The Nostalgia Critic cleanup

Suggestions sound good.

On the subject of "taking one-off jokes as canon", there's these examples on The Nostalgia Critic: The Critic: Tropes N-Z:

• Raised as the Opposite Gender: He was raised as a girl for a short while in childhood and his identity issues are a bit of a Running Gag. He also cries literally in his first commercials special that he's not a man, which even if you take as just thinking he's too pathetic, is still pretty relatable to people with gender issues. And he goes between being proud of and sulking about his dick, a common trait of trans men.
  Critic: Now granted I didn't grow up as a girl... for long. *looks embarrassed and about to cry* I have a history.
• Transgender: At some point he grew up as female, he takes testosterone pills, and he has repeatedly asked if he was born as a girl. Plus he's able to get pregnant by Chick, even if it is by FernGully magic.

Plus this in Rachel's folder on The Nostalgia Critic: Other Characters:

• Innocent Bigot: She has no idea what happens to black guys in movies and doesn't much care, and her first insult back to the (trans male) Critic is calling him a PMSing girl.

The Critic being a trans man seems like fanon at best.

Keet cleanup

Yep. It's fine fanon and all, but I'm still a little miffed that I watched the show under the assumption there would be unambiguous transgender representation and it turned out to just be jokes that were misinterpreted on this page to make the show sound better (probably all added by the same person).

Ambiguous Gender Identity, maybe, but not canon. I'll put the trans man headcanon in fanon to compromise.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 10th 2020 at 1:44:13 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Speaking of the "other characters" page, I'm unsure of whether those long subpages need reorganizing. It's a bit inconsistent whether certain characters get their bits merged into their actor's folder or whether they get their own folders. It's also a bit unclear which non-recurring characters should get a spot on the page and which don't need one. Like, why does the not-really-a-distinct-parody Barack Obama need a spot under Malcolm's section but not the three-times recurring character of Carrotjuice? IDK whether the solution would be to cut this down or split the page further or what.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 11th 2020 at 6:31:03 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Also I finally watched the review of The Shining miniseries so I can say with confidence a lot of examples about Rachel being a victim of Critic's abuse are misrepresenting the review. Yes, Critic goes crazy to parallel the events of Kubrick's The Shining but the joke is that Rachel is never actually threatened by him. She gets concerned, she chews the scenery by crying, but it's clearly just a re-enactment of Kubrick's film in context, and she's able to quickly turn it off and lock Critic in a door. Critic does play up the abusive husband role, and it can be unsettling, and she definitely might be afraid at some points. But the idea that Rachel was always some hapless victim of Critic (as some of the entries imply) is kind of ridiculous, especially since it sometimes serves to put down her role in NC in favor of her other role in a Walker show.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 11th 2020 at 1:35:57 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

The anniversary specials should probably be looked at as well.

I was tackling the main NC pages because the length of the show meant more room for bad entries, plus I don't read up on the anniversary special pages much, but yes we can look those over too. I know they also have had a gushing problem in the past and I imagine the opposite problem might be true in recent years. Those who better know the special and the other producers involved might be better suited than me at cleaning those pages up but we can definitely bring examples here.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 14th 2020 at 2:23:05 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

TearJerker.The Nostalgia Critic is just as bad as the Nightmare Fuel page (possibly even worse), taking Played for Laughs moments entirely out of context to make them look more serious and sad. Should we sandbox this too?

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I’m pretty sure that the NC Fanservice entries were just because our editors found Doug hot.

I knew one of the more frequent editors. That's exactly the case.

I don't care if people find Doug attractive because that's subjective, I only care if they misuse fanservice, especially if it's used in a fetishistic manner.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 17th 2020 at 8:58:56 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I'd say go for it.

And it's done. This one needs even more help than the Nightmare Fuel page. Lots of speculation and making connections that likely weren't intentional. Sooooo much "obviously it's a connection to TBF since they're reusing the same stock music they used in TBF, even though it was used in several other reviews!" and other total reaches.

Note that there is a fandom who cares about Critic as a character, so entries about his trauma aren't inherently invalid, but there should be more context rather than reaching to connect an offhand joke to his trauma.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 22nd 2020 at 3:16:41 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Proposition: should we move all non-Nostalgia Critic works by Doug (such as his vlogs) to his creator page? They clog up the NC pages right now and distract from the content of the series proper, and the creator page already lists some tropes from his work (though that page might need a look over as well).

Also reminder, please offer feedback on the reviews and contribute to the sandboxes if you can so I have enough consensus to start cutting things.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 22nd 2020 at 5:36:19 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Oh, absolutely. Those examples showing up on NC pages makes NO sense, feel like an example of them confusing Doug and NC as just "the same, so I can put the tropes on either page".

I'll save them in To-Do to move to the main page, or make another sandbox, if the many sandboxes aren't becoming overwhelming/counterproductive.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 23rd 2020 at 3:45:29 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

On another note, there are more than a few cases on the main page when they include Discussed Tropes in a review but don't actually explain what he discusses. Ex:

• In Name Only: The Critic describes Masters of the Universe like this in-universe.

These would be ZCE, right?

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Yep, that's a classic "This example is this"-type ZCE.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I might do a full review of the main subpages, because for the most part they're either "this example is this," Square Peg, Round Trope often based in taking the show's intentions way too seriously, or troping another Doug or Tamara project.

BTW, should we keep examples from behind the scenes videos on here? They're sort of an extension of the show and can provide context on some things, I just don't want it to veer into "troping the actual actors" territory. (The Incest Subtext section on Doug and Rob feels....questionable, though at least it's usually lampshaded by the boys.)

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 23rd 2020 at 11:33:57 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Depends on how in-character they are, I guess. We obviously don't want to start troping Doug and the actors themselves- not only because it'll open the door to potential ROCEJ violations (I have to admit that I can't think of Doug now without thinking of Change the Channel because it affected me really deeply, and thus I can see other people having similar reactions and wanting to trope Doug's behind the scenes life and somehow connect it to the controversy) but also because it's just creepy and off-mission.

So, I guess it's a case-by-case basis.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Ironically a lot of the troping of Doug was done years before CTC, so it's not very negative about him. Most of the complaining is a Single-Issue Wonk from 2013 about Demo Reel's cancellation / the reboot's existence, and the real-life troping goes to other inappropriate directions (painting Rob as abusive towards Doug because he pretended to choke him once, the entiriety of the Fanservice subpages). There are some entries that should be cut for being complaints about the show though, like "Just Joking" Justification regarding the Doug and Critic difference.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 23rd 2020 at 11:44:38 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Yeah, that too.

Like I said, I tend to link Doug with CTC even if none of the examples actually say anything about it. Just thought I'd mention it as something to consider looking out for (though it mostly seems to be discussed on the actual Channel Awesome pages and not Doug's).

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 23rd 2020 at 8:52:57 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Barring a misuse of Seasonal Rot about 2019 (which was more complaining about The Wall than anything) I actually haven't seen too much CTC complaining on the page, barring the Hindsight pages where it usually makes sense. I worry since Doug gets Misblamed for some higher-up behavior, but the pre-CTC contents of the pages have far more issues because a lot of it was added years ago before certain tropes got cleaned up.

Since I still watch NC (though of course I'm still critical of the company's past actions as well as Doug's smaller fuck-ups) my goal is more on catching the issues that those who haven't kept up with the series would catch, like some shoehorned headcanon-y tropes about the sketches. There's some meta junk too, but a lot of it is complaints about the show before CTC was a thing.

Point is, this thread isn't about CTC, it's an objective attempt to clean up misuse, complaining/gushing, and bloating.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 23rd 2020 at 12:06:12 PM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Fair enough, definitely.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

So here's my ideas for the content besides the main show. Obviously not including things like ZCE and shoehorned examples that need other work done.

• Doug vlogs not related to NC's content: Move to Doug Walker. "Real Thoughts" and "First Viewings" are basically behind the scenes content so they can stay, but "Doug Reviews" and the show vlog series are basically other works.
• Tamara vlogs unrelated to NC's content: Move to Tamara's Never Seen.
• Behind the scenes videos: Keep unless it's applying a NRLEP trope to the real-life people.
• Crossover videos hosted on other contributor's channels: Keep if it's related to a theme in NC or it's a remark on NC characters, but otherwise move to the contributor's work page.
• Other Channel Awesome series troped on the page: Pretty rare for it to happen but should be moved to any respective pages or maybe the Channel Awesome page.

Should the content relating only to Doug's other vlogs be cut from YMMV too? It'd kind of have nowhere to go since Doug's Creator page very understandably doesn't have a YMMV section. The NC pages just seem like a catch-all for all Doug-related talk at some points.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 25th 2020 at 10:58:27 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Sounds good.