Asexual Enjolras

-having a job

-not having a job

-applying for jobs

-the job market

Unfortunately it only works so long as you recognize the fact that he's you know. Completely wrong and also unhinged here. Like it's neither ethical nor correct about social good or Huaisang or Xichen. It's insane even if it's honest in some ways. That's the whole point.

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

The Kingdom of Hawai’i was illegally overthrown with the help of American businessmen and we have suffered under the iron grip of America.

Our land is simply seen as a vacation spot, my people are simply seen as tour guides and hula dancers. We have had our culture, our history, and our people turned into a commercialized joke by America.

The rampant tourism kills our islands with endless hotels, attractions and overcrowding. The housing and living costs are out of control because of the false “paradise” narrative. The Navy poisons our water and destroys our land. Covid has killed so many of my people due to the reckless and selfish nature of tourists. I have lost loved ones to this virus, because tourists “couldn’t stay away”.

My people have suffered. I have suffered.

We are more than your vacation. We are more than an aesthetic.

We are a sovereign nation illegally occupied by the United States of America.

Restore Hawai’i to Hawaiians. End the American Occupation.

See the links below to learn more and to read up on your Hawaiian history.

NHS: 0/10, what's the point? Honestly his storyline is so grounded in rejecting his family's toxically masculine skillset and counting on uselessness to make him underestimated that I think it ruins the character.

NMJ: 100/10. BUTCH SWORD LESBIAN AND HER FEMME ART GAY BROTHER.

JYL: 6/10 the new improved Jiang Fengmian, now with 100% less abusive parenting. Maybe as a MALE character with high emotional and social intelligence he will be allowed to drive his own storyline.

JC: 9/10, collects more deadly accessories than her mother and probably started that fist fight with her fiance before Wei Wuxian got the chance.

WWX: 8/10. Troublemaking teen that looks like her hot mom accidentally makes half the young masters of her generation fall in love with her, only to be swept off her feet by the peerlessly beautiful ice queen who turns out to have been a hopeless lesbian the whole time.

LWJ: 8/10. See Wei Wuxian above.

WN & WQ: 7/10. Shy socially awkward girl dies and goes fucking feral. Tsundere boy medic who would literally kill himself for his baby sister. Flawless in concept

JZX: 4/10, interesting but I would not want any daughter of Jin Guangshan living under the same roof as him.

JGY: 3/10, more interesting than Huaisang but mostly in a way that makes me depressed

MXY: 6/10, also depressing but would give someone more qualified than me an interesting way to explore wwx's relationship with gender.

XY: 1/10, unhinged goth girls are great but the yandere jokes aren't worth it

LSZ: 9/10. Sizhui is already like twenty thousand wish fulfillment tropes anyway, just make her a full on YA heroine. Mad Scientist Wei Wuxian's beautiful daughter and Lost Princess of the Wen clan, the twin jades' lusterous pearl and apple of the Lan clan's eye.

LJY: 6/10, I'm always up for loud and disruptive women.

Wen Chao at the Cloud Recesses - Yes, he’s garbage, and he interrupted Jiang Cheng’s carefully prepared gift-giving, which is unforgiveable, but you cannot deny that this is a moderately dramatic entrance. From a piece of shit. 5/10, hate him, consolation prize for most punchable face.

Lan Wangji on the search for Wei Wuxian - The slow climb up the stairs. The epic scenery. The unsubtle threat. 8/10, points deducted because the follow-up is anticlimactic. We should have gotten to see some ass-kicking.

Lan Wangji at the hostage summer camp - Improvement! Isn’t letting the scenery do all the work, but letting it work for him instead. More slow swishy robes. More murder in his expression. No sign of having a broken leg because he keeps the pain inside. 9/10, excellent way to not be dead, no wonder Wei Wuxian rapidly develops a technique for flirting in hostage situations.

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.”

please note that yes many of these are concepts that exist elsewhere and a few are even taught in fiction writing classes but TvTropes just does an amazing job at displaying the range of things that can be done with them

legitimately so much of the terminology I use to talk about storytelling, and even think about it in my own head, i learned about from TvTropes

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Watsonian vs. Doylist

Trope Tropes, for all the ways tropes are used, deconstructed, subverted, and played with.

The Oldest Ones in the Book, which is basically my favorite thing on the entire Internet

Punk Punk, for -punk subgenres

Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness, Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism

The Weird Al Effect is a fun one

Chekhov’s Gun, Chekhov’s Boomerang, Chekhov’s Skill, and further variations

Law of Conservation of Detail

Law of Conservation of Normality

Anthropic Principle

Word of God, Death of the Author

Sliding Scale of Fourth Wall Hardness

Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness

Genre Savvy

Flashbacks and Chronology breaks down all the ways you can handle chronology in storytelling

Show, Don’t Tell is a very good breakdown of what is showing, what is telling, and how both can be used effectively.

Lampshade Hanging

Noodle Incident is just fun imo

Genre Title Grab Bag

Fridge Horror

Rule of Cool, and also Cool of Rule

The Smurfette Principle

The Hays Code - not a trope but a very good breakdown of how the Hays Code affected storytelling in film