allybrinkenwrites

[allybrinkenwrites]

Always use protection.

So you have sex with a robotgirl/robotboy/robotenby, right?

(I phrased it slightly awkwardly because I'm making it generic as to which of you has a phallus or a hole of some kind. Could be both, neither, or one or the other)

[allybrinkenwrites]

thinking again about TvTropes and how it’s genuinely such an amazing resource for learning the mechanics of storytelling, honestly more so than a lot of formally taught literature classes

reasons for this:

basically TvTropes breaks down stories mechanically, using a perspective that’s not…ABOUT mechanics. Another way I like to put it, is that it’s an inductive, instead of deductive, approach to analyzing storytelling.

like in a literature or writing class you’re learning the elements that are part of the basic functioning of a story, so, character, plot, setting, et cetera. You’re learning the things that make a story a story, and why. Like, you learn what setting is, what defines it, and work from there to what makes it effective, and the range of ways it can be effective.

here’s the thing, though: everyone has some intuitive understanding of how stories work. if we didn’t, we couldn’t…understand stories.

TvTropes’s approach is bottom-up instead of top-down: instead of trying to exhaustively explore the broad, general elements of story, it identifies very small, specific elements, and explores the absolute shit out of how they fit, what they do, where they go, how they work.

Every TvTropes article is basically, “Here is a piece of a story that is part of many different stories. You have probably seen it before, but if not, here is a list of stories that use it, where it is, and what it’s doing in those stories. Here are some things it does. Here is why it is functionally different than other, similar story pieces. Here is some background on its origins and how audiences respond to it.”

all of this is BRILLIANT for a lot of reasons. one of the major ones is that the site has long lists of media that utilizes any given trope, ranging from classic literature to cartoons to video games to advertisements. the Iliad and Adventure Time ARE different things, but they are MADE OF the same stuff. And being able to study dozens of examples of a trope in action teaches you to see the common thread in what the trope does and why its specific characteristics let it do that

I love TvTropes because a great, renowned work of literature and a shitty, derivative YA novel will appear on the same list, because they’re Made Of The Same Stuff. And breaking down that mental barrier between them is good on its own for developing a mechanical understanding of storytelling.

But also? I think one of the biggest blessings of TvTropes’s commitment to cataloguing examples of tropes regardless of their “merit” or literary value or whatever…is that we get to see the full range of effectiveness or ineffectiveness of storytelling tools. Like, this is how you see what makes one book good and another book crappy. Tropes are Tools, and when you observe how a master craftsman uses a tool vs. a novice, you can break down not only what the tool is most effective for but how it is best used.

In fact? There are trope pages devoted to what happens when storytelling tools just unilaterally fail. e.g. Narm is when creators intend something to be frightening, but audiences find it hilarious instead.

On that note, TvTropes is also great in that its analysis of stories is very grounded in authors, audiences, and culture; it’s not solely focused on in-story elements. A lot of the trope pages are categories for audience responses to tropes, or for real-world occurrences that affected the storytelling, or just the human failings that creep into storytelling and affect it, like Early Installment Weirdness. There are categories for censorship-driven storytelling decisions. There are “lineages” of tropes that show how storytelling has changed over time, and how audience responses change as culture changes. Tropes like Draco in Leather Pants or Narm are catalogued because the audience reaction to a story is as much a part of that story—the story of that story?—as the “canon.”

like, storytelling is inextricable from context. it’s inextricable from how big the writers’ budget was, and how accepting of homophobia the audience was, and what was acceptable to be shown on film at the time. Tropes beget other tropes, one trope is exchanged for another, they are all linked. A Dead Horse Trope becomes an Undead Horse Trope, and sometimes it was a Dead Unicorn Trope all along. What was this work responding to? And all works are responding to something, whether they know it or not

[allybrinkenwrites]

The 84 Series

[allybrinkenwrites]

Oh no I forgot to wear the antistatic strap and now my computer is pregnant

[allybrinkenwrites]

Oh! I know this one. I was real close with one of his family members. Larry was actually a majorly religious guy, so not surprised to see something like this in Perl.

i'm sorry what??? this sounds like the intersection of robotgirl and divinity posting, not a real coding practice

[allybrinkenwrites]

The problem with my polycule is that I've got a wolfgirl GF and a goatboy BF and I'm carrying this cabbage so it's basically impossible to cross rivers

[allybrinkenwrites]

you gotta be as gay as possible on the computer otherwise alan turing died for nothing

[allybrinkenwrites]

being anticapitalist with a strong work ethic is so fucking embarrassing like my managers don't deserve this

[allybrinkenwrites]

your lazy ass is not joining my commune to make shitty resin jewelry we actually invited you here because we are going to eat you. yeah sorry. yeah we already decided

[allybrinkenwrites]

japanese game dev in the 90s: hey dude can you make some music for our game about anime girls getting fucked sloppy style

guy who's about to push the PC-98 sound card to its absolute limit and create the most heartachingly beautiful music you've ever heard: Yeah okay

[allybrinkenwrites]

That exists. It’s called a CEO.

being a data analyst suuuuucks i dont WANT to help a company improve i want to make a company WORSE. they should have a position called data shitter who just makes everything suck for the company . thats what i want to be

[allybrinkenwrites]

Honestly it's fine to be sex obsessed. It's fine to rail your own ass once a day. It's fine to be ace. It's fine to not want sex even mentioned. It's fine to be kinky. It's fine to want gross or dangerous or unethical things to happen to you. It's fine to be vanilla. Do what you want. I'm tired of everyone nitpicking eachother. Go outside. Take a nap. Have a snack.

[allybrinkenwrites]

Right-wingers will be like "we can't spend money on blue-sky public transit solutions! We need those funds to fix the roads!" and then not fix the roads

[allybrinkenwrites]

TiL (click to go to the thread, which probably has more interesting tidbits I missed).

Bonus:

[allybrinkenwrites]

In the library I have been reading lots of books about pesticides and related topics. The library's physical print collection skews toward older books, so there are lots of books over 50 years old.

I will share the findings in subsequent reblogs, but for now I'll say this: Filmmakers and novelists working in the most gory, nauseating crevices of the horror genre could never dream something more twisted, disgusting and absolutely blood-curdling as a book about Turfgrass Lawns from the 1960's.

[allybrinkenwrites]

A quite insightful quote from Stormy Daniels.

[allybrinkenwrites]

I cant believe this tweet is how I find out