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Yes, reality show contestants are treated as characters.
Nice Character, Mean Actor is NRLEP/IUEO for a reason. Cut it if you see it.
Expy can theoretically apply on a show like this, but it would have to be much more than just "the producers wanted someone to fill X archetype."
I would say Expy for reality TV is really a stretch. Yes, they are personas that we can trope, but I'd say it's near impossible for a reality TV persona to ever be an expy, especially since they're usually exaggerations of the person, and not deliberately written. Yes, producers do nudge these people to make more interesting or entertaining shows, but I don't think there's enough Executive Meddling to say that, for example, Russell Hantz is an expy of Adam Jasinskinote .
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors
reality shows need a massive clean up for their character pages. while you can trope them, there are many tropes that should never be applied. By definition, appearance tropes / characterization tropes shouldn't be on there since they're about a creator making a decision to give a character a certain physical trait / characteristic for characterization purposes. But despite that, these pages are covered in appearance tropes left and right.
In contrast, Stock Characters and Archetypal Character can be used since reality tv producers often intentionally cut footage to shoehorn characters into those familiar types for the audience to latch on to
In short, any trope designated No Real Life Examples, Please! should 100% not be on the pages but many others without it shouldn't either as they're for characterization purposes, unless they are being Played With (discussed, invoked, enforced, or exploited, specifically).
Edited by amathieu13
Kill any Expy examples you see. That trope attracts misuse to begin with; for a character to be a valid Expy they have to be a blatant and intentional carbon-copy of an existing character. While reality producers may want a repeat of someone they've had before (and may even slant the editing that way), real people fail the "near-exact duplicate" definition by default.
Wanted to ask before i removed a bunch of tropes at once: i was gonna clean up some of the character pages on survivor, and I'm wondering what is the official policy on tropes that can apply to reality tv contestants? They're technically real people, but they're edited to tell a story, so it makes sense to treat them as characters. Still, I'm pretty suspect about the use of tropes like Nice Character, Mean Actor and Expy