Using "No Real Life" tropes for Reality TV - policy questions

Bringing this back from ATT and starting a Trope Talk thread, as recommended by the mods:

When troping Reality TV, we generally take the view that contestants can be troped as fictional characters. From No Real Life Examples, Please! -

It's acknowledged that this isn't a perfect solution - and we already seem to have an informal (?) consensus that some characterisation and appearance tropes that can be applied to a purely fictional character (E.g. Spicy Latina, Pretty Boy and Sassy Black Woman) are not appropriate to list for real people in reality shows unless they are directly acknowledged within the work.

However, some tropes fall into a grey area. The Scrappy seems to be top of that list:

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• X-Pac Heat is our trope for cases where both the character and the performer are hated by the audience. Currently, it is only permitted for Professional Wrestling examples, due to the unique nature of wrestling shows.
• The Scrappy and related tropes (the most relevant ones seem to be Base-Breaking Character and Rescued from the Scrappy Heap) are our audience reaction tropes for unintentionally hated characters. TheScrappy specifically excludes examples where the audience hates the character because they hate the performer, with the trope page referring that scenario back to X-Pac Heat.

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However, with reality shows, the 'character' has an existence as the same person outside the work - they may appear in other works (including talk shows and other non-scripted events where we can't consider them a tropeable character), they may attract tabloid coverage, they may have an active social media presence (many shows actively encourage this), they may face criminal charges or go through a messy divorce...

John Wick ceases to exist when the cameras stop rolling; the hypothetical Adam Boggs from Big Brother doesn't. And at least part of the audience doesn't draw a line between Adam the 'character' and Adam the person in the news, or on Twitter, or on that talk show.

So all of this influences the way the contestants are perceived by the audience, and - as it's outside the work - all of it veers into troping real people as if they were fictional characters, which is prohibited. Even if we can remove all references to things outside the work from the examples without turning them into ZCEs, we know they're still factors in why many contestants are loved or hated by the fans.

As with those appearance tropes, if it's mentioned within the work, I think that's grounds for an example - e.g. one returning Drag Race contestant cheerfully described herself as "one of the most polarizing characters" in the show's history, and that feels like a 100% valid example of (discussed) Base-Breaking Character - but those are the exceptions.

This got discussed at some length on ATT, but my hope is that we can get a decision (via crowner?) here to settle it, then possibly keep the thread open for any other tropes that raise similar concerns.

(We already have a reality tv cleanup thread elsewhere, but it doesn't handle trope policy - and this was deemed out of scope for the NRLEP thread as well)

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 6th 2023 at 7:02:32 PM

Just to add to that - there's also the question of how "unintentional" some of these cases are. Some shows clearly position a contestant as the bad guy, but beyond that it's subjective and we're trying to guess the creator's intent based on the way it's been edited.

But that's a question we can cover (here or elsewhere) if there's a consensus to keep Reality TV in scope for these tropes.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 6th 2023 at 7:10:59 PM

I don't watch reality TV, but I have been involved in the Big Brother Cleanup thread where The Scrappy was used a bit too much.

I don't know if there's any merit for a reality tv-specific version of The Scrappy with a focus on Manipulative Editing, but that's the first thing that popped into my head.

TV Tropes ruined Faust's life

There's a holler for a blank crowner but I rather wait until we are actually ready to use the crowner as the thread was just started.

Macron's notes

One example of misuse, from TheScrappy.Ru Pauls Drag Race:

Scarlet Adams, in the international section:

I don't see any way we can claim that's not Real Life Troping, as it's clearly outside the work.

Yeah, that's more like Overshadowed by Controversy, and I'm not sure if we can use that to refer to a particular contestant on a reality show and not the whole work.

Just cut this from: TheScrappy.Ru Pauls Drag Race:

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• History repeats itself with Captivating Katkat from the upcoming Season 2 of Drag Race Philippines. Similar to Scarlet Adams, it was discovered that she did blackface in the past. It’s not helped by her trying to justify it on social media, to the point of even blocking people on Twitter who are rightfully calling her out. While she eventually gave an apology, many people felt like she only did so because she was losing followers and so she has a chance to win the crown.

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Given that the season hasn't even aired yet, it's a breach of No Real Life Examples, Please! as well as No Recent Examples, Please!.

But... it seems pretty likely that six months after the show debuts, Katkat may seem to qualify for The Scrappy based on fan reaction.

However, if she does, we know that's going to be built on this RL foundation. Even if it's not directly mentioned in the example.

Which brings us back to the potential problem with applying The Scrappy to reality contestants.

Yeah, again more an example of Overshadowed by Controversy than The Scrappy.

I don't think there's a problem with applying The Scrappy to Reality Show contestants in generall, but I think it does need to be about their presence in the show just like it is for fully fictional characters.

Edited by StarSword on Jul 19th 2023 at 12:08:09 PM

Yeah, that's the rule as it currently stands. Reality TV examples are allowed if the focus is on what happens during the show and nothing else, because once the cameras are gone and there's no editing to achieve a specific narrative, it's all real life.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'm personally not terribly comfortable with the idea of troping The Scrappy for reality shows. As I said in the main Scrappy thread, it's difficult to separate the difference between playing a character and being their authentic self unless a person outright admits it. There's also, as someone else pointed out, the problem that even if we cut all mentions of it, outside events such as controversial social media posts can easily shape opinion of people on a reality show, which could easily relegate it to being the "Elephant in the room" for that person.

My preliminary stance on this is to ban all Audience Reactions from RL-adjacent works like reality TV and game shows, if they aren't already, and to prohibit Trivia that isn't sourced from the show itself.

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

That takes away things like memes and stuff too, though. Not all audience reactions target specific people or break any sort of RL examples policy.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'd tend to agree. Broken Base may be valid even if Base-Breaking Character isn't, for example.

But I personally think we need to be very careful when treating contestants or hosts as 'characters', though.

Bump. On YMMV.Kitchen Nightmares there's a Diagnosed by the Audience example for the infamous Amy of Amy's Bakery. I assume this is safe to chop?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Definitely kill it.

back lol

Chop it. Diagnosing real people, even in reality shows, sounds wrong.

It's gone.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness