Wall of Text cleanup

Any thoughts on my Sleeper Hit rewrite here?

I feel a little sheepish posting here as I know I have trouble being succinct myself at times but I was looking at Reborn to Master the Blade and there's a lot of overly long sentences using way too many commas and just generally overly long example context and Word Cruft. But I am not sure how to start as I'm only sorta familiar with the work (watched the first couple of episodes of the anime adaption and read the first manga adaption volume).

Go ahead with the Bocchi the Rock rewrite.

Found this wall of text example on Randall's section in Characters.Monsters Inc (edit history is here).

• Big Bad: Randall is the main antagonist of Monsters, Inc. because he's clearly a corrupting influence (One example is that Mr. Waternoose does have good intentions at the beginning of the first film which can't prove that Mr. Waternoose is not Randall's unwilling pawn and not to mention there's no real proof that those intentions were fake. Another hint of Mr. Waternoose just being an unwilling pawn is that after the Scarers took a break, Mr. Waternoose discusses his plans to save the company which also cannot prove that Mr. Waternoose is not Randall's unwilling pawn, despite that foreshadowing his true role and plus, there's no proof that he pretends he doesn't know how to save the company. Throughout the movie, there are no real hints that Mr. Waternoose is not Randall's unwilling pawn and not to mention, not even Randall and Fungus hint this which also clearly shows that Randall manipulated Mr. Waternoose. And speaking of that, if the idea of the Scream Extractor was Mr. Waternoose's idea and he didn't want any witnesses, then why did he get Randall involved when he's not even the top scarer and how did he know what Randall is capable of beforehand which also shows that Randall is the manipulator. He got so angry and scared that his manipulates are not going to work if he doesn't listen to his boss and unwilling pawn, Mr. Waternoose because Mr. Waternoose will punish him. When Mike tries to make Fungus let him go, Fungus said that Randall told him he is not allowed to fraternize with victims of his plan, stating that the plan was Randall's and not Mr. Waternoose's. When Mike tells Mr. Waternoose that the whole thing was Randall's fault, Mr. Waternoose gets confused saying Randall as well as also angrily saying "How could this happen?" "Oh, how could this happen?" which pretty much proves that the whole plan was Randall's and there's no proof that he pretends that Randall is behind the plan. When Randall and Mr. Waternoose banished Sully and Mike, the scene clearly shows that Mr. Waternoose unwillingly followed Randall's orders since during that same scene, Randall is seen showing his hand to the door indicating that he is ordering Mr. Waternoose to banish Mike and Sully. This would also foreshadow the scene where it reveals Randall force Mr. Waternoose to banish Mike and Sully. After banishing Mike and Sully, Mr. Waternoose regrets doing so and admits that Randall is behind everything when he tells him that he never should have trusted him with the plan since it resulted in him to betray his own employees, but Randall said that with the scream extractor, they won't need scarers and Sully got what he deserved which also indicates that Randall is the one who came with plan and convinced Mr. Waternoose to go through with it. After Randall briefly got knocked out, by Sully, when Mr. Waternoose ordered Randall once again and also told him "There can't be any witnesses, Randall was angrily already prepared to get up as well as responding in sinister way that "there won't be" which suggests that Randall used Mr. Waternoose as a pawn, and also plans to betrayed/kill Mr. Waternoose after Sully and Mike in order to become the new CEO of Monsters, Inc. When Mr. Waternoose told Sully that he, and Boo have seen too much, he meant too much of Randall's plan and plus, when Mr. Waternoose said that he had no choice but to make things be that way. This shows that Mr. Waternoose unwillingly went along with Randall's plan to save his company, and when Mr. Waternoose said that he will kidnap a thousand children before he lets the company die and will silence anyone who gets in his way, he was unwillingly doing it for Randall, and his plan.).

FWIW, I trimmed it down.

Edited by gjjones on Dec 7th 2023 at 7:07:31 AM

On ValuesResonance.Literature:

• Vilhelm Moberg's four book suite collectively referred to as The Emigrants is almost more topical today than when it was originally written in the 1940s and 50s. The story is set in the mid-19th century and follows a group of people in Småland, Sweden, who become the first in the parish to emigrate to America. The first book ("The Emigrants") follows the characters until they have landed on American soil and the following three ("The Immigrants", "The Settlers" and "The Last Letter Home") chronicles how they build a new life in their new homeland and stays with the characters until most of them are dead. Among the group of emigrants are Karl Oskar Nilsson, a farmer who can't provide for his family at home and dreams of the vast farm land of North America, and his wife Kristina, who doesn't want to emigrate but agrees after their oldest child dies of starvation. Karl Oskar prospers in the New World but Kristina spends her life plagued by homesickness and never becomes "Americanized" or even learns the language. While the Swedish mass-emigration to the US isn't exactly an ongoing thing, the core of the story is very, very topical as of this post being written in 2015. The number of refugees worldwide today from impoverished third world countries, the debates on whether or not they should be allowed to enter the countries they flee towards, and the growing anti-immigrant sentiment on the right and pro-immigrant on the left, makes the story feel very modern and relevant. The characters in the novel are all so well-written and fleshed out and their various hardships so relatable that even though they are 19th-century peasants from Protestant Sweden they can easily be recognized in people of all origins and faiths in modern times. In particular, their voyage across the ocean in the first book is almost uncomfortable to read about (and watching it in the movie) today when there are so many people still risking their lives on the seas to escape to a better life. Sweden itself is today oftentimes hailed as a land of milk and honey in the countries that see a lot of its citizens fleeing there, which comes off as ironic as the character Robert constantly hails America that same way in the first two novels.

Does Randall even qualify as the Big Bad of that movie, given that he's working together with Waternoose?

Both Randall and Waternoose are the film's Big Bad Duumvirate.

But if there's two main villains, does that mean that neither one of them can be the singular Big Bad?

IDK if we need spoilers for Monsters Inc ya'll

I do believe they should be under Big Bad Duumvirate though, since that's how subtropes work.

I've also started a discussion here.

Edited by gjjones on Dec 7th 2023 at 1:07:03 PM

Found on Archive Panic, while cleaning wicks for The Last Of These Is Not Like The Others (now replaced with Creator's Oddball here):

• LoadingReadyRun has enjoyed a very robust run over the years. In 2023, they are holding their 20th anniversary. They produced at least one video a week for 11 years; even at an average of only of 3 minutes per video, that's 28.6 hours of video to watch. Then came all the bonus videos and spinoffs, which would take you a while to watch them all. (Fortunately, continuity is only important within the commodoreHustle sub-series). After 6 years, LoadingReadyRun struck a deal to produce their shorts for The Escapist, and for the following 5 years of weekly sketch comedy, their videos appeared there. They continued to produce spinoffs for The Escapist after the finale of their sketch comedy. A few months after the end of their sketch comedy, The Escapist had some in-house upheavals and LRR decided not to renew their contract (along with a number of other creators, which is outlined on The Escapist's page). However, after transferring back to YouTube, the archives have grown even deeper for the following eight years, once you count the numerous podcasts, streams, and other series that LRR has put out, died, and sometimes revived in the intervening years. Given that they could be streaming a 3-hour-long gaming session on Twitch while also releasing a 1-hour-long podcast and a 15-minute scripted video on YouTube at the same time, the only way you could catch up on everything is to make LRR more than a full-time job. The way it's OK to skip a lot of it is that their content has become so wide-ranging in topics (Magic: The Gathering, Marvel movies, WWE, video games, young adult literature, old 80s sitcom rewatches, a road trip show in the style of Top Gear, a yearly telethon for charity, how to make coffee better, etc.) that you probably aren't interested in everything they do anyway.

Found this on Trivia.Doukyusei

• Franchise Killer: Despite its status as a classic of the Dating Sim genre, the series would effectively end up being shelved for good in the aftermath of the release of Kakyūsei 2 in 2004. And what makes Kakyūsei 2's failure particularly painful was that it was clearly meant to be a comeback project of sorts for the Dōkyūsei series and for Elf as as storytellers. At the point of its release, the latest proper installment in the series had been been the original Kakyūsei from 1996, with the only other release having been the Mahjong-themed spin-off Jankyūsei for the Gameboy Color from 2001. Elf certainly went all in on the project, promoting it with both a short TV-series and an 2 OVAs and put it directly up against the latest installment in the popular Rance series, by releasing it on the same day as Rance IV. There was just one problem, however; Elf had prominently marketed the game as a "Pure Love Story", but one of the potential love interests, Saimon Tamaki, was in revealed in her storyline to already be in a sexual relationship with a boyfriend. This made fans of both the series and the genre very angry. It even caused a downright controversy, as at least one upset fan took to protest this creative choice by breaking his copy of the game and returning it to Elf along with an angry letter.
  
  Interestingly enough, the original Dōkyūsei had done things that were even more radical (one of the love interests is in a relationship with the main character's best friend and another is a sex worker), and this didn't spark any notable outrage back then. To cut a long explanation short, Dōkyūsei might had been genre-defining when it came out, but the various successors it had inspired, such as Tokimeki Memorial, had also been sharping the genre and its clichés in the time since, and this included the emergence of a very strict segregation between what counted as "Pure" and "Impure" love, and a story about woo-ing a woman who was explictly not a virgin and in a relationship was firmly seen as being in the latter category (even if it was just one of many possible storylines, and all the other storylines very much conformed to the genre's expected norms).
  
  Regardless, the uproar quickly caused sales to plummet, and Kakyūsei 2 ended up as a clear financial failure. Though Elf had plans about getting a proper Dōkyūsei 3 off the ground, it would never materialize and remained Vaporware until Elf's closure in 2015, with the damage to the company's image and finances caused by the controversy caused by Kakyūsei 2 being suspected of being the main reasons why.

Jesus christ, that's too long. The least I could do is cut everything past the first sentence.

Thanks!

Edited by ToonAbby on Dec 21st 2023 at 9:06:24 AM

Done that. I also the troper who originally added a text wall notifier.

At One Piece: Seven Warlords of the Sea, this one example takes an entire screen for me, with a lot of redundant information on Doflamingo

I can summarize it as:

• Ultimate Job Security: The group is a Deck of Wild Cards who the World Government has recruited mainly for being powerful and influential. Loyalty and discipline is not something that's required, meaning they can still terrorize the world and even Marines, as long as they don't publicly discredit or oppose the World Government and publicly lose to a relative upstart. Until it becomes too much of a problem, WG will attempt to cover their digressions. Crocodile tried to take over a country, while Doflamingo did 10 years ago and has also further secured his position with blackmail over World Nobles and profits from illegal slave market, and both got arrested only when they were defeated and their crimes became impossible to hide. Moria attempted a Zombie Apocalypse, but his general underperformance was the main reason for his assassination. Jinbe got arrested for bluntly refusing the War summons. Mihawk, Kuma, and Hancock often oppose WG, but are pardoned for being subtle enough and still doing some some jobs when asked. In only took until Levely when the Government has agreed they are collectively not worth keeping .

On Characters.RWBY Remnant is this large wall of text.

• Jerkass Gods: The Brothers created the world of Remnant as an experiment but quarreled over how the world would manifest by using their own creations as weapons against the other: the God of Light would create things that he liked, such as plants and animals, but his brother would destroy everything he disliked and eventually created the Creatures of Grimm to help him do that. While they settle their feud by creating humanity together, they lose pride in their experiment over time. They punish Salem for demanding the resurrection of her dead lover, but only after they squabble about it via resurrecting and killing him multiple times in front of her. When she seeks revenge by inciting a rebellion against them, they destroy humanity; declaring it a failed experiment, they deliberately leave her alone on an empty world, unable to die. When the God of Light finally reincarnates her dead lover, it's only to prepare the second evolution of humanity for Judgement Day. On that day, they will either restore humanity to its full potential or declare humanity to be irredeemable and destroy all life, including the planet. Originally created by the Ever After's Tree to manage the Ever After, they created both the Jabberwalker and Curious Cat as experiments. However, the Jabberwalker and its ability to permanently kill Afterans never worked properly while the Curious Cat was given the ability to fix every broken heart except its own, resulting in both flawed creations becoming problems for the realm over time. Rather than improve their creations or destroy them when they caused grievous harm, the brothers argued about the fallout until they grew tired of thinking about their mistakes and made more experiments to ignore their old ones. As their experimentation caused them to outgrow the Ever After, the Tree created a doorway for them to explore new realms to create and destroy to their hearts' content without bringing further harm to the Afteran balance.

I've cut it down to this, but can anyone do a better job?

• Jerkass Gods: The Brothers created the world of Remnant as an experiment but quarrelled constantly over how the world should manifest by using their own creations as weapons, each wanting the other's creations destroyed. Although they settle their feud by creating humanity together, they lose pride in their experiment over time and eventually abandon it completely after Salem manipulates their old grudge and turns humanity against them. Although the God of Light gives humanity one chance to redeem itself, he places sole responsibility in the hands of a single flawed human, and will destroy the planet if he fails. The Brothers originate from the Ever After, first manifesting their jerkassery in how they delegated responsibility for maintaining the Ever After to flawed creations that could not function properly, arguing over whose creations to live and die before finally abandoning that realm to create Remnant.

At YMMV.Hazbin Hotel

Way too long. Suggestion:

• Misaimed Fandom: A common critique is that, if the Pilot didn't make the main premise of "reducing the population of Sinners through redemption" nearly impossible, the Heaven's negative portrayal in Helluva Boss and series' first episode made it effectively dead on arrival. However, solving Overpopulation Crisis isn't Charlie's main goal nor do angels care about it, the point of the Hotel is proving that rehabilitation is even possible, and Adam is just another person she's trying to prove wrong.

Better, but feels more like Common Knowledge than anything

The eight examples in UnfortunateImplications.Thirteen Reasons Why are all written as extremely long and dense paragraphs; for example:

• The Tragic Aids Story in Season 4 got backlash for this, with viewers expressing concern it would spread misinformation and fear amongst young viewers. Not only is the portrayal of AIDS not all that accurate, many people felt that by 2020 the plotline was severely outdated; being HIV-positive is no longer an immediate death sentence thanks to the development of medication and people with HIV can absolutely live long, fulfilling lives. Even people with AIDS can live several years if they have treatment. The fact that Justin got HIV by having sex with/being raped by other HIV-positive men while he was a prostitute and/or sharing infected drug needles just as he'd managed to turn his life around didn't help, as it's unintentionally reminiscent of harmful myths around HIV such as "only gay men get HIV", "AIDS is a punishment for immorality" etc.

That example doesn't seem super dense to me, and I'm on mobile where everything is longer.

I found the Complacent Gaming Syndrome entry of Helldivers is bit too long, but I can't fix by myself because I haven't played the game for a long time. Anyone can help?

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: On paper, laser weapons have several strong drawbacks to counterbalance their powerful advantages: They have very limited magazines if you do happen to overheat the weapon, their reload time is long, and their DPS tends to be below that of conventional weapons. In reality though, their advantages tend to vastly eclipse the few drawbacks they have: If you can properly manage their heat, which isn't all that hard to do, they effectively have infinite ammo in a game where running out is a frequent concern and can spell life or death. On top of this, they usually have very long range, perfect accuracy, and a decent fire rate to boot, which make them great for killing every faction's scouts, even on the higher difficulties. The Sickle, which fills the niche of the "assault rifle" laser weapon, and the Trident, the "shotgun" version are arguably the best examples; The Sickle, unlike most other laser weapons, has all the advantages mentioned above, but it actually does the most amount of damage of any assault rifle equivalent in the game as long as you can hit center mass, even above battle rifles. (Which due to the pinpoint accuracy and long range, is much easier to ensure than on other weapons of a similar type) It's only drawbacks are that it does very little damage on off-center shots, and overheats quicker than most other laser weapons, but with upgrades and a minimal amount of experience with it, these disadvantages basically become non-issues and you are left with a Jack of All Trades weapon that has just about everything you would want in a primary. The Trident sacrifices sacrifices the Sickle's accuracy and consistency for being able to flood a portion of the screen with lasers that can easily decimate scouts and hordes in ways that even the Sickle can't do. As a result of all these factors, it's not uncommon to see entire lobbies wielding these weapons as their primary, with their heavy weapons filling the need for AT, which are about the only things laser weapons cannot do.
  • On a broader level, it is quite easy to fall into the trap of taking the same weapons and equipment against the same enemy factions over and over again, as most factions tend to be extremely weak or vulnerable to specific gear. The Bugs are arguably the best example: Bugs as a whole are fast, heavily armored, and, with one exception, exclusively melee. The "Avenger," essentially a flamethrower that shoots toxic sludge instead of fire, is almost custom designed to screw over the Bugs biggest strengths, as it not only does it come with all the strengths a flamethrower has, (large magazine capacity, great crowd control, heavy damage-over-time) but it also slows everything it hits down to a crawl, making it exceedingly unlikely that their melee-only hordes will ever reach you. On top of this, in a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, it completely ignores the Bugs heavy armor as they are still entirely organic, allowing it to damage and kill even the toughest Behemoths in a few spritz's, which would otherwise take dedicated AT weaponry to kill, and usually multiple shots at that. An experienced player can easily go through even a high-level bug planet using this weapon and nothing else.

Hey, there. So, does the following text on the Creator.Funimation work page's current description (which I am currently working on) count as a Wall of Text? If so, does it need to be trimmed down further?

As of this writing, the description's word count is 1,370 words.

Edited by gjjones on Feb 11th 2024 at 5:49:12 AM

Found this on YMMV.Shimeji Simulation

• Common Knowledge: The manga, while it is still a Slice of Life with a lot of Surrealism on it, per the author's Signature Style, before going to a handful of Darkest Hour and Cerebus Syndrome moments, has been often mistaken as Iyashikei due to its seemingly innocuous premise and even its summary, which turned out to be a load of lies as readers go further through it. While it was Iyashikei at first, which explores the ex-recluse Shijima's attempts of friendship especially in a positive light after befriending Majime in a light-hearted manner, reading through a few chapters shows that it a Genre Deconstruction of the Iyashikei genre and how it immediately subverts anything about it, similarly to Girls' Last Tour which is an Iyashikei in a Crapsack World. There are very clear indications that the manga is gradually heading to a much existential, bittersweet route despite the obvious comedy it shows, in the tones of Dramedy, in much earlier chapters before even the Wham Episodes happen. This includes tackling the very topic of existential crisis, which is the very staple of this manga, as well as tackling the question of what discernible limits that humanity can do to their own imagination to achieve their own utopia at the cost of balance, often with very disastrous consequences. This is not even counting its four (in)famous Wham Episodes where reality gets permanently altered by Big Sis by handing them the powers to change it; with her clone who does the same thing, but giving them the ability of changing themselves, and natural order further collapses to oblivion, which is anything but a distant memory of its own; Shijima kicking Majime out at the fear of being merged by her before being transported to a world where she's all by herself, going to a reverse Character Development; and Shijima going back in time per her sister's request to reverse the damage her clone caused, at the cost of distancing herself from others to not interfere with the changes. Even the secondary aspect of Shijima finding other friends beside her Only Friend Majime is not portrayed in a positive, soothing light that is usually the keystone of the Iyashikei genre, as she seldom socialises with others outside of her friend group and is mostly portrayed as an aloof girl with zero desire for friendships, showing her Fatal Flaw of being highly dependent to the people she only knows including Big Sis and Majime and not wanting to get out of her comfort zone which becomes worse after Shijima becomes more fearful of being in one with Majime during Chapter 43, setting off the Darkest Hour and Shijima's path to existential crisis and later her inevitable isolation from others.

Mentioned that one before

This is on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, under Award Snub:

• Best Animated Feature was largely seen as Across the Spider-verse's to win, given its widespread acclaim, the first film having previously won the award in 2019, and the competition ranging from obscure (Robot Dreams), to divisive (Elemental and The Boy and the Heron), to never having a real chance due to being Screwed by the Network (NIMONA). Suffice it to say, many were shocked when Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron swiped the award. While some (such as co-producer Christopher Miller) gracefully accepted the loss and were happy to see the film win (due to it being Hayao Miyazaki's first Oscar win since Spirited Away in 2003 and it being a rare 2D animated film winner), others (including Miles' voice actor Shameik Moore) felt Across was robbed, arguing that Miyazaki didn't deserve the award this time due to the film's divisive reception and only got it because of his history of being snubbed in the past. As a result, this quickly caused a Fandom Rivalry to form between Spider-Verse fans and Ghibli fans over who deserved the award more.