and wants to taste that sweet, sweet, stinky fish. Pink's ghost gets an extremely elaborate showing of anxiety and fear mixed with unabashed feelings, and a heavily implied trans allegory. Hometown NPCs with almost no character have pages, and rightfully so. These deserve their own too, they are no less individuals than a character with a body, much like the SOUL Kris has to lug around. They are a cartoony yet appreciated showing of the daily struggles someone with plurality, gender identity struggles, and so on can experience. That can be covered properly by going over these two sides carefully. Bowl has done that!

You can see the struggle in covering this on Pink's wiki page already. Length aside, you see awkward headings, stilted paragraphs that try to introduce the experience each side experiences, so on, so forth. Sure, this can be formatted better, but the problem with constantly switching between two distinct characters remains and ends up hurting the presentation of a deeply complex and (so very unfortunately) unique character. This is the same problem you see with Elnina and Lanino, because...well, it's the same deal; you have two personalities you want to cover. The only difference is that they're sharing a body.

There is more to this but I am trying to avoid veering firmly into theory territory; I am still showing an interpretation, but I'd say it's strong!

The drafts Bowl has put up are great and she has taken apart the blocks of text extremely well. I see very little reason not to mainspace them. That's my vote.