Gronkh

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An important participant of the German Let's Play community, Gronkh started recording LPs in 2009.

He gained most of his fandom from his ongoing Minecraft Let's Play, which greatly increased the popularity of both himself and Minecraft in Germany. Contrary to popular belief, though, he did not define the Let's Play genre in Germany; he merely popularized it among more casual viewers.

His LPs are quite un-Walkthrough-like compared to others, even though he hardly ever offscreens anything. His knowledge about the mechanics of the game he's playing are often limited or non-existant, but he usually makes up for it with general videogame savvy. His commentary about equally consists of review-like opinions on strength and weaknesses of the game, witty illustration of Fridge Logic, random talk, opinions and Real Life observations, and puns he apologizes for immediately afterwards.

Gronkh is one of the administrators of the MMORPG site playmassive.de and the gaming site playnation.de. Together with some other PlayNation administrators and affiliated Lets Players, he publishes his videos on his website gronkh.de along with Youtube.

Certainly not to be confused with Gonk or Gronk.

Games Gronkh has Let's Played:

Wide Open Sandbox:

• Minecraft
• The Sims 3

Trash/Let's Not Play:

• Adventure At The Riding Stables 7
• Garbage Simulator
• Garden Simulator 2010
• Police Simulator

MMORPG tests:

• Allods Online
• Atlantica Online
• Runes of Magic

Others:

• Battle Of The Immortals
• Bulletstorm
• Dont Shit Your Pants
• Duty Calls
• Dragon Age (plus various DLCs)
  • Dragon Age II
• Deponia
• Drawn: The Painted Tower
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Eternally Us
• Fable: The Lost Chapters
• F. E. A. R.
  • F. E. A. R. 2
  • F. E. A. R. 3
• Harvey's New Eyes
• Legend of Kyrandia
  • Legend of Kyrandia 2
• Loom
• Max Payne
• Monkey Island
  • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
  • The Curse of Monkey Island
• Prey
• Risen
• Singularity
• Torchlight
• Vollgas: Full Throttle

Tropes found in Gronkh's Let's Plays:

• Animal Nemesis: He is driven by a searing hatred and justified suspicion towards chickens in Minecraft, after (the? an?) Evil Chicken repeatedly caused his death by pushing him off a cliff.
• Annoying Laugh: He tends to imitate one of these in Oh Crap moments.
• Arch Enemy: Evil Chicken.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After he announced to end his Let's Play Minecraft, the threats of the Fan Dumb were like this. As someone put it:

Okay, he'll be beaten black and blue, get killed and have to read many comments.

• Artificial Stupidity: "Idiot dogs."
• Audience Participation: Even more often than other Let's Play authors, he lets his viewers decide what he'll do next in his LPs.
• Bad Powers, Good People: In Dragon Age II, he played a Lawful Good warrior... with the Reaver specialisation.
• Big Brother Instinct: An aspect of how he played Hawke in Dragon Age II.
• Big No:
  • This.
  • His reaction to the destruction of the Chantry in Dragon Age II.
• Black Comedy
• Catch Phrase:
  • Most of them vary and only stick for a few episodes or a single Let's Play, but the persistent ones include:
  • "Du alte Pottsau!". (Literally "You old pot-sow"; "Pottsau" is both a rarely-used, relatively mild generic insult and today a humorous slur towards the inhabitants of North-Rhine Westphalia).
  • <insert recurring or overused joke here> "That joke'll never get old."
  • Crit damage! Crit damage!
• Chainmail Bikini: Discussed.

Female characters in MMORPGs can be distinguished by the fact that the better their armour is, the more skin is shown off.

• Characterization Marches On: In his early videos he tended to put things much more bluntly and was much less talkative than he is now; all in all, his in-show personality wasn't developed yet.
• Comedic Sociopathy:
  • He often is cruel to Minecraft animals for laughs.
  • His entire mini-LP of the game "Die Polizei" was about being a racist, sadist, foul-mouthed asshole.
• Compensating for Something: Discussed in his Let's Test Atlantica Online, where he called the cannnon "compensation cannon".
• Creepy Child: He generated one in his The Sims 3 LP. Also the "mutant babies" to which he changed the spiders for an anniversary episode by swapping out the textures and sounds.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: In Minecraft he gets lost extremely often, even though he has a good sense of direction, because he just cannot leave any sidepath of a cave unexplored.
• Curse Cut Short
• Cuteness Proximity: Frequently parodied in the interaction with his Minecraft dogs.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Determinator: Many of his Let's Plays exceed 200 episodes.
• Dirty Cop: Played for Laughs in his Let's Play (fragment) of a police simulator game.
• Drinking Game: He suggested one himself on his Facebook page: Take a shot every time he quicksaves during his Let's Play of Prey. During some fights, this literally happens every ten seconds.
• Dronejam: Happens to him occasionally, always snarkily commented.
• The Eeyore: Fenris from Dragon Age II is this to him.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: He considered constructing one of these here.
• Fake Longevity:
  • He often jokingly states that something he does would just happen to stretch the Let's Play.
  • Discussed numerous times during the Dragon Age II LP.
• Failed a Spot Check: He has a tendency to overlook important things.
• Fail O'Suckyname: He cracked jokes about the name similarity between Ser Varnell and some detergent.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Minecraft:
    • Creepers are called insurance salesmen or Jehovah's Witnesses, originating from their habit of persistently lurking in front of a door. The former also is influenced by the custom texture pack by artist (and fellow Let's Player) Honeyball, which he uses, where the creepers look like the sleazily primp suit-clad characters from The Lonely Island's The Creep. Alternately, there's "Creeper Man".
    • Skeletor.
    • Zombie Pigmen are known to him as "Schweinepriester" (literally "pig priests", a relatively generic and appropriately suidine insult).
    • He often calls Endermen "Ändermänner", both a pun on the name "Endermen" and a reference to their ability to make changes to the landscape (German: "ändern" ~ to change)
• Genre Savvy
• A God Am I: Frequently parodied.
• Heh, Heh, You Said "X": He often uses this on himself, foregoing such potential comments.
• Heroic BSOD: Played for Laughs in-character, caused by seeing Evil Chicken again in Minecraft.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: He often apologizes for his own puns or complains about how often he already used them.
• Insistent Terminology: Inverted. He doesn't care whether it's silver or iron.
• Instant Web Hit: Any video uploaded or promoted by him gets a few ten-thousand views per day for a while.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He jokingly called Gamlen Amell a "jerk with a heart of moron" in his Dragon Age II LP here.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Lampshaded here.
• Miles Gloriosus: On one occasion in his Minecraft LP he promised "fast-paced action scenes", only to... run away from any monsters.
• Money Spider: Lampshaded on many occasions, also with actual spiders, in Dragon Age 2:

Disgusting abominable spiders carrying money!

• Mundane Made Awesome: Dramatic music plays while we construct the ceiling... THE CEILING!!
• My Friends and Zoidberg: Whom are we gonna take with us... These two pretties and Aveline. (One of those "pretties" was Varric the hairy dwarf.)
• The Nicknamer: He for example called the Harvester in Dragon Age II "Gyros Man".
• No Hero Discount: Discussed about Sandal in Dragon Age II.
• "No. Just... No" Reaction: Played for Laughs as his reaction to gay romance in Dragon Age II.
• Non Sequitur: Too often to count; often Lampshaded. A glorious example:

It hisses and grills like a briquette in the evening. Even though I don't know whether a briquette in the evening actually makes any sounds.

• Player Tic: Repeatedly choosing the same dialogue options in RPGs that allow this.
• Pungeon Master
• Real Is Brown: He criticized this here.
• Running Gag:
  • Him being "Almost Twelve Years Old (TM)", along with his "Gregor Onkh" identity.
  • Minecraft:
    • Using a shovel to "shear"/spank sheep. Once shears were introduced, their sprite in his custom texture pack by Honeyball was changed to what he called a "groping glove" to reflect this.
    • Chickens being evil.
    • A certain mispronunciation of "gravel", originating from his uncertainity on which word to use for it in German early in his Let's Play.
    • "Gronkh, you missed some coal!", originating from his viewers' annoying tendency of attempting to be helpful and telling him about ressources he purposedly ignored.
  • Mischief with snow golems as a stinger in Minecraft prerelease specials.
  • "Let me through, I'm a medic!"
  • All moonlit nights in Dragon Age II caused him to ask "Where is Batman?".
  • Fenris not cleaning up the corpses in his home in the course of several years.
  • In his "Adventures at the Riding Stables" LP, "Or the horse will die."
  • "CopyCopyCopyCopy", referring to the numerous backup saves he made in order to horribly screw around with the scenery in the course of experiments, in a manner similar to Raocow's "That was a demo."
• Sarcasm Mode: Shows up rather snidely here.
• Self-Deprecation: He often calls his own commentary "pointless rambling" or similar.
• Shoot the Medic First: Applies to other sorts of casters as well in Dragon Age II.
• Sinister Geometry: Inverted; he loves symmetry and tries to apply it in everything he builds in Minecraft.
• Sir Swearsalot: Yes. Mostly mild swearing though, but he (occasionally) tries to avoid even "Crap!" since some fans complained about it, leading to some awkward examples of Last-Second Word Swap or Bowdlerization.
• Sophisticated As Hell:

"My tender disposition doesn't take well to this, you bummer!"

• Song Parody: As a special, he recorded one of these (using the music of the song "Das Beste" by Silbermond) when he reached 200 subscribers. The first stanza is an over-the-top cheesy 'thank you' and declaration of love to his subscribers, the second one midway shifts into a Take That to Silbermond and Lampshade Hanging of the song's cheesiness... and in the end, the refrain's lyrics are suddenly replaced by Gronkh discussing how much he likes schnitzel.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Primarily in Minecraft, where he often forgets to switch playlists, resulting in cheerfully cutting wood being accompanied by gloomy Nether music or upbeat music playing while exploring a creepy cave.
• Squee:
  • Every time Sandal from the Dragon Age series says "Enchantment!".
  • This entire video. (At least the first part.)
• So Bad It's Good:
  • He stated this about singer Andreas Elsholz, whose music he had "recommended" before as a Rick Rolling-style prank.
  • Also the premise of his simulator "Let's Trash"s.
• Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: A Wall Banger to him if done unsubtly.
• The Stinger: Parodied for example here.
• Take That: He justified intending to set a Minecraft chicken on fire with the statement that "incinerating a chicken is relatively tame compared to what regularly happens to them at KFC".
• Uncanny Valley: Lampshaded regarding humans in Adventure At The Riding Stables 7.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: There's a persistent rumour going on that his real name would be "Gregor Onkh". He has given up on correcting the naive viewers who kept thinking so, and regularly jokes about the name or even supports the rumour himself. This culminates in a "Gregor Onkh Loves You" shirt worn by him during several interviews.
• Vendor Trash: He often sarcastically praises such items for their value and usefulness.
• We Buy Anything: Lampshaded here.
• Zerg Rush: As a side effect of how the absurd amount of wolves he tamed just because they're adorable, much to his annoyance, this unnecessarily happenes every time an enemy approaches his dog coop.

Idiot dogs!