Removing complaining, bashing and other negativity from the wiki

The main bulk of the text SoYouWantTo.Write An Ending seem to be complaining about specific works and how their endings suck. Is this really kosher?

On one hand, examining how other works failed is a good way to figure out what pitfalls you need to avoid in your own writing, since it's arguably easier to figure out what people didn't like about a thing than it is to identify the precise elements that make it work.

On the other hand... yeah, way too much of that page is just straight-up essays breaking down in far, far too much detail why the endings of certain works sucked, plus some presumptuous statements thrown in here and there, capped off with insanely long diatribes about how to fix those endings (which is... okay, even if many can agree on why an ending sucked, it's less likely that many would agree on exactly what would have fixed it).

A lot of that page could be cut and truncated to a paragraph or two of "here's why people liked the story, here's the ending, and here's how audiences felt the ending betrayed the journey; what can we learn from this?" for each example. I don't see a big problem in having examples, especially since most of the ones listed are works with entries on Ending Aversion and similar pages. Each one just needs to be less wordy with the recaps and audience reaction, and not jump the gun into becoming Fix Fic for ten paragraphs.

Edited by RacattackForce on Apr 12th 2023 at 11:58:39 AM

Bringing this up from Offending the Creator's Own. This is pretty much not an example, it's just bashing the work.

• Even people who somehow agree with or at the very least aren’t against Frank Miller’s beliefs in Holy Terror have a very hard time enjoying the comic due to the terrible art, dialogue, and pacing.

Yeah. It's nothing to do with the views presented in the work, just a criticism of quality. I think it can be cut.

I agree. Completely misused.

How would one go about cleaning that up though? That's a lot of stuff to cut and that seems like something that needs more discussion.

I think their was talk of banning the examples on how to pages. This conversation would be Better their.

I think the current description for Character Check is too negative, painting it as a bad trope when Tropes Are Tools. I feel like the following would be better:

Which thread would that be?

Here's an entry for Glurge that I edited from YMMV.Americas Got Talent. I'm not sure if I over corrected here, and I'd like some feedback. Here's the original:

• Christina and Ali Christensen, two decent-but-not-great singers who made it into the Top 10 on the basis of their sob story. You see, they're SISTERS with CYSTIC FIBROSIS and they're GOING TO DIE and Christina's ONLY THIRTEEN and they're SO INSPIRATIONAL.

Here's my rewrite:

• Christina and Ali Christensen, a singing duo who made it into the Top 10 on the basis of both of them, as well as their two other siblings, having cystic fibrosis. The two also say that they started performing as a duo for their older sister's funeral.

Is this good, or does it need work?

I would cut the whole thing. Applying Glurge to real people seems pretty bad to me. The page itself doesn't explicitly have any restrictions about real life examples, but there arent any there, either.

The line about them going so far based on sympathy and not talent seems pretty gross, especially considering how subjective music is and how American Idol has never been some objective arbiter of quality.

I mean, to be fair, it's also very true that a lot of contestants are either told to embellish their backstories or are chosen specifically for their backstories. It's a reality show at the end of the day. You can't trust any of it.

I've seen this under Marvel Puzzle Quest: While many of the minion characters can be annoying (see Goddamn Bats below), one stands head and shoulders above all of them:GODDAMN MUSCLE GRUNTS. First off, their primary ability, which they spam the board with (with a 2 turn countdown), is Threaten, which creates two powerful Attack Tiles (and too powerful Attack Tiles). This isn't SO bad at lower levels, but at higher levels letting even one of these abilities go off can lead to disaster. More than one, and before you know it, your team is being one-shot by each match doing thousands of damage cascading into a total party kill. And even if you're fighting just minions (who can't make matches), their other ability, Tommy Gun, hits the whole party. It has a five turn countdown, but combined with the Threaten Tiles, just one going off can kill your whole team. The Muscle goons also scale horrendously as their level goes up: even maxed out boosted 5-star characters can be ripped to shreds by them if playing on a difficulty that allows them to scale into the Level 400 range, mainly because... To top it all off, they have massive amounts of HP you have to knock down before their abilities, almost always spawned in out of the way places, utterly wreck your face. And while there ARE characters who can counter these issues (steal Enemy buff tiles or destroy them, lessen team damage, etc), there's no guarantee you have them, or have them at sufficient strength. In conclusion, it honestly seems like if the Muscle goons escaped the game, they'd take over the whole Marvel universe in short order.

The end can be cut off and I think the whole thing could stand to be shortened tremendously.

Shorten it to "The Muscle Grunts are generally difficult to control, especially at higher levels", or something like that.

I found this on Recap.The Simpsons S 28 E 15 Kamp Krustier:

• Retcon: And how. This episode contains so many inexplicable changes from the source material that it is heavily debatable how much of a sequel this episode even is. Despite having the same writer as the original episode, it does not show. We cannot expect a writer to remember every detail about a previous work, especially from almost a quarter-century later, but we would have expected him to have at least watched the original episode before doing a sequel.
  • To start, there is a Happy Ending Override...in the original, Krusty saves the campers (despite their suffering coming from his own negligence) and takes them to Tijuana, and all is forgiven and forgotten...until this episode. In this episode, the kids are finally returned, but they are scarred and shaken, as if the trip to Tijuana never happened.
  • The kids are seen canoeing in a flashback, and it becomes important later, but a scene in the original shows the rivers too dangerous to canoe.
  • Marge and Homer act as though the rebellion never happened...even though they already saw the news report about the camp being taken over by Bart.
  • Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney are seen rebelling against the camp, even though they were the counselors against whom the campers were rebelling and were reported as missing during the chaos.
  • Mr. Black is nowhere to be seen or even mentioned, despite being the cause of all of it.
  • Nelson is seen coming off the bus in this episode, despite not being a camper in the original episode.
  • Sideshow Mel was seen in a camp flashback, even though he was clearly not present at the camp in the original episode, nor would there have been any reason for him to be there.
  • Most importantly, the slave labor, cruelty, and starvation the campers went through is never mentioned. Any memories of the camp are to things that never happened in the original episode, and were not really cruel except in a hyperbolic satirical way. For example, instead of Lisa saying they were fed gruel and made wallets, she brings up how they were shown the Parent Trap or were forced to watch the camp production of Phantom of the Opera.

I play Marvel Puzzle Quest (and have noticed that those pages are kind of a mess in general), so I think I can rewrite that example Edit: looks like it's already been edited on the page, so nvm

Edited by Afterword on Apr 15th 2023 at 7:37:23 AM

Cut it all. It's just a point-by-point nitpicking.

Does anyone think this DracoInLeatherPants example sounds more like a vent about the fans? Note this page was brought up before.

Definitely reads like venting, or at least overly snarky. I do believe the character is an actual example though, based on what I know.

Edited by RacattackForce on Apr 16th 2023 at 10:21:38 AM

I feel like the Going Cosmic description leans a little too negative with it saying it's usually Writer on Board and often Jumping the Shark, even though the trope isn't an inherently bad thing.

Also the page for Opera; while the main page fine and balanced itself, most of the quotes page is snarking about opera and saying why the whole medium is bad.

Edited by molokai198 on Apr 16th 2023 at 10:38:50 AM

Re: Opera: No objections with removing the bad quotes.

Edited by Berrenta on Apr 17th 2023 at 7:56:30 AM

These entries could maybe be changed to Series Continuity Error, with the complaining in the first paragraph cut out (something simple like "Despite being by the same writer, there are many inconsistencies with the episode it is intended to be a sequel to").

Bringing these up from the YMMV page for Ballerina. I think these entries need a bit of a re-write to sound less nitpicky.

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The final confrontation between Félicie and Regine can come off as this. Not only does it cause a severe Mood Whiplash, but the scene is never referenced again and it isn't clarified what happened to Regine afterwards.
• Cliché Storm: The film features familiar character archetypes such as the dreamer, the inventor and the Alpha Bitch and a Liar Revealed story with An Aesop about believing in yourself and following your dreams.

Edited by DongwaChan on Apr 17th 2023 at 5:14:45 AM

The first one seems like misuse because it seems plot-relevant, just not properly followed up on. The second doesn't seem that complainy to me.

From YMMV.TheSimpsonsS15E18CatchEmIfYouCan:

• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The episode tries to portray Bart and Lisa’s determination to catch Homer and Marge as cruel, however the two parents just come off as lazy and selfish opting to blame their children for not being able to spend time together instead of actually trying to do it. During FAMILY movie night, instead of getting a movie for the family, Marge only brought a movie for her and Homer, which Bart and Lisa obviously didn’t enjoy. Also the two only chased after their parents because they lied to them about where they were going, not to prevent them from having fun. In fact, Bart was perfectly willing to stay in the paid for hotel room when he and Lisa were ditched by them a second time. Upon finally catching up to them, upon seeing how sad they were, they opted to spend the day by themselves so that their parent could have some alone time. Only to find that Homer and Marge had ditched them again. All in all Bart and Lisa are shown to be perfectly willing to give Homer and Marge some romantic time, their parents are just unwilling to go through the effort to make that time.

All in all, it just seems like a long-winded complaint about the episode's plot, and the troper who added it also added a "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot entry to complain about the same things as this entry does.

I might be reading too much into this, but from the first two points for Memetic Mutation for The Little Mermaid (2023). Since one of them stems from a Morbius meme, I can't help but wonder if that whole...thing is insinuating/hoping the movie will bomb.

You can also see it happen quite a bit in the comments section for the trailer for The Marvels (2023)