NATTER ALERT!

Is this example from WrittenByTheWinners.Real Life natter? I'm not sure what's going on here. One part seems to describe Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as hapless victims who were portrayed as cruel tyrants by those who overthrew them, but then it goes to say they were actually more villainous than portrayed? I also don't know if Written by the Winners can actually overlap with Historical Villain Downgrade as the example claims.

Edited by Diesel on Feb 26th 2024 at 11:28:41 AM

It sounds like it may have been natter at one point, but instead of getting rid of it entirely the example tries to argue for both sides. The example should just be cut.

Surprise Difficulty has some natter issues, specifically symptoms of Thread Mode. For instance, some examples have lone sub-bullets noting that a sequel to, or remake of, a given work toned down its predecessor's difficulty.

Bringing this up from Retroactive Recognition. This is a mess and needs to be re-written.

• Hey, did you know Tony Shalhoub, TV's Monk, played the guy who set up the "borrowed ladder" deal between Jerome and Vincent in Gattaca?
  • Tony Shalhoub guested in a lot of stuff — The X-Files, Jeebs in Men in Black, Galaxy Quest, the Thir13en Ghosts remake.
  • Hell, he even had his own sitcom (with Neil Patrick Harris) Stark Raving Mad.
  • Although it doesn't seem to work if you were a fan of Wings.
  • He also sings "Macho Man" with Joan Cusack in Addams Family Values.
  • He's near unrecognizable as an incompetent producer in Barton Fink. It's also noteworthy for Monk fans since he shares scenes with his future television brother John Turturro, who played Ambrose Monk on the show.

Edited by DongwaChan on Feb 28th 2024 at 10:38:52 AM

Other examples on the pages seem formatted similarly (because they're grouped by creator, not work) so that's a whole conversation in itself. But if he already was known for anything before Monk, as the Wings example implies, doesn't it not count?

I'll cut it then.

The Spiny Shell comments on this Funny.Sonic The Hedgehog 22022 example seem out of place and irrelevant:

• Sonic's "superhero name" is "Blue Justice (trademark pending)".
  • This becomes doubly funny when you realize that particular phrase is a popular nickname for the Spiny Shell in the Mario Kart series.
  • Triple funny for anyone who plays Mario Kart 8 and has a Sonic Amiibo; by applying the Amiibo, your Mii can dress up with Sonic's appearance and race Mario and the gang while avoiding the dreaded Spiny Shell. In other words, Blue Justice^note (trademark pending) versus the other, more evil Blue Justice.

I agree. I've never heard the Blue Shell called that personally, so I'd only include it if there's reason to believe it's a Shout-Out and not just a coincidence.

I was just looking at the Real Life section for Alien Kudzu, and it looks like there's a lot that can be slimmed down, including multiple second-level bullets and quite a bit of word cruft. Can I go ahead and take the scissors to it?

Does "TropesAreTools in this case" sound like Justifying Edit?

I don't think Tropes Are Tools applies to YMMV anyway, but the basic explanation for why they're an Anti-Climax Boss despite the game hyping him up can probably be kept to contextualize the situation.

Bringing this from Retroactive Recognition. This really needs a re-write.

• In an episode of Cheers, Diane serves on a jury and manages to get the defendant to break up with his girlfriend when he comes into the bar. The man looks uncannily like a flesh-colored Data. (Brent Spiner)
  • What's funny about Brent Spiner is how many of his roles are comedic-ish... Data's the exception, not the rule. The rule is closer to Arik Soong.
  • Though he does appear in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent as a creepy therapist.
  • Then there are those episodes of Night Court with the hillbilly family. Take a look at the man in that family....
  • Spiner played another comedic hillbilly as a rural preacher in the Tales from the Darkside episode "A Case of the Stubborns".
  • In season five of Hill Street Blues, Brent Spiner had a small role as a director of pornography.

Edited by DongwaChan on Mar 19th 2024 at 8:45:47 AM

Let me try. I've left out the contexts for now, since I'm not sure how to write them in without a bunch of parentheticals.

• Brent Spiner is probably best known for his role as Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but both before and after TNG, he's taken roles in shows such as Cheers, Hill Street Blues, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Night Court, and Tales from the Darkside, among many others.

That works for me.

Bringing this up from Contractual Purity. This is just a wall of natter, on top of some snarking.

• Several of the presenters of UK children's magazine show Blue Peter have fallen afoul of this, with BIG NEWS in the tabloids that some presenters have been caught on camera smoking (shock!) or drinking (horror!).
  • And Janet Ellis, who was allegedly sacked for being single and pregnant.
  • Perhaps more reasonably, Richard Bacon was sacked after being caught taking cocaine.
  • And Peter Duncan was fired for having appeared in a soft porn film. Though in this case, the adult film role in question was one that he did before joining Blue Peter; he was fired for not having revealed it to the BBC during his application (although had he done so, he would probably never have been made a presenter in the first place).
  • Seventies presenter Lesley Judd leapt before she was pushed, knowing it was about to become public knowledge that her lover had left his wife for her. She didn't wait around for the inevitable sacking.
    • Hilariously parodied by The Armstrong and Miller Show.
  • He was brought back for a second stint about a year later, though. His replacement in the meantime was Michael Sundin, whose brevity on the show was not due to having appeared in a gay porn film (he wasn't actually in any of the sex scenes). He wasn't offered a new contract for the simple reason that he wasn't very good at the job.
  • Right at the very start in the late 1950s, the standards were even stricter: Blue Peter's first presenter Christopher Trace was fired simply because he was getting divorced. This was not seen as desirable at all for a member of a presenting team who were intended to be surrogate parents to the nation's children. This set the tone for Standards: Blue Peter presenters were held to notoriously high expectations for conduct and behaviour ever after.

Maybe:

• Several presenters on UK children's magazine show Blue Peter have been fired for misbehaviour of different sorts, often exacerbated by the tabloids publicising what they did because it sells. This ranges from Richard Bacon, who was sacked after being caught taking cocaine, to Janet Ellis, who was allegedly sacked for an unwed pregnancy. Other notorious cases include Peter Duncan, fired for having appeared in a soft porn film and not letting the BBC know, and Lesley Judd, who quit when it was about to be made public that her lover had left his wife for her. It was even stricter when the show started in the late fifties: the first presenter Christopher Trace was fired simply because he was getting divorced. This was satirised by The Armstrong and Miller Show.

I haven't looked at the videos linked for The Armstrong and Miller Show, but chained potholes are bad practice. I may watch them to decide if any should be kept.

Found this on Trivia.And Then There Were None. Is it possible to rewrite this or should I just cut the whole example in its entirety?

I think we have to cut it until an expert weighs in.

Bringing this up from Fake American. This is a mess and needs to be separated and sorted out.

• Hugh Laurie also wrote a novel called The Gun Seller, in which certain of the American characters speak in a distinctly 'American' way, essentially by cursing excessively. Others talk completely normally. It's all based on whether or not we're meant to like them. The book's very British main character spends a good chunk of the novel impersonating a hick Minnesota farm boy.
  • Eddie Izzard's American imitation also ends up like this. Americans apparently talk very loudly and swear every other word.
    • And are also Texan. ("Talk Bri'ish t' mah kidz!")
    • In the comic book Preacher, an Irish vampire on one occasion impersonates his Texan friend, le stories.
    • There are also a disproportionate number of indeterminate Southerners. Apparently a really broad Texa Georgiana accent is easier than New England or Midwestern speech.

Bringing this up from Grandfather Clause. This really needs some fine-tuning to come off as less natter-ish.

• Many acts with long discographies still use styles, gimmicks, and techniques which modern performers could not employ with a straight face. Being KISS or Wayne Newton is a great way to have an extremely long career. Imitating them is a great way to be ridiculed.
  • One of the best-known aspects of the career of Elton John, at least since 1972, especially onstage, was Elton's use of crazy glasses and flamboyant costumes, a gimmick he adopted at the peak of Glam Rock and kept intact until 1986. The peak of this tradition would have likely been the (in)famous Donald Duck costume he wore at his free concert at Central Park (the one which later became a Running Gag on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson). The tour of 1986 saw Elton sporting giant multicolored mohawk wigs, a Camp Gay "Ali Baba" costume, "Tina Turner" wigs, and, for his orchestral concerts in Australia, a "Chopin" costume complete with white wig, heavy white powder and a fake birthmark. Though Elton was only 40 at the time, he (and the press) came to agree that he had carried it far past the point of retaining his dignity, and he auctioned most of the costumes and glasses off in 1988 (after using them for the cover of that year's Reg Strikes Back album) and toned down his image. He still incorporates a relatively flamboyant look, but rarely to the point he did until The '80s.
  • Unless you don't really care about it, and/or manage to be successful with being gimmicky. Lady Gaga is living proof. People did eventually get burned out with her, so Gaga had to tone down the gimmicks and reinvent herself with a more realistic persona. Singers like Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj have largely supplanted Gaga in the flamboyancy department, however.
  • Imitating KISS, and taking their gimmick to new levels, is what got acts like Slipknot, GWAR and Lordi their success.

It all reads like straight-up misuse to me? All of the bullet points are just unrelated asides. And the main point has no context.

Bringing this up from Fake American. This is a mess and needs to be separated and sorted out.

• Hugh Laurie also wrote a novel called The Gun Seller, in which certain of the American characters speak in a distinctly 'American' way, essentially by cursing excessively. Others talk completely normally. It's all based on whether or not we're meant to like them. The book's very British main character spends a good chunk of the novel impersonating a hick Minnesota farm boy.
  • Eddie Izzard's American imitation also ends up like this. Americans apparently talk very loudly and swear every other word.
    • And are also Texan. ("Talk Bri'ish t' mah kidz!")
    • In the comic book Preacher, an Irish vampire on one occasion impersonates his Texan friend, le stories.
    • There are also a disproportionate number of indeterminate Southerners. Apparently a really broad Texa Georgiana accent is easier than New England or Midwestern speech.

This is on Mainstream Obscurity under Animated Films:

• Spirited Away is widely regarded as a flawless, exceptional, almost untouchable masterwork of animation, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film in 2003. But despite this, similar to Fantasia, there are many in the general public who haven't seen it. And even those who have seen it have found the story surprisingly difficult to follow and understand. The reason for the film's success is its uniquely surreal world design and challenging themes such as social alienation, loneliness, discrimination, slavery and the loss of identity, but these aspects simply don't appeal to mainstream audiences, who are more used to far more accessible and cheerful animated films by Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, etc.
  • This somewhat applies to Studio Ghibli in general. In fact, Spirited Away itself is perhaps of their more accessible films, ironically enough. Barring the more obviously kid-friendly movies such as My Neighbor Totoro or Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, most general audiences are largely unfamiliar with their catalogue of films. Likely due to many of them (even ones that aren't blatantly meant for adults such as Princess Mononoke or Grave of the Fireflies) often featuring themes, plotlines, and worlds that even grown adults could find uncomfortable and upsetting upon first viewing. Making their audience in the West to be largely comprised of otakus, animation connoisseurs, and movie buffs (of which, there is significant overlap), but rarely amongst the average moviegoing public.

I'm mostly asking about the second bullet, namely wether or not it's natter (although I should point out that, looking through the history, Spirited Away was in the Anime folder before being removed). Sorry for bothering you if it isn't.

It's a second-level bullet addressing the first-level bullet, natter by definition.

While trying to fix indentation in Funny.Wario Ware, I found a (badly-indented) subbullet that I think might be natter:

• Most of the characters succeed in attracting people to the dance club (see the Awesome page for more), with Young Cricket and Mona in particular attracting a lot of women and men respectively, except for Dr. Crygor, whose dancing actually drives people away, and Master Mantis, whose dancing impresses Dr. Crygor but draws silence from everyone else. Thankfully, Penny's singing draws a lot of people in.
  • Yes, you read that right: Penny's singing causes people to draw back in. ^note This kinda makes sense in four ways. 1): We have never heard her sing before. 2): It has been implied her singing is way better than her composing. 3): The caption straight-up says [angelic singing] when Penny starts singing. And 4): Her aforementioned Tonally Transformative Elixir gives anyone who drinks it an amazing voice.

Swarm of Rats has an entry about a page-less work, a crappy low-budget film called Rat Disaster... and a nattery mini-review (that doubles as bad indentation) underneath comparing the work to Train to Busan

Cut?