History WebVideo / SarahZ

* MadonnaWhoreComplex: In “The Rise and Fall of Geek Culture”, Sara discusses how women in male-dominated fandoms either had to “aggressively sexualize” themselves in order to gain a little bit of acceptance, or work hard to desexualize themselves to differentiate themselves from those “fake geek girls”.

* BiasSteamroller: Happily admits that she has a biased hatred of the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' franchise and that she'll be taking Creator/JRowling to task.

* CanadaEh: In her Q&A, she responds to a question asking if she's Canadian by dropping "eh" and "aboot" in a stereotypical accent. The way she pronounces "about" as "aboot" naturally also fulfills the trope. While tearing apart the movie ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'' she kept on referring to ''[[VerbalTic Soar-ry]] [[Film/SorryForBotheringYou For Bothering You]]'' as a better movie about a similar concept.

* CanadaEh: In her Q&A, she responds to a question asking if she's Canadian by dropping "eh" and "aboot" in a stereotypical accent. The way she pronounces "about" as "aboot" naturally also fulfills the trope.

* EntertaininglyWrong: Argues that, for all the absurd nonsense that went on in TJLC, there was a pretty convincing core to it. ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' did indeed feature a lot of subtext and jokes about Sherlock and John being gay, the creators were actively pushing for the idea that the show had a grand, vast, hidden narrative, and therefore connecting the two seemed pretty reasonable. At the time, it just wasn't evident that the show [[invoked]] ''[[TheChrisCarterEffect didn't]]'' have a vast hidden narrative, and the jokes about Sherlock and John being gay were meant to deflate romantic tension rather than heighten it. She notes that, honestly, the fans were probably thinking about things much harder than the writers were.

** In "The Rise and Fall of Geek Culture", she said that the Gamergate controversy of 2014 marked the beginning of the end for the mainstream geek culture explosion of the late 2000s and early '10s. She argued that it not only brought its long-standing issues with misogyny and racism to the surface and made them a dramatic fault line within various fandoms (citing ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' and ''Franchise/StarWars'' as examples), it also marked the moment when the tension between geek culture's historic self-image as bullied, put-upon outsiders and its new image as [[ProudToBeAGeek the cool kids of pop culture]] finally snapped, destroying the idea of there being a single, unified geek culture at all. A series of other, individual controversies that followed, such as the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' Szechuan sauce debacle, the disgrace of various big-name figures, and the oversaturation of MerchandiseDriven brands like [=ThinkGeek=] and Toys/FunkoPop, further took the shine off of geek culture and increasingly made it seem primarily a domain dominated by ConspicuousConsumption and [[invoked]] PanderingToTheBase, with the year 2019 serving as its death rattle even as "geek" media itself continued to flourish.

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: She points out that ''{{Series/Riverdale}}'''s attempts to address this with the [[TeacherStudentRomance Archie/Miss Grundy affair]] results in a BrokenAesop given how sexily the scenes were framed, and that it was still portrayed as [[StarCrossedLovers forbidden love]] rather than a predatory adult taking advantage of a naïve teenager.

** In "The Rise and Fall of Geek Culture", she said that the Gamergate controversy of 2014 marked the beginning of the end for the mainstream geek culture explosion of the late 2000s and early '10s. She argued that it not only brought its long-standing issues with misogyny and racism to the surface and made them a dramatic fault line within various fandoms (citing ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' and ''Franchise/StarWars'' as examples), it also marked the moment when the tension between geek culture's historic self-image as bullied, put-upon outsiders and its new image as [[ProudToBeAGeek the cool kids of pop culture]] finally snapped, destroying the idea of there being a single, unified geek culture at all. A series of other, individual controversies that followed, such as the ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'' Szechuan sauce debacle, the disgrace of various big-name figures, and the oversaturation of MerchandiseDriven brands like [=ThinkGeek=] and Toys/FunkoPop, further took the shine off of geek culture and increasingly made it seem primarily a domain dominated by ConspicuousConsumption and PanderingToTheBase, with the year 2019 serving as its death rattle even as "geek" media itself continued to flourish.

* AnAesop: While her video ''Tumblr's Failed Convention: The Story of Dashcon'' is mostly chronicling the aforementioned event, she does deliver an additional moral in the conclusion:

* AlphaBitch: Uses this as an example of how a cliched trope can be used well with regards to Cordelia of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' - by putting her in unusual situations that forced her to learn and grow as a character.

* AngstAversion: [[invoked]] She believes a big reason for why the film adaptation of ''Film/DearEvanHansen'' failed is that it removed or altered the lighthearted moments from the [[Theatre/DearEvanHansen original musical]], which she saw as more of a dark comedy, which made the story seem less self-aware of its outlandish concept and thus made it more explicit and uncomfortable.
* AscendedExtra: Her co-writer, Emily, began her life on the channel with a small cameo reading lines from ''{{FanFic/My Immortal}}''.

** Discussed in her video on Queerbaiting, and how the term is often confused with HideYourLesbians (such as ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'' where ExecutiveMeddling prevented the confirmation that the two characters were a couple until the finale) or HoYay (such as ''{{Series/Scrubs}}'', where the characters are clearly straight and their close friendship is PlayedForLaughs).

* BerserkButton: Usually PlayedForLaughs; she doesn't like the BBC Sherlock portrayal of Irene Adler, and jokes that she has a "daily Irene Adler rant" quota to fulfill.
* BiasSteamroller: Happily admits that she'll be taking JK Rowling to task and has biased hate of the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' franchise.

* BreatherEpisode: She describes [[https://youtu.be/aod-SNM2tOo her video]] about ''Crime Scene Kitchen'' as this, hoping to make a more lighthearted and fun video after her most recent videos about ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', the Creator/McElroyBrothers and the legal response to her ''Homestuck'' video became exhausting to release, and her next video[[note]]which turned out to be about {{shipping}} culture[[invoked]][[/note]] would examine some controversial topics. Because she doesn't want to be defined by such controversies, this time she just made a video about a weird, fun cooking show she saw.
* BuryYourGays: She discusses this trope in her Destiel video, saying that not all cases where a gay character dies should be automatically considered homophobic because the trope isn't just "a gay character dies" but "the only gay characters are treated as uniquely expendable or die in ways that are tied to their sexuality" and that Castiel being sent to turbo-Hell the instant the audience learned he wasn't straight thus came across as [[ExaggeratedTrope a hilariously extreme case of this]], especially when the last two episodes seemed to go out of their way to completely ignore his love confession to Dean and only gave a token mention of him having gotten out of turbo-Hell off-screen.
* CanadaEh: In her Q&A she responds to a question asking if she's Canadian by dropping "eh" and "aboot" in a stereotypical accent. The way she pronounces "about" as "aboot" naturally also fulfills the trope.
* CatchPhrase: The word "buckwild" shows up at least once in almost every video she makes.

* CausticCritic: Sarah herself averts this trope but in her video titled "Bad Media Criticism", she demonstrates how the overuse of the trope can lead to nitpicking in place of actual critique.
* CharacterNameAlias: In her video on Dashcon, she did use the real names of organisers Meg, Cain and Roxanne - but for an anonymous Australian volunteer, Sarah calls her Susan for the sake of the discussion.

** However hard she tries and even having scripted the segment in advance, she ''cannot'' keep a straight face when it comes to talking about [[WesternAnimation/TheLorax Onceler]] fans [[ScrewYourself shipping him with himself]].
** She's laughing with incredulity when she describes how Dashcon offered to compensate those who donated with an extra hour in the ball pit (which was not a timed event).
* DeathOfTheAuthor: [[invoked]] Discussed extensively in her video on Creator/JKRowling and authorial intent. She finds it inherently hypocritical that JK Rowling has been supportive of fan fiction and different interpretations of characters, but has been quick to resort of WordOfGod to debunk theories she doesn't like (like responding "no" to a fan asking if Sirius was gay).
* DelusionConclusion: A major component of TJLC, a.k.a The [=JohnLock=] Conspiracy of Series/{{Sherlock}} fandom[[invoked]], which arose from the fact that the show already had episodes focusing on Series/{{Sherlock}}'s "mind palace", and therefore large portions of the show might also take place there. Needless to say, this meant that any scene the fandom couldn't fit into the theory could take place there, and was probably rife with psychosexual symbolism in and of itself.
* DesignatedHero:[[invoked]] One of her biggest complaints about the show ''Series/{{Insatiable}}'' is that both of the main characters are unlikeable and very hard to care for.

** Her TJLC video naturally goes into this, being a discussion in part of the fandom's drama and how utterly willing they were to demonize those who posed a threat to Johnlock--in particular, she brings up how Mary Watson was hated far more than any of the show's actual villains ''before the character was even introduced'', and the ''Series/{{Elementary}}'' version of Watson was given a similar level of hatred solely for being a female Watson, and therefore, in their eyes, much more likely to get paired with her Holmes during the height of BBC ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'''s popularity. (Ironically, ''Elementary'', like ''Sherlock'', kept Holmes and Watson's relationship at ShipTease levels at most.) Even the idea that Sherlock was [[UsefulNotes/{{Aromantic}} aro]]/ace (which there was some canon evidence for) got accused of homophobia--when, as she points out, erasure of UsefulNotes/{{asexuality}} is considered a form of prejudice in and of itself.

** Discussed in her video on Theatre Bootlegs. She uses an example of the ''{{Theatre/Heathers}}'' musical initially closing after a poor run, but developing a large following mainly through people who saw bootlegs of the show online. This popularity led to the show being revived.

* DisproportionateRetribution: Examined in ''The Horrifying Panopticon of West Elm Caleb''; Sarah discusses how a lot of public callouts online, even ones directed at genuinely harmful people, can often be wildly disproportionate, up to and including doxxing and harassment. Sarah points out that in most cases, this doesn't actually help people who are harmed by such individuals, and what's more, a not insignificant number of people who perpetuate these callouts seem to be more interested in entertaining themselves than actually helping anyone.

* DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale: She points out that ''{{Series/Riverdale}}'''s attempts to address this with the Archie/Miss Grundy affair results in a BrokenAesop given how sexily the scenes were framed, and that it was still portrayed as forbidden love - rather than a predatory adult taking advantage of a naive teenager.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Her earlier videos were ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'' memes, much before she started doing video essays. And even some of her early video essays were more nitpicky complaining critiques of ''{{Series/Heathers}}'', ''Series/ThirteenReasonsWhy'', ''{{Series/Riverdale}}'' etc.
* EndOfAnEra: Her video on the infamous Dashcon heavily involved the idea that it was, in many respects, the end of the "cringingly enthusiastic" era of Website/{{Tumblr}}, where people talked about a "Tumblr University" as an ideal situation or created maps of all the different communities or mashed various fandoms together to create chimeras like Superwholock. After Dashcon bombed out, there was a clear shift away from that; merged fandoms died out almost completely, and the term "hellsite" being used to describe Tumblr went into fashion, with the site taking on a notably more pessimistic tone.
* EntertaininglyWrong: Argues that, for all the absurd nonsense that went on in TJLC, there was a pretty convincing core to it: ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' did indeed feature a lot of subtext and jokes about Sherlock and John being gay, the creators were actively pushing for the idea that the show had a grand, vast, hidden narrative, and therefore connecting the two seemed pretty reasonable. At the time, it just wasn't evident that the show ''didn't'' have a vast hidden narrative, and the jokes about Sherlock and John being gay were meant to deflate romantic tension rather than heighten it. She notes that, honestly, the fans were probably thinking about things much harder than the writers were.
* FalseFlagOperation: A bizarre example; in "Tumblr's FAKEST Story", she comes to the conclusion that many fake Tumblr posts ''are themselves fake'', made specifically to be mocked on other platforms for clout. There is no record of "Oppa Homeless Style" and similar posts existing anywhere besides screenshots posted to reddit. Sarah notes that many of these fake stories frame their made-up posters, usually implied to be "social justice warrior" types, as cringey, stupid liars, and by extension, also frame the real issues caricatured in such posts as hysterical, exaggerated ravings.
* ForWantOfANail: She notes in her Destiel video that were it not for the 2007 writers' strike that forced the show to scrap its initial plan of having Dean be rescued from Hell by Sam in season 3, Castiel and the entire Destiel ship never would have existed -- and by extension, neither would have Jughead's "I'm a weirdo" speech from ''Series/{{Riverdale}}'' (as the writer of that episode got famous enough to get her job after she wrote ''Ship It'', a book inspired by controversial comments that Dean's actor said towards a fan who seemed to be asking about Destiel subtext).

* FranchiseZombie: [[invoked]] "A Brief History of Homestuck" ends with her saying that in her opinion, she really loved it while it was ongoing, but that it should have flat-out ended. That way, people could enjoy it as a fun nostalgic thing and look back on its merits fondly, rather than constantly being jerked around with epilogues and "ambiguously canon" sequels and games trapped in DevelopmentHell. She compares it to sand art that's gorgeous and complex, but washes away when the tide comes in--trying to keep doing something past its natural time will inevitably make it come out poorly.
* FullNameUltimatum: Parodied in "Homestuck Sent Me A Legal Threat, And Then It Got Worse": whenever Sarah really starts getting fed up with Creator/AndrewHussie, she calls them "Andrew Hussington."

* GenreKiller: [[invoked]] She believes that, while the disappointing ends to the ''[[Literature/TheHungerGames Hunger Games]]'' and ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' film series killed the young adult dystopian genre, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the election of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump as United States President around that same time nailed the genre's coffin shut and ensured that it wouldn't receive the sorts of [[PopularityPolynomial ten-years-later nostalgic reappraisals]] that ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' did. Amidst the political climate of the late 2010s, the simplistic morality and heroic savior protagonists of many YA dystopias increasingly did not ring true to the experiences of young people engaged in activism, for whom such books became relics of a simpler, more innocent time. The genre was soon displaced on the one hand by social issue novels like ''Literature/TheHateUGive'' that more directly commented on real-world problems without cloaking them in the metaphor of a dystopian future, and on the other by YA fantasy series like ''Literature/ACourtOfThornsAndRoses'' that offered similar exotic worlds and romance without the ham-fisted social commentary.
* GenreShift: Her video essays started out being critiques of bad media like ''{{Series/Heathers}}'', ''{{Series/Riverdale}}'', ''{{Series/Supernatural}}'' etc but has shifted towards discussing social issues like the ethics of true crime podcasts, whether theatre bootlegs are a bad thing, parasocial relationships with [=YouTube=] personalities etc.
* GilliganCut: Done quite hilariously in "The 'Author' of ''My Immortal'' Emailed Me, and Then It Got Worse," where Sarah briefly speculates that a forum goer from Wiki/ThisVeryWiki might be yet another one of Toby's {{sock puppet}}s, but then gives a few reasons why she thinks it's ''probably'' not true and that the account is legit. Cut ''immediately'' to Sarah nine hours later, saying that nope, that account is ''absolutely'' Toby and she has the proof, having noticed a clue during editing and then done some digging to confirm it.
* GirlShowGhetto: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] and [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in "Everyone's Into ''Twilight'' Again". Sarah notes that many of the criticisms aimed the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' franchise during its heyday were laced with shocking amounts of misogyny (due in large part to the franchise's target audience and heavy focus on the teen romance elements) and even homophobia (such as calling the sparkling vampires "gay" and certain characters homophobic slurs for supposedly lacking "masculinity"), and much of the series' renaissance has been a direct repudiation of this mentality.

* HanlonsRazor: Oddly inverted in her video on ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'', where she makes the argument that the film is too willing to dismiss instances of genuine malice as simple idiocy, and has no broad thesis for why its society became dominated by uneducated louts other than "stupid people are just like that." She claims that in real life, societal dysfunction is often the result of people who ''do'' know that what they're doing is wrong, and simply don't care; well-educated and logical people are capable of making incredibly selfish decisions, and stupid people can often have bad intentions. She contrasts this with ''Film/SorryToBotherYou'', where CEO Steve Lift is portrayed as a pretentious, hedonistic moron, but this doesn't prevent him from being shown as evil.
* HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday: A major component in ''TJLC'', as explained by her, was that the show's seeming insistence on "proving" that Watson was heterosexual came across as this, not helped by the fact that Irene Adler implicitly suggests at one point that [[EvenTheGuysWantHim interest in Holmes]] isn't blocked by IncompatibleOrientation.
* HereWeGoAgain: In her video about the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' finale, she notes that a lot of the theories about Dean originally reciprocating Cas' love confession and/or reuniting with him before [[invoked]] ExecutiveMeddling made the writers change it sounds ''very'' similar to The Johnlock Conspiracy, and sincerely hopes that it doesn't get as out of hand and genuinely harmful as TJLC could.

* InNameOnly: The Once-Ler fandom, in her view: the mixture of TransplantedCharacterFic, an overused FandomSpecificPlot, and a metric ton of {{Recurring Fanon Character}}s resulted in a fan community that was almost entirely unmoored from the original story.
* IRejectYourReality: This is a major component in her views on "The [=JohnLock=] Conspiracy." She explains that the third season premiere pretty much destroyed the idea of both a vast MythArc mystery plot and the possibility of [=JohnLock=] becoming canon, by way of treating fans trying to analyze Holmes's survival as [[StrawFan weird, creepy, obsessives]] and refusing to give a significant answer, and featuring many a TakeThatAudience to the idea that Holmes and Watson might be gay. However, fans refused to give up on the idea because they didn't want to admit that their favorite show was mocking them and didn't care about representing them, and so constructed an elaborate theory that framed the show as a hidden subversive masterpiece all along--consequently, the pairing only became ''more'' popular, in the face of mounting evidence that it would never happen. If anything, TJLC only exploded afterward.
* ItTastesLikeFeet: Her opinion of the cotton candy Faygo she drinks for her Homestuck video.

** She argues this was a lot of the reason "Oncest" became a thing: in the original film, the Once-Ler's jump from "goodhearted EndearinglyDorky hipster" to "pure evil cartoonish supervillain" happens over the course of a single musical number. Because of the rather squashed development arc and his radically altered design, mannerisms, and personality, it made it seem less like he'd been corrupted by greed, and more like he'd been abruptly swapped out with a different character. So that was exactly how the fandom handled it: treat them as two distinct characters. And then ship them.
** One of her main critiques of the Johnlock Conspiracy (at least, the more toxic parts of the fandom) was how, for a lot of the big name fans, it wasn't enough to let people ship whatever they wanted--or even enough for them to also ship Johnlock. They had to ship Johnlock, actively want it to become canon, ''believe'' it would become canon, and ship the pairing in the "right" way (suggesting Sherlock was a top especially was treated as a horrifying moral failing). {{Shipping}} is normally harmless fun, making fan content and sharing theories and memes with friends, but TJLC turned it into intense bullying and outright harassment, cultish followings around a few [=BNF=]s, and some of the most insane, outlandish conspiracy theories this side of Flat Earth.
* JustHereForGodzilla: Invoked and discussed in "Tumblr's $6000 Scam: The Story of All Or Nothing". She explains that when she was coming to understand her own bisexuality, she would sometimes watch movies or shows just because they had two women in a relationship because she wanted so badly to see people like her, so she understands the impulse to recommend things based on representation. However, she further says that a) this isn't always helpful, because it leaves out what something's about and whether it's actually good, and b) it's a bad way to ''write''. In her opinion, one of the biggest problems of the failed All or Nothing series was that they never came up with a real plot--"an asexual and a pansexual live together" works fine as a viral tumblr post, but not as a whole show. By contrast, the successful series (yes, there was one), was about the transition from high school to college, FriendVersusLover tensions, and debate club, with the character's sexualities as part of their arcs rather than the whole point of the show.
* JustJokingJustification: She says that a frequent defence of ''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic'''s bad faith criticism was that it was merely Doug Walker playing a character, and the opinions were those of a character for comedy. This defence is broken when she shows that The Nostalgia Critic's opinions would show up in Doug Walker's out of character reviews as well.
* LampshadeHanging: Points out that having this does not excuse using problematic tropes or lazy writing - namely Cheryl mocking Betty and Veronica's gratuitous lesbian kiss in the ''{{Series/Riverdale}}'' pilot, when the advertising still hyped it up like a SweepsWeekLesbianKiss.
* LiteralMetaphor: In ''That Time The Sherlock Fandom Invented A Character'', she explains that the criticisms of Homestuck's trans content were written entirely by Emily (herself a trans woman), and she is essentially "a vessel for Emily" in that part of the video. To drive the point home, she opens this segment with a part where she moves her mouth but it's Emily's voice that comes out.
* LongHairIsFeminine: Discusses this and how some girls may have been pressured into growing their hair long to conform to traditional feminity - and rejecting this later in life leads to prejudice towards those who do have long hair.

* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: Well, "crime" is perhaps a stretch, but the video "The 'Author' of ''My Immortal'' Emailed Me, And Then It Got Worse" is built around this. Initially, she thought it was just a random idiot, then it turned out that they were one of the people who had claimed to be the writer of ''FanFic/MyImmortal'' before--and then it turned out that, based on some detective work, said person had also written ''FanFic/ThePrayerWarriors'', and [[SockPuppet run many other accounts]]--including multiple ones that wrote Bible-themed poetry on FFN.

* NotLikeOtherGirls: Discussed and deconstructed in a video with the same title - where her thoughts on the matter say that it's far from just internalised misogyny or shallow bullying, but representative of a deeper problem where society pressures girls to conform to traditionally feminine traits and both accepting or rejecting femininity can result in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
* NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer: In "The Rise and Fall of Teen Dystopias", the ''Film/TheHungerGames-themed Subway ad'' is captioned "THIS IS A REAL AD. THIS IS NOT A COMEDY SKETCH. HELP."
* OffendingTheCreatorsOwn: [[invoked]] Discussed in her video, ''Double Standards and Diverse Media'' which opens by explaining a story on Amelie Wen Zhao and how her planned trilogy of books as part of a series called "Blood Heir" was canceled due to heavy criticism of the first book's content on slavery (which could be interpreted as offensive by some people). She then explains that media that is made by diverse creators will often be held to higher standards due to perceptions that because they are in the same minority they are in, they would be able to avoid making the same mistakes those from non-marginalized groups make, when that's far from the truth.

** In "The Rise and Fall of Teen Dystopias", she mentions that the cancellation of the ''Film/{{Divergent}}'' film series means that the books' infamous [[spoiler:killing-off of the main character]] will never happen, and [[spoiler:Triss will remain alive]] forever in this continuity.
* PetHomosexual: Is particularly annoyed with how ''{{Series/Riverdale}}'' reduces Kevin to this compared to the original comics - where his sexuality was incidental and he was a rounded character. In the show, he's reduced to being a SatelliteCharacter that only exists to give Betty relationship advice and sassy one liners. And when he does finally get a storyline of his own, it plays into the AllGaysArePromiscuous trope.
* PoesLaw: Her video on The [=JohnLock=] Conspiracy discusses this, noting that the show's attempts to cultivate an air of mystery meant that it seemed like "errors" in the show were actually put there on purpose to provide fans with clues to the resolution of the show. Part of the reason the conspiracy collapsed was that it became evident that, for instance, those gaping plotholes or continuity errors weren't [[DelusionConclusion meant to imply that the entire sequence never happened]], but were just bad writing. In particular, the fandom ''immediately'' believed that "[[Recap/SherlockS04E03TheFinalProblem The Final Problem]]" had to be fake because it was so poorly-written that it ''had'' to take place in Sherlock's head--it didn't.[[invoked]]
* RealWomenNeverWearDresses: In ''I'm Not Like Other Girls?'', she says that a lot of women who ascribe to this trope may have done so out of a rejection of traditionally feminine values that they may have been forced to conform to, or been mocked for not being.

* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Discussed: Sarah briefly mentions in her ''Homestuck'' video that she dislikes redemption arcs where characters do one grand gesture and then die, because she prefers redemption arcs where the character has to continuously work to be a better person.
* RevealingCoverup: In "Homestuck Sent Me A Legal Threat, And Then It Got Worse," Sarah points out that in the course of backing up What Pumpkin's request that she amend her video to remove information they insisted was wrong, Andrew Hussie actually ended up ''confirming'' several claims that would otherwise have remained totally unsubstantiated (such as an artist improperly being left off the Hiveswap credits). If both parties had just ignored the video, these things likely would never have come out.

** In her video on ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', she argues that the franchise does have many aspects that genuinely deserve criticism--but the problem isn't things like the vampires sparkling, it's things like the racism (for example, the classy, extraordinarily beautiful vampires are all white or extremely pale, while the Native American werewolves are portrayed as aggressive and animalistic).

** A common one across videos is referencing when the script is written or influenced by her Co-writer Emily, and also Emily laughing in the script about forcing Sarah to talk about anime.
* SequelEpisode: ''"Does JK Rowling's Transphobia Ruin Harry Potter?"'' is one to her previous video ''"JK Rowling and Authorial Intent"''. The video is technically a response to Rowling's well known bouts of transphobic behavior on Twitter getting worse and resulting in her releasing a manifesto online she nicknamed "TERF Wars", and subsequently makes another analysis about Authorial Intent and Death of the Author of how Rowling's views has influenced her writing and just saying "Hatsune Miku wrote Harry Potter" may make people forget that. The video makes multiple references to the previous video, which also referenced the behavior of fans towards JK Rowling's troublesome tweeting.

* SockPuppet: "The 'Author' of Fanfic/MyImmortal Emailed Me, And Then It Got Worse" starts out with an account claiming to be a "backup account" of Tara Gilesbe's contacting Sarah... and then it quickly goes off the rails, with Sarah and another vlogger uncovering ''at least'' twenty sock puppets from the same user. Sarah outright describes the whole debacle as "Msscribe, but more Christian."
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: From her video on the Homestuck fandom, she posts a long paragraph about how she was definitely ''not'' one of the kids who tried to find a real-life kismesis:

** When going over fan community nicknames, Sarah states that "Doctor Who fans are called 'Whovians', Glee fans were called 'Gleeks', Star Trek fans are called 'Trekkies' and K-Pop fans are called [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers 'terrifying']]".

** In ''The Rise and Fall of Geek Culture'', Sarah claims that ''Series/YoungSheldon'' is a murder mystery where Sheldon solves a new case every week. She then says “None of you can prove me wrong on that because nobody has ever watched ''Young Sheldon''.”

* UnnecessaryMakeover[[invoked]]: She touches on this trope and applying it to real life people in ''"How Fans Treat Creators"'', and how fans can sometimes feel ownership over a person's image the same way they might over a fictional character's. In her view, this is over-stepping a boundary, as a person has the right to do whatever they want with their own appearances - relating a message she once got from a subscriber who didn't like her haircut (at thirteen no less!).

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: Discussed in ''The Horrifying Panopticon of West Elm Caleb'', where Sarah notes that a lot of people who do online public callouts will use very serious and pathologizing language even in situations where it clearly doesn't apply, like using "abuser", "toxic" or "gaslighter" as catchall terms for "asshole".
* YoungerThanTheyLook: Many viewers expressed surprise in 2021 when Sarah revealed her age to be 22 - assuming she was at least a few years older.
* VisualPun: In her video ''"I'm Not Like Other Girls"'', she regularly switches between {{Tomboy}}ish clothes (casual sweater, hair tied back) or GirlyGirl (pink sweater, fuzzy bathrobe, long blonde wig) to better make her point about girls being pigeonholed into one role or the other.

* DelusionConclusion: A major component of TJLC[[invoked]], which arose from the fact that the show already had episodes focusing on Series/{{Sherlock}}'s "mind palace", and therefore large portions of the show might also take place there. Needless to say, this meant that any scene the fandom couldn't fit into the theory could take place there, and was probably rife with psychosexual symbolism in and of itself.

* RecurringExtra: The mysterious, beautiful, and possibly omniscient Great Cheshire appears whenever a line from {{FanFic/My Immortal}} is read aloud.

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: Discussed in ''The Horrifying Panopticon of West Elm Caleb'', where Sarah notes that a lot of people who do online public callouts will use very serious and pathologizing language without seemingly knowing what they mean, like using "abuser" or "gaslighter" as catchall terms for "asshole".

* HanlonsRazor: Oddly inverted in her video on ''Film/{{Idiocracy}}'', where she makes the argument that the film is too willing to dismiss instances of genuine malice as simple idiocy, and has no broad thesis for why its society became dominated by uneducated louts other than "stupid people are just like that." She claims that in real life, societal dysfunction is often the result of people who ''do'' know that what they're doing is wrong, and simply don't care; well-educated and logical people are capable of making incredibly selfish decisions, and stupid people can often have genuine bad intentions. She contrasts this with ''Film/SorryToBotherYou'', where CEO Steve Lift is portrayed as a pretentious, hedonistic moron, but this doesn't prevent him from being shown as genuinely evil.

** A common one across videos is referencing when the script is written or influenced by her Co-writer Emily.

* AngstAversion: [[invoked]] She believes a big reason why ''Film/DearEvanHansen'' failed is that it removed or altered the lighthearted moments from the [[Theatre/DearEvanHansen original musical]], which she saw as more of a dark comedy, which made the story seem less self-aware of its outlandish concept and thus made it more explicit and uncomfortable.

* LiteralMetaphor: In ''That Time The Sherlock Fandom Invented A Character'', in order to drive home that criticisms of Homestuck's trans content were written entirely by Emily (herself a trans woman), she moves her mouth but it's Emily's voice that comes out.

** Her TJLC video naturally goes into this, being a discussion in part of the fandom's drama and how utterly willing they were to demonize those who posed a threat to Johnlock--in particular, she brings up how Mary Watson was hated far more than any of the show's actual villains ''before the character was even introduced'', and the ''Series/{{Elementary}}'' version of Watson was given a similar level of hatred solely for being a female Watson, and therefore, in their eyes, much more likely to get paired with her Holmes during the height of BBC ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'''s popularity. (Ironically, ''Elementary'', like ''Sherlock'', kept Holmes and Watson's relationship at ShipTease levels at most.) Even the idea that Sherlock was [[{{Asexuality}} aro/ace]] (which there was some canon evidence for) got accused of homophobia--when, as she points out, erasure of asexuality is considered a form of prejudice in and of itself.

* TakeThat: When going over fan community nicknames, Sarah states that "Doctor Who fans are called 'Whovians', Glee fans were called 'Gleeks', Star Trek fans are called 'Trekkies' and K-Pop fans are called [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers 'terrifying']]".

* RunningGag: In "The 'Author' of ''My Immortal'' Emailed Me, And Then It Got Worse", every time she points out that an account associated with the various Tobys writes '''Bible-themed poetry''', the phrase is bass boosted and accompanied with a close up to emphasize how ''all'' of these sock-puppet accounts are doing the same thing.

* MostFanFicWritersAreGirls: Debunks this in her video on authorial intent, pointing out that many fan fiction writers were LGBT fans interacting with media they liked in ways they could relate to. She does something similar in her video on TJLC, pointing out that, while there were absolutely straight women fetishizing male-on-male relationships, when she put out a call to former members, most of the respondents were LGBT themselves.

-->'''Sarah:''' It always bothers me when a show that sustains itself off of the fandom of young women mocks the very people that allow it to survive.

* AnAesop: While her video ''Tumblr's Failed Convention: The Story of Dashcon'' is mostly chronicling the aforementioned event, she does deliver an additional moral in the conclusion:
--> "Just because someone has the same geeky interests as you, it doesn't necessarily mean they have your best interests at heart."

* BreatherEpisode: She describes [[https://youtu.be/aod-SNM2tOo her video]] about ''Crime Scene Kitchen'' as this, hoping to make a more lighthearted and fun video after her most recent videos about ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', the Creator/McElroyBrothers and the legal response to her ''Homestuck'' video became exhausting to release, and her next video[[note]]]which turned out to be about {{shipping}} culture[[/note]] would examine some controversial topics. Because she doesn't want to be defined by such controversies, this time she just made a video about a weird, fun cooking show she saw.

* GenreKiller: [[invoked]] She believes that, while the disappointing ends to the ''[[Literature/TheHungerGames Hunger Games]]'' and ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' film series killed the young adult dystopian genre, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the election of UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump as United States President around that same time nailed the genre's coffin shut and ensured that it wouldn't receive the sorts of [[PopularityPolynomial ten-years-later nostalgic reappraisals]] that ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' did. Amidst the political climate of the late 2010s, the simplistic morality and heroic savior protagonists of many YA dystopias increasingly did not ring true to the experiences of young people engaged in activism, and the genre was soon displaced by two separate genres: social issue novels like ''Literature/TheHateUGive'' that more directly commented on real-world problems without cloaking them in the metaphor of a dystopian future, and YA fantasy series like ''Literature/ACourtOfThornsAndRoses'' that offered similar exotic worlds and romance without the ham-fisted social commentary.

* BreatherEpisode: She describes [[https://youtu.be/aod-SNM2tOo her video]] about ''Crime Scene Kitchen'' as this, hoping to make a more lighthearted and fun video after her most recent videos about ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', the Creator/McElroyBrothers and the legal response to her ''Homestuck'' video became exhausting to release and she doesn't want to be defined by such controversies.