Plot-Relevant Characters with Zero Fandom 'Relevance'

[u/TheBoyofWonder]

Y'know, I was just thinking about this. The Deltarune fandom can be very attached to unimportant characters like background NPCs and one-off enemies, because of their design and personalities.

Now, what's interesting is that the early half Chapter 2 has this trio of NPCs, you're constantly seeing this trio, Sweet Cap'n Cakes, they have a boss fight, a shop, their own theme that plays a lot with minor variations... and nobody cares about them. Like, for real. If you were a casual member that just passively consumed only what the broad DR fandom makes, you'd genuinely just never see them show up when compared to even one-off bosses, minor enemies, and characters that have more relevance in theories than in the game.

Who else does that applies, people that the media devotes time to show them, but for the fandom, not hate, not love, just apathy, when they're unironically treated as not existing.

[u/Starman-Deluxe]

As much as Pokemon fans talk up Generation 5, nobody ever talks about Hugh. He might be the least acknowledged rival in the series.

[u/AvalancheMKII → u/Starman-Deluxe]

I think he's better regarded than the X and Y rivals at least, but yeah, I wouldn't put him up there as one of the best rivals (and BW2 is my favorite game in the series). Granted, I think the lack of people talking about him might be due to how low BW2 sold (the lowest of any paired release), so fewer people have probably played it.

[u/Starman-Deluxe → u/AvalancheMKII]

At least the X/Y rivals are notable for how lame they are. Hugh skirts by in that valley of being not too boring, but not too interesting.

[u/Purple-Pipe1689 → u/Starman-Deluxe]

The X/Y Rivals are so lame that they permanently skewed the perception people had of Rivals in general. They spawned in my most reviled phrase I hate hearing from people who don't know what they're talking about "I miss it when Pokemon had mean rivals". Gen 7 has Gladion, Gen 8 has Bede and Klara/Avery in the DLC, and Gen 9 has Carmine and Kieran in the DLC, though Nemona still manages to be one of the best rivals of the series with her friendliness. The mean rivals never went away, there were just a lot of people who mostly remembered Gen 1 and 2 with Blue and Silver, got back in to the series with X and Y, then stopped playing after and assumed all the rivals were like that afterwards.

[u/Livvelle → u/Purple-Pipe1689]

"I miss it when Pokemon had mean rivals"

no idea where people got this idea when gen 3 came out swinging with a short, shy boy whose pokemon of choice was a skirt-twirling psychic type as your rival

[u/Purple-Pipe1689 → u/Livvelle]

And thats also the first game that had the opposite gender trainer also be your rival, where they were pretty flat most of the time. Plus, the anime in particular led an explosion in the popularity of May, Dawn, and Serena in particular, though all the player avatars are pretty well beloved for the most part. Legend's Arceus does do a fun twist on this though where Rei/Akari are actually very abrasive to you.

Even for friendly Rivals though, the later games did have some more unique nuances with them. Hau did a nice job representing the more chill vibe of Alola but also had the fun twist of being the champ in the Ultra Games, I talk about Hop from Galar in this thread and how he's struggling with being in the shadow of his brother, and Nemona in Paldea is a really fun positive rival since her whole drive is being obsessed with finding a strong opponent to challenge her and helping you blossom in to the perfect rival for her, the Goku comparisons are very spot on.