Talk:List of Six Feet Under characters

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Difficult to follow - rewrite
2 Birth/death dates and layout fixes
3 Organization of characters
- 3.1 Family tree
4 Sources
5 Individual articles
6 Article name

[edit] Difficult to follow - rewrite

This article, while occasionally informative, includes so many inaccuracies, poor grammar, and awkward language that it sometimes seems like I am reading a different language. Some examples follow:

Inaccuracy In the Arthur Martin section, the following text: "when she learned he was not attracted to her, she went off and married George Sibley". Ruth did not end her relationship with Arthur because he was not attracted to her. She ended it because his expressions of love were so odd that she could not relate to him. Futhermore, the quote seems to indicate that Ruth immediately ran away to marry George Sibley because of her failed relationship with Arthur; this is also not true.

Poor grammar Every section of this article contains run-on sentences. "In the 1970s, the Chenowiths had become a topic of discussion after allegedly allowing their daughter Brenda to undergo testing by the controversial Gareth Feinberg, PhD who later wrote Charlotte: Light and Dark, Brenda resents her parents for those reasons."

Awkward language "Willa Chenowith was born on the final episode of Six Feet Under prematurely much to the fears of parents Brenda and the deceased spirit of Nate."

Furthermore, it's well known that Six Feet Under is a remarkably subtle show with a great deal of character nuance and depth; as such, there is much information being presented in this article which could be considered opinion or interpretation. An author could present the necessary information for this article by including much less information. While there is a fine line between fact and interpretation on Six Feet Under, there is a very clearly defined line between interpretation and the information necessary to complete a Wikipedia article.

I would recommend that the article be recreated.

Additionally, the tenses are all over the place; the article switches from past to present tense several times in a seemingly arbitrary manner.

My suggestion is that you help contribute if you find errors in grammar and not complain on a talk board. No offense. Sfufan2005 00:54, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Birth/death dates and layout fixes

Is it really necessary to include the birth and death dates in the section headings?! Not only is this a slap in the face of anyone who hasn't seen the very end of the very last episode but wanted to briefly glance over the top of the page without suffering any minor spoilers (expecting that at the very least the table of contents would be safe to look over for a moment), but it also just doesn't make any sense to me: the sections are about the characters, not about the characters+the significance of the years they were born and died in. I think these dates should be listed just below.

Other changes I recommend:

I'd definitely move George Sibley to the "supporting characters" section. If Lisa, Nathaniel, Billy, and Vanessa are supporting characters, then George most definitely is. The only difference between his significance and that of Lisa's and others' is that he doesn't appear until the last season, which creates an exaggerated impression of his role throughout the series because he's focused on so much near the end and thus more fresh in our memories. But note that he doesn't appear in almost any of the promotional material 7 "main characters" consistently appear in (I haven't seen many promos for the 5th season, so if he appears in those, that's something, but Lisa did too for season 3, so it's certainly not enough), he wasn't given a death date like all 7 other main characters were at the end of the last ep, etc.
Along with that, I'd move Federico below Brenda and Keith, not only because he's of less central importance throughout almost the entire series than those two characters are, but also because he isn't ever a part of the Fisher family, so having the 6 main character Fishers (the central 4, plus Keith and Brenda for marrying in and for playing major roles throughout the entire series—hence why George and Lisa aren't listed in this section), followed by Federico.
The layout of this page is.. interesting. It looks pretty neat, having those big blocks of text encircle the pictures, but it's kind of hard to wade through such lengthy paragraphs; when I go through this entire article to copyedit it, I'll probably divide them up into a lot more paragraphs (and rearrange the images slightly in the process, so they continue to work well with the text).

So, yeah. Just thought I'd mention a few of the things that immediately struck me when I looked at the page, before I started any in-depth editing. Best to keep the lines of communication open. -Silence 04:23, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, George debuted in late season 3. He was on the show for 2 and a half seasons and for much of that time, he was heavily featured. We met his children, we saw his mother die, we watched him have a nervous breakdown and then recover. He was more of a leading character than Billy (who disappeared for huge chunks of seasons two through five) or Vanessa (who only had leading material in the third and fourth seasons). And George appeared in the promotional material for both seasons 4 and 5.

You're hardly being fair or neutral in your comparison of George and other characters, acting like every single minor detail of George's story is of earth-shattering importance and huge, involved, vital story-arcs involving other characters are minor side-notes by comparison. I sense a definite bias towards events later in the series vs. ones early in the series. First, he was not on the show for "two and a half seasons", he was on the show for two seasons plus the last two or three episodes of the third season, and he very often played a minor or side-role throughout those two seasons, only occasionally rising to prominence (particularly in several episodes of the fifth). Furthermore, you count the fact that we meet two of George's kids in favor of him, and also count the fact that we see his mother die, yet completely ignore how massively important Billy's family is in the story, or that his father's death is shown too. You also act like Billy's only interactions were with Claire and Brenda (whereas George really was almost entirely involved in one other character's life—Ruth—and never had especially noteworthy or remarkable interactions with anyone else; Ruth was always the focus of his life, but the same is not true for Billy, who fixated on many other different main characters at different points in the series and ended up having numerous roles and paradigms in the series, not just one or two), ignoring his connection to several other characters, most importantly Nate, who he develops quite a history with. And to count Billy's disappearances against him is hardly fair if you're ignoring the fact that George didn't even exist in the series for over half of the episodes. At least Billy was a looming presence in the background ever since episode 1, even if he didn't always actually appear in the eps. I'll concede that George is a more central character than Billy, but not as much as you seem to think he is. And he's certainly less of a main, vitally central character than Lisa, by far, who you don't even have anywhere near the top of the page. But since you've agreed to move him down, I'm just nitpicking at this point; glad we found some agreement. -Silence 15:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem w/comparing George to Billy is that the reason we met Billy's family is because he was Brenda's brother. That is also why we met his parents - they were Brenda's parents. Billy, aside from his story with Claire, revolved around Brenda's life. George, even though his stories were repetitive at times, had a history and family that was independent of previously existing characters. And again, I did not put Lisa or George where they currently are, so I wish you wouldn't believe that I somehow maneuvered them into position based on my thoughts of the show. If you check the edit histories, I'm pretty sure that they were where they currently are BEFORE I began editing the page. I kept them there because I did not want to completely redo the page, not because of any big pro-George or anti-Lisa attitude. --JamesB3 19:27, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree Rico should be moved below Keith and Brenda.

It doesn't really matter to me whether or not we keep the birth and death date of each character, but the dates were a big part of the show. Not to mention that if people don't want to be spoiled they shouldn't go to the character section. --JamesB3 05:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll agree that George was more definitely important than Vanessa and maybe slightly more important than Billy (though in a concentrated sense rather than in terms of overall impact throughout the series; Billy wove in and out of the story and had numerous distint story-arcs, whereas George really only had one or two; they were just prolonged), but he was certainly less important than Lisa, who you haven't listed with the top characters. Just remove him, there's no reason to include anyone who wasn't a main character in every season; it will only cause trouble.

As for the dates: People have less reason to believe that a character page will have obvious spoilers on it than to believe that an episode summaries page will have obvious spoilers on it. I know that I came to this page when I'd finished watching about half of Six Feet Under and was quite apalled to find that I couldn't even briefly scroll down the page without reading the text without having such massive things as dates of death spoiled for me due to how huge their font size was. Moreover, there are plenty of practical reasons to have the death and birth dates in the character summary rather than in the section name, and also to have the shortened name used for the section name and only mention the full name in the text—just as is the format for article titles. So what I'm thinking is to start the sections like this:

===Nate Fisher===
Nathaniel Samuel "Nate" Fisher, Jr. (1965–2005), played by Peter Krause

etc.

Anyway, the chief practical reason to make the sections as short as possible is: it makes it much easier to link to those individual sections whenever we need to on any individual pages! That is, it means we can link to Nate Fisher by typing Nate Fisher rather than Nate Fisher. That makes a pretty huge difference. I bet once we have individual in-depth summaries for each episode, people will be especially annoyed to have to include the date of death in every single part of every page on all of Wikipedia that links to Nate Fisher's section (or any other character whose date of death in the series is known). Pretty awful, having to avoid even editing any Six Feet Under article for fear of spoilers in the very names of the article sections being linked to. Let's not cause unnecessary suffering, OK? -Silence 05:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I would say George and Billy had a close amount of story arcs (Billy - his love for Brenda and his doomed relationship w/Claire; George - his marriage to Ruth, the loss and recovery of his mind, and his problematic relationship with his kids as well as how his daughter caused upheaval in Nate's life). But if you want to move George out of the main characters section, fine. Doesn't matter to me. I would suggest maybe, if we are going to do that, we give the Fishers the #1 section, then have a #2 section for Lisa/Ted/Keith/Brenda/George/Vanessa, and then a #3 section for the other characters (like Brenda's relatives, Russell, Father Jack, whoever) I also have no problem w/taking the dates out of the section headings.

You were doing well until you got to Ted. Ted appeared in four episodes out of the entire series. Putting him on the same tier as Lisa, Keith, Brenda, Geoge, and Vanessa is absurd; you might as well put George's daughter up there too (and certainly excluding Billy and Nathaniel, and arguably Sara, from such a list is surprising, since I'd argue that all three of those characters are more significant to the series as a whole than Vanessa is). And if we have only the Fishers in the beginning, then I say we should organize the rest of the pages based on families as well for the sake of consistency, which was my original main suggestion for this. At the very least it solves the problem of having to argue about exactly how important characters are. Plus it's the only system that will make it obvious to anyone who's seen the series where on the page each character will be, aside from alphabetical order; people will get lost to some extent if we use "order of first appearance" or "order of number of appearances", because people aren't systematic like that. Organizing it that way is acceptable, but I still think doing it by family would be ideal. -Silence 15:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The reason I put him on the same tier is because he was married to Claire. Each of the Fishers only married (or remarried) a few times. The people they married were special to their lives. Yes, Ted only appeared in 4 episodes, but the last episode spanned about 100 years! Ted helped Claire change her outlook on life and eventually she married Ted and stayed with him until his final days. I think that warrants inclusion with Brenda/George/Vanessa/Lisa/Keith. My problem with organizing based on families is that I feel it muddies the waters and does not make clear to people who the most prominent characters were. Someone might skim through the article believing that Lisa's twin nephews were as big a part of the show as she was, or that they had a huge amount of airtime because they were related to her, even though they were actually only in a few small scenes. I still think that we should just put a small family tree at the start of the page for Brenda, for Keith, for Lisa, and then link to the articles down the page that go into more detail about some of the bigger members of their families (like Billy/Margaret, Barb/Hoyt). --JamesB3 19:27, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't see this character guide as being for someone who has watched the show halfway through. I see it as being for fans for loved the show and want to have a detailed yet brief history of their characters. If I were a fan who was only halfway done with the show I would avoid this section. I'm also not sure that having an episode guide is the best idea, since those can be found on other sites, but I guess a quick summary of each episode would be fine. Would that be on a whole new page? --JamesB3 06:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

It shouldn't be for "fans" in general, it should be for anyone who's interested in the show. In fact, as an encyclopedia article, it is required that this article's primary focus be on educating people who don't know anything about the show; they're the most important people to worry about anyway, since they're the ones most likely to need this information, having not seen the show themselves. However, while we should base our writing on the assumption that our readers know nothing or next to nothing about the characters already, we shouldn't include worrying about spoilers as a significant factor in that: that's what the spoiler warning is for, and once that's there, all bets are off. That means that if it in no way degrades the quality of the page, it's OK to make spoilers a little less obvious (and in the case of moving the dates from the section headings to the section text, it actually improves the page too, so that's a bonus), but it's definitely a very low priority—having well-written, understandable, and comprehensive (neither so short that it misses important details, nor too long that it becomes weighed down with trivia) information is what our job is, not just reminders for people who have already watched the show and loved it. While in practice that will be the majority of people who view the page, in principle we must never assume that people know any more than the minimum, for the same reason that quantum physics isn't written solely for quantum physicists, but for laypeople too. -Silence 15:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Organization of characters

I think that the current way the characters are listed has some problems. There's no obvious system to it, so it's difficult to find characters quickly. I think we should choose one of the following organized systems and stick to it:

List the 7 main characters (Nate, David, Ruth, Claire, Brenda, Keith, Federico) at the top, then list all the other recurring characters in alphabetical order of last name.
List the 7 main characters at the top, then list all the other recurring characters in order of first appearance.
List all the characters in order of how many episodes they appeared in.
List of the characters in order of "importance" to the series (a little too subjective).
List the characters in "family" subsections.

I think that the fourth option would probably work best, because family plays such a large role in the series and almost all of the important characters have family members show up at various points. The major families throughout the series are: the Fisher family, the Chenowith family, the Charles family, the Diaz family, the Kimmel family, and the Sibley family. Characters who don't fit into one of those categories can go in an additional section at the end, "Other recurring characters" (which I'll list in order of number of appearances below, though we can use some other system, like order of earliest appearance or something, if you prefer).

Obviously, the only real problem with a system like this is that some which characters belong in which families may be disputed. Because so many characters marry into, are adopted into, and are born into the Fisher family throughout the series, and these raise questions about which of the two families the character will be listed under, for the purposes of the list all characters who are not Fishers at the beginning of the series will be listed under the other family they belong to. So Brenda is listed as a Chenowith, Keith as a Charles, Lisa as a Kimmel, and Ted as an "other recurring character". Likewise, Maya is listed as a Kimmel (before you protest: remember that we are never made 100% sure that Nate is Maya's biological father), Willa as a Chenowith, and Durrell and Anthony as Charles (or possibly under "other recurring characters", if you think we should stick to definite blood-relations for all the families, not just for the Fishers). Such a listing would look something like this (using the names the official website uses for each character; their full names can be mentioned at the start of their bio, in the same style an article would use):

Fisher family

Nate Fisher
David Fisher
Ruth Fisher
Claire Fisher
Nathaniel Fisher
Sarah O'Connor

Chenowith family

Brenda Chenowith
Billy Chenowith
Margaret Chenowith
Bernard Chenowith
Willa Chenowith

Charles family

Keith Charles
Karla Charles
Taylor Charles
Roderick and Lucille Charles
Anthony and Durrell

Diaz family

Federico Diaz
Vanessa Diaz
Julio and Augusto Diaz
Angelica

Kimmel family

Lisa Kimmel Fisher
Peg and Ed Kimmel
Barb
Hoyt
Michaela
Maya Fisher

Sibley family

George Sibley
Maggie Sibley
Kyle Sibley
Loretta Sibley

Other recurring characters

Russell Corwin
Nikolai
Olivier Castro-Staal
Father Jack
Arthur Martin
Gabe Dimas
Anita Miller
Bettina
Parker McKenna
Jimmy
Matthew Gilardi
Hiram Gunderson
Robbie
Joe
Sophia
Patrick
Edie
Melissa
Ted Fairwell
Todd and Dana
Mitzi Dalton-Huntley
Phil
Carol Ward
Celeste
Jake
Dr. DiPaolo
Rabbi Ari
Sarge

Thoughts? -Silence 02:27, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I think this idea is the best:

List the 7 main characters at the top, then list all the other recurring characters in order of first appearance.

I don't think we should split into a family section, as it just creates confusion. Keith had an aunt, a niece, a sister and parents - none of these were such huge characters that they need their own subsection, but if Keith is listed under Charles family, that would be the natural consequence. Personally I feel that the 7 main characters should stay where they are. Then some of their more important relatives, like George's daughter and Rico's wife, are in the recurring section in order of first appearance. I also think that we should consider which recurring characters are worth including. I don't think that, just to name one, Edie is worth having on the site, as her presence was relatively meaningless and she only appeared in about half of a season. I would put Parker and Anita as others who shouldn't have their own subsection (they can be mentioned in Claire's section, which is a bit skimpy anyway), whereas Olivier, Russell, Ted and Gabe were all very important parts of Claire's life and of the narrative of the show. --JamesB3 04:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree that none of Keith's family members merit sections: Keith's father (who could be listed in the same section as his mother) and Taylor are both more significant than several of the characters already listed on the page. Also, there's another simple option: we could actually provide information on the family and its less significant members between the ==Charles Family== and ===Keith Charles=== markers; such a space can easily be used for all the data which isn't important enough to have its own character section. I'm also considering a "Minor recurring characters" subsection of recurring characters, with only a one-line description of each character. But, OK, let's see how your idea of listing them would look:

Main characters

Nate Fisher
David Fisher
Ruth Fisher
Claire Fisher
Brenda Chenowith
Keith Charles
Federico Diaz

Supporting characters

(First season)

Nathaniel Fisher
Gabe Dimas
Matthew Gilardi
Vanessa Diaz
Hiram Gunderson
Father Jack
Margaret Chenowith
Bernard Chenowith
Billy Chenowith
Nikolai
Parker McKenna
Robbie
Julio and Augusto Diaz
Mitzi Dalton-Huntley

(Second season)

Angelica
Dr. DiPaolo
Karla Charles
Taylor Charles
Melissa
Lisa Chenowith Fisher
Sarah O'Connor
Rabbi Ari
Roderick and Lucille Charles
Maya Fisher
Phil

(Third season)

Carol Ward
Russell Corwin
Todd and Dana
Bettina
Patrick
Olivier Castro-Staal
Arthur Martin
Sarge
George Sibley
Joe
Sophia

(Fourth season)

Peg and Ed Kimmel
Barb
Hoyt
Michaela
Anita Miller
Edie
Jimmy
Celeste
Kyle Sibley
Jake
Maggie Sibley

(Fifth season)

Loretta Sibley
Anthony and Durrell
Ted Fairwell
Willa Chenowith

Oh, and I disagree strongly that Edie wasn't important. Edie had a huge influence on Claire's art and her understanding of herself and who she wanted to be, and she played a major role in several episodes (she appeared in a total of seven episodes, whereas Carol Ward, who you've already included, appeared in only four three episodes plus her brief appearance in Lisa's wedding video). -Silence 05:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I can see how it's confusing, but I didn't include Carol Ward. She was already there when I began editing the page and I didn't want to remove her because I didn't want to just take off someone else's work. If it were up to me, she would be removed. As for Edie, I honestly felt that her relationship w/Claire and any influence on her art was fairly meaningless (most of Claire's story that season seemed to be about just how meaningless and hollow art school was). Russell came up with as much of the idea as Edie, if not moreso. I think that Edie, Parker and Anita were all ciphers and could be summarized in Claire's section.

I don't think we need to put (first season) or (second season), etc. because that implies the characters left after that season. I think putting them in order of appearance is enough.

As for Keith's family, I would disagree they merit their own sections. They were an important part of Keith's life but they never had any real purpose outside of driving a few story beats for Keith. They can be summarized in Keith's section. I also think that Lisa's family can be summarized under her section, and Ari, Melissa, Todd, Dana, Sarge, and Patrick (if Patrick was the sweet chorus guy David slept with one time) also don't need their own sections.

Alright, nevermind Carol Ward then; again, sorry for jumping to conclusions. So at least you're consistent, but I don't agree anyway. If we were talking about character pages (i.e., distinct articles), I'd agree with you in a heartbeat and tell you that putting minor character information into the page of the main characters they're most significant to is often a good way to handle it, to avoid creating wasteful stubs and make it unnecessarily difficult to reach information (by requiring more link-clicking and backtracking to find it).

However, there's a world of difference between dealing with character pages and dealing with character sections of a single page. When we're talking about sections, suddenly there's plenty of room to easily fit some characters like Robbie and Edie, who had little impact on the overall flow of the series, but did make a significant impact during the (fairly long) series of episodes they appeared in and did further the character development and plot progression of the series, in addition to very often being interesting, unique personalities in their own right, and often additionally noteworthy for shattering stereotypes or somesuch.

Additionally, remember that being able to find the information should be our primary goal in making this page. It's all well and good to say that Parker McKenna's information should go in Claire's section because she almost exclusively impacts Claire's character (though by that rationale alone, George would have to go in Ruth's section while we're at it :F), but thinking about it practically, if someone is looking for information on Parker McKenna on Wikipedia and finds this page, won't it be a hundred times more convenient for that character to be listed in the table of contents than to be buried in a quasi-summary in a totally different character's section?

But let me explain things to you this way, by suggesting something that at first seems counter-intuitive, but after thinking about it actually makes perfect sense: in a way, isn't it actually more important (for fans of Six Feet Under, anyway, who you say are your first priority in working on these pages) to have sections for the characters of intermediate importance than for the characters who appear in most of the episodes anyway? You see, people often have a difficult time remembering characters who only appeared in a half-dozen episodes a few seasons ago. For example, I'd completely forgotten Melissa (the prostitute who propels Brenda on her self-destructive sexual adventures) until I looked back through some of the episode summaries on the Six Feet Under site. Additionally, Wikipedia has more than enough room to hold summaries for every single character who ever appeared on Six Feet Under; the only question is how many of those characters are noteworthy enough for inclusion, and in the case of an award-winning, successful, highly popular series like Six Feet Under, considering that it ran for 5 seasons, I think that any character who played a major role in several episodes of a season should be included in the page! In fact, the only characters who shouldn't be included, in my view, are characters who appear in no more than one episode, and ones who appear in more than one but in extremely minor roles (i.e. the Krohner mortician Pam, Yuri, Gabe's buddies, Connie, etc.; on the other hand, someone like Rabbi Ari might merit inclusion, despite only appearing in a couple of episodes). At the very least, even if you don't want to grant them a section, they should certainly be listed in a brief list of minor characters at the bottom. But I think there's enough information on all these characters to actually give them sections. It's really not that difficult to write up a paragraph or two and perhaps dig up an image; I'll certainly help, if we can come to an agreement on which characters to include on the page or not. -Silence 20:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The problem I have w/this is that Melissa, and similar characters, only had a limited influence, and that was on one character. I would consider including a page on her, but then how many pages would we need to create. Would we create a page for Jake, who carjacked David? He was in less episodes than Melissa and yet he had far more of an impact on David's life than Melissa had on Brenda's. Maybe we should have on the main character page descriptions for the main 7 or 8 or whatever, and then give a link to another page for characters who had a major impact on ____'s life? We could have one page that mentions Melissa, Joe, the Chenowith family (for Brenda), and then one page that has Patrick, Sarge, the carjacker (Jake?), the lawyer that David went out with, a page with the various people Claire spent time with (although I would still include Ted on a separate section with all the Fisher spouses), etc. How does that sound? --JamesB3 22:28, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Again, we're talking about sections of a page, not pages. None of the characters of Six Feet Under have their own page currently, though I see no reason why a couple of the most major ones couldn't have one eventually; I've worked with a lot of character pages before, and that's how things have always worked in the past. But all of that's in the distant future, what matters is that there is no limit to how much information we can put on Characters of Six Feet Under. If the page gets too big, we can easily subdivide it into separate pages, or do any number of other things to ensure it remains navigable and useful. The only requirement should be noteworthiness, and any character who had a significant effect on the story, had a developed personality, and appeared in multiple episodes should probably be included on the page, even if the character only had an effect on one other character. How many characters were influenced has absolutely nothing to do with whether a character is noteworthy enough or not to merit inclusion! A character who had an extremely minor influence on eight or nine major characters is still infinitely less significant than a character who had a pretty large influence on only a single major character.

And yes, of course we would include one for Jake. Jake was one of the most crucial characters in all of season four, one of the most unique and difficult to understand significant characters in the entire series, and starred in one of the most controversial episodes of the entire series; there is plenty of noteworthy information that belongs on Wikipedia, and not just goddamn hidden inside David's section!! Also, I would dispute that Jake had a stronger impact on David's life than Melissa had on Brenda's. While David's conflict with Jake only brought him a lot of stress and trauma for a few episodes, it didn't cause any lasting harm or anything like that; on the other hand, Brenda's descent into constant random sex with strangers ended up destroying her marriage, permanently scarring her relationship with Nate and all the other characters, driving Nate away so that he would be much more tempted to marry Lisa instead, etc. I shouldn't even have to be arguing this.

I'm surprised that someone who has been so terrified of using up Wikipedia's (for all practical purposes infinite) space by including a handful of slightly less major but still quite important and noteworthy characters, is so willing to include those characters as long as they're divided up in a ridiculously, pointlessly, horribly haphazard and dischordant manner across numerous different pages. What is wrong with including them all on Characters of Six Feet Under, and then creating new pages to divide up the characters if the page starts to get too large?!?! Why is that so terrible? Isn't that pretty obviously the most convenient way to handle this for everyone? Putting the main characters on their own page is pointless, it'll make life harder for anyone who wants to see information on any other character, the main character sections aren't yet long enough anyway, if they get too long they should probably be put on individual pages (like Nate Fisher) so they'd be easier rather than just as hard to access, with shorter summaries on this page, and anyone who comes to this page looking for the main characters won't be at all bothered by all the minor ones anyway because they're all at the bottom of the page!! -Silence 00:21, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the carjacker did have as much of an impact as Melissa, since David kept having breakdowns over the guy in the last 2 seasons. There's nothing "terrible" about your suggestion, and I don't think I ever used that word. I just don't know if there is room to include detailed information about so many characters all on one page. There are (or used to be) size limits for a page, so that was my concern. And really, we all have strong opinions on subjects, but that's all they are - opinions. If you said, "HBO ran Six Feet Under" then you wouldn't have to argue a subject. If I said that Nate and Brenda weren't married in season 2, that would be a fact. But it's nothing life and death, so I don't think that your ideas are "terrible". I just think that's a lot of people to put on one page. If that's how you want to do the site, fine. Go for it. --JamesB3 02:01, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

This is what I would suggest:

At the start of every section for a main character (like George or Brenda or Keith) we have a short family tree or timeline. For instance, at the start of Lisa's section, quickly list all her relatives. --JamesB3 06:34, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's a terribly interesting idea. Family trees! I hadn't even considered that; such a thing would actually work wonderfully for this series, since it's so complex and family-oriented, with a vast majority of the characters currently on the page related to one another. Of course, the family tree idea is also an idea that works about fifty times better if you use my idea for organizing the page by family groups, since it would be really awkward and space-consuming and annoying to, for example, put the Charles family tree under Keith Charles, or the Fisher family tree under Nate Fisher, or the Chenowith family tree under Brenda Chenowith, or anything like that; on the other hand, if we had actual sections for each family, with family members grouped under them, we could easily put the family tree for each family right under, for example, "Chenowith family", above the first member of that family given a section!! Fantastic. The family organization plan is looking better and better all the time. Let's see now... -Silence 20:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Family tree

Now that I've gotten thinking about how everyone's related, I've spent the last few hours drawing up an ascii family tree of the Fishers and all the families they marry into. It contains all the information available, as provided by the series and by the HBO Six Feet Under site, with the exception that less important branches of the Charles family tree we know of was left off because it would go over the edge of the page, and I left a few people off (like some of Hoyt and Barb's children I think). Feel free to add to or correct this tree.

Oh, and don't worry about how large it is. I assume that if we use something like this for the main page, it will be divided up from family to family—i.e. one for the Chenowiths only, one for the Fishers only, one for the Sibleys only, one for the Charleses only, one for the Kimmels only, and an extra one for the Diaz family, who I didn't include here because they're the only significant family that's in no way connected to the Fishers. I only started off with a huge, involved one like this to prove to myself that it was possible; it took quite a few tries to get everyone fitted on here without crossing any lines or whatnot. :)

Key:

+ = marriage, civil union, or child-producing intercourse.
___ = horizontal line of siblings.
| = vertical line of parentage; when leading to a dot, instead denotes a person being used in two positions on the family tree.
. = due to lack of space, the person's name cannot be listed where it should be, where the dot is, and will be indicated by a line pointing from the person's name to the dot.

                     Smiths                         O'Connors       Fishers
        _______________|_____________                 |               |
       |               |             |                |               |
       |               |             |             ___|__             |
Abigail Smith  Loretta Sibley + ?   Marie Altman  |      |            |
                              |                   |   Sarah O'Connor  |
                              |                   |                   |
     unmarried lover + George Sibley   +   Ruth Fisher   +   Nathaniel Fisher Sr.
                    /           \                        |
                   /             \                       |________
                  /     6 wives + .                      |        |
                 /              |                        |   Claire Fisher + Ted Fairwell
                /     __________|__________              |
               /     |                     |             |
            Kyle   Maggie Sibley   Brian Sibley          |  Joseph Green + Anna Green
                                                         |           ____|____
                                                         |          |         |
Bernard Chenowith + Margeret Chenowith                   |  Dorothy + ?  Jeanette Bradford
                  |                                      |          |
        __________|                                      |  Roderick Charles + Lucille Charles
       |         |      _________________________________|                   |
Billy Chenowith  |     |                       |                _____________|
                 |     |                       |               |             |       
   Brenda Chenowith    |  Raoul Martinez + David Fisher + Keith Charles  Karla Charles + ?
                 \     |                                |                              |
                  \    |                            (adopted)                          |
Daniel Nathanson + . + Nate Fisher Jr.           _______|______        ? Benoit + Taylor Charles
                 |   |                \         |              |
 Forrest Nathanson   Willa Chenowith  |   ? + Durrell       Anthony + ?
                                     /       \                     /
                                    /   (who is parent of whom is unknown)
  Peg Kimmel + Ed Kimmel           |                    |
   __________|__________           |         ___________|___________
  |                     |          |        |           |           |
  |                     |          |     Matthew     Keith Jr.    Katie
  |    Hoyt Woodworth   |          |
  |            \        |          |
  |             \       |          |
Barb Woodworth + . + Lisa Fisher + .             
               |    \            |
               |     \           |
               |      \          |
   Michaela Woodworth  \         |
                        \        |
        (biological father is probably Nate, but uncertain)
                             |
                        Maya Fisher

So, how's it look? -Silence 20:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

It looks pretty good to me. Not sure how anyone else feels but I like the idea.--JamesB3 22:28, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I like it, we should include it on the Characters page. Sfufan2005 03:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

Somes sources for the info on this page would be goood. Having just watched (and rewatched) the last episode and specifically the end of the last episode, I'm a bit confused as to how some details are known. For example, how are Brenda's degrees known and her adding several courses to the USC curriculum? How is Claire's later career known, especially the years she got tenure etc? How was David's later life in community theatre known? Etc etc... I guess the names for the sons and grandchildren of Claire, David (well from the adoptions) etc were known from the credits/character list (I didn't bother to look)? 203.118.178.220 18:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Most of the extra info is from [1] (Warning: Last Episode Spoilers), and other sources on the website. The site provides in-depth "obituaries" for almost all the characters who die throughout the series. -Silence 22:41, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Individual articles

I think we have a large amount of information (which is wonderful, by the way) for the starring characters to have their own individual characters (Nate, David, Claire, Brenda, Ruth, Rico, George and Keith). The remainder can stay on this page (see my work on List of characters from The Sopranos. If anyone has objections or questions let me demonstrate first and if anyone has any ideas come forward. Sfufan2005 03:30, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

- I started out with Nate and will continue with David and Claire. Sfufan2005 03:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
  - You are doing it wrong. Leave at least 2–3 relatively short paragraphs for all main characters. Sub-pages for characters should be used to give all the specifics on the characters, not to replace information on them altogether and make it impossible to read about them without going to the individual sub-pages. Their sections should be heavily summarized for this page, not removed altogether. -Silence 04:15, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
    - Also, Brenda, Nate, and David were (and still are) the only characters on Characters of Six Feet Under who have enough information to merit individual articles at this point. Making distinct articles for Claire and Ruth was premature and has produced stubs; they already had very little information yet available here, not more than many of the minor characters on this page. However, it's not a big enough problem to be worth reverting or anything, and hopefully the new articles will help to attract more attention so they can all be significantly expanded—though it could easily have the opposite effect and isolate the articles from each other enough that they become inconsistent, flawed, or under-used; we'll just have to wait and see! -Silence 04:19, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
- I am not doing it wrong, I'm just not doing it the way YOU want it to be done. I agree that there should be a paragraph about the character but the rest should go in the individual article. But why aren't Ruth and Claire entitled to articles, they are part of the main ensemble and their articles will hopefully be expanded. Please stop jumping to conclusions before I finish because you are being incredibly rude. Sfufan2005 04:43, 17 February 2006 (UTC)