#Tropes are tools

[thousandyearphantombunker]

these are just my opinions. I'm not saying we have to get rid of these tropes. I just personally hate them

Tropes I hate: 'bi woman leaves man for a woman because her ex was abusive' she could've just left her ex because they were incompatible. She doesn't need her ex to be abusive in order to get into a relationship with a woman. It has weird implications. Biphobic misandrist misogynistic because honestly misandry and misogyny are two sides of the same shitty coin when it comes to this shit (a lot of misogyny comes from misandry in works like these for some reason) fun fact about bisexuals- they like both genders and don't need a tragic backstory to explain why they aren't with a dude- their sexuality is fluid naturally- this cliche tends to imply the only reason why bisexual characters identify as bi is because of trauma which oof.

Hallmark movie BS- cheating is gross. I don't care that he's your goddamned soulmate break up with boyfriend properly.

'disabled character has a special power that basically negates their disability' or 'inorder for this disabled person to have worth they must have a useful power or skill' or 'severely disabled person is a prop and only exists to be an nuisance or inspiration porn' let your blind character be blind. Let your character who has a chronic illness have symptoms of illness- outside of the ableism wtf was the point of making them disabled? For the aesthetics? Just let disabled characters be disabled. Disabled people should not have to justify existing- a disabled person's worth shouldn't be tied to a special ability that makes them useful or whatever. Disabled people do not exist to serve as inspiration to everyone. It's always 'actually that mentally impaired person is super smart and therefore they're actually worthy of respect- okay but what if they did have a low IQ? Do you still respect them? I do but I know a lot of you don't.

'hes hot so he gets a pass on being a possessive creep' no he doesn't it's gross. Tell me the truth- would you still find it hot if someone who looked like Danny devito was being possessive of you?

'its okay when a man rapes another man because it's gay and sexy' I shouldn't have to explain this one. Rape is evil- yes even if it's a sexy man doing it to another sexy man.

No more depicting racist/homophobic characters as caricatures of Appalachian rednecks or developmentally disabled people or people born of incest. It's classist ableist and perpetuates gross stigmas against these groups of people. Seriously you'll claim to be anti classism and ableism but you depict the people you don't like with those stigmatized developmental disorders or low IQs and you assume coming from poorer rural areas are automatically racist? Go fuck yourself if you write this shit. People who have low IQs aren't morally inferior to you, people who live in poor areas and possibly have worse education than you aren't morally inferior to you. Your not fighting anti intellectualism your not fighting media illiteracy your not fighting racism or homophobia- your being an asshole. People who are born out of incest are human too, stop acting like the way these people where fucking born makes them deficient. Also stop equating deformities with being evil while your at it

[rheas-chaos-motivation]

Questions to ask beta readers

General:

Were you confused at any point of the story?

What genre would you say this book is?

When did you put the story down?

Is the ending satisfying?

If you had to cut 3 scenes what would they be?

When did you feel like the story really began?

What was the last book you read before this story?

Characters:

Do you get any of the characters names confused?

Which character is your favorite?

If you had to remove a character who would you and why? (you don't have to remove the character, just make sure their role is meaningful)

Which character do you relate to the most?

Which character do you relate to the least?

Do the characters feel real?

Are character relationships believable?

Are the goals clear and influence the plot?

Are the characters distinct (voice, motivations, etc)

Setting:

Which setting was clearest to you?

Which setting was the most memorable?

Am including enough/too much detail?

Plot and conflict:

Are the internal and external conflicts well defined for the main characters?

Are the internal conflicts and the external conflicts organic and believable?

Are there enough stakes?

Are the plot twists believable but still unexpected?

[thelaurenshippen]

I spent a chunk of yesterday making a bunch of these trope memes for atypical's shows and when I tell you I BLANKED on how to describe a show I spent the better part of my twenties writing...

I'm really curious, TBS listeners, what tropes/identifiers/hooks would you use to get someone to listen to the show?

[biblicalhorror]

Okayyyyy yeah also let's talk about Tammy. I didn't know how I felt about her for awhile because she did very much feel like the Disposable Black Girlfriend, but I'm seeing people saying she's an "abuser" or God forbid "just as bad as Kevin" and that's just. Not at all true.

Yes, Tammy is controlling. She doesn't seem to really like Patty for who she is, and kind of seems to want to change her into someone else instead. HOWEVER, I think we need to look at the whole character to understand WHY she's like that. I don't think she's controlling Patty for personal gain or for the sake of manipulating her. I think she's lonely and desperate for companionship, which leads to her ignoring/pushing past the obvious incompatibility in her relationship with Patty.

Here's what we know about Tammy:

1. She seems to be the only black person in the Worcester social circle. She also mentions frequently how she's surrounded entirely by white men at work.

2. She is also the only openly lgbt person in the area, other than Patty, who is still not exactly out and proud.

3. She describes her entire job as "making excuses for" and "cleaning up after" the men at her job, particularly her partner (whose name I am unfortunately forgetting, does anyone remember?), who even had her plant evidence for him on at least one occasion.

4. Despite being very competent and good at her job, the white men around her keep failing upwards (she mentions a few times that people beneath her keep getting promoted) while she remains stagnant in her career. There doesn't seem to be any explanation for this other than the fact that she is a black lesbian in an extremely white, conservative community.

Basically, Tammy seems like someone who has been taught (like many black women) that she will have to work much harder than everyone else to get ahead in any capacity. She is also likely very, very lonely. She doesn't seem to have any friends outside of work, which isn't surprising given the above. It seems like she doesn't exactly have a ton of prospects, dating-wise, other than Patty. In my opinion, it's really no wonder that she clung to Patty so desperately and immediately and tried to forcibly mold her into someone who could be compatible. She's tough, smart, organized, direct, manipulative, no-nonsense and controlling because, well, she had to be. And she ends up trying to "rein in" Patty because, in her mind, what's the other option? She ends up alone, surrounded by men who force her to cover for their antics and don't care if she lives or dies.

I'm not saying her behavior is healthy. But it comes from an entirely different place than Kevin's abuse, or Chuck's, or even Neil's. And it's also not uncommon. In real life, I know many queer women (specifically small-town lesbians) who end up in relationship dynamics just like that over and over again because they start dating someone who doesn't quite fit, and they compensate for it by trying to force a connection instead of accepting loneliness and isolation. I have a lot of sympathy for Tammy. And I wish the show had taken more care to establish the abuse she faced from her coworkers off-camera.

[reconstructwriter]

Force Sensitive B (Sans Disguise)

A 63 year old Sith with his Force disguise/concealment stripped away by his own reflected Sith Lightning. Notably no one else who is struck by Sith Lightning Exhibits any physical or facial changes from Sith Lightning.

The Dark Side definitely didn't do Palpatine's looks any good. I'm conflicted on how I feel about this trope and the idea that the Light side makes the Jedi look prettier. I like that abusing power visibly screws the user over and to a lesser extent that the Jedi get some reward for their devotion to good. It's also a viable reason for why so many of the Jedi are pretty and quite a few of the Sith aren't. On the other hand the beauty = goodness and ugly = evil tropes do reinforce nasty stereotypes and bigotry such as Pretty privilege and the idea that ugly people or people with disabilities are morally bad.

But yeah Tales of the Jedi Dooku DOES NOT look 70 and the idea that he goes from looking like that to how he looks in TCW could totally be him wallowing in the Dark Side as a Sith!

Okay, so in canon, according to the novels, Master & Apprentice (2019), Dooku: Jedi Lost (2019), Padawan (2022) and the guidebook Clone Wars: Character Encyclopedia (2021)...

... Dooku left the Jedi Order a decade BEFORE The Phantom Menace. However, in the fourth episode of Tales of the Jedi, it seems he's still in the Jedi Order by the time of TPM.

That said... if we wanna get technical... they don't explicitly say anywhere Dooku is still in the Jedi Order, in the episode.

But in Dooku: Jedi Lost, we learn he got to keep his lightsaber after leaving the Order...

... and in Padawan, they say Dooku visits, from time to time, even occasionally meeting with the Council.

In the episode, we see some passing Jedi nod to him, in reverence. He's referred to as "Master", out of respect. He seems a bit out of the loop, especially when it comes to the Council's conversations and it's because he's no longer on the Council, he's no longer a Jedi.

(Out-of-universe, I'm sure it's because in Dave Filoni's mind "Dooku was never on the Council" and they call him "Master" because he's still a Jedi.)

But yeah... it's a bit of a stretch, but maybe those two sequences in "The Sith Lord" will be retconned as Dooku just "visiting the Temple, as he does from time to time".

That said, if the canon timeline still holds, I gotta say... Dooku looks pretty goddamn good for a 70-year-old!

I would've guessed he's in his mid-50s, he and Qui-Gon look about the same age-range!

Creators of comics like Age of Republic: Dooku (2019), Age of Republic: Jango Fett (2019) and the guidebook Secrets of the Sith (2021) figured "he's in his 60s when he left the Jedi Order, in his 70s during TPM, let's make him look like it":

So I dunno.

I'll admit that I do like the implication that if you serve the Light Side, you age at a slower pace (short of spending 20 years on a planet with two suns...!) and the deeper you drench yourself in the Dark Side, the quicker you age.

"Choices were made", let's put it that way.

[thepedanticbohemian]

Break these terrible amateur tropes by thinking outside the box.

[rae-butter]

I remember seeing this post about the idea of a character who, instead of nursing a secret soft side in their abuse, are simply nothing but masks down to their core. nothing but an empty shell of themselves.

now I’m obsessed with this concept. There’s so much you can do with this because like was sacrificing who they are worth it in the end? Was creating utter isolation in order to protect themselves worth sacrificing the ability to love? Do they still have the capacity to rebuild themselves or was that sacrificed too?

The concept of trauma response in fiction is so fascinating to me because you can create circumstances that are unfeasible in reality and force a character of your own creation to endure it as an experiment.

Like I want to write you into an empty shell of yourself so I’m gonna give you the worst life imaginable.

[spotaus]

Okay! This one is less rendered than the other two, but here's some doodles of Tulpa figuring out how to co-exist! (Aka Fresh not taking training seriously while Dream is trying desperately to get his friends to think he's normal.)

When Dream first returns to the Star Sans', he finds himself in a pickle, because he needs Fresh to move his body. Sure, they made a tentative agreement that Dream trusted Fresh not to break, but Dream hadn't been specific enough with the guidelines.

Fresh pilots Dream's body based on the commands from his soul, but more often than not Fresh simply decides not to listen. Sometimes when they're training, Fresh will suddenly make Dream fumble his bow or send an arrow flying way off-target. Dream is always frustrated by this, unaware that Fresh it doing it for his own good and is forcing the guardian to take a break.

Blue was also made aware of Fresh very early on. One day he was passing the kitchen where Dream was cooking and spotted how Fresh's little form was wiggling out of the hole on Dream's skull. Blue made Eye-contact with Fresh, but said nothing since it seemed like Dream was aware and didn't mind. He waited until Dream told him to acknowledge the parasite directly, but suddenly a bunch of Dream's weird actions made sense to him. Blue regularly makes sure to check in on Dream, before abd after he's aware of Fresh, because he knows Dream works himself into the ground.

Dream (eventually) figures out that Fresh was being clumsy for his sake and nearly cries about it (even his mother and the villagers never did that for him, and Blue was the only other person to ever pull him away from training for his own good) so he gets a bit emotional. He feels bad for how angry he used to get at Fresh for doing that, but Fresh never gave him a proper explanation either, so it was a two-way street.

And while Fresh was lienent around Blue and Ink, he never slipped up around Nightmare's gang. Though, he did fight seriously, which to him might look like goofing off, which is completely separate from Dream's fighting style. (For now Dream uses Arrows and his Bow, but I'm thinking Tulpa has a T-Shirt Canon or a Nerf Gun by the time they make-up.)

Ideally Fresh cannot be seen during combat because he actually pilots from around Dream's soul, but sometimes his parasite form expands to support Dream's weak joints and act like a shock-absorber.

[seriously-mike]

I am regularly shocked by people who have no sense of time beyond a month or so. They apparently cannot comprehend that decades ago, some tropes, some worldviews and other things were considered either revolutionary (one way) or acceptable (the other), and are either upset that what once was revolutionary is obvious a few decades later, and what was acceptable isn't anymore, because the society has moved on.

Not to even mention that Tolkien went on record to state that his stories are escapist on purpose. Apparently suffering from trench foot and getting shelled daily does that to people - when you see that the world has no rules and the guy who surrendered to you isn't some orc bred by an evil wizard for nothing but war, but some small-town cobbler conscripted just like you, and the whole "dulce et decorum" is a crock of stale shit, it's understandable that you crave some constants of good and evil.

I get mail

I, a total stranger, was thinking of befriending your kid, but before I did, I thought I'd ask you, are they a boring, selfish jerk?

It's fine if they are, I'm just really trying to find quality people to be friends with, so I thought I'd ask you, is your kid a dick?

Wait, don't get offended! How are people supposed to know whether to hang out with your kid if you can't answer a simple question?!

I, a total stranger, was thinking of inviting myself over to your house for dinner.

But before I do, I wanted to ask, is your cooking insipid, greasy and terrible?

Honestly, it's not problem if it is, I'm just trying to focus on eating food that isn't shit.

Oh, come on, don't be so touchy! How is anyone supposed to know whether to eat the food you cook if you won't tell them whether it sucks?

[pyrepostings]

Interrogation setting where whumpee won't stop mouthing off and antagonizing whumper, so they get gagged during the session and only get the chance to talk after.

And of course, if they continue to be a smartass the gag goes back in between sessions too :)

[rheas-chaos-motivation]

Create your characters voice

Write one to ten pages (I usually do 5 for major character, 1 or 2 for side characters) as your character. Anything they would say, opinions, diary entries, complaining, etc.

Ooooh I have collected some helpful things to maybe include:

adopting slang from people they are close too/love interest

do they have a raspy voice? High pitched? Overly sweet? Commanding? Figure that out.

to make characters have their own voice vary rhythm, word choice, use of profanity, how much they talk about themselves or others, their politics.

Take some dialogue and ask if readers would be able to tell who is speaking with no context.

Write an AITA post from their point of view.

Identify what role your character has, a leader? a follower? a disrupter? a rebel? an antagonist? a peacemaker? How does that change the way they speak?

The character traits will tell you what your characters will say or how they will say it.

[physalian]

10 Plot Premises That Never Get Old

There’s a great many lists out there complaining about the worst and most overused tropes in fiction. I want to pass the mic to tropes that will never get old. The love-to-hate ones, the knife-twisting ones, the shipping fodder.

1. Killing the character who knew too much

Or, the “Maes Hughes” effect. Your story centers around a massive mystery or conspiracy and one lone character is unfortunately not genre-savvy enough to remember that the phrase “the early bird gets the worm” ends in “but the second mouse gets the cheese”.

This is the character who has unraveled the partial, if not entire truth, coming to a shocking realization moments before their untimely murder. Usually, they’re alone. Usually, this death rocks the remaining characters, sometimes for the entirety of the remaining plot (see FullMetal Alchemist). Usually, they become genre-savvy at exactly the moment they realize there’s no way out of this. Conveniently, they’re never on the phone with the right person, or there’s never any cell service. They didn’t write their findings down or didn’t hit record.

This whole entire tragedy is only a tragedy because this character made the wrong choice that is also the only choice this character would have made.

2. The enemy of my enemy

As OSP once said, anyone can be a minion, even the presumed Big Bad. Whether it’s a serialized cartoon with well established sides of good and bad or a single movie, having two entities that loathe each other reluctantly and bitterly join forces to deal with an even Bigger Bad… that’s the good stuff.

Either the villain has been minion-ed, or the good guys and the bad guys’ enduring battle of morals is interrupted by a wild card third party that insults them both or threatens the world both sides are trying to save in their own ways.

This is *not* a redemption arc. This is the temporary alliance that usually terminates once the threat is dealt with (see: Transformers Prime, or ‘Marabounta’ from Code Lyoko). Extra points if they’re age-old rivals who fight better together than the hero does with the rest of their team. Extra extra points if they both realize this and firmly deny that it happens (and even more if the villain tries to exploit the hero with this fact later on).

3. The redemption arc

***Emphasis on the word ‘arc’*** The ones that span 56 out of 61 episodes (see: you know the show). The ones that cost the redeemer their ideals, the friends they thought they had on the wrong side, maybe a limb or two. The ones that start with a villain so convinced they’re right, only to slowly question everything they’ve come to know and, without shedding their entire personality, do the right thing and still survive the process.

This is not redemption equals death. This is not a half-assed heel turn at the very last second—that’s a button mash impulsive act for shock value. This is taking a character almost all of the heroes have given up on trying to save, someone they themselves have nearly written off, and deciding to try anyway. This is a character deciding to do the right thing even if it doesn’t ever redeem them at all. This is a character whose whole life ahead of them is spent doing better than what was done before, and we love them for it.

4. The haunted ashes of a fallen empire

This one is a bit more tricky to define but think Prometheus of the Alien franchise, or Xerxes from FMAB. These are characters in the present exploring the ruins of a civilization that never should have fallen, but did due to the Big Bad they either created or tried to imprison. This is those characters looking around at what used to be, and making history repeat itself whether they’re genre-savvy or not.

These are the glaring red sign posts telling the heroes to turn around every step further in *or else* and they do it anyway. Or, these are the heroes who know exactly what happened and in their own hubris, are convinced it won’t happen this time to them.

5. The Most Dangerous Game

The originator: An island owned by a big game hunter who has evolved into hunting humans. The trope: Powerful and/or incredibly skilled character in any other situation is trapped in the confines of a dwindling clock matched up against the very antithesis of who they are and what they represent, but who is also just like them.

I just love seeing characters who are normally incredibly competent and rarely fazed, tripped up by the horror of being hunted by someone just like them who lost their humanity. So many juicy existential questions arise, so much angst. Double points if the character has a firm no-kill policy or extremely picky morals and has to wager tossing them aside to survive.

6. Stranger in a strange land

Whether it’s a character in a foreign country trying to learn and respect the ways of the people who saved them (see: Last Samurai, or Avatar '09), or an alien who crash-landed on Earth and struggles to assimilate and not get caught by the government (see any PG 13 alien adventure movie), a time traveler to the past or the future (Outlander, Back to the Future), either drama or hilarity ensues, often with a heaping helping of socio-political commentary.

It gets kind of troublesome when the writer is a white guy taking all the wrong messages from throwing his white guy protagonist into a land of the ‘savages’ (see uhhhh all variations of Pocahontas). But then you have strange lands like Wonderland, or Narnia.

7. Magical Otherworlds

Speaking of Narnia and Wonderland—magical hidden otherworlds. They can be incredibly blandly executed sometimes, but some of our most cherished stories come from living vicariously through Harry Potter or the Pevensie siblings. In this case I’m specifically talking about complete otherworlds, not hidden-in-plain-sight otherworlds (see: Percy Jackson) because of the complete freedom and creativity you have in geography, history, and world mechanics.

The possibilities are endless! Double points if the otherworld is a metaphor for childhood adventure and living without adult responsibilities (see: Peter Pan), a world in which we know, no matter how cool the world is, the protagonist was never meant to stay there. They must always inevitably, inexorably, return home and take what they’ve learned there to live a better and profound life.

8. “I know you’re in there somewhere”

Is it done to death? Yes. Is every situation different because it’s completely dependent on the relationship between the characters involved? Also yes. Tends to overlap with a redemption arc, but more often a hero-turned-temporary-villain. The drama! The angst! The shipping fodder! (see: many, many anime, too many to count)

This trope also has some uncertainty to it. You never know if the confrontation will be a success, if the character in question will commit some heinous act to wrack them with guilt later, if they even want to be saved, or if they really were saved and not just faking it. Either we get a POV of the stricken character’s battle in the mind or are left watching on the edge of our seat as unknowing as those trying to save them, and sometimes, rarely, they’re just not salvageable.

9. On the Run

The base has been discovered, the ship has been overrun, the house has burned down, the government is on the hunt. The hero team is forced apart with only the clothes on their back and what they can carry with only one or two others and loses all contact with most of their team, scattered to the wind. They leave a trail of sketchy motel rooms and diner take-away boxes, or they sleep in their car, or are forced to hide out in old bases that the villain definitely knows about but wouldn’t bother checking, built in a bygone era with a friend that’s no more.

Everything they ever knew has been called into question. The character they find themselves stuck with wasn’t their closest buddy on the hero team, but both forge a newfound respect for each other in this new unknown. Poignant conversations are had as one keeps watch in the dark so the other can sleep, and yet doesn’t, as they mourn the passing of the life both knew and vow to take it all back in their darkest hour.

10. The Thing

As in, a mysterious entity or illness has invaded the story and knowing which characters are infected and compromised is impossible. This entity either bodysnatches other characters and can be expunged, zombifies them, or kills and replicates them (see many zombie shows, iterations of The Thing, or “Croatoan” from Supernatural). This entity is a sickness slowly spreading throughout the town or the base or the ship and the heroes (or villains) realize far too late that something is very, very wrong.

This entity brings characters to their breaking point, paranoia making them do very bad things in the name of survival, killing off characters the audience knows is clean, but their murderer doesn’t, for extra knife-twisty fun. This entity brings a morally devout character near to ruin as they almost cross a line trying to do what’s right. This is an entity where, even when it’s defeated, is never really gone for certain… is it?

[cybertron-after-dark]

Being constantly surrounded by the presence of a loving God sounds great until you realize you never know when his freaky fuckin eyes are gonna show up to check on you.

And man. They do it a LOT.

[utilitycaster]

When we say characters are narrative tools that just means that any statement like "we need to hold [fictional character] accountable" or critiquing a fictional relationship solely on the basis of whether it is healthy is worthless. It doesn't mean that you can excuse bad writing/storytelling by saying WELL THEY'RE NARRATIVE TOOLS. Characters don't need to be good people to be compelling nor sympathetic! But also, sometimes there's a villain who does just fucking suck (for example) and isn't interesting and only exists to push the narrative from point A to point B and that's valid to criticize. Characters aren't real people and shouldn't be judged as such; but they should feel real and vibrant and their actions should feel organic to the story and hold weight. If they actually just feel like a tool of the narrative then that's bad storytelling; the purpose of a story is to dress up these tools in something compelling.

[abhainnwhump]

Whumpee is locked in an empty dark room with a metronome. It ticks back and forth at a steady pace, 24/7. It never stops. Whumpee has no idea what time it is, how long they've been there, or even when they are fed. They can't even find the source of that metronome, it's like it changes places. Soon enough, they start going mad.

Another metronome prompt:

Whumper uses a metronome to hypnotize Whumpee and make them repeat every cruel, messed up word they say. The ticking never leaves Whumpee's mind.

[anhilliator1]

Juuuust gonna link this right here...

Mr. Gaiman, I was wondering something. I would never accuse Sir Terry Pratchett of even unintentional plagiarism, perhaps down more to my perception of the man than anything concrete, but I was trying to figure out if there was perhaps a common source that may have inspired two works.

There was an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that bore some very generalized similarities to the plot of Night Watch, in that a man is thrown back in time to a few days before an extremely important historical riot and ends up replacing one of the key figures in said riot, who died ignominiously beforehand. I have not finished the novel but some people who heard me point out the general similarities have remarked that there are further parallels. Perhaps there are, perhaps there aren't.

I was wondering whether you knew anything about the writing of Night Watch that might shed some light on this. Its publication postdates the premier of the episode by a few years but obviously I have no idea whether its composition did.

I don't have any reason to believe that you would know, other than having known Sir Terry, but I thought I'd ask. Best wishes!

Terry and I used to talk about what he was watching on TV all the time. If you'd found a relationship between an episode of Red Dwarf and a Terry book, I think that we could conclude that Terry had borrowed the idea. I don't ever remember him talking about any Star Treks other than the original series. But that doesn't mean anything. It's quite possible that Terry caught that DS9 episode or part of it and went "But they've missed the point! That's not the interesting bit!" and went off to write his own version. It certainly wouldn't have been the first time that Terry took his irritation with a piece of popular fiction and used it as the grain of sand in the oyster to build a pearl around.

Remember, though, Person Goes Back In Time and Finds That They Are Mistaken For Someone They Think Is Important is very much a standard trope in SF. I think the first time I encountered it was Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man. What's important about Night Watch is that Vimes is becoming the person who inspired Vimes, and that we get to see how the events of the Glorious 25th of May shaped the people we have known as adult, finished versions of themselves into those people.

As a general rule though, it's wisest to read the whole book before diving off after questions about the plot, otherwise you might look a bit silly if the book goes somewhere else.