Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Takeshi Kovacs

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) b uidhe 04:27, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Takeshi Kovacs

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A fictional character that appears in three novels and the related franchise, but no indication of notability (WP:GNG) otherwise. The many sources just repeat plot (WP:NOTPLOT) plus give some trivial casting info, but nothing that would justify a stand-alone article or merging. – sgeureka ^t•c 16:41, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. – sgeureka ^t•c 16:41, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep While I am not as familiar with the books as the series the subject is the main character in 3 books and 2 seasons of a popular streaming service. To me that seems like it would be notable enough even if the article needs to be cleaned up... and possibly have new references added. ScienceAdvisor (talk) 21:26, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As ScienceAdvisor has said, three books and a major multi-season streaming series should confer sufficient notability for an article about the central character that ties those works together. Samsara 12:27, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or redirect - Notability is not inherited from parent works. Current sourcing is mostly passing mentions. There needs to be more meat. TTN (talk) 00:01, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As stated above, 3 books + a multi-series TV series where the character is central is plenty, it's a lot more than many other character pages have. Lack of "Meat" is reason to improve the aricle, not remove it.Hackerjack (talk) 15:35, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notability is not inherited. Meat in this instance refers to more substantial reliable sources to satisfy WP:GNG. TTN (talk) 15:52, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as a notable fictional character:

The book Sex, Death and Resurrection in Altered Carbon: Essays on the Netflix Series has at least two character-centric sections: Living with Ghosts: The Haunting of Takeshi Kovacs and Takeshi Kovacs: The Dilemma of Inbetweenness.
The academic article "Romanticism and the Cortical Stack: Cyberpunk Subjectivity in the Takeshi Kovacs Novels of Richard K. Morgan" has numerous details about the character.
He is also one of the protagonists discussed in the book The Transhuman Antihero: Paradoxical Protagonists of Speculative Fiction from Mary Shelley to Richard Morgan.
I see more character-centric details in the book Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspectives.

Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:46, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Of the four, only the essay goes into any depth on the character. The others either barely mention the character, or only mention the character in relation to the plot to discuss the wider themes. TTN (talk) 21:50, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, they do not "barely mention" the character. I reviewed the sources and found numerous details characterizing the figure directly. Bare mentions are items like WP:GNG's example of Bill Clinton's jazz band Three Blind Mice. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 21:57, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an example of such details from Beyond Cyberpunk:

"Unlike most cyberpunk heroes, Kovacs is ethnically-marked. Where his fictional predecessors were mostly race-blind and heroes uniformly white, Kovacs repeatedly stresses his mixed Japanese and Hungarian roots... followed by examples throughout the books.
"Personal freedom of street-wise operators like Kovacs is possible... his outspoken, often solitary, dismissals of the Protectorate's might... only amplify the lack of lasting political alternatives."
"A solitary and cynical Chandlerian hero, he continually asserts his independence and readiness to do violence to maintain his territoriality, but the narratives repeatedly position Kovacs in situations in which he chooses to—as opposed to having to—stand up for others."
"As Steven Shaviro notes, Kovacs seems to 'combine an utterly Hobbesian view of human nature with a Marx-like level of outrage at explotation and and oppression'."'
'"Kovacs frequently experiences a sense of peculiar detachment and a feeling that the sleeve he is wearing reacts to certain stimuli unconsciously but the results bear on his conscious mind."

Not "barely mention" at all. That claim is a disingenuous framing of the sources that demonstrate the topic's notability. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:07, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For The Transhuman Antihero, a character-focused book studying multiple such characters, it states, "As with the other paradoxical protagonists examined in this study, Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs is revealed to be a a character whose actions whose actions are often informed by a personal sense of morality and justice." Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:15, 19 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Erik's quotes demonstrate that TTN's characterization of the sources as trivial is incorrect. There is a point where nitpicking of sources becomes reflexive and not grounded in common sense. -- Toughpigs (talk) 02:49, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.