Cleaning Up Needless References To Reviewers

This was added to YMMV.Sam And Cat:

• Uncertain Audience: In Quinton Hoover's review of the series, he observed that Sam & Cat came out during a time where Nickelodeon's teen and preteen viewerbase were shifting away from television in favor of online content. This means that Sam & Cat had to try and appeal to the younger audience that was quickly becoming the network's main demographic while also trying to appease the older, pre-established fanbases of iCarly and Victorious, a likely why the show's writing and humor is considerably more immature either of its predecessors.

Reception isn’t allowed in description, so removed that.

I might be biased because I watched that video but I don't think the reviewer mention is harming the example, as it's pretty well-contextualized and helps inform why the show struggled to succeed.

I found this on Quest for Camelot:

• Damsel Scrappy: In spite of few of her strong moments in the film, Kayley is nevertheless poorly prepared for knighthood. This is annoying given how often she speaks of wanting to be a knight.
  Nostalgia Critic: Young lady, you DEFINITELY need a career change.

Now normally I wouldn't mind the quote but also normally the reviewer quoted would you know have been mentioned in the entry. Should this be removed or rewritten?

Edited by Bullman on Sep 1st 2023 at 1:23:58 PM

The quote is unnecessary and the example itself kind of ignores a key point: Kayley isn't well-suited to be a knight because no one will train her.

It's like saying someone who wants to be a lawyer but isn't allowed to go to law school would be a bad lawyer.

But did the show struggle to succeed? I was under the impression that Sam & Cat did well and it was only cancelled because of the behind the scenes issues.

It was cancelled for behind the scenes harassment issues as per Word of Saint Paul, but I do believe it also struggled in ratings compared to its predecessors. However it may be more of an issue with Nick as a whole losing cable viewers due to streaming popularity, as Quinton himself pointed out.

Regardless I do think there's an argument for Uncertain Audience based on this entry, but I'm not sure if Sam and Cat was even really dumbed down that much from its predecessors or if the iCarly and Victorious audience just grew up.

Out of curiosity, I went ahead and looked up the shows ratings and found two articles saying it had good ratings. Now, I'm sure that these numbers aren't as good as the show's predecessors. The pilot for Victorious brought in 5.7 million viewers, while Sam & Cat brought in 4.2 million viewers. Still, I think it's fair to say Sam & Cat had an audience.

I can't really speak to if the show's humor was dumbed down or not. I didn't follow it the same way I followed iCarly or Victorious. It does seems plausible that older audiences assumed the show would be for them and were disappointed that it was made to appeal to a younger demographic. At the same time, it's hard to imagine that the people behind the show weren't trying to bring in the viewers who grew up with iCarly and Victorious.

Edited by SharkToast on Sep 3rd 2023 at 7:30:38 AM

I'm not sure if Death Battle counts as a reviewer but Condemned by History has a pretty needless reference on Superfriends's entry:

"^note As an example, when the Superfriends version of Aquaman appeared on DEATH BATTLE!, Wiz entered SpongeBob's and Aquaman's analyses expecting SpongeBob to be a legitimate joke and Aquaman an impressively broken character... only for those to flip incredibly quickly"

Yeah, I saw that. It should be cut. DEATH BATTLE! was far from the only series to make fun of the Superfriends version of Aquaman. Like, I could name Family Guy, Robot Chicken, The Fairly OddParents! among countless others.

This example from Money, Dear Boy relies almost entirely on reviewer quotes (including one from some obscure "snarky reviewer" website and one from Nathan Rabin). Should it be cleaned up?

• Eric Roberts has worked a lot since his 1995 arrest ("44 movies on the slate for 2016. FORTY-FOUR◊. (...) That is more movies than Marlon Brando made in his lifetime.") And movies like The Dark Knight, The Expendables and Inherent Vice are the exception, as Nathan Rabin sums up:
  According to his IMDB page, Roberts is scheduled to appear in no less than 41 films this year [2013]. Seriously. Obviously, some of those films will not be released this year, or ever, but that’s still a staggering volume of work for an actor outside the world of pornography.

Edited by DongwaChan on Sep 25th 2023 at 5:42:29 AM

Pray for Death actually has a review quote for a page quote. What's more, the work description is more opinion than description.

Shorten the description to just the salvageable parts, and remove the reviewer quote.

This example from Money, Dear Boy relies almost entirely on reviewer quotes (including one from some obscure "snarky reviewer" website and one from Nathan Rabin). Should it be cleaned up?

• Eric Roberts has worked a lot since his 1995 arrest ("44 movies on the slate for 2016. FORTY-FOUR◊. (...) That is more movies than Marlon Brando made in his lifetime.") And movies like The Dark Knight, The Expendables and Inherent Vice are the exception, as Nathan Rabin sums up:
  According to his IMDB page, Roberts is scheduled to appear in no less than 41 films this year [2013]. Seriously. Obviously, some of those films will not be released this year, or ever, but that’s still a staggering volume of work for an actor outside the world of pornography.

I don't think any example should be on the page that doesn't cite Word of God from the actor.

Are review quotes not allowed for the page quotes?

I suggest you go to Ask The Tropers with that question.

Bringing this up from On-Set Injury. The example already describes the issue well, but I think the link to a reviewer's retrospective is rather needless and should be cut.

• Starlight Express: The original production, performed on roller skates at speeds of up to 40 MPH, was widely known as one of the most dangerous plays on the West End, with the 21 actors averaging three injuries per run each, and one actress later suing the company. The Broadway production, which was faster and on a larger set, was just as bad, if not worse, with one actor snapping his ankle in rehearsals and another blowing out his knee after falling 15 feet. Wait in the Wings would later title his retrospective on the musical "The Painful Spectacle of Starlight Express" for this reason.

Edited by DongwaChan on Oct 2nd 2023 at 1:13:50 PM

I think just cut the last sentence, then.

The page quote for Offending the Creator's Own is a reviewer quote and just seems to be there to bash a work affected by the trope. Should we take it to the page quote thread?

A reviewer quote is actually pretty useful in audience reaction tropes. My issue is more that the quote doesn't feel clear enough that conservatives are actually offended, as opposed to just thinking the book is lowbrow.

Found these on YMMV.Doki Doki Literature Club

• Draco in Leather Pants: MatPat claims that Monika is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to win the player's affections specifically so she could get the player to save Sayori, Yuri and Natsuki from a horror game called "Project: Libitina", a currently unreleased Defictionalization of "The Portrait Of Markov", a book Yuri talks about in her route. Interestingly enough, the Doki Doki: A Brand New Day mod has the Portrait of Markov book act as an Artifact of Doom; maybe Phathom (the mod's creator) is a fan of the theory?

• Fan Nickname:
  • In Lattice's Japanese Let's Play, "Pro-chan" is used for Natsuki, who describe herself as one. Also, watchers will ask where "BGM-san" is gone whenever the Background Music suddenly stops.
  • Thanks to the spoiler being well-known, Sayori has been referred to in Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's animation on Zero Punctuation as "Saddo McKillmyself".

• Harsher in Hindsight: Sayori's entire characterization is this once you play through the game. She's presented as your cheerful Childhood Friend, and has typically cute and quirky flaws you'd expect from a dating sim heroine; she's clumsy, she's often late to school because of oversleeping, she has trouble staying organized, is mentioned to be a Big Eater, and relies on her relationship with the MC to make sure she's on track. These aren't just stereotypical Moe traits, but signs that Sayori has been living with depression. Once she reveals this to you, it puts much of her characterization into less "cute anime girl" and more "cause for concern". It only gets worse after she commits suicide. So, it's harder to find scenes featuring her cute or funny on future playthroughs with that in mind.

  Dan: I wish I didn't give this character such a dumb voice before she started, like, pouring her heart out.

• Realism-Induced Horror: It's well-known that DDLC undergoes a sudden Genre Shift from romance to metafictional horror after the first act. But some players, including Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation, claim that the most disturbing part of the game can be found before the twist: Sayori's depression and eventual suicide are presented in a very realistic way, making them very relatable to anyone who has suffered from depression or knows someone who has committed suicide.

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Yahtzee expressed the following sentiment regarding Sayori's depression and subsequent suicide:
  Yahtzee: It happens regardless of what choices you pick, which, in itself, might be an effective premise for a game about depression: constantly reliving the same few days trying to save her and failing every time because her problems are too deep-seated to be fixed just because you accidentally felt her up on day 3.

• The DILP entry is a nattery bullet point in context, and is more of an Alternative Character Interpretation. [=Mat Pat]'s theory could be merged with the entry if it affected the fandom's reading of Monika but as it stands doesn't really explain DILP well enough.
• I think Fan Nickname is valid if these nicknames picked up in these creators' communities.
• I don't think the Dan quote makes sense without the context of their Let's Play style.
• I think Yahtzee is just backing the entry up here and it's fine.
• That's misuse as written; They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot is not for making up a different idea altogether, and this isn't really a wasted plot as it is the turning point of the game. Though maybe there's something to Sayori's depression being used as more of a turning point and not used to its full potential as a deconstruction?

YMMV.The Princesss Jewels has two entries and both reference the reviewer and analyst BlackLightJack

• Critic-Proof: As shown in this video, despite the low quality of the art, the unlikeability of the main character, and the repugnant sexism on display, it still got a high score on Webtoons, and is loved by its fanbase, who consider Princess Ariana a strong, independent woman.
• Designated Hero: Princess Ariana. She spends the comic seeking out and collecting gorgeous men to make them part of her harem, referring to them as her "jewels", and treating them like objects for her personal amusement. It's pointed out in the above-mentioned video, she would more likely be the villain of the story if it showed her actions to be as terrible as they are.
  • In the above-mentioned video, a portion of it is devoted to a scene in episode 9. In it, Princess Ariana lures out Lord Meldea by posing as a street dancer. When he comes for her, he's portrayed as the perviest sexual predator of all time, asking her to come into her house, and ordering his men to bring her by force if she refuses. She easily trounces him and his men, all the while chewing him out for treating women like toys for his own sexual amusement, even ordering him to be castrated for what he did. This is all portrayed without the slightest bit of irony, and only the video commentators tear into the blatant hypocrisy Ariana is displaying, considering she's essentially doing the exact same thing as him.

Now the first one I think is...fine I guess because it's about Critic-Proof. But the Designated Hero one shouldn't reference him at all.

Found this on Opening a Can of Clones:

• Star Wars: This has been a slowly growing sticking point for the series for a long time coming, with both the films and the Expanded Universe adding in clone armies, doombots, the force being able to do whatever the plot needs it to do, and the ability to cheat death via vaguely explained Sith magic. However, it really hit the fan in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, wherein both films upped both the strength and prevalence of these elements to such an extent as to leave many viewers with the sense that nothing was at stake anymore. To wit, Rey becomes proficient with the force despite receiving little to no Jedi training and even spontaneously develops non-Force talents she shouldn't reasonably have, like wind-sailing and swimming in dangerously stormy waters; force ghosts are shown interacting with the material world directly; Luke uses an Astral Projection across light years of space to confront Kylo Ren; Palpatine is brought Back from the Dead via cloning and is seen draining energy from Rey and Kylo to heal his deteriorating body; Rey and Kylo both use Force Healing to save each other from fatal injuries (which deserves special mention seeing as it directly contradicts Anakin's motivation for falling to the dark side in Revenge of the Sith); and physical objects are shown being teleported across systems via spacetime communication. Suffice to say, all these elements combined in such a way as to essentially break the story, and in doing so turned many fans off to the series' future, something which Angry Joe—himself a huge Star Wars fan—noted in his discussion on The Rise of Skywalker:
  Angry Joe: [Force Healing] is a big Plot Hole because of the fact that it completely ruins death. There's no tension anymore. Death is a complete joke in this film. This person dies; comes back. This person dies; comes back. So, you do not give a shit when somebody dies! And not only that, but it completely ruins the series for the future. Like, you've got force ghosts that can do stuff [...], lightning strikes [...], and now we've got force healing [so] nobody can fucking die... I don't want to see episode X! I don't want to see XI; I don't want to see XII! ...They have to go away. They have to go back into the past.
  • Then there's The Critical Drinker's stance on the films:
    Drinker: Another massive problem that hangs over this movie is the Force. See, in the original trilogy, the force was subtle and used sparingly, like when Luke hears Obi Wan Kenobi's voice in his head and later sees his force ghost, or when he uses a force pull to retrieve his lightsaber. And when Palpatine used force lightning for the first time, it was like: "Holy shit! This guy is powerful!" Now it's just been elevated to ridiculous levels! Now, the Force can pluck spaceships out of the sky, heal fatal injuries, host Skype calls, teleport objects across the galaxy, and cast lightning bolts powerful enough to disable entire war fleets. There's no limits, no rules, no indication of what's possible or not, [and] so there's no way to buy into it. This is a world where you have no idea what anyone can do at any given time, and so pretty soon, you just stop caring.