gnome-core declares a dependency on totem (>= 43) | showtime (>= 48).

IMO this is unnecessarily strict. A variety of media players are available for GNOME aside from totem or showtime. Celluloid [1], Clapper [2], and possibly others also exist and are perfectly usable/integrated in a GNOME environment.

Since the user may opt for a different Gtk-based media player, in my opinion this dependency is better relegated to the "Recommends: ..." area.

This was observed on Debian Trixie/13.

[1] https://celluloid-player.github.io/
[2] https://rafostar.github.io/clapper/

I think Showtime is a better fit for our default Debian GNOME install
than Totem, but we ran out of time to make that swap for Debian 13.

gnome-core is supposed to be a metapackage that closely follows what
GNOME upstream considers core. I think ultimately we will add a new
metapackage as requested in https://bugs.debian.org/1089002 to provide
a more minimal GNOME experience for people who want more control over
what apps are installed while still having the convenience of a
metapackage to make sure that more essential parts of GNOME are
installed.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha