Headscratchers Cleanup

Whether there's an official rule, I'm not sure. Regardless, headscratchers like that are just...why would someone write that?

Edit: I did some digging and, after some consideration, decided to make an ATT report.

Edited by UFOYeah on Oct 9th 2022 at 8:27:30 AM

I mean, as everyone at your ATT query said: re-write the whole thing so it breaks no rules. Bootlebat wanted, in my opinion, to ask how Anakin persevered despite everything happening to him. How he phrased it... was wrong. Horribly wrong.

TLDR, the reasoning is there, it's just very poorly worded and liable to raise more than a few suspicions.

Question: For a work that has Recap pages, can Headscratchers pages exist for each episode? It would probably be best to copy them to the main Headscratchers page for the work, but those are often disorganized and this would allow us to sort them based on which episode they're talking about, if it's only one.

Having separate pages might help if otherwise the page would be too long, but often the recap pages aren’t indexed on the main series page, which means that duplicate questions might be added by people unaware of the other page.

Headscratchers.Garfield needs some cleanup, but I'd like to take this section up for discussion:

• What happened to the older, funny Garfield? "Nostalgia Filter" aside, Garfield, the character and the strip itself: were really different in prior years. Nowadays, Jon is sometimes described as a Cloudcuckoolander but before, Garfield was the Cloudcuckoolander, Jon was the Straight Man. At first Garfield was just doing those crazy things cats do, but later on he got more of an imagination. He would take on alter egos such as The Caped Avenger, Banana Man, Amoeba Man, etc. He would dress up in fruit or pretend to be a sumo wrestler. And there were so many more sight gags back then than there are now. Sometime after the animated version ended, it started becoming what it is today: a bland comic about a cat insulting his pathetic owner and nothing more. The reason Garfield Minus Garfield and other variations on the theme work is because Jon became the entertaining one. So why and how did this happen? Did Jim Davis think that after Garfield and Friends ended that kids wouldn't be interested in the title character anymore, so he stopped making him interesting? Or did he just run out of ideas? Sure, it's a strip that was just made to make money... but it was much, much more clever once.
  • It's because Jim Davis can get away with it. At first, he had to really work to make money off of Garfield, meaning he actually had to put great jokes in. After Garfield and Friends was made, he realised that he had a Cash-Cow Franchise that won't die, so he can chuck in whatever crap he likes. Jim Davis was in it for the money, and he got it.
  • To be fair, Jon shows occasional bouts of competency nowadays, and Garfield still has a foiled plan now and then (though much more rarely than in the past).
  • Perhaps Davis began to run out of ideas after awhile and fell into a rut. Again, the earlier comics were much funnier and the newer ones almost seem downright cruel at times.
    • It definitely got worse around the turn of the century.
  • Some fans have incorrectly thought that Jim Davis died and somebody else took over writing it! Admittedly, he retired from drawing the strip around the 90's and handed it over to assistants at PAWS Inc, but he's still currently alive.
  • Here's an overly-detailed theory: Garfield's current age is more than twice the normal lifespan of his species. As such, he has aged to the point that he can no longer physically partake in - or even complete the mental processes required to dream up - the wacky escapades he used to put on. In his impaired physical and mental state, he is no longer capable of doing very much beyond eating, sleeping, and degrading others. Jon, on the other hand, has spent so many years in isolation and endured so much mental anguish from repeated failures to engage in social affairs with members of the opposite sex that his sanity has gradually slipped away, taking with it his basic knowledge and perception of the world around him (hence his incompetence at daily tasks and utter lack of good judgment). This could be why Garfield has become the Straight Man and Jon is now the Cloud Cuckoolander. If you want to think about it on a deep level, that is...
  • Additionally, Jim Davis got much much older. He was 33 when he began the strip but now is 65.

The initial paragraph feels like the sort of complaining we're trying to keep off Headscratchers, with the first response being the worst. Is there enough substance here to keep at least some? (On this topic, someone made a video about the franchise recently in which they classed all the jokes in various categories, and "Make fun of Jon" was the biggest, even in the early strips; so while it may have gotten less funny, I doubt that it became any more cruel.)

Yeah, that's just meta bashing.

These headscratchers (the ones that amount to "Why did the quality of the work go downhill?" and "How come the creator doesn't care anymore?") are the type that use the namespace to complain and very little else. I suppose they could be re-written, but cutting them for complaining would be hard to argue against.

They might be relics from when it was called "Just Bugs Me".

From Headscratchers.Xenosaga:

• Not so much a complaint as an observation- why do people complain so much about the second game? I've seen many people talking about it, and whenever they discuss a certain scene, level, or feature, they mock how said scene/level/feature is probably the only good part of the game. The thing is, they say this about every single scene/level/feature in the game. If every level, scene, and feature in the game is the "only good part," isn't it possible- just possible- that it's actually a good game?
  • I liked the game. The battle system required strategy, it seems RPG gamers are just too lazy to do that and just want to hit x to attack and didn't bother to understand the system. What was annoying for sure, is MOMO's subconscous. Too many enemies and they did not give you enough dungeons/enemies prior to the area to be strong enough against them. Also the GS Path was long and tedious.
  • While this troper can't talk for others, the complaints I have against this game mostly involve the voice acting and the very drastic changes in character models. Coming straight off Xenosaga 1, 2 not only changed a lot of the voice actors, but they also didn't emote very well. Even KOS-MOS, with her normally emotionless voice, sounded completely off. The characters themselves almost drifted into Unintentional Uncanny Valley territoy with the sudden change from anime-esque style to "Waaaayyy too real looking". That being said, the gameplay WAS solid. But as mentioned they dumped you right into a dungeon and the atmosphere just felt off.
  • Arguably the biggest issues with the game are that the Battle system is very slow, and the game is full of Padding. After the initial two dungeons you pretty much HAVE to stock and break combo every enemy to do decent damage, which leads to nearly every battle lasting a very long time as you sit there stocking over and over. All the main dungeons are also very long, full of backtracking and long corridors of walking, the Ormus stronghold dungeon is arguably complete filler (and was removed from the Xenosaga I&II version of the story), and the GS side quests are full of constant backtracking as well. Also, every character has access to the exact same spells and abilities in the skill tree, so they end up being less differentiated than the other games, or most RPGs.

I found it because of a wick fix. But I'm pretty sure this whole thing is better off deleted.

This was added this year to Headscratchers.Office Space:

• I have a personal example of exactly this. Despite the fact that I produced consistently better numbers and more output than my peers, I got a terrible performance evaluation (and the incompetent asshole that everybody hated got rated at the top simply because he constantly kissed our boss's ass), so I said 'hell with it' and actually made a conscious decision to be a useless piece of crap while I looked for a different job. I did as little as possible, simply didn't show up to a bunch of meetings, tossed paperwork in the trash, actually threatened to punch the aforementioned incompetent asshole in the face if he didn't shut up and get away from me, slightly rearranged my desk so nobody could actually see my screen without walking past my desk and looking and then spent probably 1/3-1/2 of my workday watching Youtube, playing flash games (Kongregate and Armorgames ftw) and searching for another job on company time. I'd say I did MAYBE 1/8th the work that I had been doing previously, and yet my next performance review was BETTER, and the moron actually congratulated me on 'fixing my issues'. Needless to say I didn't stay working for him much longer and left as soon as I secured another job offer. It happens, some managers are just utterly incompetent at actual management.

On the one hand, it's relevant, on the other it's first-person. Not sure what to do with it.

Star Trek: Nemesis has lenghty Conversation in the Main Page bashing the character of Janeway, full of hatred and complains about the character just because she makes a 2 minutes cameo in the movie as admiral. Some examples:

Kind of obvious these two carpets violate almost all headscratchers rules and should be removed

Edited by TVGuy on Jan 29th 2023 at 9:48:29 AM

If they’re just complaining, they can be removed.

Noted

From Headscratchers.Pokemon Scarlet And Violet, we've got conversation on the main page. Original entry for reference, then the actual comment (bad part bolded for emphasis):

• Okay, just why the heck are there NO POLICE in this region? Team Star would have been beaten and then incarcerated for obstructing roads in Paldea if there were a proper form of constabulary!

[...]

• How to tell me Scarlet and Violet are your first Pokemon games without telling me Scarlet and Violet are your first Pokemon games. There's literally only one game in the entire series where the police are actively investigating the evil team throughout the whole thing. That's Platinum, and even then interpol sends just the one agent. And while interpol does tend to get involved with the evil teams in subsequent games, they only show up to perform clean-up after the player has already dealt with the problem on their own, and it's ALWAYS just the one agent from Platinum again. I didn't touch the Sword and Shield DLC but if you told me that Looker was asked to fly halfway across the world to Galar on zero notice just to apprehend Rose I would believe you. Someone give that man a raise.

Does this seem kinda mocking to anybody else? It does to me.

Agreed. That's unnecessary.

There is also rampant first-person writing in there, too. I'm thinking of cleaning it all up and adding a warning for the issue.

At Headscratchers.The Amazing World Of Gumball, I think TheCove's additions are a bit odd.

At least some of those entries seem identical to earlier edits by on the page by these socks of a banner user, so this might be them again, though its earliest edit was before the most recent sock was bounced. Pinging ~MacronNotes, who handled this in the past, for more input.

As for the answering their own questions, as I recall, before the ban evader was identified, the questions they listed received responses from other tropers, and after they were identified and their edits reverted, the responses went as well, because the question that they answered were gone.

Edited by costanton11 on Feb 20th 2023 at 9:24:04 AM

Your ping didn't go through because you didn't write the markup correctly it's ~ and then @/TroperName or @/{{Troper}}.

Anyways, geolocation was a match so I bounced The Cove but in the future it's better to report these things on Ask The Tropers so that it will get the attention of other mods.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 1st 2023 at 5:32:35 AM

I see. Wasn’t sure exactly how the ping function worked.

There's an entire "fandom" folder on Headscratchers.Homestuck, and I'm pretty sure these questions aren't allowed, but want a second opinion.

Meta questions aren’t allowed, so you can remove that.

Could Headscratchers.Muse be checked? Found it from this query, and there's quite a sprinkle of "this troper" in that page.

Apologies if this is already answered in the thread (I had a quick search) or Administrivia - can Characters pages have Headscratchers?

Characters.Marvel Comics Galactus has one.

I'm assuming not?

I asked the tropers right here to find out. I think the answer I got can basically be summed up as "character pages can't have headscratchers because they aren't works", so yeah, I think you're right.

Edited by OmegaPC777 on Jun 27th 2023 at 8:43:47 AM