Vlog Brothers

John and Hank Green: Epic Nerdfighters!

DFTBA!^[1]

Vlogbrothers, as the name implies, is the YouTube channel and vlogging project of brothers Hank and John Green. Vlogbrothers (also known as Brotherhood 2.0) was originally a one-year project starting January 1, 2007, where the two brothers swore off textual communication with each other. They were to update one after the other every weekday of the year and each video was to be no more than 4 minutes long. After the year was up, the large demand from their fanbase led them to continue the project.

Since then, they have developed a sizable fanbase, due not only to the success of their videos, but also music, books and various charity works. Both now also host another channel "Crash Course", where each brother gives lectures on subjects they're knowledgeable about, and Hank also hosts "Sci Show", filled with various science news videos.

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Vlog Brothers provides examples of the following tropes:

• Adorkable: Hank and John, obviously, but also Hank's wife Katherine. Maureen Johnson, who took over for John when he was on paternity leave, also fits this quite nicely.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: John has several prepared.
• And Call Him George: John would name his puppy-sized elephant Louis, and they would be the best of friends.
• Angry Dance: "5 STARS FOR ANGER DANCE!!"
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Hank made a video (and song) about the demolition derby in response to incredulous comments from people who thought derbies were fictional.
• Anti-Love Song: Hank sings "Florida" like a regular ballad love song, but it's actually about how much Florida sucks.
  • "The Adorable Cannibal" may also be an example because it is actually a love song, but a really wierd one that overlaps love and sexual attraction with food cravings, and eating with making out.
• Big Brother Instinct: It's rare, but John has occasionally shown himself to possess it.
• Blatant Lies: On "Question Tuesday, the day that I answer real questions from real nerdfighters!", John always answers the question "Who the eff is Hank?" (whether or not it was actually asked) with some wordy description of a person, thing, or phenomenon which is quite obviously not his brother.
  • "Hank is a sausage covered in cornbread batter and deep fried."
• Broken Base: Invoked by fans with the Zombies/Unicorns issue, a completely silly and non-serious break specifically because they decided there wasn't enough conflict.
• Catch Phrase: These are abundant. "DFTBA!"
  • "The link is in the doobly-do." (borrowed from Wheezy Waiter)
  • "Best Wishes!"
  • ......In your pants.
  • "God, I love librarians!"
  • "French the Llama!" (sort of)
  • "I'll see you on Monday/Wednesday/Friday."
  • "Dude...no edge."
• Cavemen vs. Astronauts Debate: Zombies vs. Unicorns, which started in the community of YA novelists and has since spilt over into Nerdifghteria, dividing even the Green brothers themselves. Hank is pro-unicorn, and, while John is not exactly pro-zombie, he is definitely anti-unicorn.
• Continuity Nod: Occasionally bringing back old jokes.
• Continuity Lock Out: Because the series is so long-running and there are so many videos, many jokes and references can easily be lost on new viewers. Sometimes even John and Hank forget how some things got started.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The brothers have a longstanding rule that they have to keep their videos under four minutes or face punishment. For example, Hank once went two seconds over the time limit and was forced to spend fifteen hours in a local Target store.
• Media Research Failure: British tabloid The Daily Star did a article on Britain's Got Talent runner-up Jonathan Antoine and his professing to be a nerdfighter. The group was referred to as "The Nerd Fighters", was called a bizarre internet cult, and that Members are often intellectual loners, claim they are “not made of flesh and bone’’ and watch Harry Potter and Star Trek movies all the time.
• Defictionalization: During the Great American Tour de Nerdfighting/ Paper Towns tour 2008, nerdfighters made many items that previously existed only in John's book, Paper Towns, such as Margo's crazy shopping list/receipt, Amish hunger wonder bread, Go Fast bars, and more.
  • Invoked in the case of the vehicle used to drive across the country for the Paper Towns tour. It was the exact same minivan owned by Q's mom in the book.
  • Also a Culver Creek Prep t-shirt from Looking for Alaska.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Who would guess that the Vlogbrothers are a couple of brothers who vlog?
• Expressive Hair: John's hair gets puffy when he gets anxious (because of a nervous habit of running his hands through it). Hank's hair does this too to a lesser extent.
  • "Puff Levels are unusually high today." Sometimes the Puff Level will steadily increase over the course of a video.
• Face Your Fears: John is afraid of heights, but he faced his fear and stood up on top of a table to raise money for his favorite charity.
  • He also later rode the Frog Hopper as a punishment.
• Famous Last Words: John knows the last words of lots of famous people.
• Fan Community Nickname: Nerdfighters.
• Filk Song: Many of Hank's songs. This Isn't Hogwarts, Dead Boy's Girlfriend, The Man Who Throws the Tetris Piece, I'm Not Edward Cullen, and lots more.
• Forced Meme: John has been trying to make "French the llama" a thing since the 2009 Project for Awesome.
• Grammar Nazi: John.
  • "You should probably know that in that context, "you're" is a contraction, and any time you're contracting "you are" it's spelled WHY-OH-YOU-APOSTOPHE-ARE-EE. Omigod, youtube, before you click "submit comment", read your comment and ask yourself, "DO I MEAN YOU ARE?". And if you do, you need an apostrophe."
• Happily Married: Both of them.
• Happy Dance: A whole montage of them.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: John's wife, The Yeti. Her cute would break the camera.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Averted with the Evil Baby Orphanage.
• Hurricane of Puns: "Mules Are So Half-Ass".
• In-Joke: Tons. Often confuse or are totally lost on new viewers. Best wishes!
• Insistent Terminology: DFTBA is not an acronym because it doesn't spell anything. It is an initialism.
• Insult Backfire: Both John and Hank have mentioned in several videos the stupidity of negative comments that accuse them of being nerds/geeks (they take it as a compliment) or "gay" (this is not an insult anyway).
• I Uh You Too: While this is obviously a family example rather than the usual romantic ones, John and Hank do seem to have a pretty hard time saying the words "I love you" to each other. Even when forced to do so by beloved nerdfighter Esther, it was clearly an awkward experience for them.
• Keet: Both of them, but especially Hank.
• Law of Disproportionate Response: Used heavily in Hank's song, "I'm Gonna Kill You", which threatens gruesome deaths on people that irritate him by slowing down the grocery store checkout lane, owning a giant SUV, and throwing a loud party late at night.
  • "I'm usually a very peaceful person, but I'm gonna kill you."
• Lighter and Softer: They have their moments, but on the whole, they're the lighter and softer alternates to most of the other vloggers on YouTube.
• Lovable Nerd: Both of them.
• Memetic Hand Gesture: The Nerdfighter hand sign -- two Vulcan salutes done with palms inward and arms crossed, accompanied by gun-cocking sound effects.
• Metaphorgotten: John has done this once or twice. After a nice, undecipherable one: "I'm a novelist. I make up metaphors for a living!"
• Moment Killer: OK, so they're already married and there's no Aborted Declaration of Love here, but in the "Fifth Anniversary with the Katherine" video, Katherine deftly assassinates a moment and keeps things from getting sappy: Hank starts stroking her hair. When she asks why, he replies "Because I love you!" She then asks him to do it again... And when he obliges, she licks his hand. Complete with "BLEAAAURG" sound.
• Motor Mouth: Both of them, big time.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Many viewers have commented on how appealing they find both John and Hank, and Hank has appeared on several blogs in lists of "certain people [the blogger] would like to do certain things with" (also known as the "celebrity do list" or "guilt-free three")
  • Also, both brothers have talked about the hotness of nerd girls, John in response to a young viewer's question about dating, and Hank, in usual Hank fashion, in a song.
• Nerd Core: Several of Hank's songs, including DFTBA and The Man Who Throws The Tetris Piece (especially the Dr. Noise cover).
• Nerd Glasses: Both wear glasses, but John has a special pair that are extra-nerdy.
• Nerdy Marriage Proposal: One nerdfighter asked John to propose to his girlfriend for him.
  • John appeared to be just as nervous before the proposal (and as elated and relieved when she said yes) as an actual groom-to-be would be.
  • In fact, this is the same way he proposed to his wife, by asking her favorite author to ask her for him.
• Proud to Be a Geek: John, Hank, and Nerdfighters in general.
• Punny Name: In this survey, Hank plans to avert this trope. Any potential child of his will not be called Hunter, Olive, Forest, Lime...
• Pure Awesomeness: The official definition of a Nerdfighter is someone who is composed of pure awesome instead of tissue, bones, etc. Also, the mission of Nerdfighteria, to increase awesome and decrease worldsuck. What more could you ask for?
• Quizzical Tilt: Bubbles the Nerdfighting Puppy was prone to this upon hearing new sounds. Once he stopped, the Nerdfighting community at large attempted to get him to do it again. Because it was eye-meltingly cute.
• Raise Him Right This Time: The Evil Baby Orphanage. The idea is that, instead of going back in time and assassinating famous dictators and other evil people, time travelers should abduct them when they're infants and bring them to the orphanage to raise them to be good people instead.
• Running Gag: "Who the eff is Hank?", tiny chickens, airports, sock puppets, peep-eating contests, among many, many others.
• Shout-Out: Lots and lots. To authors, poets, musicians, and scientists living and dead, to movies and books, to other video bloggers.
  • Hank's guitar is painted with the words, "this machine pwns n00bs", and John's laptop has a sticker with the original words "This machine kills fascists".
• Sibling Team: Obviously.
• Spin-Off: Many nerdfighters have been inspired to do other collaborative vlogs, notably shortsisters and fiveawesomegirls.
• Stalker with a Crush: While Hank's Helen Hunt song is supposed to be funny and non-serious, when the real Helen Hunt heard it, she thought it was this trope and took out a restraining order against him. A restraining order covered in flowers and smiley faces.
  • the restraining order is fake though, just so you know
• Stupid Statement Dance Mix: Hank put one together called "Willy's Song;" it was an amalgamation of all the bizarre sounds Nerdfighters had made in an attempt to get Willy to do his Quizzical Tilt again.
• Temporary Substitute: YA author Maureen Johnson (no, not that one) fills in once in a while.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: INTERNET SENSATION BITCH!!
• Unusual Euphemism: French the llama! Asshat. Warner Chilcott.
  • And there are several videos in which John uses the names of famous poets in place of swear words.

John: I’m a William Blake gangster, so of course you want my Samuel Taylor Coleridge. You’re gonna wanna be all up in this William Wordsworth - Like oh Percy Shelley! Oh oh Percy Shelley! I’m the Lord Byroning Samuel Taylor Coleridge - WILLIAM BLAKE!

• Viewers Are Geniuses: While both John and Hank often take time to explain what they are talking about, for the most part they assume that the majority of viewers are Nerdfighters and, therefore, smart enough and nerdy enough to understand and be interested in the topics mentioned. Hank and John both make casual references to people, works, and terms many casual viewers might not understand. Also, John can go into literary-sounding musings or descriptions, often filled with quotes from his favorite authors as well as his own books.
  • Also, Nerd Jokes. You have to be pretty familiar with scientific theories, literature, computer science, comics, psychology, anime, sci fi and fantasy, politics, math and physics, and/or famous historical scientists and scholars to get the jokes at all.
• The World Is Just Awesome
• Writers Cannot Do Math: John has often had to call up "Resident Mathematician" Daniel Biss to do simple sums and even verify that one number is larger than another.
  • He also infamously calculated once that there were 100 seconds in a minute.
• You Keep Using That Word: Beginning videos with "Good morning Hank/John/Nerdfighters" became a tradition even though videos are actually rarely made and not necessarily watched in the morning. Lampshaded by Hank.

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