Removing complaining, bashing and other negativity from the wiki

I found this on the Video Games section for Magnetic Hero regarding Cloud:

• Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII. Despite the fact that he's a former soldier for Shinra, not to mention a jerk, AVALANCHE accepts his help and eventually admit him as their leader. It gets even harder to swallow when they find out that his memory of certain important events is wrong, and even when they discover that he can be mind-controlled by the Big Bad they still trust him! The most painful Idiot Ball moment is how, despite Cloud's orders not to give the Black Materia to anyone, including himself, Barret or Red XIII (depending on who you pick to hold it) will give it back to the possessed Cloud as soon as he asks, out of his sheer charisma alone.

The way it's written it seems to be a bit complainy, particularly with the phrases "even harder to swallow" and "the most painful Idiot Ball moment". Should it be rewritten?

I'm finding the YMMV page for Evil Dead (2013) rather complaininy.

I noticed that a troper called wormmonda (who strangely has been absent from since site since 2012) had made some edits on What If…? S1E6 "What If… Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?". Thing is their "edits" came off like someone who either felt like complaining about "wokeness" or just wanted to create Flame Bait. I removed the edits on the basis that they were unnecessary natter that were almost guaranteed to start a Flame War, only to notice that wormmonda had also made entries on the Discussion Page. I am aware that people have different opinions on certain subjects, and don't believe that this site should be one that bans anyone with a right-wing political point of view, but a lot of what this troper was spouting was just infuriating. I can't tell if they genuinely believe what they're spouting or if they're just trying to get a reaction out of someone for shits and giggles. The troper's 'edits' and 'arguments' can be seen on the Discussion page, and the prior history, of the aforementioned YMMV page.

Reading through that, it actually sounds like the troper has a left-wing perspective. While he is ranting about wokeness and liberals, he’s coming at it from the perspective of an “anti-woke” leftist angry at liberals for not being radical enough.

With all that said, his comments are still way overboard in terms of complaining and political ranting.

I reported it.

x5 Yeah, that definitely needs to be rewritten.

Magnetic Hero is just the place to describe how a character attracts a team. Complaining about whether or not you think they should be able to attract said team is nothing more than natter and complaining.

Has anybody bothered to check the Milli Vanilli page? From what I've seen, it has a bit of complaining, bashing and snark.

I mean, it's not that bad. The YMMV page in particular actually paints the "singers" more sympathetically.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 8th 2021 at 5:18:22 AM

Well, half of it is troping pop culture references to them (for example, that Mario cartoon appearance) and not their songs.

Edited by DongwaChan on Oct 8th 2021 at 5:34:25 AM

That can be removed, but it's not complaint-based.

Music pages often double as Creator pages, which can trope the musicians' pop culture personas, as long as it isn't remarking on them as people.

While this doesn't really feel complainy per se, I still question if this bit on YMMV.Spyro The Dragon 1998 is really necessary:

• First Installment Wins: A small subset of the community has this opinion about Spyro 1. Even disregarding the varying opinions on what came after the original classic trilogy, there are those who greatly preferred the first games' platforming focused gameplay to the more mini-game and Gameplay Roulette focus Spyro 2 and Spyro 3 would adopt, with the level designs of the latter two feeling more linear and less interesting to traverse as a byproduct. This opinion became much more vocal during latter half of The New '10s, thanks to several platformers being released that put much greater emphasis on the platforming itself over gimmicks and mini-games, which caused many to look back on Spyro 1 as being rather ahead of its time.^note And the one that did try to be a deliberate throwback to mini-game/gimmick platformers releasing to lukewarm reception at best.

At the least, the last sentence and the note can be deleted, as they're completely irrelevant.

The focus of the trope is on the first installment in a series, not bringing up completely separate entries about different games that are only in a slightly related genre.

I think what the example was trying to say was that some people think the first Spyro has aged the best because minigame/gimmicky platformers aren't really a thing anymore(?), but the games mentioned are still very different that comparing them feels like a stretch. Regardless, that note still feels like an unnecessary dig at Yooka-Laylee.

EDIT: Scratch that, it's still bogus because platformers that focused on platforming have been around long before Spyro, that's just unnecessary gushing, I've removed it.

Edited by RainbowPumpqueen on Oct 9th 2021 at 2:49:56 AM

This is on Sugar Bowl:

• PB&J Otter, to those who don't have fond memories of watching the show. The show's cheeriness and overload of songs create cavities to the ninth degree.

That looks like it was copied directly from Tastes Like Diabetes.

Found this on Opinion Myopia

• Fans of cancelled Shonen Jump series like Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru, Time Paradox Ghostwriter, or Phantom Seer can't understand why they were cancelled. Many of them assumed early on that the series was destined to become a hit, often citing "potential" as a primary reason, and have trouble imagining how anyone could genuinely dislike it. As such, when it fails to perform as well as they expect, they'll come up with surface-level excuses (it just needs more time, it's just this one plot point that's disliked, it just needs more promotion) to explain it away. Later on, when they can no longer deny that the series isn't going to last, they'll start making bad faith accusations of the Japanese readers (they just don't like its genre, they just can't understand its subject matter, they just have a bias against its source material) to rationalize its failure as illegitimate. In their minds, the series was robbed of the success it rightfully deserved, and they will not hear anything to the contrary.

While it sounds like an example, it's very long and it seems after a while it seems to devolve into complaining about the people who liked those series. Admittedly, the troper who wrote this entry mostly adds criticism in YMMV pages of minor manga series like the three listed above

The problem with that entry is that it doesn't explain anything. Why did these manga get a following on Anglophone social media while not getting traction in the magazine's readership? Also, some of these excuses might well be true: they weren't promoted for some reason, the readers didn't like the genre. As it is, it's an entry that could be applied to anything with a devoted fandom but little wider appeal. It needs something specific to those manga.

Have you messaged the troper? I feel it would be fair to invite them here (or the discussion page) to discuss it.

Will do it

That Spyro entry sounds more like Vindicated by History.

I removed the entry for the time being, and messaged Fishysaur with an overly-long explanation. Now here's another overly-long explanation. The last several days have been giving me a hard time.

Why did these series get a following on Anglophone social media? That varies a bit - Samurai 8 was because Kishimoto made it, Time Paradox Ghostwriter was for its novel premise, Phantom Seer... I'm pretty sure it was mostly just the art. Why did they not get traction in the magazine's readership? That I'm less clear on, but I'm not going to start making assumptions about it.

Now for the excuses. "Samurai 8 just needed more time," despite getting more time than a lot of series get. "Samurai 8 only failed because Japan hates sci-fi," despite Japan having many iconic sci-fi series including Dragon Ball Z, Gundam, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, and even newer titles like Edens Zero. "Time Paradox Ghostwriter is only disliked because of the Plagiarism Controversy," oversimplifying dislike of that series down to just the fact that it had in-universe plagiarism and ignoring anything beyond that, like the lack of consequences. "Phantom Seer just needed more promotion," as if just giving it some more color pages or a cover feature would magically induce success. A weird one was "Phantom Seer failed despite having 100K copies in circulation, that must mean there was a conspiracy to get it cancelled right from the start," which... come on, do I really have to go over why that's nuts?

What I was generally trying to describe in that entry is a trend I've seen pop up in the last couple years, starting with Samurai 8. Western manga fans, a lot of them pretty new to the medium, put the cart before the horse. They assume a brand-new series that only has one chapter out will be the next big Shonen Jump hit, and form an overnight cult following around it. They'll talk about how much potential it has, as if potential alone makes a series great. If anyone expresses doubt, then "It's too early to judge," though only if that judgement is negative. Now, what the cult following doesn't realize is that they're a vocal minority, and the series isn't actually that popular outside their community. It fails to find success, and ends up getting the axe. However, the more outspoken members of the community can't accept that, and start looking for something to blame.

I'm not just saying it to be mean, I'm describing a phenomenon I've seen play out four times now. Samurai 8, Time Paradox Ghostwriter, Phantom Seer, and Red Hood is going the same way. The problem isn't that people like these series and want/wanted them to do well, the problem is how fanatical a lot of those people tend to be.

Edited by MaximumBurnination on Oct 10th 2021 at 11:03:37 AM

I have been informed that I am an idiot, and a Vocal Minority would not work for Opinion Myopia. The entry stays gone.

Regarding the Evil Dead entries from above, as someone who knows nothing about the movie, here are my thoughts:

• Ass Pull: Is a ZCE, needs expanding.
• Idiot Plot:
  • First one doesn't sound too complainy, though the "Okay" at the beginning sounds like Word Cruft one would use when ranting. But would the others' actions really be considered "idiotic" here? I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder, so I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.
  • This is really long as it is and reeks of someone wanting to rant. I'd probably just condense it to, "The people of the opening scene, well aware of how dangerous the Necronomicon is, decide to wrap it in barbed wire and leave it out on an open table for anyone to found, rather than simply hiding it somewhere deep within the forest where it's much more unlikely to be find." But I thought this was for when the majority of the characters in the work act like idiots; if it's a single moment of idiocy, wouldn't that just be What An Idiot?
• The Scrappy: No idea on the actual fan reception for this character, but I'd probably bring her up to the Scrappy cleanup thread if she hasn't been already, just so we know this is a widely held opinion. "For some" is needless Word Cruft, anyways.
• What An Idiot: Are these entries required to be written in the "You'd Expect/Instead/The Result" format? I honestly don't know. Regardless, I'd probably just change up the order a bit and say, "Instead of heeding the warnings written within the Necronomicon not to speak or write any of the incantations, Eric thoughtlessly cuts through the barbed wire and tears open the trash bag wrapped around it, then proceeds to read the incantations written inside, dooming himself and everyone else in the process", or something along those lines. Oh, and un-caps that caps lock, of course.

Edited by PacificGreen on Oct 11th 2021 at 11:03:26 AM

So there seems to be a trend with widely hated works, that information will be falsely or even intentionally misinterpreted to make the hated subject seem worse than it actually is.

• Ride to Hell: Retribution
  • Jerkass: At one point, Jake encounters a heavily inebriated woman complaining about her boyfriend, Orson. Instead of having sex with her like with every other girl with bad ex-boyfriends, he dares her and encourages her to down an entire bottle of alcohol, causing the woman to pass out.

Like this entry, I just watched the scene on youtube, Jake avoids her come-ons as she's drunk, looks surprised when she takes up his dare, futilely tries to take the bottle away when she takes up his word and finally worried steadies after she passes out.

And another one from the same page.

• Seen in-game. A group of miners automatically assume Jake is Devil's Hand because he's a biker, and start a fistfight with him over the damage the Devil's Hand has done to their community. Jake proves his innocence by murdering them all.

Again the cutscene shows Jake sparing the miners regardless of what the player did, even the Pet The Dog entry later on the page mentions this.

• After defeating a bunch of miners who confused him for a member of the Devil's Hand and attacked him, Jake returns to the first miner he met and spares his life after interrogating him for the location of the next boss, saying he understands why they don't trust bikers. Whether this works or not depends on whether the player beat the miners with melee in an ambiguously non-fatal way like the game intended, or if the player gunned them all down because it's easier.

So it seems this is a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation rather then the main character killing random innocents as the game expected the player not to use weapons on the miners.

• From Sonichu
  • Even after her Freudian Excuse (having never been loved herself) is revealed to her adversary, he still beats her into a state of paralysis.

The character is Slaweel. However doing a basic search on google shows the protagonist of Sonichu did not beat her into a state of paralysis, but merely did a Videogame/Pokemon electric attack, with Slaweel just getting the Paralyze Standard Status Effect from Pokemon. For reference's sake, Paralyze in Pokemon makes a Pokemon temporarily unable to attack but they can move and it is very reversible.

Contrary to the claims on the main and YMMV page about it being A Fate Worse Than Death, she stands up after being hit with it and outright says she's ok.

Also looking at lot of the 4kids pages, they play up the censorship to make it look more extreme then it actually was.

I did a rewrite of Sonic X, as it kept saying Maria wasn't killed in the dub, when in actuality, closely examining the dialogue shows she still died just with "lost" and "taken away" used instead of words like "dead" or "killed." Note they refer to the "only survivor" and talk about how young the character was, as well as the fact that a gun was last seen pointed at Maria in the flashback.

Basically it was Never Say "Die" in effect rather than Spared By Adaptation.

There's probably way more too. I think Stardust the Super Wizard may have some example as well, so I might check.

Edited by Monsund on Oct 11th 2021 at 3:08:05 AM

Came across this in Pacifist Run:

• Prior to its release, the developers of Cyberpunk 2077 promised that the game could be played without killing anyone, and it does indeed offer multiple ways to neutralize enemies without killing them. The problem with all of them is that this is essentially an Informed Ability. Blunt weapons for instance are categorized nonlethal, but bludgeoning people with baseball bats, steel pipes or cybernetic arm implants capable of punching holes in car engine blocks would almost certainly kill the victim in Real Life. Even less convincing are the eye and/or weapon mods that make all weapons nonlethal without actually changing how they work. This explicitly includes ordnance like 4-gauge shotguns, massive anti-materiel rifles, frag grenades, and all sorts of full-auto bullet hoses. And then there's a sidequest that involves absolutely, definitely blowing up a few dozen people with a Hover Tank's main gun. Granted, this one is optional, but only for as long as you don't care about getting what most players consider the game's best ending.

This entry seems to be complaining about how the nonlethal options are unrealistic more than the fact they are, in fact, nonlethal and allow for the Pacifist Run. Also that last bit about the hovertank seems nattery, especially sicne it notes the mission is option and, thus, perfectly avoidable for a Pacifist Run.