User blog:Bobdave/Blog about some trivia things

I initially wasn't going to make this a blog because I thought it could seem like I was overreacting about things but I was urged to by Nail and Teddy so ye, I think this is sorta necessary-ish. There's a tl;dr at the bottom if you can't be bothered to read this unnecessarily long thing XP

It's about the trivia relating to "the longest verse of any one rapper". Our current trivia, which I tried to change recently, claims that the "longest" verse of a rapper is a three-way tie between Stephen King, William Wallace and Walt Disney at 18 lines. My belief is that this is inaccurate due to many of Wallace and King having shortened lines.

For example

Look at ya, with your little blousey outfit / Looking like a stiffer white dick than your monument

Compared to:

'I'll knock your face off your moola! / Alba gu bràth! Gu bràth! Hoo-rah! Hoo-rah!'

and

'Masque of the Red Death: barely blood curdling, Pit and the Pendulum: not even unnerving / Perving on your first cousin when she's thirteen years old? Now that's disturbing'

Compared to:

Pouty little poet with an opiate affliction / I'm a workaholic with a fiction addiction

The first pair of "lines" in each set are normal-length. Each individual "line" takes up 2 bars in an instrumental like all other normal-length "lines". (E.g. You can't rhyme against the dark side of the force, why even bother?).

Then the second pair of "lines" in each set are half-length, taking up 1 bar of an instrumental per "line". (E.g. ''Of all the scientific minds in history). ''

I have written the word "line" in quotes because I have been told that the Wiki uses a system which is that lines separate rhymes. A flawed system for two key reasons.

One: There are parts of verses like Copperfield's

Got the slim fingers that were built for sleights / You're a chunky stuntman dressed in tights / You talk shit about your hero, that ain't right / But you can look up to me now, I know you like heights

and parts of verses like Thor's

You can keep your astronomers, I'll sail with the conquerers / For thousands of kilometers discovering the continents

These both have rhymes that fall in the same place in the lines but Thor's lines are counted as two while Copperfield's would probably be counted as four simply because of the flow that he had been using throughout the verse. If this separated by rhymes rule is really a rule then Thor's verse should be counted as four lines. My point is that it's a sketchy definition.

Two: The trivia is about the longest verse, so surely it should take into account shortened lines. All of Disney's lines are consistent in length and it is practically beyond debate that he has 18 lines. King and Wallace, however, have these shortened lines that mean that even if you count them as lines in themselves and still say that King and Wallace have 18, their verses are still shorter relative to the instrumental and the time they take up, so Disney still has the longer verse.

Conclusion: I have two ideas to change this. The first one is using the word bars to describe length, so Disney in fact had 36 bars while King had 20 and Wallace had 24. This might, however, get confusing for some, so my second idea is to just use the word line to describe the full-length ones and treat two half-length lines as one, so Disney would have 18, King would have 10 and Wallace would have. As someone who studies music and poetry and also twitches every time he sees the trivia I think we should change it. Also, as a Wiki we should provide trivia that isn't confusing or misleading to anyone. Wow, I wrote a lot for one small thing at the bottom of a page, oops. I appreciate you even reading this much. But yeah, I don't know, it seems like the most logical way to go about it. Comment your thoughts and stuff.

Also, extra-quick side thing: I also think we should change the trivia on "longest battles" to the actual time taken by the battle because Henson vs Lee is certainly not longer than East vs West and Spielberg vs Hitchcock. I don't know whether this would be between the beginning of the video and the appearance of the endslate or between the end of the intro and beginning of the outro but yeah, I think it should be changed

tl;dr - Disney's verse is longer than King's and Wallaces so we should change the way we use the word "line" in the trivia / use the word "bars" instead of lines so that it doesn't mislead or confuse people. Also we shouldn't call Henson vs Lee the longest battle cuz 2 minutes of outro.

<3