VTubers Cleanup Thread

I mean, if someone is potentially getting murdered over their YouTube channel, I wouldn't want to feel responsible for that because I deleted a trope example. That makes me more determined than ever that we should completely remove all of this content. At the very minimum it violates our prohibition against drama importation.

If we want to compromise, there is still the standby of treating them as real people no matter how fictionalized their characters are and exclusively troping the creative content on their channels. Applying that standard, vlogging would not be tropable, while a Let's Play that adds original creative material would be.

Or, adopting this idea, only trope the content that is obviously fictional, meaning that someone's adventures on Mars as a fairy dragon are tropable, but their shopping trips to Macy's are not. "Personality" tropes should be completely avoided since there's no way to tell how fictionalized they are.

Edited to add: Of course, if someone says, "What about the 'Mars shopping trip' to 'Mars Macy's' that is obviously an analogue for the real tuber's shopping trip," I'm going to tell them to stop being a fucking idiot and prohibit that sort of shit outright.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2022 at 6:21:44 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If we don't want to be responsible for any related Flame War, let's just not use information of "character is also known as this person with own social media" kind. As I've said, distancing from real events would null that problem, which we should be doing anyway.

Also, I agree that vlogging is not tropable regardless unless it provides previously unknown bits on the fictional story.

This all sounds like a big issue, but I'd like to assure that at least hololive pages mostly try to describe channels as if they were for example Total Drama episodes, and had an element of self-moderation for years to avoid real-life troping and rocej. The bigger problem are groups that at least I can't vouch for, and not enough formality of connecting our previous policies to this genre to cite for cleaning things we say should be removed.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 19th 2022 at 1:29:52 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

If these are completely fictionalized, they are no different than an episode of Family Guy that is being performed and animated live. That's completely tropable. What bothers me is the idea that we are supposed to simultaneously accept this and that these are actually real people with real lives whose personality traits are being channeled through their virtual characters.

In other forms of media, there is a clear line between actor and character. We know that Stewie is a fictional character voiced by Seth MacFarlane and that tropes about Seth don't go on the Family Guy article. So why is this so difficult for Vtubers?

If hololive is this big deal that everyone is trying to imitate, then the imitators need to meet the same standards or they get chop-chopped.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2022 at 6:35:33 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

i'd honestly hate to see this happen, if only for the reason that i treat "forbidden knowledge enables serial killers" with the same disdain as the "video games kill people" "argument". they're both oversimplifications of a much more complex topic.

if keeping the pages up causes drama importation by any of these infantilizing idiots from outside the site though, again, i don't blame you if you want to cut them.

for what it's worth, like Amonimus said, VTuber page editors look like they're trying to stay away from that crap anyway and already treat the characters they're troping as if they're actually fictional, since their agencies already try to do that anyway.

edit: re: it's hard for the VTuber genre because the clear line is deliberately extremely blurred, that's their selling point for a lot of people.

Edited by Freecom on Aug 19th 2022 at 6:37:15 AM

weaponizing Dungeon Fighter Online elitism since 2018

You aren't really addressing the key question: is that a serious problem or isn't it? If it is, then we should avoid doing anything that might put real people in danger, and so prohibiting this content would be appropriate. If it is not, then it cannot be used as an excuse to avoid properly separating real life from fictional trope examples.

It can't be whichever answer lets you keep the articles.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2022 at 6:37:36 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's New Media, it's less difficult for those who know more about it. Imagine if Family Guy aired live unscripted, Seth would still try to best to behave like Stewie. We would describe Stewie and not Seth unless Seth slips-up.

Some channels have a very clear line between actor and character, and some don't even behave the same. For those who don't have an obvious line let's say anything that sounds like not in-character should be cleaned up.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Our own thread for vtubers is actually pretty casual about talking about the actors behind the characters. It rarely comes up because it's largely irrelevant, but it's not treated as super serious everywhere.

For vtubers specifically, it is a combination of the aforementioned policy most corporate ones have of "anything done in character applies TO the character", which is something the fans take seriously (which has also been somewhat inherited even in the indie scene) plus the fact that it is understood anything the talent does when NOT acting as the avatar has no bearing, adding an additional divide and incidentally quite similar to the example of Seth vs Stewie. EDIT: As said

Edited by TheFoxsCloak on Aug 19th 2022 at 7:42:38 AM

re: if it's a serious problem.

I don't think so. It's as if we gave a living address of a movie director, they wouldn't like it for privacy reasons, which is why we don't do that. All vtuber related drama is mostly due to multi-million-fans celebrities actual private info (which is top secret anyway) getting leaked, there isn't really anything that could be a danger to us because it's something really nobody knows until late after the fact.

Those who don't care about their online idendity don't sign nondisclouse agreements, don't have secrets and don't get dramas.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 19th 2022 at 2:01:18 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Even if "forbidden knowledge" wasn't troped or talked about at all, stalkers are still gonna stalk and killers are still gonna kill. They have other ways of getting that info that fan conduct has no bearing on. What goes on here at TV Tropes isn't going to jeapordize any streamer's safety.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 19th 2022 at 7:04:01 AM

In simple temrs,

• Virtual YouTuber = Digital Avatar + Streamer. The content may vary and not exclusive to Let's Play or blogs.
• hololive and other Agencies listed at Virtual YouTuber didn't originate the genre and don't set up standards. They are just companies that provide equipment, narrative, accounts and salary in exchange for taking ad revenue, Non-Disclousure Agreement and working for the merchandise.
• They all follow the basic story: "A fantasy character just so happened to have access to the internet and wants to be famous + gimmick", which gets expanded by frequent improv and stand-up comedy over time.
• Actors get a lot of freedom and mostly talk how's their day been doing, but by contract they have to discuss with higher-ups the topics they want to bring up ahead of time because of privacy and entertainment concerns. There's no way of telling if they behave the same in real life until they say so or are clearly in-character. What an actor says automatically applies to what the character would say, even if everyone can tell it's describing Real Life. Often the actor explicitly tells that is what they as-character are doing, and may use previously-established elements to connect it to the narrative, while asking to ignore the contradictions. If an Actor says something they don't want to be associated with the character, they ask the audience to disregard it.
• Anything they say on social media is monitored and in effect the same as if they were on a stream, making it Character Blog.
• It's not dangerous to talk about out-of-character stuff vtubers do. Either it's secret or is public knowledge, nobody would get in trouble for bringing out-of-acting stuff up. Asking the actor to talk something not related to their acting is simply considered rude, they are effectively always in the middle of a performance.
• Many actors had lives as other online personalities, which audience can puzzle in. The actors are obliged to feign ignorance to anything not related to their current job and make no nods to it. Agencies will never mention real person identities even if it's known.
• "Doxxing" here refers to the actor's real identity compromising their living information. The only real way to be doxxed if the actor reveals themselves, really screwed up, someone they contact with speaks up or their living info gets leaked, in any other context it's used in joking manner. Vtubers face no danger besides themselves or hackers. Agencies try to help the actors, but this typically results in the actor being fired with some support in finding a new house.
• Agencies can ask their members to perform in animated series, tie-in games, concerts and other activities with own plot when they feel to. In this case it's the same as hiring a voice actor for a cartoon.
• Vtubers without Agencies are not different from a typical Web Video channel and just have zero restrictions.

The standards we'd want for Virtual YouTuber are already covered by our other policies. If a vtuber is only talking about their day, it's not tropable. Vtubers may talk how their colleagues are "much nicer in person" (as points, this may need thinking over), we should dismiss that. If a vtuber does a bit, then doubles-down on it using a narrative, it's tropable. Characterization Tropes can't apply until vtuber confirms they are using them for the character. If they appear in a scripted side-work, everything within it is tropable. Anything that happens off camera shouldn't be brought up even as Trivia unless the vtuber discusses it.

Basically the initial post got all the basics right.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 19th 2022 at 4:51:04 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Any consensus for what to do with the What the Hell Is That Accent? and Reclusive Artist examples? My suggestion for the former is to axe the Gura and Baelz examples but leave Korone and Miko, and my suggestion for the latter is to axe everyone but Kizuna and move her to the Other folder.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 19th 2022 at 7:32:46 AM

I mean, I specified "in-character" rather than "on-screen" because that policy applies even off their primary content. Granted for most that just means their character specific Twitter accounts, but even that has precedent in more traditional media. Girl Genius has a character with a Twitter account, but it's not explicitly troped because it's not explicitly canon to the comic. Alucard from Hellsing Ultimate Abridged does as well, but that is troped (as little as it contains) because it is considered canon. Conversely, we wouldn't trope Gordon Ramsay's Twitter because we can't make the assumption it is being made from the perspective of him as he is on screen.

Again, it comes back to the idea of "anything that comes from the avatar applies TO the avatar". If the characterization trope comes from the context of the avatar, the assumption is that it applies to it. Likewise, even if they mention meet ups off-stream, if it's from the avatar it's ABOUT the avatar. Explicit confirmation that it's not about the talent won't happen because it breaks the premise; the assumption it's about the avatar is baked into the foundation of the concept.

• Reclusive Artist: Everything besides Kizuna AI should be removed, for starters, this describes info leaks and not aversions of Reclusive Artist. Mikeneko is also not an example as by that point she was no longer an "Artist" to count.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?
  • Sakura Miko's example is plain real-life troping and irrelevant to the trope.
  • "Gawr Gura's speech make it difficult to pin down" is the only part where the trope applies.
  • Korone's example is good.
  • "her accent wanders through three different continents" is the only part that matters. Everything after that is fan speculation followed by natter.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 19th 2022 at 3:57:08 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

Would WACTOR publicly doxxing one of its talents, Shino Laila, count as an aversion of Reclusive Artist? Semi-crosspost from what I said in the vTubers thread, WACTOR was pursuing damages against her since they found her moonlighting on a non-corpo persona, but in their public announcement, they also explicitly identified the actual person behind both the corpo and non-corpo personas.

Edited by HashiriyaR32 on Aug 19th 2022 at 9:50:13 AM

From what I've just read, and how I understand Reclusive Artist

1. WACTOR first fired Shino Laila, then revealed her real name. Since she wasn't using her real name while in WACTOR, it played straight before and didn't have the Creator part after the incident.

2. I'm not familiar if her next character Eileennoir was used in conjuction with her real name. If she doesn't use her real name while being Eileennoir, it's still a straight example.

Reclusive Artist could have it's definition cleaner and has own RL issues, but that'd be off-topic.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

That's hardly unique to VTubers. We've been calling it keyfabe, so let's bring up pro wrestling. For a while, that was a fictionalized narrative that was absolutely supposed to be accepted as the real lives of real people whose personality traits were channeled through their physical characters.

And while this isn't particularly true any more (meaning that wrestlers active since the 80's or so aren't a good analogy), we can still draw some comparisons. For instance, look at how long the pro wrestling section under Statuesque Stunner is. Those wrestlers are only beautiful and tall because they're beautiful and tall IRL, the same way that most VTubers only have, for instance, untraceable accents because that's just how they talk.

You might argue that wrestlers being tall and pretty is part of the "wrestling fiction" in a way that accents aren't part of the "VTuber fiction". I would first ask: Why? I would second ask: Where's the distinction between "the VTuber fiction" and "the VTuber actor"? Because, as I argued earlier, part of the appeal of VTubers (for both actor and audience) is that there is no distinction. You can't make a clean divide between tropes that apply to the character and tropes that apply to the performer, because most tropes will apply to both.

This applies especially to characterization tropes, partly because that's most tropes that would apply to the character (duh) and partly because of how people act on the Internet. Without getting deep into theory I don't actually know the proper terminology for, everyone online acts differently than they would IRL, especially if they're Internet Famous to some degree. A vlogger is going to control their behavior (their "performance") to look good on camera, bend or reframe the truth when describing their actions, etc etc. This is not different in kind from a documentary or biopic starring the person it's about, only in scale. All content

I guess I brought up another relevant question: How do these rules apply to media about real-life subjects, where the subjects are participants? Reality TV, documentaries, etc etc. If Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon played themselves in the Queen biopic from the other year, would that have any influence on what parts of that biopic were tropeable? What parts of their performance would be, for instance, Brian May [biopic] and which parts would be Brian May [person]? That's not just a tricky question, I think it's unanswerable.

Which is why I feel like focusing on whether or not X trope refers to a VTuber's fictional persona or real person is a fool's errand. It's subjective, it can't be reasonably extrapolated from the information we have available, and above all, it's poorly-defined. Which is why my initial post framed the discussion in terms of "Do we want to keep all the tropes associated with the character (and delete the rest), or delete all the tropes associated with the performer (and keep the rest)?" That's the only way you could write a rule that can be enforced without constant arguments over whether a given trope is "fictional enough" by people who don't even know what the person behind the avatar is like.

Fortunately, we didn't have to deal with the problem of pro wrestling kayfabe since it was unmasked long before this wiki was a thing, but I imagine we'd be having the same conversation.

Regardless, the answer must be one of two things: figure out a way to trope the personalities of Vtubers' characters separately from their real life identities, or don't trope any part of that and treat them as real people. If the latter, most do not qualify for TV Tropes articles because they don't create any tropable content.

This a problem entirely created by the fans of these channels. It's up to them to solve it.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2022 at 11:27:27 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I hate to keep harping on the same issue, but the "anything from the avatar applies TO the avatar, not whoever's behind it" is both the crux of the subject and basically accepted fact as far as vtubers go. That separation is very much enforced in hololive and Nijisanji, and even most indies follow it even if just through sheer inertia in the scene. As far as pretty much everyone with a VERY FEW weird outliers are concerned, even if comes from whoever is behind the avatar, if it's not from the context of the vtuber it does not apply to the vtuber. Conversely, anything they do in the role of the vtuber applies to the vtuber regardless of anything else.

Again, the first one of these are is already in use. If there's a need to set "has to be refered as an In-Universe example by the vtuber and not describing themselves personally" to make it clear, we can do that.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 19th 2022 at 9:44:49 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

is it really, now? i'm thinking back to what Fighteer said earlier:

this is actually the norm in the scene. Kizuna Ai is a lovable bumbling idiot of a gamer instead of the super AI she's supposedly obligated to play as because that's how she acts in her gaming streams. Suisei, the character, is a Psychopathic Manchild because the person behind the avatar is ruthless in multiplayer sessions with other hololive members. Kanata only gets occasionally characterized as a gorilla in animated skits because her actor has unusually ridiculous grip strength. i could go on and on.

the few explicit exceptions i could think of are vtubers that were specifically made for advertising purposes, like the Sonic the Hedgehog ones. i can't imagine shunting real life under the kayfabe of an established fictional character with a long history ending well.

also, i can think of at least two incidents where people have tried to separate the vtuber from the actor, albeit under dubious circumstances and ending with angered fans both times:

• Kizuna Ai: activ8 (the managers) once tried to spice up the channel by introducing Ai clones voiced by different people. people who were following the Twitter account of Nozomi Kasuga (original Ai's VA) noticed this came suspiciously shortly after Kasuga was implying activ8 was treating her extremely poorly.
• Game Club Project "CTuber" debacle: Game Club Project's owners, Unlimited Inc. also tried to pull something similar after one of their VAs complained about work conditions after having to do several 12 hour or more Pokemon streams for several days in a row, because that's what her character setting is. Unlimited's response was to sack all the VAs and get new ones who wouldn't complain as much, and justify their decision by coining the term CTuber (Character VTuber) with the implication that only the character matters and the VAs are expendable.

most companies after those two knew better than to follow in either's footsteps, as they're rightly scared of shooting their profit margins in the foot. hell, even outside of corporate, when hololive's Kiryu Coco got in trouble for mentioning Taiwan in a non-provocative context, the VTuber themselves showed up in Japanese government documents regarding a potential international incident. as opposed to, i don't know... the actual person behind the avatar? you know, something that would seem more appropriate for a meeting like that? shit's weird, man.

weaponizing Dungeon Fighter Online elitism since 2018

I'm not sure if that contradicted me or agreed with me.

• Kizuna Ai is not an AI in real life and her article doesn't (or shouldn't) describe how she is in real life, the article tropes the personality she set up.
• Suisei is not Psychopathic Manchild in real life and her article doesn't (or shouldn't) describe how she is in real life, the article tropes the personality she set up.
• Kanata's is not a gorilla (or angel) in real life and her article doesn't (or shouldn't) describe how she is in real life, the article tropes the personality she set up.

Which to me solves the issue and hardly different from describing events in a movie.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 20th 2022 at 11:46:47 AM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

going back to what Fighteer said:

the deliberately blurred line between vtuber and actor effectively makes the former impossible, because to varying extents real life is gonna creep into their act somehow, depending on the streamer themselves. it doesn't help the ambiguity when companes like hololive roll up these quirks into their character portrayal, which is why i brought up all those examples in the first place.

the only way this is achieveable is if an actual clear line between the two — for example, they don't even so much as allude to anything occuring in real life, which is why i brought up advertising vtubers before, it's real easy for them to do that because most times "the person IS the vtuber" doesn't usually apply to them. it's an actor playing a clearly-defined, already existing fictional character most of the time. we can probably trope Sonic the VTuber because his portrayal is largely going to be consistent regardless of who's actually doing the portrayal. contrast that to most vtubers where the avatar and character setting are more of an optional suggestion than anything else, they can let as much or as little real life creep into their character as they want (within contractual limits, of course).

lemme give you another example: Matsuri portrays herself as a sort of Lovable Sex Maniac raging lesbian on her gaming streams. one would think that's just a side effect of the Improbably Female Cast, plus maybe slightly some influence from their raunchier competitors that don't have to deal with Contractual Purity. then you got Matsuri saying she's had an ex girlfriend before on one of her talk streams, where she's always been more consistently candid with real life stuff. does that now make that aspect of her character not tropeworthy, because there's some real life basis to it? honestly, we wouldn't be able to make that call unless we did some digging on her VA, Sato Nozomi, to see if she says the same stuff there as she does as Matsuri. and considering your average vtuber fan is prone to equating that to "doxxing", i (still) don't blame Fighteer for just wanting to avoid the hassle and cut everything.

ideally, we would just cherry pick the real life stuff out of these pages and, on the rare occasion one of those "it's doxxing" idiots actually gets into an edit war over this, put our foot down and point to our editing policies. you don't like it, then get out. as Fighteer said, "screw those people". i'm just a random occasional editor in no position of power on this site though, so that's not my call to make.

weaponizing Dungeon Fighter Online elitism since 2018

so, more stuff that edges this closer to "cut fucking everything":

i've been talking about this very topic on a Discord server i frequent often. basically everyone hated the takes from those in here not in favor of cutting the pages (including myself), because you can doxx someone with surprisingly little. one of them even used the Shia LeBouf "He Will Not Divide Us" flag as an example, it was nothing more than a flag waving in front of a non-descript cloudy sky with no other identifying features in sight (4chan located the flag through the cloud patterns, unsurprisingly). and vtubers are putting out so much more information beyond that by just merely streaming (their voice, probably their face if not a vtuber).

Edited by Freecom on Aug 20th 2022 at 12:43:50 PM

weaponizing Dungeon Fighter Online elitism since 2018

It's starting to sound like cutting everything is gonna be inevitable with how vehemently some people are for that option.