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The excerpt in the title of this question is a comment someone made about a manga I’m reading, ブラックジャックによろしく.

I have two questions:
① What is the て preceding て綺麗事 for? Is it a typo to have two て like that in succession?
② Is イライラする an example of a verb which is based on mimetic sound?

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The て preceding 綺麗事 is the て-form of the auxiliary verb いる. Dropping the い in ている is very common in colloquial speech, I.E. 思ってる. This just gets slightly more confusing with sequential て-forms. You might think of it like this:

思う　ー＞　思っている　ー＞　思っていて。。。　ー＞　思ってて。。。

In this case the second て is just there to let the person continue their sentence. So for the sentence below

泣けばいいと思ってて綺麗事ばかりな主人公にイライラする

A very, very direct translation might look something like this:

(They) think it will be fine if they cry and are all superficial positivity, which makes (me) angry.

As for イライラする, it's certainly a mimetic. mimetic+する is a sufficiently common pattern that I don't think if I would call this a "verb based on a mimetic" as much as just a normal mimetic; the する here just describes the action of being in the state associated with the mimetic.

Edit: Please note my original interpretation of the sentence was incorrect as I misinterpreted the omitted subject for 思う. I'm using naruto's provided translation here

The protagonist thinks weeping solves everything and just talks about ideals, which pisses me off.

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    The subject of 思ってて is the 主人公, too. This protagonist is a junior resident, but he is unrealistically sympathetic to patients and weeps very often. This reviewer is saying the protagonist is a professional and should not cry. "He pushes things too far believing he can save all patients. The protagonist thinks weeping solves everything and talks only about ideal, which pisses me off."
    – naruto
    May 23, 2020 at 22:48
  • @naruto My bad, thanks for pointing this out. Something felt off to me about the elided subject switching between clauses but I didn't pay enough attention to it. Will update my answer, this is what I get for speedreading.
    – Mindful
    May 24, 2020 at 1:03
  • @naruto Missing out on these details (i.e., elided subject switching between clauses) can't be helped if one is not familiar with the manga in question, right? Also, based on naruto's translation, there were some omission of particles in the first sentence. If I try to make it closer to textbook Japanese, is （私は）担当が患者全員は生かせられると思い込んで（担当・主人公が）無茶しすぎる。Right?
    – rebuuilt
    May 24, 2020 at 1:18
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    @rebuuilt I happened to know a little about this character, but I don't think you need context to read this without changing subjects (expect for イライラする at the end). 思い込む is "to make a false assumption", and its subject is 主人公, too.
    – naruto
    May 24, 2020 at 1:29
  • I thought 思い込む just ”intensifies/emphasizes” the 思う. Oh well, I need to work on my 複合動詞. In that case, I can simplify the sentence to 担当が患者全員は生かせられると思い込んで無茶しすぎる。Right? Thank you so much for all your help!
    – rebuuilt
    May 24, 2020 at 1:40
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1) I think this is essentially a shortened form of 思っている.

2) Apparently it is. Edit: The link I've previously posted in the answer might not be accessible for everyone, it seems - it showed a Google Books preview of a page from a paper called Sounds of the Heart and Mind: Mimetics of Emotional State in Japanese by Debra J. Occhi that was published in Languages of Sentiment: Cultural constructions of emotional substrates. Here's a doi.org link that should resolve, at least (but the content is behind a paywall for me) - https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.18.

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  • I can’t access your link, it says the page is not available. :(
    – Etienne Zizka
    May 23, 2020 at 11:21

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