Wall of Text: Difference between revisions

** In the same tradition (though more tongue-in-cheek, obviously) Chris Sims of the Invincible super-blog does a feature he calls [http://www.the-isb.com/?cat=201 Warrior Wisdom Fridays] that feature one of Ultimate Warrior's characteristically incoherent Wall Of Text rants, plus a hilarious [[Alt Text]] haiku summary.

* Dave Sim's ''[[Cerebus]]'' went beyond the [[Walls of Text]] and into chronic [[Author Filibuster]] when the comic itself was repeatedly put on hold to make space for multi-page misogynistic rants of plain text. It does get over that phase eventually<ref> the walls of text, not the misogyny</ref>, then later falls back into it.

* [[Don Rosa]]'s earlier works (particularly ''The Pertwillaby Papers'') had tight-packed expository speech bubbles. Not so much in his Disney comics, though; the "Disney remakes" of his stories are a good example of how one can thin the information flow without really affecting the ''net amount'' of information conveyed to the reader.

* The online archive of the surreal Brown University newspaper comic ''Burble'' is fully aware of its large bits of dialogue; despite its high quality compared to most other strips at the time, it was mocked (and later self-mocked) for "too many words".

* ''[[Mallard Fillmore]]'' often doesn't even draw the character's ''body'', instead crowding piles and piles of text around a floating disembodied head.

** ''[[This Modern World]]'' is the same.

* [[EC Comics]] had a pattern: the dialogue was put on the page before the artwork was. The writer would occasionally write his script directly onto the storyboards as he came up with it. This often meant that around 90% of the panel was pure text, with the art shoehorned into what was left. Some comics would end with a panel that was nothing ''but'' text to explain the story.

** The exception are the stories that Harvey Kurtzman drew, as well as the ones he wrote and storyboarded for other artists.

* The problem has been endemic long enough in the comics industry to make famous one particular work offering a way to patch it: "[http://joeljohnson.com/archives/2006/08/wally_woods_22.html Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work], or Some Interesting Ways to Get Some Variety into Those Boring Panels Where Some Dumb Writer Has a Bunch of Lame Characters Sitting Around and Talking for Page After Page!"

* In a recent interview, celebrated comic scribe [[Larry Hama]], a penciler turned writer, observed that the format of Marvel Comics' books in the 1970s and early 1980s was often guilty of this, bemoaning the overuse of captions. "You'd have a caption covering 3/4 of a panel, [[Narrating the Obvious|describing the content of the panel it was covering!]]"

 

 

* Nobel prize Jose Saramago loved to to this, do not try to imitate him, he got a nobel for a reason.

* The literary style of maximalism emphasizes the author writing down ''everything'' that crosses his/her mind in the interest of painting a more "complete" picture of the author's/character's mindset.

 

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** The guessing-game personalities when Whose Line started in Britain were extremely simple ("a pirate," etc.), and gradually became longer and more convoluted over the next 18 seasons.

 

 

== Manga ==

* As a self-styled modern day Sherlock Holmes, ''[[Detective Conan]]'' more often than not feature walls (and walls and walls) of text while [[Pull the Thread|pulling the thread]] to reveal who did it. [[Kindaichi Case Files|Kindaichi]] can be just as wordy, but he at least has the courtesy to break up his walls of text.

* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' often falls into this, and even plays this one for comedy once, having Yue go off on lengthy [[Expospeak]] tangents only to discover no one was listening.

 

== Video Games ==

* If you make a rather wordy post on the ''[[City of Heroes]]'' forum, some people will complain they were killed by your wall of text. Some [[Troll|Trolls]] will engage in wall of text contests to see if they can overload the forum display.

{{quote| Wall of Text crits you for [[Over Nine Thousand|9999]] damage.<br />

* In one stage of ''[[Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune]] 2'', [[Joke Character|Gatchan]] lets off two consecutive blocks of texts so big that ''they obscure your vision''. Taken [[Up to Eleven]] in ''Maximum Tune 3'' and its upgrades, where not only does he have ''four'' blocks of text, he has the gall to say them NEAR THE END OF THE STAGE, making you more likely to lose.

* In the early text-based game [[Colossal Cave]], the description of the volcano.

* It is apparently a popular joke in [[Touhou Project]] doujinshi to have Nitori or someone else go to lengthy descriptions (usually of technology) to the other characters wo more likely than not are not actually listening. One doujin parodied it by having Alice get pushed against a wall by the huge speech bubble.

* When [[Cloudcuckoolander|Rin]] in ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'' starts rambling, it's shown in the largest and fullest textbox in the game. [[No Punctuation Period|With barely if any punctuation.]]

== Web Comics ==

* [[Web Comics]] usually [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] their frequent large blocks of exposition, often in the narration or titling:

** ''[[Penny Arcade (Webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]'''s "[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10 I Hope You Like Text]." This exchange was deemed ''[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|so awesome]]'' that it was put on a ''shirt'' which sells, apparently, very well.

*** ''DMFA'' frequently uses the phrase "Wall of Text" during big exposition parts. Occasionally, you need to wear construction helmets.

*** Fa'Lina recommends this as the preferred way to avoid having your mind read by cubi. Memorize a boring wall of text, such as legal babble.

** ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' notes that [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1538#comic "When people think 'funny', they think 'tons of words!'"]

** A similar device is the infamously named ''buckleybox'', a smaller but equally superfluous [[Wall of Text]] used to reiterate something that ''[[Don't Explain the Joke|should already appear in the actual comic]]'' visually, but may not due to odd dialogue placement, poor art not conveying it, or the assumption [[Viewers are Morons]].

* ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]'' does this a lot, like in [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2003/09/30/episode-336-elves-love-talking/ this] strip. Note the title of the strip itself. And yes, there are more extreme ones.

* ''[[Goodwill Heroes]]'' had an instance where [http://www.goodwill-heroes.net/06-06-2011/bk01-ch02-pg03/ the Librarian] belittled the main cast for raising their voices in a library.

* ''[[Dresden Codak]]'' has been accused of this ever since Aaron Diaz [[Cerebus Syndrome|added an actual plot]]. Possibly the strongest case can be found [http://www.dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_041.html here].

* ''[[Silent Hill Promise]]'' The comic, like the [[Adventure Game|adventure games]] it apes, supplements the images with plenty of narration.

{{quote| '''Warning:''' The following comic contains a lot of words. Those who are frightened or intimidated by reading are encouraged to seek entertainment elsewhere. [[Viewers are Morons|We recommend a shiny ball of foil]].}}

* ''[http://www.viruscomix.com/subnormality.html Subnormality]'' '''is''' walls of text (except when it's [[Text Plosion]]... Or totally wordless). It's right there in the sub-title: "Comix with too many words since 2007."

** This trope is referenced by name at the start of [http://www.viruscomix.com/page494.html this strip].

** [http://www.viruscomix.com/page505.html This] is the most excessive example of Wall of Text ever seen. 19 panels. ''2500 words.''

** Later on lampshaded again with "[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0558.html comic way too wordy for chief grukgruk sometimes.]"

* ''[[Errant Story]]'', although it does manage to pull it off quite well with the storytelling style.

* This is a common criticism of ''[[Better Days]]'' ([[Firefly|No relation]]), made only worse when it turns up in the supplementary porn comics.

* ''[[Precocious (Webcomic)|Precocious]]'' [[Played for Laughs|plays this for laughs]]. It happens whenever Suzette goes into a rant (could be about anything from her [[Straw Feminist]] [http://www.precociouscomic.com/archive/comic/2009/03/24 philosophies] to [http://www.precociouscomic.com/archive/comic/2009/03/23 someone forgetting her name and believing it to be snobbery])

** It also uses [[Wall of Blather]].

* In ''[[Pastel Defender Heliotrope]],'' [[Unicorn Jelly|and possibly every other Jennifer Diane Reitz work,]] everyone communicates via text walls. [[Up to Eleven|Every page, every panel, every word bubble.]] [[Rimshot|There are enough walls of texts in there to keep out Mongol invaders!]]

* ''[[Far Out There]]'' had a very bad case of this [http://www.drunkduck.com/Far_Out_There/index.php?p=360961 in its early days.] Thankfully, the author is gradually learning to [http://www.drunkduck.com/Far_Out_There/index.php?p=614943 show, not tell.]

** In Act 6 Act 3, Homestuck [[Reconstructed Trope|actively defends its method of long-winded narration]] by having a new character who hates long stories tell her arc in bullet points and skip straight to the end, depriving the reader of almost all the interesting details. A second character, pissed off at this display of storytelling, decides to [[Call Back|recap the Ancestor Arc]] in the same bullet style, showing that while the initial version of that arc was fairly long-winded, the bullet-point style turns every character into a one-dimensional plot device and turns the narrative into a terribly-paced [[Random Events Plot]].

 

 

* Every last usage license agreement. Ever. Including the one that is the picture at the time of this writing.

* [[UNIX]] manual pages.

{{quote| Zola the Gorgon (commenter on blog): "I think someone wrote this ad by running a mission statement generator (e.g. http://www.isms.org.uk/mission... and [[They Just Didn't Care|cutting and pasting all the results into a solid block of text until they met their wordcount]]."}}

* The labels on bottles of [http://www.drbronner.com/dr_bronners_philosophy.php Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap] mix this with a kind of religious/philosophical/advertising version of [[Room Full of Crazy]]. (If the picture on their [http://www.drbronner.com/history_overview.php history page] is really of the late Dr. B, it would certainly [[Mad Scientist|explain a lot]].)