has made a decision that all articles in the Let's Play namespace (list of pages in that namespace) should be moved to other namespaces.
Since let's plays are usually video-based, the target namespace is usually WebVideo/. However, some are text-based, and the consensus was to handle the namspacing of those on a case-by-case basis, with Blog/, Fanfic/, and Literature/ brought up as potential targets.
Before any given article is transplanted, we should confirm that it meets the standards for being a TV Tropes work article. Note that these often serve as hybrid articles for their creators in much the same way as the Music namespace. If there is insufficient content, the articles end up becoming about the creators, violating our "no troping real people" policy.
The crucial question is whether the article has any tropable, creative content. This means that it's more than just "Alisha plays games and makes faces." What counts as tropable, creative content? Here are some examples.
- Creating a fictional/roleplaying narrative that is distinct from the game being played or the real person doing the LP.
- Using the game as a medium to craft original content: songs, videos, machinima, and so on.
- "MST'ing" or creatively riffing on the game's content, as long as it's sufficiently transformative.
What are not criteria for a tropable Let's Play by themselves?
- Adopting a quirky personality, cracking jokes, making funny faces, or overreacting to jump scares.
- Cosplaying, playing with toys, unboxing merchandise, etc.
- Having a "gimmick" that makes them stand out, such as a repeated Catchphrase, eating loudly on microphone, or calling their viewers "Doggo fam".
- Playing games in a particular way (speedrunning, evil runs, no-kill runs, etc.) that fall within what it is possible to do in the game itself, with or without mods.
- Modding the game.
- Being very popular.
- Having lots of memes arise in their fandom.
Note that the same general principles apply to any Web Video creator, especially those whose main work is in news, reviews, vlogging, and/or reaction videos.
There are a few outliers that will need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.
- After-Action Report: I would move it to literature, although it could be considered fanfic.
- Liveblogs, which are probably not tropable.
Web Video cleanup sandbox
This project has several purposes related to all things Web Video:
- Cleaning up the WebVideo index
- Cleaning up the WebVideo/ namespace to move pages that belong elsewhere
- Cleaning up individual Web Video pages that have massive issues
Overview
The easy-seeming part when I started on Web Video (the index) was just removing things not even located in the namespace— found in Creator, Film, Web Animation, etc. Then I started noticing there were many things put in Web Video (the namespace) that were basically Creator pages, lots of Let's Play, other video game streaming that doesn't currently have an index, other misuses in index and/or namespace placement...
- original live action, meaning not animated or reusing existing footage;
- narrative/creative, a bit unclear, but it's not someone simply reviewing another work/reacting to other works/playing through another work;
- a work, which is... a work, not a creator.
) is much more broad:
"Live-action videos and video-based Lets Plays originally or only released online. Covers both YouTube videos and web-exclusive series, but does not include those that belong in the WebAnimation/ namespace. For big-budget series exclusive to streaming services such as Netflix, use Series/ or the appropriate animation namespace instead." — Not limited to original or live action footage, narrative works, etc. However, people have mistakenly created Web Animation pages in this namespace, made what are essentially creator pages, typed it as "Webvideo", etc.
:
Reaction channels tend to straddle a line here, but are not generally tropable unless they create some sort of distinct creative endeavor rather than stare at a video and laugh a bit. Also it helps if they are reacting to fiction, not to real life. The latter may be entertaining but falls into the same general category as gossip. We can trope these only for their use of production and artistic tropes, not for their topics.
-
No Analysis Channel index— corrected! - No index for non-Let's Play video game streaming unless they're on Twitch. If they don't fall into the Let's Play format and aren't on Twitch, where do they go?
- No
Gag Dub orGag Sub index - Where should we put channels based on prank calls, scam-baiting, other audio-based things where the video is incidental?
Pages identified for cleanup:
- A Dose of Buckley — see this ATT for more info
- The Mysterious Mr. Enter and subpages — issues include troping the creator and not the works
- The Nostalgia Critic and subpages — see this project thread
- Smosh and subpages — Smosh is a channel, and the pages have multiple works (may need a hard split)
- Thomas Sanders — Creator, lots of biographical details, previously hard split for Sanders Sides but may need another
See also:
- Cleanup: Review/Let's Play YMMV Tropes
- TLP: Actual Play genre/index
Just the index cleanup itself is a considerable project, figuring out what stays and what needs a different index, but there are also many pages with significant issues to clean. This is a very big project, but I've seen other people notice these issues, too. I hope we can at least get the index under control.
(![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]"){kind=small}
For clarity and re: review stuff. Continue to edit as things occur that are useful to keep at the top of the thread.)
Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 2nd 2023 at 9:02:00 AM
It's either real or it's a dream
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Let's Players still aren't as edited and scripted as reality TV often is, so that comparison doesn't really work. Even there tropers have to be careful to not go overboard and start troping real people (this also applies to wrestling as well). The reaction one is closer, though even there we've removed WebVideo/ pages for channels like Shaun for not being tropable.
Edited by harryhenry on Aug 4th 2022 at 4:16:36 AM
we also don't trope all forms of Reality TV the same. We just recently decided that contestants on traditional game shows (think wheel of fortune, deal or no deal) are not to be troped as characters. This is in line with outside classifications that actually don't consider traditional game shows the same as modern Reality TV.
While there is an ongoing discussion on the murkier examples like American Idol and other competition Reality Tv shows because these shows often build up storylines and narratives for each contestant, Lets Players (and video game streamers writ large) are far closer to traditional game shows than American Idol. It's a person playing a game and the focus is primarily on how well they play that game, not on any narrative or storytelling. Any jokes they tell are one offs, off the cuff, and are tangential to their gameplay.
Edited by amathieu13 on Aug 4th 2022 at 9:24:43 AM
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
And again this isn't even to say that all Lets Players lack creativity. My go-to examples for tropeworthy LP channels are LetsPlay.Captain Sauce and LetsPlay.Call Me Kevin, as both of them craft unique narratives through how they edit their videos and create characters and stuff. This doesn't mean you can take any ol' LP channel and call them creative simply for making a silly voice, but clever editing and scripted gags is an inherently creative process since it's presenting a specific narrative the gameplay itself wouldn't otherwise provide.
However, Twitch streamers and normal gameplay channels and stuff simply don't try and craft any sort of creative narrative through their works; they're just there to play games.
Recently I had to cut LetsPlay.Patterrz, a channel I personally enjoy, because it all focused on basic, non-transformative gameplay... until even more recently, when he began to put out videos edited to have a unique narrative, leading me to start rebuilding the page at Sandbox.Patterrz.
Compare the work of the people I brought up with the people we've cut and you'll see that there's a fundamental difference here. It's that difference that makes something tropeworthy or not.
Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 4th 2022 at 12:57:53 PM
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
re: Minecraft Championship, I was going to go through it and remove some of the tropes that are relying on RL, but wanted to run them by here first JIC. Here's what I was going to cut, foldered for length.
- Brick Joke: During Rocket Spleef in MCC4, TommyInnit kills Katherine Elizabeth, which he celebrates by uttering the memetic phrase, "Just killed a woman, feeling good". Over a year later, in MCC14, Katherine kills Tommy in Battle Box, and celebrates by saying "Just killed a child, feeling good." I actually think this is just misuse
- Butt-Monkey: Wilbur Soot in Ace Race, which he hates with a burning passion. Every time he plays the game, he manages to discover some new technical difficulty (to the point where his computer overheated and crashed in the middle of MCC13's round of Ace Race), and even when his game functions the way it should, he always gets the worst of its flaws. When everyone expressed their frustrations with Ace Race in MCC14 (unclear labelling led a bunch of people in the wrong direction, taking them from single digits to nearly last place), Wilbur was overjoyed that everyone else finally felt his suffering.
Wilbur: Ace Race, please take me on a date before you FUCK ME!
- Child Eater: A discussion is Played for Laughs in MCC18. When Sapnap repeatedly knocked Ranboo off the platform during the TGTTOSAWAF, Ranboo eventually got fed up and started ranting about how he would eat Sapnap's children in retaliation.
- Determinator: Wilbur Soot has made a point of participating in every iteration of MCC, no matter the obstacles he faces. These obstacles have included his entire computer overheating and crashing during MCC13's Ace Race, his fire alarm going off and continuing to blare for another hour during MCCP21note , and being stuck in Germany for MCC3, which he played from Nihachu's PC (at the time, she lived in Berlin and wasn't a contestant yet). In the only MCC he hasn't been invited to so far, MCC Pride 2022, Wilbur goes as far as to take over Shubble's livestream for about ten minutes to play Ace Race.
- Irony: The Red Rabbits of MCC22 consisted of Dream, GeorgeNotFound, Captain Puffy, and Awesamdude... which, in a complete ironic twist, has 3/4 of the team (everyone other than Dream) unable to see the colour red due to being colour-blind/colour-deficient.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: TommyInnit, dear Lord, as most prominently shown in MCC15. When someone compiled the number of times each streamer cursed in that iteration of the tournament, Tommy swore 196 times, so much that an entire tier had to be created just for him. For context, 196 swears is about one per minute, and was more than double the tier below him (40-90). Even if you counted by teams and not individual players, Tommy alone would outswear each of them (for context, the Red Rabbits, who would be at the top of the list team-wise if not for Tommy, swore "only" 161 times).
- Temporary Substitute: In MCCP21, Wilbur's fire alarm went off during Parkour Tag. While it ended up being a false alarm, it still forced him to evacuate for around twenty minutes until the fire department was able to give the all clear. Since the tournament couldn't be paused for that long, his team chose to have Philza sub in for Battle Box.note This happened again the event right after, when PeteZahHutt's internet crashed halfway through MCC15 and HBomb94 had to take his place.
Angry babby
Brick Joke could be reworked as Call-Back or maybe Ironic Echo. Not sure about Child Eater cuz I think the trope's about someone who regularly eats children as characterization, not just threats (and it's NRLEP).
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Alright, went ahead and took care of those, refiling Brick Joke under Call-Back.
Speaking of Minecraft Lets Players, Philza is fairly small and leans heavily towards RL from what I read.
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors
Naïve Fool
I was going through adding "[= =]" around different phrases in the wiki, and got to L Ps. It led to a few pages, but most pertinent to this project, this one, which is pretty unprofessional and basically unfinished. Judging by the history page, the creator himself made it himself.
Delete?
Don't ask about my profile picture. I don't know either.
the Retromancer
It's a part of a larger group, LetsPlay.The Chaotic Crusaders, which includes Creator.Triforce Of Doom, Creator.Shadowxx 25, Creator.The Cyber Okami. The mentioned are also tropers (Tropers.Triforce Of Doom, Tropers.Shadowxx 25, Tropers.The Cyber Okami, Tropers.Subzero 7), have the same indentation problem, got poked for Auto-Erotic Troping and went inactive since 2020. JacobPF42 could be one of them with a different name. caffeinefrappe seem to have vandalized the page with a giant poem at some point.
Anyway, that's quite a very interesting history, but for the mentioned bluelinked pages I'd vote for a cut.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Naïve Fool
omg that is not a poem.
that is the script for Bee Movie. that's how long ago they made their last edit.
Edited by Konnor on Aug 5th 2022 at 10:23:53 AM
Don't ask about my profile picture. I don't know either.
Friends forevermore
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way for us to contact that troper.
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Ya like vandalism?
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
"that's not a poem, that's the script for the Bee Movie" are a group of words I never thought I'd see strung together. I'm kind of sad I missed seeing the gem of that vandalism.
Asking about LetsPlay.Philza again, but also came across LetsPlay.Strawburry 17, which I think is an obvious cut with only 6 tropes, all of which are troping the RL person.
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors
Naïve Fool
Searching4Rinoa also has an edit history featuring their name.
Why not just make a different name?! You should know making a page about yourself isn't allowed!
Don't ask about my profile picture. I don't know either.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
...Yes it is, tho?
You can't add subjectives or anything, but like
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Naïve Fool
Talking about yourself in the third person just feels weird, idk.
Also I did not know you could until I searched what Auto-Erotic Troping was and just assumed what it meant.
As always, my description rings true.
Edited by Konnor on Aug 6th 2022 at 11:01:17 AM
Don't ask about my profile picture. I don't know either.
×4 That page should probably be cut for the reasons you stated.
If it is troping the games rather than anything creative the Let's Player does (if there's a creative element at all) then it should be cut.
Naïve Fool
Just found another page troping real people. Delete?
Edited by Konnor on Aug 8th 2022 at 5:37:21 AM
Don't ask about my profile picture. I don't know either.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Yeah, I'm not seeing any fiction there.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure PurenessAnd the images aren't even quoterighted!
I'd like to apologize for all this.
Hi! I recently found out there's a page for Down the Rabbit Hole, which is basically a series of mini-documentaries. Almost all of the examples are troping real life people, and the ones that aren't are troping the guy who makes the videos.
Can this page be cut in its entirety or should it be trimmed down to only the tropes that are applicable to the role the creator deliberately plays as a narrator? Some of them sound redundant but I think it's still enough to leave the page with the minimum three tropes needed to remain a page.
- Author Appeal: The main reason Fredrik made the Hurdy Gurdy episode is because he owns and plays a hurdy gurdy.
- The Comically Serious:
- Fredrik tries to be as objective as possible no matter how ridiculous the facts he's reading out are, making for some unintentional comedy as he goes over bizarre events without a hint of comedic reaction.
- Something that occurs very frequently is Fredrik reading text out loud exactly as it is written, including any spelling or grammatical errors, all while never breaking his deadpan delivery.
- Deadpan Snarker:
- Despite the unbiased nature of his show, Fredrik is not above making occasional snarky comments or observations about the subjects he covers.
- When he read quotes and online posts, he changes his tone to reflect the often angry or unstable attitudes of the original writer and regularly refrains from correcting typos, speaking the word as it was incorrectly written. When he finishes, he will immediately say "unquote" in his normal, flat tone of voice. Similarly, when talking about social media posts, he will occasionally spotlight comments he finds funny treat them like pertinent information for comedic value.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: A mild example, but the early Down the Rabbit Hole episodes tended to be somewhere between 10 to 20 minutes long, compared to the later ones which tend to be 30 minutes or longer. The Anime & Otaku episode was uploaded into two parts and is currently the only episode to be such.
- Some of the earliest episodes have Fredrik very rarely working in some bits of his own humor, and sometimes show bias towards or against certain figures, such as the Romine brothers in his first video. This is very minor, but noticeable when compared to later episodes that put great effort into being strictly neutral and facts only.
- Early episodes would occasionally use somewhat awkward "side notes" to cover details that are not directly related to the topic at hand, but are still helpful in understanding them. Later episodes work in such information more naturally.
- The Stinger: The Purr Cat Café episode ends with Fredrik repeating Diane's catchphrase "Meow. Meow. PURR!" after the credits are over.
- The Stoic: Despite the bizarre, occasionally humorous, and often disturbing content of the documentaries, Fredrik maintains an admirable, almost newscaster-like level of calm professionalism in his voice at all times. He has been compared to a non-comedic Critikal for this reason.
Edited by lapistier on Aug 9th 2022 at 3:45:35 AM
This feels like the most appropriate place to ask:
Mike BurnFire's let's play of Fallout: New Vegas, currently kept on LetsPlay.Mike Burn Fire*, contains enough transformative content to warrant keeping, but it doesn't have a formal title. What should be the page name for it?
- yes, I know the page has a lot of problems, and stores a lot of things about other playthroughs and the creators themselves, but cleaning it up before moving seems straightforward enough; I could do that once I get the answer to the above question
Edited by BarthVader on Aug 11th 2022 at 7:14:21 PM
Hi there. I recently received a message from TheFoxsCloak that the Let's Play page of Kagato The Final Boss has been cut. Something about it being an Non-tropable Let's Player or something. Is there a way to convince you that the page itself is worth saving just to ask?
Edited by GregoryJones470 on Aug 12th 2022 at 3:26:27 AM
Again, I would argue that Let's Players are perhaps closest to Reality TV of various kinds, and we absolutely trope the people involved with those. Not just contestants, but also hosts. Gordon Ramsay as a VERY long trope list that is independent of any one of his works, because the "character" is universal across all of them. While Let's Players don't always exaggerate as heavily as him, the principle is no different, merely the backdrop. Instead of it being a competition (and even that's possible, given the Minecraft one being discussed) it is a Reaction scenario like MST 3 K or other Web Video reviewer type shows, just improvised instead of scripted.