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Not just K-pop or idols... I believe this happens to many bands and musicians under the "Music" namespace on this wiki.
Not sure if they are strictly covered by the Real Life Troping policy or not (the Administrivia page has a part about "Musicians", yet there still seems to be a very thin line between troping the singer's real-life with their "persona", let alone how they sing or what they do, for example), but go in any "Music/" page and you may find some trope examples talking about the musicians/members themselves. If we compile them, there would be a lot, but these are just a few at first glance:
- Queen Bee tropes Stage Names for the members.
- Green Day tropes the Berserk Button of lead vocalist Billy Joe Armstrong.
- Bring Me the Horizon tropes Sir Swears-a-Lot for lead vocalist Oliver Sykes.
- Rick Astley tropes his Vocal Evolution.
- Foster the People tropes Only Known by Their Nickname for former member Cubbie Fink.
- Aerosmith also has an entire section about "Musician Tropes".
- Avicii tropes about him being a Record Producer.
- Foo Fighters tropes All Drummers Are Animals for their drummers.
- Ludwig van Beethoven has an odd case as well. His folder specifically states "Beethoven's works", but there is a Deaf Composer example there (albeit barebornes or zero-context), which is obviously about him.
If examples like these have to be cut or cleaned-up for violating the Real Life Troping policy, a lot of Music pages would be affected, requiring a massive or long-term project/clean-up effort. Personally, I'm not even sure if these examples are allowed or not, or if there's a currently-existing thread for cleaning up real-life troping about bands and musicians.
Best wait for other editors and mods to reply though...
Edited by DanteVin With Great Power, Comes Great Motivation
I think some of these might be okay, like the stage names on Queen Bee and Vocal Evolution on Rick Astley, since it's not getting into applying tropes to the musicians like fictional characters. Vocal Evolution as a trope basically revolves around real people and their voices changing - the same for the stage names on Queen Bee. In both examples, too, the tropes affect their art and aren't just about them as real people. I'm not sure if these should be on the main page, per se, since to me they don't really seem like traditional tropes, but they're in main and it can't be helped. What I'm talking about is stuff like, on the U-KISS page:
Can't Hold His Liquor: This describes Kevin, who has no tolerance for alcohol whatsoever. (Aside from this being real life troping, Can't Hold His Liquor is NRLEP, so this should be gone anyhow.) Some of the stuff you listed (like Sir Swears-a-Lot on Bring Me the Horizon) falls into that category in my view. But I'm far from an expert.
Edited by neruneruparka
Troping the music or the on-stage/in-video performance is fine. That Can't Hold His Liquor entry is not OK. Vocal Evolution I think is misuse because that trope describes the voice of a character changing because the voice of the actor has changed, not the evolution of a singer's voice over time.
We don't have a K-pop cleanup, but we do have a music and RL troping cleanup: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16423012440A61600600
One thing of note is that there is a cleanup thread for real life troping in music. I feel like since in K-pop pages it's especially ubiquitous there might need to be a separate thread for just cleaning up K-pop.
Edit: Just in time, somebody posted it before me! Well, it's still something to know. And about Vocal Evolution up there, I did feel that because of the Laconic, but there is a whole separate page for Music examples. What's with that?
Edited by neruneruparka
Noticed the Music subpage right after deeming those misuse. Well. Perhaps that's a topic for the repair shop, but it's probably OK to let the current examples stand and focus on cleaning up worse misuse and wiki violations.
^I don't really think we need a TRS thread. Misuse is misuse, and This Is a Wiki. And if it ends up that certain K-Pop bands are reduced to stubs by cleaning it up, we can just send them to the Cut List and reduce the surplus population.
(Note: last comment is purely me being a wiseass. 😜)
Well, since real life troping is prevalent on way too many K-pop pages (and it doesn't see signs of slowing down), I think at least a notifier or commented out disclaimer should be added on K-pop pages to keep the real life troping out.
For example, I noticed EXO has a disclaimer on the "Band and Member Concept Tropes" section. Which is a good segway to say a lot of K-pop groups have "lore" nowadays, or plotlines that tie into their music videos and outside content, usually teasers and extra videos and stuff. (For example, ATEEZ are pirates in their story, and LOONA has lots of [near incomprehensible... oops!] lore.) If it's troping the "lore," that's fine. But content like V-Lives and variety shows, not released and planned by the company, rarely have anything to do with the lore. And of course, troping idols' personal lives is a no no.
Edited by neruneruparka
^^ If people feel the expanded definition should be made official, it's a TRS matter. But it's just as valid to cut misuse.
Notices on top of the most active pages or certain sections might help. They should be commented out because it's a note for editors, not for readers. Readers aren't concerned about this.
After getting a little savvy with TV Tropes, one thing I've noticed is how the majority of pages for Korean pop artists violate the Real Life Troping policy. The K-pop scene is a scene where many fans (get the impression of) knowing their favorite singers really well, and the fandom can sometimes be quite similar to ones of fictional properties, so I understand why this happens... but it's not allowed on TV Tropes. (For the record, most K-pop stars don't play any fictional persona; all the "fictionalization" could be chalked up to image management or editing out the bad parts, but most aren't playing characters.)
As an experiment, I thought of a random K-pop group - in this case, U-KISS - and guess what? Almost none of it was about the music, but about the people in the group! (It's also filled with misuse, both in the real life troping and the few examples related to their music, but that's besides the point.) I thought this could be the fault of being a page that probably hadn't been touched since 2012, but I checked the page of NMIXX and it has a whole section on tropes applying to the members.
I was thinking of making a short-term about this, but I heard I should discuss over here instead of unilaterally making a thread at the Short Term Projects forum. I'm sure this could also be a problem with pages for other non-Korean idol singers, since those too market their image and personality over anything else. And when it comes to controversies, which K-pop fans always handle with the utmost tact, it can get real messy. (A while back I deleted a massive wall of text on the SS501 page about the leader Hyunjoong's controversy... that occurred years after SS501 went on "indefinite hiatus.") Anyways, what should we do?
(Sorry if I didn't convey my message well; it's just something that's been bugging me for a while.)
Edited by neruneruparka