Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tsathoggua

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 no consensus. Fictional characters in well-known universes are always difficult; they are often covered in length in multiple reliable sources, but a full analysis also requires evaluating the nature of the coverage which can be highly subjective. Here, I do not see a consensus developing even after substantial discussion. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:58, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tsathoggua[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

What makes this fictional minor Lovercraftian entity notable? I don't see anything out there outside WP:PLOT and lists of which works this appeared in or was referenced. Seems to fail WP:NFICTION/GNG. Can redirect to Cthulhu Mythos deities, maybe merge some referenced PLOT content there, through nothing here seems particularly important (and Tsathoggua is minor enough he doesn't even have a subsection there, and I can't even figure out where we should add a subsection for him if we were to merge anything). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:37, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:37, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:37, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It 's easy to find more sources for this such as The Dream World of H. P. Lovecraft; An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia; The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters; The New York Review of Books. See WP:ATD; WP:BEFORE; WP:NOTCLEANUP; WP:NOTPAPER; WP:PRESERVE, &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:48, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- See WP:GOOGLEHITS. As usual, there is no shred of evidence that Andrew did anything outside of entering the subject's name in Google search and listing the hits that 'sound nice'. A cursory check of several, which took me longer than it took for him to list those sources, confirm the mentions are in passing (see for [1], [2]) While [3] has a paragraph, it is half-plot summary and half-publication history, no analysis to speak of. Same for [4]; virtually the only analysis to speak of related to this topic is the sentence or so that the entity was not invented by L. but by another, less famous writer, whose creation L. adapted into his works. Interesting, but we can't build an article on two sentences of trivia. GNG requires in-depth discussion, and as usual, this is lacking.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:20, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - WP:GOOGLEHITS refers to the number of hits reported by Google which, in this case, is "About 259,000 results". Per WP:STFW, the nominator is supposed to look through these but this due diligence doesn't seem to have been done. I browsed and listed a few and consider them quite adequate to establish notability. As the number indicates, there's plenty more to be found. For example, I'm liking this podcast by Michael Shea but am still working through it. But that's just for fun and personal illumination as my !vote stands regardless. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:40, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as above. Plenty of sources. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:59, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect, to Cthulhu Mythos deities the sources cited by Andrew D are either passing mentions or in-universe material, nothing that would actually contribute to notability. You can wikilawyer off as many random policies as you want, doesn’t change the fact that this fictional deity is not notable. Devonian Wombat (talk) 11:54, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect, to Cthulhu Mythos deities. Of the sources presented by Andrew above, only The Dream World of H. P. Lovecraft actually has any kind of coverage, and even that isn't particularly extensive. The other two books are nothing but extremely passing mentions (particularly in The Ashgate Encyclopedia and Literary and Cinematic Monsters, which is basically a name-drop with no coverage). The link to the The New York Review of Books is, in fact, a letter to the editor, and thus not a reliable source. The character, in question, is already covered in the master list of deities, and it does not appear that the current version of this article has any actual reliable sources to merge. The one entry in The Dream World of H. P. Lovecraft can be added to Tsathoggua's entry at Cthulhu Mythos deities as a source, but nothing in this current article needs to be retained in order to do that. Rorshacma (talk) 20:22, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Donald Tyson, the writer of The Dream World of H. P. Lovecraft: His Life, His Demons, His Universe, is not a reliable source. He is an occultist who created a magical system based on the Necronomicon.^[1] ―Susmuffin ^Talk 10:59, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Matthews, Carol S. (April 15, 2018). "Letting Sleeping Abnormalities Lie: Lovecraft and the Futility of Divination". Mythlore. 36 (2): 178–179. doi:10.2307/26809310 – via SWOSU Digital Commons.

Comment Ah, thanks for that. I guess you can strike my recommendation for adding that book as a source to the master deity list, then. This is a good reminder, though, that just because a subject may have been covered by a published book, that doesn't necessarily make that book a reliable source. Rorshacma (talk) 15:47, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. If WP:PLOT is the rationale for deletion, then against that there is Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy and Slime Dynamics both of which have some out-of-universe discussion, although I have to say it is hard to fathom what the latter book is talking about, or indeed, the whole purpose of the book. The Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture also clearly has some substantial discussion, but only in snippet view. SpinningSpark 14:15, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Spinningspark: I don't see how the first source you link goes beyond PLOT? Tell me, could you use this content to make a single non-plot line we could add to our article? I tried this, as a mental exercise, and failed. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:17, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - This is commentary on plot, not a summary of plot. That Lovecraft gave a different backstory to the creature is out-of-universe encyclopaedic comment. We could say that Lovecraft linked the myth to the "real-life" Hyperboreans myth to make the creature more believable. We could say, that according to this author, Lovecraft made the creature, while still horrible, more sympathetic to the reader by making its minions more ghastly. We could say (again, according to this author) that Lovecraft's use of "star-spawn" is deliberately ambiguous over whether the creatures are just aliens or actually made by stars. That's four lines. I don't see how you couldn't like at least one of them. SpinningSpark 11:45, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - It's all good, but not a single one is in-depth. This fictional entity got a few sentences of analysis, yes, but few sentences are not in-depth treatment. And GNG requires in-depth coverage, not a passing mention here and there. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:27, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Piotrus' moving goalposts. "Could you use this content to make a single non-plot line?" somehow turned into "a few sentences are not in-depth treatment" in record time. I tried to attribute this discrepancy to anything besides pure IDONTLIKEIT, as a mental exercise, and failed. — Toughpigs (talk) 06:11, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- There are no goalposts moved; few sentences is not related to notability. Please don't make straw man arguments, I never said that a topic is notable if you can write a few sentences about it. The point is that few sentences are the most one can write on this topic, outside pure plot fancruft. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:58, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ha ha. You set a goal and then refused to concede the point after it had been met four times over. That's not so much moving the goalposts as refusing to acknowledge that (your owm) goal even exists. A bad case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Bearing in mind that you singled out this source as being particularly devoid of encyclopaedic information, I've surprised myself that we are able to get quite so much out of it. Four sentences directly on-topic is most definitely more than a passing mention. Besides which the source contains way more than that. It actually begins at the start of the page previous to the one linked with a quote from At the Mountains of Madness and then proceeds to analyse it over nearly two pages. Since four encyclopaedic sentences are not enough for you, let's try a fifth. We could say that Lovecraft tries to lure the reader into believing in Tsathoggua by opeing with more well known and believable myths, like the abominable snowman, and then placing Tsathoggua at the bottom of the list. We could say this is part of the beginning of Lovecraft welding his stories into a single universe. Oops, sorry I just added a sixth sentence. Strike that and I'll add it back after your next denial. I would further argue that not all the discussion by a source need be usable in an encyclopaedia article for that source to establish notability. It is enough that the source has discussed the subject in detail at all, whether usable or not. SpinningSpark 11:50, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect - I'm sorry, but this fictional figure is not notable for a separate Encyclopedia article in my judgment. I agree with others that redirection to Cthulhu Mythos deities is the correct choice. - GizzyCatBella🍁 15:29, 23 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect Keep supporters are unable to find any examples of significant out of universe coverage. Wikipedia is not a repository of plot summaries. b uidhe 05:51, 24 June 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.

[1] Matthews, Carol S. (April 15, 2018). "Letting Sleeping Abnormalities Lie: Lovecraft and the Futility of Divination". Mythlore. 36 (2): 178–179. doi:10.2307/26809310 – via SWOSU Digital Commons.

[1]