NATTER ALERT!

Should I remove it then?

Edited by Bullman on Aug 17th 2020 at 4:29:57 AM

Yes, please do so.

And the natter is gone.

Is this bit on Refrain from Assuming too conversational or is it OK? (Colored the problem area)

• The first song in Act II of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is officially titled "My Eyes", but is often referred to as "On the Rise". There was a gap of several months between the release of the video and the release of the soundtrack and song titles.
  • Most of Doctor Horrible has that problem, due to the aforementioned gap between the release of the musical and the release of official titles for the songs.
  • In all honesty, the entire production is full of this. "Penny's Song" or "Story of a Girl"? And just how are you supposed to name the Bad Horse Choruses? Not to mention that despite "Brand New Day" being the closer of Act II, the opener of Act III, "So They Say", ends on "Or is this a brand new day?" Sure, we know all of it now, but...
    • To clear up confusion: the official titles (according to the soundtrack albums) are "Penny's Song", "Bad Horse Chorus" and "Bad Horse Chorus (Reprise)".
    • Also, reportedly, Joss Whedon will break down and cry if you call it "Laundry Day". It's "My Freeze Ray".

That Example Indentation is terrible. One example per bullet point, and all on the same level, please.

Edited by HighCrate on Aug 18th 2020 at 9:30:04 AM

That last bullet...what?

Honestly, I’d nuke all but the first bullet and close it with “other songs have this issue as well.” The rest is so poorly written as to be incomprehensible.

Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab on Aug 19th 2020 at 6:33:09 AM

I'd second that.

Is this sub-bullet on Epic Rap Battles of History unnecessary to anybody else? Not only does it have way more detail than what feels necessary for the example, delving more in-depth into the historical context, but it seems to defend the bombing of Japan (rather than just describe the character's perspective on said event) which feels like an extremely contentious point. The first bullet still needs more context but that can be solved with a sentence or two describing the character's point of view.

• I Did What I Had to Do: Invoked almost word-for-word by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.
  • Unlike Thanos, who was (in the MCU) a Well-Intentioned Extremist, Oppenheimer developed the atomic bomb because the alternative was far more worse. As the bombs were completed, Japan remained an island fortress, where every citizen was expected to give their lives for their Emperor. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a last-ditch HOPE that an invasion of Japan would be avoided. Meanwhile, the plans for Operation Downfall were being drawn up, a sequenced series of invasions that would be the largest military operation ever conducted, even to this day, and prolong the war by at least a year while adding millions more to the death toll. The last stage of the invasions, a direct assault on Tokyo itself that would have made D-Day look like a family vacation by comparison, had the end goal of capturing the Emperor to force him to surrender. If the Emperor died or managed to escape, the resulting hostile occupation of Japan would claim countless more lives in the decades to come.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 23rd 2020 at 4:16:50 AM

^ Would this work?

• I Did What I Had to Do: Invoked almost word-for-word by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer's feelings about the bomb were mixed: he helped develop the bomb because the alternative — a protracted land war against Japan — was all but certain to be far worse for both sides. However, following the bombing of Nagasaki, he argued that atomic weapons should be banned.

Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab on Aug 25th 2020 at 4:06:46 AM

I’ve found some possible examples of natter on the pages for Final Fantasy (video game) and Final Fantasy (characters). The author refers to himself as “I” in the article a lot, and overall has a way more personal tone than most articles on the site. I don’t doubt that he means well, but directing him to some of the site’s guidelines on natter may be a good idea.

Edited by EthanLac on Aug 25th 2020 at 7:16:45 AM

It's an improvement, though I don't want to turn the entry into a history lesson either way. Just add enough historical context to make his portrayal in the battle make sense for that trope.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 25th 2020 at 10:47:20 AM

• I Did What I Had to Do: Invoked by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, in reference to the fact that its creation prevented a protracted land war against Japan, which was almost certain to be an even bloodier outcome.

In particular, I see that there's a bunch of Walkthrough Mode on the characters page. I'll see if I can cut it down.

On the work page description for Avengers: Endgame, the following was changed from this:

to this:

Is the added part (which I've bolded) necessary?:

It's not. We also don't have anything from Word of God that suggests that Allegiant's bombing led to the renaming.

Is the last sentence on the following example from The Batman (2021) necessary?:

• WTH, Costuming Department?: Robert Pattinson eschews the well-groomed look for Bruce Wayne that other actors have adhered to and has lank hair that reaches his eyes. When combined with his pale complexion and slightly hunched posture, he looks more like the Scarecrow than Bruce Wayne. When he takes his cowl/helmet off, he looks like the Winter Soldier thanks to not having his eyeshadow magically disappear when he takes off the cowl like the previous Batmen. Although, one could argue it could indicate Bruce's still fresh rage and the toll it's taken on him by his sheer dedication to his life's mission, in addition to Gotham's ever worsening portrayals.

On Loads and Loads of Loading:

• The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) games were notorious for huge numbers of loading times for almost everything - including menus, 10 second long puzzles and single lines of dialogue, without voice acting. ...LOADING...
  • The culprit appears to be the game loading things that did not need to be loaded — during the first fight with Silver, the game loads the entire city, sans people and bridges, even though the actual fight takes place in an area the size of a city block^note And just to ice the cake, boss fights involve two loading screens. One for a 5-second in-engine cutscene of the boss showing off to the camera, then again to load the actual boss fight. Everything we just said about loading the extraneous data applies to BOTH loading screens! ...LOADING... The loading times actually don't last that long (about 16 seconds on average), but there are TONS of them. ...LOADING... One of those loading screens provides the page image.
  • For a more basic overview, a few Something Awful forumites kept track of the game's load times during a single-sitting Let's Play of this game: The sum of all the game's load screen time was nearly two and a half hours, in a game that took them twenty hours and sixteen minutes to beat, or eleven percent of the overall play time. To put that into perspective you could watch The Dark Knight in the time it takes for all that loading (not including credits).
  • While two and a half hours is a realistic estimate of how long you will look at loading screens in a single playthrough, given the amount of times you will likely die, this video shows the absolute bare minimum of loading screens you have to sit through in the game. It totals a whopping hour and fifteen minutes, which means that normal play doubles the amount of loading.
  • There's the constant problem inherent with doing the challenges provided by random passersby. First you'll have a conversation, where you choose to accept the challenge. Then there'll be a loading screen that lasts something like thirty seconds so that the challenge can tell you what to actually do, in a single textbox that you can read in three seconds. Then there's another, longer loading screen so you can actually do the challenge. Then if you fail, which you will likely do, you'll get another loading screen so that the person who gave you the challenge can tell you that you've failed, and then the game loads again to put you back to where you started before accepting the challenge. This means that every failure in a challenge adds an additional four loading screens on top of the minimum four. This isn't even considering the town missions with multiple parts.
  • Somehow, there's a single exception to this in the entire game; one of Shadow's missions, where one has to drive a buggy on a highway to destroy some obstacles, only has two load times. The mission giver tells you what to do, you accept, load, do the mission, get the ranking (or not if you fail), load, back in town. Even if it's still got the painful loading, that's only two compared to the usual four-five of every single other town mission in the game.

Edited by ccorb on Aug 26th 2020 at 6:41:06 AM

I checked, and that entire thing is 502 words. Never seen natter that long before.

Well, what do you expect?

Anyway, take this, natter! It's No Use for you being an eyesore for readers!

Let me try to trim it...

• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was notorious for huge numbers of loading times for almost everything - including menus, 10 second long puzzles and single lines of dialogue, without voice acting. This is due to the game loading unnecessary assets such as most of the hub world, even in boss fights that only take place on a single city block.

Edited by ccorb on Aug 26th 2020 at 7:57:07 AM

What Were They Selling Again? is very conversational at certain parts. Lots of the sub-bullet points that are actually relevant can probably be merged together.

Good.

On Well-Intentioned Replacement:

• The Music Man has Harold Hill painting a mental picture of the forthcoming band in fancy perfect uniforms in order to get everybody to support the band. The ones that really come are basic red coats and white pants that just barely qualify. I suppose it's an Inversion, as it's a Knockoff, but not Good Natured by any definition.

• When The Powerpuff Girls decide to create a fourth sister, this trope fully comes into play. The creation of the Rowdyruff Boys is sort of an inversion of this, isn't it?

(And for the first one, since it's potholed and capitalized I assume "Good Natured" might have been meant to be a trope, but not sure which one was intended since there's no trope, including cut ones/redirects with that name)

I'm grateful for the help cleaning up the page on Final Fantasy, but it seems like some of the natter has regenerated, and by the same person who originally wrote it. Here's an example entry, early in the article:

• Boring, but Practical: This game is definitely a lot harder than most RPGs nowadays, but the more Warriors in the party, the easier it gets. Thief and Monk are far more vulnerable at early levels, and it takes some time to make them really shine. The Warrior, on the other hand, is a formidable tank from start to finish, and getting White Magic after the class change is a real boon. The Ninja has a critical hit rate advantage, but the Knight gets a whole extra hit which is going to cause more damage. As soon as the Ninja gets a fourth hit to even things up, that's the same time the Knight gets a fifth hit, maintaining the gap. Warrior is also cheap to maintain, seeing as most of his equipment is found, not bought.

Or, later on:

• Fragile Speedster: Their Defense is only slightly better than a Mage's. Even though they don't get hit as often, they tend to go splat almost as reliably as Mages get splat, and most bosses have godlike accuracy and don't miss too often. (Thief is actually worse than White Mage in that regard, since Thief doesn't have Blink.) Their Attack power is low, they're limited to second-rate swords, and they have very few armor options. Even at max level, they wind up with low average HP. The only thing Ninja trumps anyone in is Evasion: Ninja has very high agility and will likely attack before anyone else, and enemy attacks will often miss. About the only other benefit is that they can cast Haste.

Do the bits from Doctor Who S37 E1 "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" that I've bolded look like they could be removed with minimal effect to the examples?:

• Ass Pull: After leaving us wondering for months how the Doctor would get out of falling high above the Earth... she doesn't. She simply hits at full speed and then casually gets up without a scratch (though as she's within the first 15 hours of regeneration this is to be expected), with zero explanation or even any of the witnesses reacting like this is the slightest bit odd. Granted, they have no idea she'd fallen from orbit rather than, say, helicopter-altitude, and they have much stranger things happening around them at the time.

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Stenza kills a drunk guy who throws a few bits of salad at him. It really serves no purpose to the rest of the story, and was apparently needed to show the Stenza having another random Kick the Dog moment. Several British fans still pointed out that this kind of thing happens all the time in places like Sheffield, and is one of the most realistic things the show has ever done.