Critical Drinker Cleanup

As noted elsewhere on this site we are supposed to be troping recurring narrative or elements not the critics opinion. However, The Critical Drinker is full of examples of troping his opinion, like for example:

• Critic-Proof: invoked He feels The Fast and the Furious is this, describing it as one of the few franchises left that hasn't been polluted by sociopolitics, hasn't been "reimagined" or rebooted or retooled in any way, and hasn't changed at all beyond getting Denser and Wackier since it's first installation in 2001. He attributes this to how the series simply doesn't care what critics think, be they professional or critical fans, and devotes itself entirely to just serving up more and more of what its fans want.
  "At this point, the Fast and the Furious movies are basically immune to film criticism. They've ascended to a higher plane of existance, far removed from such petty mortal concerns. They know exactly what they are, and what their audience wants from them, and they are happy to give it to them by the truckloads. Fast cars, hot women, exotic locations, huge ensemble casts, ridiculous action sequences that laugh in the face of physics, gravity, and common sense, plots that don't make a lick of sense and absolutely don't care about it, big bald guys growling lines in something that could vaguely be described as english, and of course... family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family, family. And you know what? I fucking love it!"
• Padding: invoked One of his three biggest complaints about The Little Mermaid (2023) is how padded out it feels. Despite otherwise being a shot-for-shot remake with absolutely no new content, it clocks in at almost an hour longer than the original, which makes the remake feel clunky and bloated with how they effectively tried to pad out the run time as much as humanly possible.
  "It's not as if the script adds anything substantial to justify the extra run-time either. Everything is just slower and clunkier than it was before. Conversations drag on longer than they need to, transitions and action scenes are flaccid and bloated, and minor characters that are supposed to be there for Comic Relief get way too much screentime."

• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: invoked He feels this way about Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi, as the central conflict between her and Poe reminds him of the one between Hunter and Ramsey in Crimson Tide. He feels that if they'd written the two with more nuance in a way where neither was meant to objectively be right or wrong, rather than just having Holdo constantly act spiteful and lash out at Poe in order to "deconstruct his character" and then presented as 100% in the right to do so, that she could have gone on to be a fondly remembered character with a fascinating arc who in turn gave Poe some much-needed Character Development rather than (to quote directly) "just a purple-haired space Karen".

Which is just stating his opinion and not anything resembling a narrative. For an actual example here is three that is at least a recurring element or narrative:

• The Alcoholic: The Critical Drinker is depicted as a drunk Scotsman (as shown on his YouTube thumbnail above). Subverted with Jordan himself, who is mostly sober.

• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Drinker's early videos were much more slow-paced and serious as opposed to the more fast-talking and snarky videos he would create over the years. He also spoke with a calmer, more natural voice before developing his louder, slurring "Drinker" persona.

• Signing-Off Catchphrase: "Anyway, that's all I've got for today... go away now!" Fans have pointed out that his "go away now" can sound happier or sadder depending on his mood in the video.

These at least seem close to a narrative or at least more than just listing his opinions. I thought that starting a clean up thread for the page would be a good idea.

Edited by Bullman on May 29th 2023 at 6:23:27 AM

I feel like as a start, we could probably remove any example that claims to be "invoked", since that's usually just troping his opinion and is misuse.

Though I'm not convinced the Drinker needs a page at all, since he doesn't produce anything resembling a narrative. The only part of his character that's potentially fictional is his alcoholism, which I don't think is enough to meet minimum page requirements.

His having Early-Installment Weirdness and a Catchphrase don't seem like enough either. I know we've cut various Let's Players who are just playing mildly exaggerated versions of themselves with no narrative, and having catchphrases and running gags wasn't enough to save those pages.

Troping his opinions seen in his main channel is up for debate as he is playing an over-exaggerated version of himself.

But troping his opinions during livestreams is IMO, really pushing it. During said streams, he drops the Drinker persona making those examples are just Will Jordan's opinions. They shouldn’t count.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on May 31st 2023 at 1:52:50 AM

Yeah the live streams really shouldn't be considered at all. Anymore then say his Twitter which I kid you not I had to remove an example talking about his Twitter.

Edited by Bullman on May 31st 2023 at 8:26:36 AM

I brought up the podcast the guy's a part of, Podcast.Every Frame A Pause, because I'm unsure if the content is tropable or not.

I lean towards "no", since there's no narrative elements to trope, and the podcast hosts don't even have the justification of playing fictionalized versions of themselves. The page is just troping their real life opinions.

That is definitely not tropeable in my opinion because there is no attempt at narrative but just their opinions.

Edited by Bullman on Jun 2nd 2023 at 6:02:26 AM

I think Invoked Trope isn't the right description (other than avoiding markup issues) but instead they're Discussed Tropes which is somewhat contentious as to whether they should be included as tropes.

That said, if included, while it's fine (and arguably necessary) to include his opinion on them, care should be taken to not, you know, present his opinion as "correct."

Circling back to Podcast.Every Frame A Pause, as a mod pointed out here, the page shouldn't be partaking in any real life troping. (Personally, I'm still unclear on why a podcast with no fictional characters and no narrative is tropable at all, but if it doesn't violate site policy, I'm not going to argue it.)

So we should probably clean up entries that are troping the hosts themselves and aren't even describing Conversational Troping.

Just taking a look at the first three entries on the page:

None of these three are Conversational Troping, they're just troping how real life people are acting. Permission to cut at least these three?

I say go ahead and cut.

Okay, those three have been cut, as a start.

The existence of the Drinker's page as being tropeworthy or not is currently being discussed in the Web Video namespace and index cleanup thread.

The Critical Drinker has been officially been cut. I think we can close this thread now.

Yeah. Close this thread

Would it be worth keeping open to work on cleaning up Podcast.Every Frame A Pause, or should that effort be moved elsewhere? I'm fine either way.

I’m going with closing this thread and making a separate thread for EFAP as The Drinker isn't even really a main host of that podcast. He's more of a guest there than anything.

Btw, any wicks linking to the Drinker should just be replaced by a link to his YouTube channel.

Edit: Nevermind.

Edited by Bullman on Jul 11th 2023 at 11:14:45 AM

Per here. Should we restore the Critical Drinker page? Here's my proposal, more or less copied verbatim from the last post:

Tropes that refer to the character and his skits (Deadpan Snarker, The Alcoholic, Caustic Critic, etc) would be kept outright. Tropes that he frequently indulges in (The One Thing I Don't Hate About You, Not Helping Your Case, Rooting for the Empire, etc) or where he analyzes, criticizes, or defines the trope directly or explains in-depth why it applies to a work (Mary Sue, Uncertain Audience, Armed with Canon, Beauty Equals Goodness, etc), we keep. Then everything else, every single entry where it's just one example of how one of his opinions is related to a trope (Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, Borrowed Catchphrase, Crying Wolf, etc) we just outright axe. Finally, add this message in the little %-only-show-in-edit-page whatever-it's-called syntax:

"Only add tropes that describe the character himself, are a recurring subject of his videos, if he analyzes or defines a trope directly, or explains in-depth why it applies to a work."

It's not like we've got anything to lose if we ultimately can't fix it. If we can't fix it, we just cut it into oblivion and go hit the bar.

Edited by gophergiggles on Jul 11th 2023 at 9:29:02 AM

I don't agree with this because most of the examples you say we should keep are just troping his opinion or are outright misused in a way to try and fit his opinion into the trope (The One Thing I Don't Hate About You is about characters who find one insignificant likable quality in their enemy). Just because an example has several subbullets doesn't mean it's automatically keepworthy. It's just a list of his opinions, instead of one opinion.

Also, anything that applies to the work should go on the work's page. If there's an argument that it doesn't then we're back to troping opinions.

Which is why I think we should keep entries like The One Thing I Don't Hate About You, and not the one-off ones. The fact that he as a Caustic Critic frequently does that is tropeworthy about him as a character, like how Game Grumps have an entire page dedicated to them taking Take Thats at things. It illustrates and defines him as a character; it's a noteworthy part of his persona because it shows a recurring way he presents his material. Honestly it's no different than describing him as a Caustic Critic. Ones where "he did this once, here's a trope that's related" should be deleted because they're not about him as a character.

I checked the The One Thing I Don't Hate About You page and there's two entries for CD, one where he likes the artwork of a show despite not liking the show, and then there's a laughably forced one where he said about F9 that it was terrible, but at least it didn't have a political agenda! Like... does that even count? Sounds more like he's just using the film as a segway to criticize other films that he dislikes even more.

Here is what I will say. I would go at the middle in my eyes but there is a chance it does not count for this page. Given the circumstances, I would mostly keep it until further clarification honestly. I might end up sounding confusing right now due to my wording but that's just me.

I say just leave this be until we figure out what to do with reviewers and Books on Trope.

His actual page had a ton more entries under that one. Enough that they probably should have been put on a subpage. 20 in all, unless I miscounted.

As for that, since his page really was no different than any other of the countless Youtube "talk about subject" type personalities, albeit just with some bloat to skim off, we honestly should leave it up until we come to an actual consensus on what to do with said Youtubers. We really shouldn't do piecemeal pick-and-choose deletions since not only is that a band-aid fix that doesn't address the problem, but it is basically opening the floodgates for favoritism, personal biases, vandalism, and even copyright troll attacks. It seems to me like an Internet Backdraft or raid waiting to happen, as it feels very abusable that all it honestly takes to salt an article is half a baker's dozen to come together long enough to argue "it's not quite tropable enough".

Long-term it might even be worth creating a different namespace for them, like how Let's Play and Podcast is distinct from Web Video despite all being web-based videos, but that's honestly an entirely different discussion altogether.