Wall of Text cleanup

Thanks. Made a slight wording change and replaced the other example with it.

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Would this example from Alien qualify as a wall of text?:

• Common Knowledge: "The cast of the original Alien didn't know what was going to happen in the chestburster scene." Well, they knew, because they'd read the script, and it was described in a fair amount of detail there. What they didn't know was what it was going to actually look like, since no one had ever attempted an effect like it before, or the ins and outs of how it was going to be achieved. Everyone was sweating bullets that day. The effects team because they were trying to do something no one had ever done before and only had one take to get it right. The filmmakers because this scene was literally the only reason the movie got made, and if it didn't work or looked silly they were sunk. The cast because it was a big effects scene that would only get one take and they didn't want to be the reason it failed. There were hiccups, a few of which actually made into the movie. The first time they tried to ram the chestburster puppet through the fake John Hurt torso and shirt, it didn't work, and this "bulge" ended up in the film. Also, Veronica Cartwright (playing Lambert) happened to end up standing such that one of the blood jets hit her square in the face, her panicked squeal as blood sprays all over her is genuine (what didn't make it into the film is her falling backwards over a chair struggling to her feet and continuing the scene despite being basically in shock). But on the whole, the scene went as it was scripted and expected, the effect was just so radically new it affected the actors on basically the same level it affected the audience when the film was released.

I don't even know what that entry is saying. It argues with itself and goes into detail how the chest burster scene was Enforced Method Acting and possibly Acting in the Dark, without actually explaining how that scene is a common misconception.

Cut the whole thing. It's Not an Example.

Edited by maxwellsilver on Nov 8th 2020 at 8:49:39 AM

Zerg Rush's Video Games page has this egregious example:

The Real Life page also has numerous Walls, in the "Humans" folder. I'll try to whittle em down a little at some point, but I'd really appreciate any help!

Edited by Willowleaf24 on Nov 13th 2020 at 6:18:39 AM

Bringing up these examples from Prehistoric Earth:

• Franchise Original Sin: While Cynthia's introduction is largely considered the point where everything started going to Hell prior to Nathan and Drew switching places in regard to the writing and co-writing, several of the problems that readers (and Nathanoraptor himself) complained about en masse after Cynthia's introduction have since been revealed on closer inspection to have shown signs of being present in all five of the missions that occurred before her introduction:
  • To start, for all the complaints against Cynthia being unlikable and poorly handled when in the hands of her own creator, she's also hardly the first female character that writer!Drew showed signs of having an (at best) difficult time figuring out how to properly handle. Long before Cynthia was introduced, he'd shown similar problems in knowing how to handle Alice^note  During New Beginnings, she was portrayed as being immensely nervous over the course of the mission despite having supposed to have already had plenty of prior experience with various dangerous modern day animals beforehand, a characterization that is in jarring contrast to the competent and unflappable Action Girl she proves herself to be for the entire rest of the story, Linda^note  Who ended up blatantly Locked Out of the Loop in Devils of the Deep in regards to the animals that were going to be rescued despite such information being extremely crucial knowledge for her to have in order to be prepared for when she and the other vets have to treat them in the event that they're injured at the time of their rescue, having to receive assistance from PE!Drew in a matter that she logically should have been smart enough to take care of herself, very nearly ended up having her own job be carried out by Khatin as a result of writer!Drew initially having the dialogue between her and Khatin in the final product be positioned the other way around, and only successfully getting her very first scene on active duty as a vet doing a surgery be present at all as a result of Nathanoraptor himself adding it into a version of the chapters writer!Drew had sent that glaringly didn't include any such scenes, Yolanda^note  writer!Drew initially wanted Mia to be the one Leon and Hedetet helped save from the brontoscorpio despite how Yolanda was explicitly intended to be Leon's love interest later in the story and had already developed a much closer and more personal connection with Leon than Mia, and Colette^note  Whose explicitly planned characterization by Nathanoraptor as an Action Girl Jerk with a Heart of Gold was seemingly blatantly disregarded by writer!Drew in favor of him trying to turn her into the resident Alpha Bitch instead (and this very nearly happened twice in the same mission!). This could have been easily forgiven at the time as a result of these incidents happening during the earliest chapters of the story and writer!Drew still having inexperience handling characters that he himself hadn't played any role in creating (Yolanda and Linda had been created by A-LionGleek and refined by Nathanoraptor, who was himself responsible for the creation of Alice and Colette). But once Cynthia herself, a female character created 100% by writer!Drew, entered the scene, all of the writer's difficulty at handling female characters mashed together to the point of his own creation coming across as an insufferably unwelcome bitch that only writer!Drew himself seemed to remotely give a damn about.
  • For all the complaints about writer!Drew attempting to have Cynthia upstage Will, Leon, and Jack, several other planned prominent characters had themselves ended up upstaged in some fashion long before he set his sights on Jack and Leon and attempted to outright prevent the introduction of Will and Matt. For starters, he unwittingly managed to make Linda seem both Locked Out of the Loop in regard to crucial information she'd need for her job and disturbingly incompetent ^note  by virtue of only figuring out that Squishy the anomalocaris was being bullied into giving up large portions of his food as a result of bullying from the rest of his kind at the park during feeding AND figuring out a proper initial solution with assistance from PE!Drew despite the fact that she logically should have been smart enough to figure all this out herself and very nearly ending up in the position of Khatin (rather ironically considering his own later upstaging) performing a routine checkup on Squishy instead of her (a fate that was only avoided by Nathanoraptor successfully switching the dialogue between the two characters around when he saw the way it initially was in writer!Drew's version of Devils of the Deep) . PE!Drew also ended up at one point shown taking part in behavioral observations of the newly discovered mesothelus; an action that seems rather uncharacteristic of the hotheaded, impatient, and short attention spanned PE!Drew and would have made more sense getting carried out by either Leon ^note  who, despite admittedly being somewhat afraid of spiders, was still explicitly set up as the rescue team's resident animal expert or Khatin ^note  as in, THE PARK'S OWN FRIGGING CHIEF RESEARCHER! . But the arguably most heartless upstaging came at the expense of Colette when, during Alien Empire ^note  the mission that arguably had the most spoken dialogue from Colette at the time of said chapter's creation and posting , writer!Drew had her written in a way that blatantly disregarded the characterization for her that Nathanoraptor had explicitly told Drew she was supposed to have in favor of turning her into a one dimensional Alpha Bitch instead! And to add insult to injury, writer!Drew very nearly subjected her to such treatment TWICE in the same mission (with only Nathanoraptor's intervention preventing the 2nd planned instance of this from happening)! As was the case with the above mentioned issue, this could have been forgivable in that these were only the early days of the story's creation, and both writers were fairly inexperienced with handling the characters. But once Cynthia came into the picture, writer!Drew's subsequent handling of her and the other characters not only made it increasingly clear that she and PE!Drew seemed to be the only characters he truly gave a damn about but also allowed writer!Drew's subsequent efforts at upstaging Leon, Jack, and Will (plus, to a minor extent, several others who hadn't already fallen victim to his machinations) to end up becoming impossible not to notice.
  • Furthermore, for all the complaints about Cynthia getting constantly shilled by writer!Drew, PE!Drew himself underwent a moment when his namesake projected one of his own real-life personality traits ^note  being rather antisocial and content with being alone onto him despite said characterization going against the planned characterization for the character ^note  PE!Drew was supposed to be very sociable and charismatic . He also very noticeably was written to provide assistance to Linda on solving a problem that she herself, as head vet, logically should have been smart enough to solve on her own, as well as to take part in an activity that should have been immensely uncharacteristic of him and would have arguably made more sense getting carried out by Leon or Khatin instead. Once again, these could have easily been viewed as honest mistakes during the early days of writing the story, only to then be later revealed to instead be early signs of what proved a case of writer!Drew investing far too much in PE!Drew as well as in Cynthia for both characters' own good.

• Growing the Beard: While the story was fairly enjoyable and serviceable during the earlier episodes, readers (and even Nathanoraptor himself) felt a sense of it not quite being able to fully reach its true potential as a result of a lack of a clear underlying arc beyond the basic driving premise, Foreshadowing of later important character arcs being forced to be used as transitions as a result of this missing underlying overall arc, a sense of comparative staleness as a result of the animals rescued all being either aquatic or being confined to within a fairly short distance from each other, and the clear results of writer!Drew and Nathanoraptor's arguments and disagreements over how to handle the plot and characters spilling over into the final product.
  • Things only got worse after the introduction of Cynthia, who very rapidly cemented herself as The Scrappy amongst the readers (and also to Nathanoraptor) due to writer!Drew's self admittedly considering her one of his personal favorite characters leading to him trying to immediately force her into serving as the deuteragonist, a factor that both made her even more unendearing to the readers due to the painfully obvious Character Shilling Drew was trying to give her and pass off as Character Development by placing her in such a then unearned prominent role so quickly after her introduction and also further exacerbated his Creative Differences with Nathanoraptor as a result of how his attempts at pushing Cynthia into the deuteragonist role turned out to contain immensely high risk of shafting several more interesting characters (specifically, by reducing Jack and Leon (whom writer!Drew himself had openly admitted to Nathanoraptor about having very low faith in being capable of carrying a story on their own) to only getting their planned storylines and arcs displayed to the readers through the eyes of Cynthia and PE!Drew, respectively, and not wanting Will to exist in the story at all).

  • The fact that writer!Drew also may have only been doing this story at all because of reader demand certainly couldn't have helped either, let alone the fact that what writer!Drew really wanted to work on more was his passion project fanfic Dinosaur King Retold and that writer!Drew himself was then tasked as main writer while Nathanoraptor did the editing and occasional minor additions. Further complicating matters was the fact that several other characters and intended plot points had similarly been done dirty by writer!Drew long before Cynthia showed up and only made the already present flaws snowball to the point of becoming impossible to ignore.

  • However, phases 2 and 3 were where things finally started getting better, as the story finally started to become less aimless and appear to have a stronger driving force to the events besides the main driving premise as a result of the foreshadowed character arcs finally starting in earnest before finally paying off big time further down the line, the behind the scenes warring between the two authors came to an end after a new and improved system behind the planning and writing was set up and initiated due to one bout of Creative Differences too many occurring during the writing of Age of Giants, all the characters were allowed the chance to get their proper dues thanks to Drew finally (and possibly rather reluctantly) backing down from his relentless crusade to force Cynthia into the deuteragonist role and allowing Nathanoraptor to let Jack, Leon, and Will have the chance they deserved to prove themselves capable of carrying a story on their own, and Cynthia herself was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap thanks to finally being allowed the chance to develop properly, show off some of her less flat and more likable personality and character traits, and being granted some much needed depth. And of course, there's also the fact that Drew and Nathanoraptor eventually switched roles so that Nathanoraptor was doing most of the heavy lifting as main writer while Drew handled the editing instead. Ironically, writer!Drew himself considers all this to instead be a case of Seasonal Rot due to how much the story ended up deviating from his own personal vision for it once it was in almost exclusively Nathanoraptor's hands.

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In a scene where Cynthia dismisses Leon as a lost cause immediately before his planned showcasing of his progress in training the allosaurus squad, writer!Drew made Nathanoraptor tone down Jack's rebuttal due to supposedly finding the originally planned rebuttal to be an uncharacteristically mean thing for Jack to say. In light of how, as since mentioned in the retrospective, writer!Drew himself reportedly projected one of his own real life traits onto PE!Drew despite said trait going against PE!Drew's planned characterization and also seemingly blatantly disregarded Nathanoraptor's planned characterization for Colette at one point (and very nearly TWO points), among other incidents involving characters and their personalities, his reasoning behind his desire for Nathanoraptor to tone down Jack's rebuttal sounds more than a little hollow and hypocritical.
  • On a similar note, the reveal of how writer!Drew initially didn't want to introduce Will and Matt in the story at all for the sake of planned scenes of supposed character development for Cynthia also qualifies now that it has since been revealed to be an early sign of both how Nathanoraptor himself had to fight to prevent several other already introduced planned prominent characters from getting dismissively upstaged by Cynthia as well as how several other prominent characters (i.e. Khatin, Colette, Linda, etc.) have since likewise been revealed to have had already ended up successfully upstaged in their own way by either PE!Drew, writer!Drew, or both, prior to that moment; not to mention of the fact that writer!Drew appears to have largely considered every prominent character that wasn't Cynthia and PE!Drew as being 'just side characters' in the story of Cynthia and PE!Drew.
  • The fact that Drew and Cynthia were the very first Official Couple amongst the rescue team also manages to somewhat become this as a result of the same factor described above since not only will Drew himself likely end up Alone Among the Couples in the event that the romances between Jack and Colette and Leon and Yolanda (all four of whom have made the jump to PPR) successfully come to be once more in the new continuity (and there's little reason to expect as much to not be the case), but there's also the fact that not only are Cynthia's own chances of making the jump and joining Drew in PPR still up in the air at best (as previously mentioned), but there are also no confirmed plans of any potential love interest character for Drew to take Cynthia's place in the event that Cynthia in fact does end up Adapted Out. And it becomes even more saddening if you choose to believe in Nathanoraptor's headcanon that they'd in fact been a couple and broken up prior to their hooking up in Spirits of the Silent Forest.

• Misblamed:
  • Furthermore, in light of information that Nathanoraptor has revealed in his retrospective for the story, it is also relatively easy to mistake writer!Drew as being the 'villain' of the behind the scenes work in writing the story due to the various mistakes, screw ups, and bad decisions he made at the expense of the story, multiple characters, and Nathanoraptor. But even with all this in mind, one must also take into account that, as far as Nathanoraptor suspects, it is entirely likely that writer!Drew was just suffering from inexperience at both balancing out large ensembled casts and writing female characters and simply ended up having terrible bad luck in his trial and error attempts at figuring out the right way to go about both elements while doing writing for Prehistoric Earth (the fact that he's since shown remarkable improvement in both elements in his passion project fanfic Dinosaur King Retold provides further proof to these suspicions). And as Nathanoraptor has since explicitly confirmed, he and writer!Drew both got along quite well during their work on Prehistoric Earth even during the times they were arguing. And for all the times he accidentally messed up and did dirty to a large number of Nathanoraptor's plans and characters, writer!Drew never once acted like a jerk to Nathanoraptor.
  • On a similar note, writer!Drew has since come to largely blame Nathanoraptor for supposedly 'ruining' the story due to how much it got derailed from his own originally planned vision for it, and is even considering eventually doing a redo of it so that he can, in his own words, 'try to do the concept the justice it deserves'. However, as Nathanoraptor himself has pointed out in the same retrospective, none of the more unpleasant stuff that writer!Drew accuses him of were at all what he intended to happen, a lot of Nathanoraptor's explanations and attempts at apologizing and making peace with writer!Drew seem to be blatantly dismissed and ignored by writer!Drew, writer!Drew himself willingly put minimal (if any) effort at contributing to Phase 3 for the sake of his passion project Dinosaur King Retold, and at least two of the ideas that writer!Drew complained about getting scrapped and ruined technically only ended up that way because his originally planned versions of said ideas ended up becoming obsolete and alternative versions of them Nathanoraptor had suggested beforehand that could have allowed them to still be present in the story were vetoed by writer!Drew himself for unexplained reasons.

• My Real Daddy: While Drew was the one who initially imagined and created the specific park that the story ended up centering around and got convinced into allowing it the chance to be given life via a story, his co-writer Nathanoraptor is the one largely credited with fully allowing the subsequent story to properly come to fruition and be made as enjoyable as it was. This only increased after Nathanoraptor and Drew switched places so that Nathanoraptor would be doing most of the writing instead of Drew, and vice versa with Drew doing the editing and giving final approval in place of Nathanoraptor. It certainly also helps that Nathanoraptor also allowed all the characters their chance at being done justice, was responsible for creating some of the characters himself, and even allowed Cynthia to be developed well enough to become more endearing to the readers after her own creator's efforts at trying to make her as much, plus his seeming willingness to shaft some of the other characters that didn't deserve as much, made her come across as a Creator's Pet instead.

• Scapegoat Creator:
  • Thanks to information that Nathanoraptor released in a retrospective during July 2020 to celebrate the story's 4th anniversary, writer!Drew could be very easily viewed as the villain of the behind the scenes work in writing the story and blamed for just about EVERYTHING that went wrong over the course of writing the story due to him being seemingly the sole factor responsible for multiple potentially very interesting planned plot points and arcs Nathanoraptor had thought up ending up downplayed or excised, various characters intended to serve prominent roles ending up done dirty in some fashion or other, various planned additional characters Nathanoraptor had wanted to include ending up falling by the wayside alongside the aforementioned plot points and arcs, a few instances of writer!Drew accidentally making himself look sexist in his handling of some of the planned prominent female characters not named Cynthia, and for both making Cynthia come across as an unwelcome waste of space as well as making it seem as if she and PE!Drew were the only prominent characters he remotely gave a damn about. The fact that he later explicitly revealed that he apparently considered all the planned ensemble cast members that weren't Cynthia and PE!Drew to be 'just side characters' that were stealing focus from the planned main character(s), disagreed with Nathanoraptor and the readers on which parts of the story were the best and worst, and openly blamed Nathanoraptor for everything that went wrong with the story in his eyes doesn't help.
  • However, as Nathanoraptor himself has made clear, it is entirely likely that writer!Drew was only having difficulty in figuring out how to handle writing for female characters and large ensemble casts and just happened by sheer rotten luck to constantly get the short end of the stick over the course of his trial and error efforts at figuring out through experience the proper way to handle these elements. And considering how writer!Drew has since shown noticeable improvement in handling both such elements in his passion project Dinosaur King Retold, it is entirely likely that, if Nathan's suspicions are true, then writer!Drew's unpleasant experiences with such matters in this story may very well have at the very least allowed him to figure out what he needed to know in time to do a better job with it all when working on the story he really wanted to do the most. And for all the behind the scenes disagreements that went on between them, there were a few times where Nathanoraptor and Drew amicably agreed on planned or scrapped elements, a couple elements where Drew himself was able to successfully help Nathanoraptor and make suggestions that fit Nathanoraptor's approval, a few of the aforementioned discarded interesting plot point ideas that were discarded for completely understandable reasons instead of falling victim to behind the scenes strife or dismissal from writer!Drew, and they were always able to get along fairly well over the course of actively writing the story even when they were in the midst of arguing.
  • Conversely, any fans that are perhaps on writer!Drew's side could similarly make a case against Nathanoraptor as a result of him supposedly 'ruining the story'. However, as evidenced by what is currently present in the retrospective, and how the majority of the fans and readers appear to think and feel, Nathanoraptor arguably made the story great, saved the story from potentially getting ruined or cancelled by writer!Drew, and was also willing at times to go through with some of writer!Drew's ideas and just found problems with the way writer!Drew was planning on executing the ideas in question. Furthermore, the fact that writer!Drew seemingly disregards and ignores Nathanoraptor's explanations and attempts at making peace, openly voices his dismissive hatred of how the story turned out once it was increasingly out of his hands, and blames Nathanoraptor for everything that went wrong without remotely considering the possibility of he himself being at fault in the slightest^note especially egregious considering several mistakes he made prior to Cynthia's introduction, his seeming refusal to say more than what he feels he's absolutely obligated to say in the retrospective, the fact that at least some of his ideas he complained about getting scrapped and ruined could have potentially made it in to some capacity if he himself hadn't VETOED the alternative versions of them Nathanoraptor had suggested, and willingly gave up even trying to work things out with Nathanoraptor and made minimal, if any, contributions to the writing for Phase 3, and all around comes across as a little unnecessarily harsh towards Nathanoraptor and the story as it currently exists doesn't help writer!Drew's case either.

This sub-bullet on Ashcan Copy is very long. Anyone care to trim it down?

I really didn't want to, but since this is the third or fourth time it's come up, I've started cutting down the Prehistoric Earth stuff. Here's the Franchise Original Sin entry:

• Franchise Original Sin: While Cynthia's introduction is largely considered the point where series' quality started taking a nosedive, there are signs that several of that storyline's problems have been present since early the series:
  • While Cynthia is criticized for being unlikable and poorly written, this isn't the first time Luczynski has struggled with writing female characters. Some previous criticisms include Alice's first appearance being inconsistent with later portrayals, Linda having almost no agency or importance as a character during Devils of the Deep despite being an experienced and capable veterinarian, and outright defying fellow author Nathanoraptor's planned characterization of Colette. Some of these issues may have been excusable at the time, as they happened during the earliest chapters and Luczynski was working with characters he hadn't created. But once Cynthia, a female character wholly created by Luczynski, entered the scene, all of the aforementioned issues compounded to the point that Cynthia came across as an insufferable character that only Luczynski himself seemed to care about.
  • For all the complaints about Luczynski attempting to have Cynthia upstage Will, Leon, and Jack, several other planned prominent characters ended up pushed out into the background before he set his sights the main cast. For example, Drew is at one point shown studying the behavior of the newly discovered mesothelus; an action that seems rather uncharacteristic of the hotheaded and impatient Drew. It would have made more sense had this been done by resident animal expert Leon or Chief Researcher Khatin. But once Cynthia came into the picture, Luczynski's subsequent handling of her and the other characters made his efforts to push them at the expense of all the other characters impossible not to notice.

I would axe the second sub-bullet as complaining. I was able to cut down the rest by about one-third:

• Franchise Original Sin: While Cynthia's introduction is largely considered the point where series' quality started taking a nosedive, this isn't the first time Luczynski has struggled with writing female characters. Some criticisms from previous works include Alice's first appearance being inconsistent with later portrayals, Linda having almost no importance during Devils of the Deep, and Colette deviating from her original characterization by Nathanoraptor. Some of these issues were previously excusable, as they happened early on and Luczynski was working with other authors' characters. But once Cynthia, created by Luczynski, entered the scene, all of the aforementioned issues compounded to the point that she came across as an insufferable and unlikeable character.

I'm back!

From Super-Soldier, while removing wicks to Art Major Biology:

I'm back!

The Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels entry on NintendoHard.Platform Games is seriously huge, spanning multiple paragraphs.

Is it okay if I trim it down?

Please do.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Done.

I think alot of the examples on Creator Killer, and it's various sub-pages, could do with a look at.

There's actually a cleanup thread for that, but could you show us any particularly awful walls of text, so they can be cut down?

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From the Film — Studios and Production Companies subpage:

• Although it was considered the dominant force in the European motion picture industry, it is believed that a string of box office failures (including The Big Lebowski and Barney's Great Adventure), prompted PolyGram to leave the film industry, selling off their Filmed Entertainment division (and eventually themselves) to Seagram. Unfortunately they couldn't have decided that at a worse time: one of their final films was Notting Hill, an international smash that would've reversed their fortunes if they hadn't already shut down before it was released. Additionally, The Big Lebowski, which had only barely made back its budget upon original release, quickly picked up a cult following upon home video release and eventually grossed nearly triple what it originally made theatrically — a windfall that PolyGram would miss out on. And Universal ended up being haunted from beyond the grave by one of Polygram's inherited projects — the 2004 Thunderbirds movie (Polygram had started the project while they owned the ITC library for a time in the 90s).
  • It wasn't until February 2017 that Universal Music, the current owner of PolyGram's music catalog, would revive the brand name for film/TV production. Their first production was Ron Howard's Beatles documentary Eight Days a Week, a co-distribution with UMG's sister company StudioCanal.
  • The failure of Barney's Great Adventure has also been theorized to have started the downfall of its production company, Lyrick Studios, the producer of the Barney direct-to-video shows and subsequent television series. The film (which was snapped up from Geffen Pictures and Warner Bros., who kickstarted development of the film in 1994) was reportedly intended for a direct-to-video release, and wasn't part of PolyGram's picture deal; the resulting theatrical release led to disputes between the two companies. Executive Meddling towards the original script (completed back when the film was at Geffen Pictures) didn't help much either. The fallout between the two resulted in Lyrick's career as a production company grinding to a halt outside of their Barney and Wishbone television series made for PBS—following Great Adventure, Lyrick survived on video distribution of other animated series until it was eventually snatched up by HiT Entertainment in 2001. While the Barney show (with HiT taking over production of the show) continued up until the rest of the decade, Lyrick and its other existing properties were shuttered promptly after the acquisition.
  • Speaking of PolyGram, the Gramercy Pictures label also suffered bad luck. Launched in 1992, it was formed as a joint venture between them and Universal Pictures, serving as both PolyGram's American distributor and an arthouse label for Universal (although by 1996 PolyGram bought Universal's half). Plenty of the company's films were box-office hits, and many of the ones that underperformed (ie Mallrats and Dazed and Confused) later became cult classics. Unfortunately for them, they followed cycling between box-office flops and successes with an entire year of bombs (sans The Big Lebowski). The company seemed to be getting back on track with Elizabeth in November of that year, but by 1999 it was too late. That year, Seagram acquired PolyGram and reduced Gramercy into an In Name Only unit (later merged them and October Films into USA Films, which was then renamed Universal Focus, and after that Focus Features). Unfortunately for them, they couldn't have chosen to do that at a worse time—by the time Gramercy was reduced to that status, they put their name on films such as Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Being John Malkovich, Nurse Betty, Pitch Black, and many more. Many of these were box-office hits that Gramercy would miss. (See here for more examples of Gramercy screwing up.)
  • Gramercy itself was revived in 2015 as Focus Features' answer to the recently-revived Orion Pictures, with its first release in over a decade being Insidious: Chapter 3. Unfortunately, the critical and commercial calamity of Ratchet & Clank killed the label a second time... and within a year to boot! The brand has no future titles announced and the new management of Focus wants to steer away from genre fare. This means Universal released Insidious: Chapter 4 instead.

I'm back!

I can try and rewrite that. I'll see what I can do.

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Character Alignment's description needs a hedge clipper. Escpecially, the nine bullet-points about specific alignments; here is one of them:

• Lawful Good: Basically, they believe Law is Good, and that you do good by upholding the law. The alignment of The Cape, Paladins, and the Knight in Shining Armor. Believes in Truth, Justice and such, but may potentially believe in them a little too much. Commonly run into the question of whether To Be Lawful or Good. Poorly portrayed, he tends to be Lawful Stupid, largely depending on your interpretation of "good" and law. Individuals who believe that Rousseau Was Right will tend to view society as tending towards Lawful Good, with most individuals within it as lawful or Neutral Good. In D&D Canon up to 4.0 edition, archons, celestials who inhabit the Seven Heavens, are Lawful Good. From a non-D&D, more realistic perspective, however, LGs are likely altruists who believe in an orderly lifestyle for the benefit of their species.Lawful Good does not necessarily mean someone who obeys every law but only just laws or an internal code. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion, but it can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

It's already a distinct subtrope, so we need at most a summary for each bullet-point.

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Found this on Earth Drift:

• The Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman movie series from 1989 to 1997 first played this trope straight and then subverted it. While the Gotham City of the films is obviously supposed to be part of our world, the first movie had more overt references to the world outside Gotham: the American flag prominently displayed in Harvey Dent's office, or lines like "I got it in Japan." Batman Returns, however, has no overt references to other geographic locations except for a few passing lines, like "a California king-size bed" and "the Reichstag fire"; and while the first movie established that Gotham City imports many of its beauty products from other cities and states, Returns mentions "Gotham Lady Perfume," as if that is the only brand available. Most curious of all is the Penguin's vow that "The time has come to punish all God's children", even though he's going to be killing only 100,000 people at the most, thus almost suggesting that no other place except Gotham exists (unless there's that many people in the city). Batman Forever began a shift away from this trend, even going so far as to include a locale from elsewhere in the DC Universe ("That circus must be halfway to Metropolis by now"); and finally, in Batman & Robin, not only do other geographic locations figure into the plot ("It's morning in the Congo"), but we actually see onscreen a sequence set in the jungles of South America (the only time in the entire 1989-1997 franchise when the camera takes us somewhere other than Gotham).
  • The Nolan films from 2005 to 2012 also play with this trope. It's established that Bigfoot, Abraham Lincoln, and Elvis Presley exist in this version of Gotham, as do the Roman and Byzantine empires and the real-world countries of Russia, China and Burma. But, in contrast to the earlier films, there are very, very few pop-culture references in this franchise. And when we see the Pittsburgh Steelers, they're actually the "Gotham Rogues".
  • The DC Extended Universe went in the opposite direction. Their first film Man of Steel contained no pop culture references whatsoever, while Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice introduced several real-life figures such as Neil Degrasse Tyson and John Stewartand there's references to The Wizard of Oz thrown in at certain moments. One distinction is that the president of the United States circa 2015-16 wasn't Barack Obama. Future films would continue referencing an increasing number of celebrities and public figures.
  • Outside of pop culture references, however, the DCEU movies did play this more straight in many other regards.
    • In Man of Steel, a lot of attention is given to how revolutionary the idea of 'the Superman' is, with characters discussing at lengths the political, religious, and scientific implications of a man like Superman becoming a reality, but Batman V Superman and Wonder Woman (2017) make it clear that a superhuman with godlike power has existed in this setting since World War 1, with Suicide Squad (2016) also depicting metahumans and magic powers as being something the government is intimately aware of (and establishing Batman has been fighting metahuman criminals like Killer Croc for some time). Wonder Woman 1984 further solidifies/retcons that Diana was operating in public as Wonder Woman back in the 80s and Birds of Prey (2020) establishes Dinah Lance's mother was fighting crime in Gotham back when she was a child, and that (in this version) she had the Canary Cry power as well, establishing that metahumans were not at all a new thing when Superman first appeared, and the only thing particularly noteworthy was how powerful he was.
    • Also in Man of Steel, many of Superman's more overtly comic book concepts, such as Kryptonite Factor or Clark Kenting, were omitted or reworked; the former is depicted as merely his reaction to Krypton's atmosphere as his powers come from the difference between the two planets' atmosphere, while the latter is not employed, with Lois able to figure out his identity, most of Smallville seemingly aware of his abilities, and the only people who interact with Clark Kent or Superman never meet the other up-close to be able to identify them. He's also toned down in terms of power, to be a bit more believable, and his personality is depicted more like how someone who's had to hide his true identity would. In Batman V Superman, Kryptonite and the Clark Kent disguise are employed, with the former being given a simple explanation to tie in with how it was depicted previously, and Clark's disguise is employed, but seemingly not very effective; Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor are both aware of who he is, and Perry White is implied to be as well. By Justice League, Superman is retconned into being far more akin to his classic/comic book self, is far more chipper and optimistic, Clark Kenting seems to work so well he's able to get his job back after seemingly being dead a few years, and his power levels are now maxed out to the point he's single-handedly enough to mop the floor with a Physical God.
    • Gotham and Metropolis are depicted as both pretty much identical cities that seem to be, essentially, 'New York City under a different name', in Man of Steel and Batman V Superman. Suicide Squad implies that Gotham is decidedly a lot more weird, as its home to people like Harley Quinn, the Joker, and Killer Croc, but its not touched on too much. By Birds of Prey, Gotham is now depicted as a very weird City of Adventure , with many colourful criminals and crime-fighters, and a city that's full of neon lighting like the pre-DCEU movies and having bizarre commodities like giant chemical plans and abandoned amusement parks, and a general atmosphere that is far more akin to a weird punk-rock take on New York than the grounded realism of the previous movies.

This Is on House of Mouse:

• Fanfic Fuel: With the many Disney movies and TV shows having come out since the show's ending, many people who write fanfics or draw fanart about this show often write stories involving characters from movies such as Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and others being involved in the hijinks at the House of Mouse. And then there's the animated shows Disney's ignored- The Mighty Ducks, Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, W.I.T.C.H., along with more popular ones like Gravity Falls, Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Wander over Yonder. This also stretches to the theme park attractions like Journey Into Imagination and video games like Kingdom Hearts. This even extends to everyone else, like those from Pixar, The Avengers, Spider-Men, the X-Men, the Star Wars cast, the Indiana Jones cast and more from Disney's acquired properties. Then there are even properties Disney has either shown on its channel(s), owned at one point or collaborated with, such as the Power Rangers (and by extension, pretty much anything from Hasbro like G.I. Joe, Jem, Transformers, My Little Pony and so on), My Hero Academia, pretty much anything from Capcom, Final Fantasy (and to a lesser extent, pretty much anything from Square-Enix), Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, anything from Bandai-Namco, Sonic the Hedgehog and Rick Riordan's Mythology book series, amongst others.

Just split it into a bunch of sub-bullet points; we're aware that Disney's properties is a Long List, so maybe we can do something like this:

• Fanfic Fuel: Considering the number of Disney movies and TV shows coming out since the show's ending:
  • There are numerous fanfics or fanart about this show often write stories involving characters from movies such as Frozen, Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and others being involved in the hijinks at the House of Mouse.
  • And then there's the animated shows Disney's ignored- The Mighty Ducks, Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, W.I.T.C.H., along with more popular ones like Gravity Falls, Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Wander over Yonder.
  • This even stretches to the theme park attractions like Journey Into Imagination and video games like Kingdom Hearts.
  • Ultimately extends to everyone else, like those from Pixar, The Avengers, Spider-Men, the X-Men, the Star Wars cast, the Indiana Jones cast and more from Disney's acquired properties.
  • Then there are even properties Disney has either shown on its channel(s), owned at one point or collaborated with, such as the Power Rangers (and by extension, pretty much anything from Hasbro like G.I. Joe, Jem, Transformers, My Little Pony and so on), My Hero Academia, pretty much anything from Capcom, Final Fantasy (and to a lesser extent, pretty much anything from Square-Enix), Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, anything from Bandai-Namco, Sonic the Hedgehog and Rick Riordan's Mythology book series, amongst others.

Giant wall of text on Music:

• Grunge itself had two moments in 1994 that can be pointed to as Genre-Killers, the trend in both of them being the genre's anti-commercial attitude running head-first into its sudden mainstream popularity. First, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was Driven to Suicide over his heroin addiction and inability to reconcile his values with his success, which not only took out the biggest band in the scene but made many rock fans leery of the Darker and Edgier attitudes that were synonymous with grunge^note A phenomenon that repeated itself with Gangsta Rap a few years later; see below. It's probably not a coincidence that Hootie & the Blowfish, a band whose twangy, wholesome, down-home folk rock was the Spiritual Antithesis of everything that grunge stood for, took off just a few months later, as did Blues Traveler, a jam band whose hit single "Hook" was a Take That! at the "hip three-minute ditties" that dominated pop and rock radio (the "jangly folk-pop-rock" craze soon became overshadowed by the Not So Different Britpop). Second, Pearl Jam got into a nasty fight with Ticketmaster over their anti-consumer business practices, resulting in them canceling their tour that summer and finding it nearly impossible to tour nationally afterwards, which dealt a crippling blow to the fortunes of the second-biggest band in the scene. The drug-related deaths of Blind Melon frontman Shannon Hoon in 1995 and Brad Nowell of Sublime in 1996 also dealt a blow to the alt-rock boom of the '90s. Grunge continued to limp along in the absence of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but as a whole, it faded from the limelight over the next few years. Sean O'Neal of the AV Club points to 1996 as the year when grunge and Alternative Rock in general "died a messy, forgettable death", as it was the year the remaining "Big Four" Seattle grunge bands (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains) reached their nadirs of popularity and, in the case of the latter two, ultimately saw the seeds planted for their breakups, while the assorted copycats started falling away. Of those four bands, only Pearl Jam would survive the decade, but they had mostly turned away from the grunge sound by their third album. Most importantly, however, by that point what had started out as a backlash against corporate hair metal had essentially been taken over by the record industry, turning into Post-Grunge. A more polished, radio-friendly version of grunge that sanded off many of its more abrasive edges, post-grunge dominated mainstream American rock music for the rest of the decade, eventually converging with hard rock and the remnants of nu metal and dominating the next decade as well. Many years later, post-grunge would follow a similar fate, as detailed below.
  • In the UK, meanwhile, grunge only lasted for a couple of years before getting hit with backlash. Britpop emerged in the early-mid '90s as a Lighter and Softer reaction to the dourness of grunge (Noel Gallagher famously claimed that he wrote "Live Forever" out of disgust over the Nirvana song "I Hate Myself and Want to Die"), and quickly supplanted it in mainstream popularity there. By 1994, Bush was the only grunge or post-grunge band seeing any success in the UK, and even then, they were far more popular in the US than they were in their native Britain.

If someone could help me cut it down, that would be nice.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Fantasy Kitchen Sink has this monster. I'm thinking a lot of the notes could probably be cut outright (like the breakdown on faeries and vampires), but wanted some confirmation before breaking out the chainsaw.

• Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files has wizards, all shapes and sizes of faeries from tiny dew drops to the most human-like and powerful^note There are three divisions of the fae. The Seelie, or Summer Court, the Unseelie, or Winter Court, and Wyldfae who are a loose collection fae not beholden directly to either side. The Wyldfae have their own kings and rulers, like King Gwynn ap Nudd of the Tylwyth Teg kingdom, but they are not as powerful as the Matriarchs of the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Those two courts have three ruling queens each. In order of rank and power they are titled the Lady, the Queen, and the Mother. Mother Winter herself, has connections to beings from Greek and Norse mythologies as invoking names of some of them can get her attention, at least four kinds of vampires^note  The White Court are succubi/incubi and eat emotions. The Red Court are blood drinkers in human-guise with a true form of big bat creature. The Black Court are the Dracula-undead kind with aversions to garlic and such. Dracula himself appears trapped as a statue in Queen Mab's courtyard. The Jade Court are isolationists so little is known about them. It's possible they are Jiangshi. And the author has mentioned at least three more types, but they are weaker than the rest., ghosts, demons, ghouls, boogeymen-type creatures called "creeps" by one family's children who are known only to kids and invisble to adults (even wizarding adult)^note "Haglers" turn people into Strawman Political to stir up conflicts, and "Haunts" possess kids to turn them into bullies, Skin Walkers^note  Not the human kind, but a quasi-divine beings that grow more powerful the more they are feared and have an innate ability to know how to cause the maximum suffering in their victims. And one person who is half-Skin-Walker, five types of werewolves^note  A werewolf is a person who can transform into a wolf on their own magic. Forcing the change on the person is against the law. A hexenwolf is a person who uses a magical artifact to induce the change, but the method is addictive and corrupting. Lycanthropes are people whose minds become more wolf-like when the moon gets closer to being full but maintain a human body, and are the original berserkers. A loup-garou is a human, subject to a powerful hereditary curse. Under the full moon, he transforms into a demonic man-wolf with enormous speed and strength, as well as immunity to injury by virtually any source except inherited silver. Lastly there are wolfweres, wolves who can learn magic to become human, a Badass Santa, at least one Norse god, two Valkyries, a squadron of Einherjar, the Svartálfar, The Erlking, the Greeks god Hades with his wife Persephone and mother-in-law Demeter and Hecate getting a mention in conversation, and one demigoddess who served Dionysus^note  The other members of the pantheon have picked up new jobs to keep believers in their concepts. Heracles takes power from fans of The Incredible Hulk, and a double statue of Hecate in Hades' vault bearing the appearances of the current Queens of the Seelie and Unseelie courts, the Fomor^note An amphibious race of frog-like beings who were driven from the land by the Fae, and the ancinet goddess Ethnui, daughter of Balor, Tengu, Lovecraftian Old Ones, numerous Christian/Biblical references^note The Nails from the Crucifixion, the noose Judas hung himself on, likely the thirty silver Denarius Judas was paid, Angels of Death, Guardian Angels, Archangels like Uriel, Raphael, and Michael, Fallen Angels including Satan, the Plaque with Jesus' name on it, Crown of thorns he wore, Grail Jesus drank from and later caught his blood, Shroud that covered him, and Spear that pierced him from the Crucifixion to name a few, Loa from Voudoun, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti, Anansi the West African Trickster God has a brief cameo too, and Foo Dogs^note These are part mortal mutts part divine protector who guard their human wards fiercely and can invoke holy powers that even the Fallen Angels fear. And like the Fallen at least two are corrupted into Fallen versions themselves, two ancinet Dragons (one met and one mentioned)^note These aren't just fire-breathing lizards but ancient primordial beings whose Duties included the changing of the seasons and moving continents around at one time. The comic books continue with spirits of nature, one naga and one qarin^note A Djin with the duties of a guardian angel showing up. Eventually arriving at Eldritch abominations from outside reality and ancient evil gods whose names have been systematically purged from all human records and memory. Once only one person knows that god's name and no other mention pops up for a few hundred years, she removes it from her memory and banishes the deity to Oblivion. There is at least one example of cross-culture existence with Fidelacchius, which bears a Nail from the Crucifixion, is also called Kusanagi. Mostly in the stories, they stick to European mythology, although other creatures from other myths have been mentioned to exist. However, the different races do interact in alliances and power struggles (in the books, at least), and it's only fantasy; no robots or aliens.

My opinion on the matter, given the rest of the page:

• Most of the notes should be cut for going into excessive minutiae about individual types of creatures. Of the present notes, definitely keep the ones on Foo Dogs, the Fomor, and the qarin because of their comparative obscurity but cut the spoilers. The note on biblical references I’m not so sure on, but it needs some rewriting to be more concise and grammatically correct.
• The bit on the exact size range on the faeries could also go.
• The section on the “Creeps” rambles on a bit. I’m not familiar with the canon, but a more concise version could say “Boogeyman-type creatures called ‘Creeps’ who are invisible to adults.”
• The Greek gods section also isn’t very clear as-is. Probably can go among the lines of “The Greek god Hades (with his family and Hestia mentioned in passing), a demigoddess who served Dionysus, ...”
• Everything after the last note isn’t very clear. Again, not familiar with the canon, but the first section of spoilers can be cut because the subject matter was already addressed and the second section of spoilers can have its second sentence cut without anything relevant being lost.
• The sentence with the third spoiler needs heavy rewording to make more sense. The section before the spoiler needs to be clearer about legendary objects existing in multiple cultures, while the section afterwards should say “... also being known as Kusanagi.”
• The final two sentences also need rewording. I propose “For the most part the stories stick to European mythology, although creatures and beings from other cultures’ myths do exist” for the first one. The final sentence should either be cut entirely or be rewritten to focus on the series lacking sci-fi elements.

"My job here is done." "But you didn't do anything."

UnwinnableByMistake.Live Action TV needs a scrub.

I'm back!

From Eternal English:

I'm back!