Removing Gushing from the Wiki

Yeah, maybe it is. It's sort of hard for me to wrap my head around how it could even work if the decon is not in the actual work, because at that point... how can you even determine that it's present?

Anyway, this is off topic. The example has already been cut, because no matter how you slice it it's not really using the term properly and is gushy as all hell.

If we need to discuss Reconstruction more it should be at trope talk.

I agree that this is a discussion for trope talk. I made a thread.

From Anatomy, shockingly the issue is not with the misuse of NF (it follows those guidelines OK) but the overly gushy tone of it:

• Nightmare Fuel: The game uses the Nothing Is Scarier tactic in a beautifully masterful way. There is no Jump Scare, there are no narmy monsters awaiting every corner, there is no danger to the player. There are only the cassette tapes, which puts the player on edge by taking away their feelings of safety and reminding them of childhood fears and leaving your imagination to think that the next room will be scarier than the last in a shaky voice. Old Howard would be proud.
  • This cannot go unsaid: Most games like this — that is, horror games, especially those which rely on Nothing Is Scarier — use an external threat to generate suspense. A mad killer, a spectral threat, or some other tangible, visible enemy. In Anatomy, you are in a house, and it hates you. It can't scare you, it can't appear to you, it can't even hurt you. But it hates you, and it will do absolutely everything in its power to make sure you know that.

I've noticed that Lizzo has a Benevolent Boss entry related to her reality series Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. With recent ongoing controversies, I'm feeling that this leans too much into real life troping, particularly given that the controversy stems from her treatment of backup dancers:

• Benevolent Boss: Lizzo is very encouraging to the aspiring Grrrls, even dropping by the house for a girls' night and awarding spots on a video or photo shoot. Her choreographer/creative director Tanisha Smith has to remind her not to let her "heartstrings" determine what dancers are ready for the stage.

This paragraph on the main page for Mission Hill is pure gushing, no? A show being notable for its representation is valid, but reception shouldn't go on the main page and "one of the greatest trope aversions ever" is pure word cruft.

• In one of the greatest trope aversions ever, elderly gay couple Gus and Wally had such rich personalities and unique storylines that the list of tropes below contains no Stereotype Gay entries. The show won an award from GLAAD for showing homosexual characters in a positive and non-stereotypical light. It even featured an on-screen homosexual kiss between Gus and Wally in the pilot episode making it one of the first TV shows of any kind to do so.

And an example can't refer to other examples on the page, either...

Plus it's also implying that the Queer as Tropes index it's linking to is bad in itself and a work not using them is a badge of honor, which...yes, stereotype tropes about real demographics do tend to have issues, especially if those stereotypes are the only representation that group gets, but Tropes Are Tools and there's nothing inherently bad about a character being Camp Gay or whatever. Anyway, it's cut.

YMMV.Anatomy could be toned down to:

• Nightmare Fuel: The game takes Nothing Is Scarier further than most horror games, in that there is no threat to the player at all. There are only the cassette tapes, which put the player on edge by taking away any reminding them that there is a hostile being all around and letting them imagine what the next room will have.

(As a more minor note, a sentence should not switch from "they" to "you".)

That it won an award can be listed on Trivia, but we usually don't put it in the main description.

Re: Lizzo: I think it's fair if rephrased to say she's portrayed that way, since this is her show and she's probably gonna make herself look good anyway.

YMMV.Velma has an issue where there are a few examples that are a bit too much gushy towards any scene where the main character is physically assaulted (with one particular scene of her being ran over by a police car in particular getting most attention).

• Catharsis Factor: As this version of Velma is considered a massive Jerkass Designated Hero and one of the most hated characters in the Scooby-Doo franchise (even more so than Scrappy-Doo himself), many scenes where she receives comeuppance in some fashion are usually seen as cathartic by fans of Scooby Doo.
  • In the ninth episode, Norville finally snaps and gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech after Velma accuses his dad of being the murderer and getting his house partially destroyed by a SWAT team in the process.
  • The short-but-sweet scene of Velma being rammed by a police car, causing her to eat pavement and make her face a bloody mess. Especially since she antagonized the driver in the first place.
  • Daphne beating the ever-loving shit out of Velma because, like the police officer above, she antagonized her, and in a much worse and more personal way at that by reading Daphne's diary in front of everyone.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Sheriff Cogburn is an instant fan-favorite for hitting Velma with his car, due to just how unlikable the latter is, despite the action being unjustified and borderline criminal due to Velma still being a teenager and he committed vehicular assault for breaking curfew.

Love how the second half of the latter example is basically "No we are not totally gushing towards a man hitting a teenage girl with a car because she's a jerk"

The Catharsis Factor example: I suggest asking the TRS thread, since there's ongoing cleanup there.

Ensemble Dark Horse is also character-bashing. That can go.

Edited by Berrenta on Sep 2nd 2023 at 3:39:42 AM

I cut the darkhorse subbullet and sent the Catharsis Factor stuff to the other thread.

There're multiple pages that start with "The [medium name here]". For example:

• ComicBook.Watchmen: The deconstruction of the superhero genre.
• VideoGame.Final Fantasy VII: The JRPG.
• VideoGame.Super Mario Bros 1: The Platform Game.
• VideoGame.The Legend Of Zelda I: The Action-Adventure Game.
• Film.A New Hope: The Space Opera movie.
• Franchise.Spider Man: The Wallcrawler, the Webhead and the Webslinger. The King of Taunts and Snark. The Everyman Hero. The (non-sidekick) Teen Superhero, The Heart of the Marvel Universe and Company.

Are these necessary? They sound silly and their page description already covers why it's considered an important media in history. In particular, I take issue with saying The Legend of Zelda is the action-adventure game. It is preceded by earlier Nihon Falcom role-playing games, which were very successful in its home country.

And it's basically a critical evaluation, which is ymmv. I'd say cut.

All are worth cutting, though I'd say Zelda is still important for action-adventure, in the same way there were 2D platformers like Pac-Land before Super Mario Bros., yet Mario is still a landmark series. But all that's beside the point, it should be cut as well.

Don't forget WesternAnimation.The Simpsons: The adult cartoon.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Sep 7th 2023 at 9:58:53 AM

Some of these sound like they are saying the works are the Trope Codifier of the genre, or shaped perceptions of the genre (true for FFVII). They could be rewritten in a more matter-of-fact way.

Found some more. Comic books seem to have a lot of these.

• ComicBook.Batman: The Dark Knight. The Caped Crusader. The World's Greatest Detective. The Most Dangerous Man on Earth. One half of The Dynamic Duo. The Cowl of The DCU. The Badass Normal Superhero. The Goddamn Batman.
• ComicBook.Superman: The Man of Steel. The Last Son of Krypton. Champion of the Oppressed. The Metropolis Marvel. The Man of Tomorrow. The Big Good and iconic Cape of The DCU. The Superhero.
• VideoGame.Doom: The archetypal First-Person Shooter. The Violent Video Game.
• VideoGame.Street Fighter II: The Fighting Game.
• Manga.Berserk: The Seinen Dark Fantasy manga.
• Franchise.Godzilla: The legendary king of the monsters. The atomic dinosaur. Death, the destroyer of worlds. The invincible force of nature, and the key to all coexistence. Up from the depths, 30 stories high, breathing fire, his head in the sky, GODZILLA!!! THE kaiju.

I think a few of these can be merged into paragragh below, like official nicknames "the Dark Knight" and "the Man of Steel", but I don't see the point in others. Any thoughts?

Superman's could just do with unbolding and adding "original" between "The" and "superhero".

I'm okay with the titles staying though, I don't think there's any harm in it.

I've cleaned up some of the shorter ones.

• VideoGame.Final Fantasy VII: The starting paragraph already put it best, so I rewrote "one of the most famous games of all time" into "one of the most famous Japanese role-playing games of all time".
• VideoGame.Doom: Rewrote its description to include the same trope links.
• VideoGame.The Legend Of Zelda I: Rewrote the starting paragraph to be more matter-of-fact.
• VideoGame.Street Fighter II: Its description already does a good job, so I just removed it.
• Manga.Berserk: I incorporated the trope links into the description.

I'll leave the comic books alone for the moment because I'm not too familiar with them.

The Ensemble Dark Horse example on YMMV.Velma I cut a while ago after asking on this thread has been added again because apparently I had to talk about it in the Discussion section of the page before cutting it.

Of those THE works, honestly the only one that I think is truly accurate is (ironically, given the guy edit-warring over it) is Street Fighter II, but even so I don't approve it going into the description like that.

Also removed Series.The Boys 2019: The other deconstruction of the superhero genre.

Not only is the gush not even referring to the work at hand (it's referring to the comic), a decent argument could be made that the comic isn't even a deconstruction of the superhero genre, what with being a Shallow Parody and all.

I agree it's too early to call it "The".

It's not even a deconstruction of the superhero genre, really though. Definitely not the comics and not really the show.