VTubers Cleanup Thread

Speaking in my capacity as moderator, none of that means anything to me. It's all gibberish. What I care about is that TV Tropes articles comply with our rules about tropability and about troping real life people. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to allow these articles to exist and be compliant.

I get why the desire for a clear divide, since from the outside looking in it does appear arbitrary or fuzzy. I've been in the vtuber hole for two years, so a lot of it is so self-evident to me it doesn't even register. But just to see if I can give an example of it, I'll use Calliope Mori who's roommate (the term for the one behind the avatar), known online as Demondice, was known from her debut for a number of reasons and is one of the best known in the community.

Her page mentions her giving "scythe swinging lessons" when not streaming, which is a euphemism for DD's day job. Because she said this as Calli, it applies to Calli. Even though this was known about DD if anyone cared to look, if she never mentioned it on stream it wouldn't apply to Calli.

Likewise, she produced a few songs regarding her pre-hololive days as Calli, rather than DD, and because of that the subject matter ALSO applies to Calli. If she had done it as DD, they wouldn't because Calli didn't make them.

Hell, on that note, DD is also a a well-known music artist whose success as Calli helped that side as well. But any content she produces under that name DOES NOT apply to Calli, because it wasn't made by her as Calli. She's done interviews as both, and answers Calli gives do not apply to DD, and vice-versa, unless it comes up on stream as Calli.

And on the reverse, Calliope Mori has a record label under Universal Music Japan, and that is SPECIFICALLY Mori, not DD. So even the big names in an adjacent industry know and respect the divide. Hell, as previously mentioned, when Coco's Taiwan thing happened the OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT had briefings that specified Coco, the vtuber, not Coco the actor.

And I guess that is the main point: there IS a divide, one the community and anyone associated with it knows and respects (if acting in good faith). It doesn't line up perfectly with traditional media, because that's the point, but it does exist and it's one that's taken very seriously.

Edited by TheFoxsCloak on Aug 20th 2022 at 5:07:13 AM

I think what Fighteer is asking is what any of this has to do with troping the content.

Edit: Also despite lurking on here through this whole discussion the terminology is making my head spin.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 20th 2022 at 4:03:20 AM

Okay, now even I'm confused, and I was lurking in the scene for a good year and a half or so. Just say something like "[VTuber name] the actor" and "[VTuber name] the character" to distinguish between them.

In general, I think we should tone down the VTuber jargon on this site to make the articles more accessible to those outside the scene.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Aug 20th 2022 at 3:05:30 AM

mmm, I was trying to be in line with the boundaries I established myself, but if it's just causing confusion I'll be explicit.

for the sake of refreshing ourselves, i'm gonna go over your initial mod post point by point and give my two cents on it:

a lot of vtubers are ostensibly the My Little Pony example, but most of them just stop bothering after a while and end up being the bullet point above that, save for any sporadic gags where they lean into their character. doubly so if said vtuber is prone to doing "Just Talking" streams, as Twitch would put it.

the third bullet point is any advertising vtuber, like Sonic. or if you wanna get real weird with it, the Tony the Tiger vtuber.

(insert J. Jonah Jameson's laugh here)

90% or more of the vtuber content i've seen is literally just the same as any other Let's Play i can watch, just with an added high-pitched anime girl in the corner.

the only things i could think of right now that wouldn't fall afoul of this are any musical endeavors and whatever original variety content hololive produces (e.g. most of their main channel, hololive - Holo no Graffiti, which is basically a series of scripted animated shorts and everyone is treated as fictional)

i think we've beat down that horse enough for one thread.

sounds reasonable, got nothing to add.

edit: formatting

Edited by Freecom on Aug 20th 2022 at 4:13:03 AM

A lot of that fan jargon doesn't even appear on the vtuber pages, thankfully.

And it really shouldn't, because it is FAN jargon and wouldn't have a place on an actual Tropes article. I'm just so used to using it I defaulted to it, so apologies for any confusion.

So any final verdict on what to do with Contractual Purity and Role-Ending Misdemeanor?

What I know is part of the plan:

• Contractual Purity: Remove all defiances since you can't play with trivia
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Remove Nijisanji since the talent didn't actually lose his role

I still need to know what to do with 1) the three straight Hololive examples for point 1 and 2) Rushia for point 2.

Again I think the real question here is, does any of this interfere with our ability to trope the creative content these creators put out? I think people have gotten too wrapped up in the discussion to really consider what we're trying to accomplish here; for the time being I think we should try and weed out the obviously not-tropeworthy cases and then worry about things like keyfabe and the like.

Edit: As for the two tropes above, I'd err on the side of cutting them if they're unrelated to the work itself or rewriting the valid examples. I'm not sure we actually have to be as concerned about the actor/character stuff, since these things are explicitly about behind-the-scenes events and information. Obviously it'd be about the real person.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 20th 2022 at 5:18:59 AM

Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Yumeoi Kakeru is misuse. Rushia may be valid since it was officially announced that she's fired because the Trivia trope is in effect, but let's leave out details that weren't announced.

"does any of this interfere with our ability to trope the creative content", not more than any other WebVideo/ or Podcast/ page I'd say. If there's a significant problem, it'd be a problem with those namespaces as of whole.

My critical concern is that we are using the "it's a character, not a real person" excuse to bypass our normal rules on tropability. Someone vlogging about their life does not become tropable just because they're wearing an avatar and calling themselves Glitterspark, the Alabaster Alien.

I haven't read very many of these articles, so I'm mainly going on what other people have said about them. The main problem we encounter with articles about streamers and Let's Players is that there is very little actual creative content, so the trope examples are about the real people on the channel. It's the same problem with websites.

After all real life troping is removed, there must be enough transformative, creative content to fill out the minimum required number of trope examples without counting setting, paratext, title/naming tropes, or narrative filigree.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 20th 2022 at 5:35:13 AM

That's one reason I said we should start weeding out bad pages first. It'll give us a basis for what we don't want and divert the thread into actual cleanup stuff.

All done. I commented out the straight examples in Contractual Purity, so if anyone wants to edit and restore them, go ahead.

The case would vary if "it's a character, not a real person" is an "excuse" or is in fact what the streamer is going for. I agree on weeding bad cases and spotlighting cases that explicitly ask to take what they describe as fiction.

There's also things that aren't explicitly part of the character but obviously aren't facets of the actor and thus become character lore (like Amelia Watson's ability to time travel). That might fall under your second case but I just want to be extensive.

Obviously fictional things like living on another planet or being able to time travel are fine to trope. The thing about character lore is that it has to be used as part of a narrative. "Today I'm vlogging about my time travel trip to last week, where I shopped at Macy's," is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, but if there is an original, fictional story being told, that's a different matter.

In the latter sense it's like performing a skit or roleplaying on camera, and those are completely tropable. It's just that the line seems to get blurry about what parts of the performances are fictional and which are just winks to camera as someone talks about their day.

And again, other types of content must also be transformative to be tropable. Doing a Let's Play in costume is explicitly not. Doing a Let's Play as if you are a fictional character could be, although I imagine it'd get pretty old after a short time. "I'm pretending to be Alice reacting to a game of American McGee's Alice in Wonderland as if it were a defictionalization of my real life."

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 20th 2022 at 5:49:52 AM

There's been more than one example of something that originated as a trait that could be argued was about the actor and not the vtuber that was later referenced in official media. Just off the top of my head, Lamy's entry of The Alcoholic had no basis in her pre-established lore, but has been repeatedly acknowledged in official things like Hologra because it became so iconic to her through her streams.

Going back to the Calli Teacher example, Demondice was known to be a teacher in Japan as her day job, speculated as an elementary English teacher. If she had never mentioned that on stream as her giving "scythe swinging lessons", it would have just remained trivia about DD. Oh it would have been discussed in community circles, depending on context, but it wouldn't have applied to Calliope Mori the Vtuber and thus wouldn't be troped as a trait of the fictional character. But because she did say it as Calliope Mori, even if reframed, it established Calliope Mori the Vtuber as a teacher herself within the fiction that the Vtuber exists. I believe there's even been official streams were Calli was acting as a teacher to some JP members learning English, which wouldn't make any sense if it wasn't considered part of Calliope Mori the vtuber.

There is a divide between real life and fiction that everyone acknowledges. Yes, most treat it as a wink and a nudge in fan circles, but all official ones play it very straight, even if it's fluid as shown above. If they establish a trait as the vtuber avatar, it is officially considered part of the vtuber avatar even if it originated as something from the actor.

I agree with all what Fighteer has previously said. It's just going into an issue that's effectively a ZCE check, someone with context knowledge can confirm or deny if a trope example was transformative using a narrative and doubled-down or is plain "shopping at Macy" without added to the gimmick.

That example about being a teacher definitely needs to be cut or rewritten. It's currently under Badass Teacher, but is uses her mentioning scythe-swinging classes (the character is a Grim Reaper) just as an excuse to go about her being an English teacher. There's nothing about the character which suggests she is an English teacher though, and even if there was it has nothing to do with the Badass Teacher trope.

If you focus on the in-universe part (the scythe swinging lessons, possibly some teaching streams) and cut any mention of the IRL part, you could probably make a workable entry for The Mentor or some similar trope.

Example in question.

Yes, this should be reworded and left with only English teaching streams for other vtubers and "young reapers" in the same The 'Verse. The Mentor (it's a redirect though) may also be more appropriate.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 20th 2022 at 1:31:24 PM

So before I go into this, I will say in advance this is going to be extremely nitpicky, and I am not as familiar with TV Tropes policy as I maybe should be, but that is accurate as far as the description goes.

Again, because this was said on stream, per hololive's policy that is canon to Calliope Mori the Vtuber's lore. Maybe it fits The Mentor better than Badass Teacher, that's not a call I can make, but what it describes does apply to the vtuber per her corporation's own official stance and all established tradition in the scene.

I'm not trying to dictate what fits where on TV Tropes, because I don't know the nitty gritty of the site policies; I'm just trying to establish as accurate of a picture as possible to make sure everyone's making informed decisions as much as possible.

Edited by TheFoxsCloak on Aug 20th 2022 at 7:30:07 AM

I mean, even with what you've said, "theorized by many" is a red flag and "how many people will" is Word Cruft, so at least those bits have to go. For the rest my bigger issue is that it's too wordy to describe something she either said she does In-Universe or is shown to do.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 20th 2022 at 1:35:10 PM

I also feel like there's two separate things involved. One is the scythe swinging classes for little reapers, which is a way of fictionalizing what she did in real life to fit her character. And the other is the actual English language lessons she currently live streams to non-English speaking vtubers and viewers.