I very, very much wish every 3rd line didn't have {w=.5} tossed in there 3 times. It's so painful for those of us who can read quickly. The choices for the player are frustration or skip text.
for anyone else, i was frustrated enough to go digging in renpy's code...
in View.of.Family-Resurrected-0.1.7-pc\renpy\character.py go down to line 147 and you'll find this bit
if tag == "p" or tag == "w":
if not less_pauses:
self.pause_start.append(len(self.text))
self.pause_end.append(len(self.text))
self.pause_delay.append(value)
Change it to
if tag == "p" or tag == "w":
pass
no more waiting