Troping Let's Plays

The short version is that I found that Fighteer made a good argument for cutting (most of) the LP Works pages; it just took me a few pages to realize that. However, individual LPs are still useful for documenting Audience Reactions to a given work, even if that LP proves to be a member of the Vocal Minority on the subject. Thus, the only place that a non-transformative LP should have on this wiki is in the YMMV page of the work that said individual LP covers, and then only if it is a good demonstration of a given Audience Reaction. Granted, general reviews of said work would serve the same function.

We're not a review collection website and don't care what any given LPer thinks of any game. However if more than one youtuber has similar opinions about a game, then yes, that can be a solid reasoning to append that game's YMMV/.

Correct. The fact that an Audience Reaction appears in a Let's Play is completely irrelevant, but if that reaction is widespread enough, a popular LP might be cited in the example description on the main work's YMMV subpage.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 4th 2022 at 9:12:48 AM

Though the "cleaning up reviewer references" thread tends to cut any reference to a reviewer even if it's not hurting the rest of the example...

That one was my fault. A less experienced and more impulsive version of me started the thread in 2021 to address a problem that wasn’t as big or harmful as I thought it was. My rationale at the time was that it was being used to sneak in complaining—but it seems I was wrong. I do apologize for the unnecessary cuts that have come about from that thread.

I don't blame you for seeing a problem: there is a fine line between citing evidence for examples and entry-pimping a popular reviewer's opinions everywhere.

I still don't think there's anything wrong with that thread. Frankly we're still probably closer to the latter overall than to the former.

Edited by nrjxll on Sep 4th 2022 at 11:28:44 AM

I guess you’re right Fighteer. I still feel bad about it, although that could just be me feeling bad about what I used to be like.

Anyway did a decision ever come about as to whether or not we’re doing a “Tropability” Administrivia page?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Sep 4th 2022 at 12:28:31 PM

Would we need a separate page or could we just update People Sit on Chairs?

Tropability was discussed here.

Chairs is for tropes and not works.

Edited by Amonimus on Sep 5th 2022 at 10:03:41 PM

Any objections to moving PewDiePie to Creator/?

Why not WebVideo? That's the name of his channel, after all. His real name would get either a standalone Creator article or be a redirect to the Web Video article.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 21st 2022 at 4:38:01 AM

He's overwhelmingly known by his username, not his real name. This is the same situation as Markiplier from the last page.

I feel Creator/ to be the better option because the page as it currently exists is clearly about the person.

Any page would be at Pewdiepie because he's primarily known as Pewdiepie, not Felix Kjellberg. It's the same reason we list actors by their stage names.

(The question at hand is whether his non-YouTube work is enough to merit a creator page instead of being two sentences added to the Web Video page.)

edit:

Edited by RallyBot2 on Sep 21st 2022 at 4:50:03 AM

Well, then it would follow the same rule as Toby Turner, which redirects to Tobuscus. Felix is primarily known for his video content, ergo that's where most people would look for the article about him.

There's one Letsplayer that was cut that I honestly don't agree with. Manly Badasss Hero is his title. The argument was that he didn't add much besides just playing through the game itself, but that's not really accurate. He both gives critique and feedback on the games he plays at the end of each playthrough and offers a great deal of insightful commentary during the playthrough proper. He has also, as a side note, been noted for his voicing of the characters in text-based games, most notably villains. On its own, that may not be enough (though to be honest, I don't agree with this cleanup at all it seems rather arbitrary to me), but it's worth noting in and of itself.

The naming situation is the same as above, he's not known by his real name.

Edited by thevideogameempire on Nov 12th 2022 at 12:10:19 PM

1. That was not the argument. LetsPlay.Manly Badass Hero has cut reason as "non-tropeable creator", A.K.A he doesn't come up with original stories or a farming narrative.

2. Giving critique and feedback is creative content for youtube, but it's not tropable. Voicing characters in a playthrough is better, but as you've said not enough on its own.

3. Don't see how the naming is relevant.

The naming is replace t to a previous convo on Felix Kjelberg. As for the rest, I still don’t see why all of these pages are “untropable”. Are we going to cut content reviewers next? They don’t tell stories. This just seems arbitrary.

Well, now that you've brought it up...

Yes. We don't trope people, we trope content. As Amonimus said, reviewing something is not a form of creative content on TV Tropes (except for a few rare cases usually involving increased effort and gags). Furthermore, it's not any form of a fictionalized narrative, which is the thing we're supposed to trope.

• Joe Shmo talking to a camera about what he thought of the latest Dawn of the Undead game is not creative, nor constructs any kind of fictional narrative. It's not tropeable.
• Joe Shmo recording himself playing Dawn of the Undead 3: Rise of the Un-Undead is not creative, nor constructs any kind of fictional narrative.
• Joe Shmo recording himself playing DotU3:RotUUD and then chopping up that recording and splicing it back together to tell the story through the POV of the Big Bad IS creative and constructs a narrative. That is tropeable.

Edited by Hello83433 on Nov 14th 2022 at 11:57:57 AM

So by this definition would The Runaway Guys be tropable since while their reactions are similar to how they are in real life, they do sort of play a character? Like Rosalina Proton Jon and Lord Dono'tor from Colosseum? And do they have enough difference from their Real Life counterparts to be considered their own characters? Another thing that sets The Runaway Guys apart from OTHER LP shows is that they have their expanded universe and aren't solely the three Guys reacting to games.

Edited by Klavice on Nov 17th 2022 at 8:39:09 AM

I saw Twitch Plays Pokémon brought up in another thread, and from my prior knowledge and what I read there, it doesn't really seem tropable by itself. At its core, it's just a group of people on Twitch playing Pokemon in a weird way. Any narrative content either comes from the game being played or from Fanon.

I'd first sandbox it and sort out examples that are fan interpretations, done by the run host and which trope the chat. If there's nothing left, then probably.

Yeah, I've discussed cutting it before too. It's weird because the fandom content is tropeworthy... but it can't be troped under an LP page because none of it came from the actual stream.