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reblog if you believe anon is wrong and writers are writers, no matter what they write about. no matter how they portray these taboo topics.

reblog if you believe art can be about topics that are controversial, taboo or outright disturbing, and artists who create controversial, taboo or outright disturbing art are as valid as artists who create art of conservative values.

If we can't talk about bad things, nobody knows them as bad things when they happen.

In the '90s you were literally nobody if you didn't have a driver's license and telephone privileges, and I had neither. Today you're nobody if you don't have a cell phone and social media. And the inescapability of cyberbullying is about the same as being trapped in a small Christian school surrounded by people who are either bullying you or enjoy watching you suffer like O'brien in a bad DS9 episode.

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

Walnut was born in a species-recovery breeding program in the 1980′s.  The program had crane chicks hand-raised by human volunteers, and at that time they did not fully understand the measures necessary make sure that the chicks do not imprint on humans and retain their identity as cranes.  

As a result, her keepers believe, Walnut does not recognize other cranes as members of her own species.  

It has not been proven that Walnut killed her previous suitors; however, there is a persistent rumor in the white-naped-crane-conservation community that she did.  

Because this species is highly endangered, and the gene pool of the captive population is small, it’s pretty important for the survival of her species that Walnut A) mate, and B) not kill a bunch of other cranes.  

The actual name of the keeper is Chris Crowe.

They both arrived at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in 2004.   

Walnut immediately began paying special attention to Chris--and ignoring the eligible male crane in a nearby enclosure.  

Walnut initiated their courtship, performing the opening moves of a mating dance.  

Chris realized that if he reciprocated the mating dance, it might be possible to artificially inseminate Walnut with her participation and consent.  (The process normally involves restraining the bird.)  

It worked!  

Chris and Walnut have had five children, who were raised by other crane couples at the facility--sometimes the biological dad and his mate--both because it’s unclear whether Walnut would accept the chicks as her own, and because Chris is not equipped to be a Crane Dad.  

However, the Institute provides her with artificial eggs to sit on, and Chris takes his turn looking after them.  (This would not work with real eggs because he can’t sit on them properly, but Walnut seems to feel that he is on the job if he just stands over them.)

she has not been PROVEN to have killed her exes, but there is a PERSISTENT RUMOR (really officers she's simply DEVASTATED, she sobs, wearing a new feather boa unfortunately resembling her most recent deceased husband)

His name is Chris CROWE. (Mrs. Walnut Crane-Crowe?)

the mental images of a whole human man learning and performing the crane mating dance, and "sitting" on artificial eggs so she thinks he's performing his duties as a husband and father (and apparently OBJECTS if he does not?)

"chris, buddy, you gotta marry the possibly-murderous crane lady for the GOOD OF THE SPECIES." (alternately: "chris, my man! good news! we found you a very interested lady! She's 36, she's very spirited and independent, she holds a very important and rare status in her society! ...Is there a downside? WELL...")

Hi, I'm Kareem Rahma, I'm on the L train, and this is Subway Takes. Mr. Selch, what's your take?

no, royalties are not a significant source of income for most authors. if you wrote something like Project Hail Mary, then absolutely, the royalties would be substantial! but that's like winning the lottery. Ryan Gosling is not starring in the movie adaption of most books.

when you sell a book to a publisher, you get what's called 'an advance against royalties'. it's usually split into multiple parts, so you might get one third for the initial sale, one third for the final revised manuscript, and one third on the publishing date.

an advance against royalties is the publisher saying "we believe you will eventually make X amount in royalties, so here it is ahead of time." and then you don't actually see any money from royalties until the advance is paid off. most books do not make enough in royalties to pay off the advance (I have two children's books and one fiction book, and have yet to see royalties for any of them).

advances are still great, but you need to make them stretch! for instance, last year my net income was about 30k Canadian (21k USD), which is fantastic when you consider that I mostly made it through writing. but I'm definitely not a millionaire. I can live off my writing (not trying to undersell that!) but I'll probably remain in a low income bracket for the foreseeable future.

this isn't me making a fuss about pirating (I've pirated way too many shows to run my mouth on that lmao), but there IS actually a financial incentive to having people buy your books!

buying books shows the publisher that they can make money off you, which means they're more likely to give you advances for future books. and advances are what authors live off (if they don't have a side job). that's why I always push pre-orders so hard! you have to be a racehorse worth betting on, or else they send you to the glue factory....

A year ago I published Scavenger: Caches and Prizes, a third-party campaign setting for the Traveller system, or rather its’ Open License fork Cepheus Engine. I chose that system because I wanted to run campaigns based around salvaging wrecked spaceships and Cepheus has a granular and modular ship design system that lends itself well to breaking ships down for parts. Additionally, it doesn’t have ridiculous stat inflation for characters, regardless of which version you use your “hit points” are unlikely to ever exceed 30 and there are consequences to even taking light damage. While your combined characteristic and skill modifiers are likely to stay within the +1 to +3 range through the whole campaign, with +5 being extraordinary. And rolling 2D6 instead of 1D20 introduces a bell curve that mitigates the “swinginess” of single-die rolls while making criticals more rare and thus more dramatic when they happen. But this spring a crowdfunding campaign to convert Traveller to D&D 5th Edition was funded within minutes of launch. This was part of the larger trend of “5E” conversions that’s been going on for the past decade or so. Creators taking advantage of the Open Gaming License and most gamers’ familiarity with the system to promote their works. Or GMs getting frustrated with the difficulty in finding players for their favorite games and homebrewing conversions, even when the original system had a shorter rulebook than the 5E PHB. And this isn’t even the first time that this happened, when the OGL was first developed for 3rd Edition there was a wave of both official and fan-made conversions of other games. Including one for Traveller. And they died out swiftly, most D&D players weren’t actually that interested in playing a different campaign setting kludged onto their beloved game, and players of the original games preferred the original systems. And then Wizards of the Coast switched to 4th edition which did not have the OGL, finishing the conversions off. Then the 5th edition was published in 2014 and brought back the OGL, which led to another boom in third-party content and setting conversions. But then Hasbro got a new CEO who took offense at the notion of other publishers making money off their product and in 2022 they tried to rewrite the OGL so that they’d get a cut of all third-party sales. Of course, most small publishers would go bankrupt if they had to pay the rates that Hasbro demanded, resulting in a massive backlash until Hasbro backed down. But the ill will that Hasbro had garnered clearly didn’t stick around, as now it seems like every game designer has to keep D&D 5E in mind. It’s not dissimilar to how everyone knows Amazon is evil but indie writers need to publish on them because no other self-publishing host has the same reach. Even Renegade, who designed their own “Essence20” system, are switching their games to D&D5.5. And that’s not even why the Open Gaming License was developed in the first place, that document was intended to keep Dungeons and Dragons alive in the event of another publisher going bankrupt. TSR, the company Gary Gygax and his friends founded in order to publish D&D, went under in the 1990s, which would have relegated the game to an out-of-print collector’s item until it reached the public domain, if they hadn’t sold the property to Hasbro. Or not. As demonstrated by the Old-School Revival movement, you can’t actually copyright game rules, and at least half a dozen different publishers have taken advantage of that fact to put out games that are either slight modifications of 1st and 2nd edition D&D, or straight-up copies. With all the cruft and inconsistency those early games had. Now then, I feel a bit obligated to clarify something, yes, I backed Traveller 5E, I wanted to see how they manage ship design and combat. And I don’t care if you try to convert Scavenger to 5E or any other system, I was honestly considering Starfinder but Paizo announced the 2nd edition around the time I was writing and I didn’t know what to expect. Now that SF2 is out you might be able to run Scavenger using the vast amount of material just on the PF2 and SF2 wikis, most of the animal-like ancestries should fit if you cut out the more overtly magical feats and heritages. And the Awakened Animal ancestry from Howl of the Wild should cover the rest. Additionally, Stellagama has published a fantasy-oriented version of the Cepheus Engine, Sword of Cepheus, that should be compatible with Scavenger for campaigns on low-tech planets. But will I ever write a conversion myself, well… Maybe for Shadowdark.

Much of the information in this FAQ relates to copyright and trademark law. This FAQ does not constitute legal advice. Readers are advised to consult their own legal counsel before proceeding with any d20 System project. Permission is granted to reproduce this document, in whole or in part, provided that this notice is preserved intact. Please send comments, questions or feedback to Andrew Smith.

Q: Why is Wizards of the Coast pursuing this strategy?

A: The company believes that one of the major factors which caused the collapse of the commercial tabletop RPG market from 1993 to 1996 was the proliferation of different, incompatible, core game systems.

The company believes that when many different game systems proliferate in the market, they cause significant problems with the shared rules knowledge and preferences between communities of players necessary to sustain a long-term, commercial market for RPG products.

The company has decided it is possible that consumers can be educated to understand the problems of system over-proliferation, and for those consumers to apply pressure to publishers to use standardized systems.

To jump-start that effort, Wizards of the Coast has created the System Reference Document, and the Open Gaming License (OGL) to allow royalty free, nonexclusive use of the game system at the heart of Dungeons & Dragons by anyone who wishes to do so, for both commercial and noncommercial works.

Wizards of the Coast believes that by doing so, and by educating consumers about the benefits of Open Games, the fundamental economics of the tabletop RPG category will be improved. One (obvious) consequence of this strategy is that if it works, Wizards will see significant, long-term financial benefits. Thus, the company sees this as a win-win situation, where it can benefit along with, rather than at the expense of, other publishers.

Q: Could Wizards of the Coast decide to stop supporting the d20 System?

A: As with all things large corporations sometimes do, there is always a chance. The chances of the company doing so are remote. As long as Wizards of the Coast is in the business of selling Dungeons & Dragons, it will be in the business of selling and promoting the d20 System.

Q: Does Wizards of the Coast want to destroy competition in the gaming industry?

A: The company would like to see the number of widely distributed roleplaying game systems reduced.

There are people who see these two objectives as synonyms. There are real-world examples that prove that not to be the case.

There are numerous examples of successful, thriving publishers who focus on making products that are compatible with other game systems. Having a “house system” is not a requirement for being a roleplaying game publisher, despite the fact that those two ideas have gone hand-in-hand for nearly two decades.

The company believes that this is a market where diversity is more harmful than beneficial. The competition in the tabletop RPG category will (if the OGL/d20 strategy is successful) shift from producing competitive RPG systems to producing competitive RPG products that share a common system.

Q: Does Wizards of the Coast think that the d20 System is the only RPG that should be published?

A: Nobody at Wizards of the Coast believes that OGL/d20 will cause the market to reject all other RPGs. There will always be a market for game systems produced by publishers who are determined to forge their own path, or to push the envelope of design. And there will always be people who find different game systems more entertaining for different types of games and different genres. Over the long term, however, Wizards of the Coast hopes that the systems which are widely available in the market also become Open Games, and that instead of supporting dozens or hundreds of different games, the market chooses to support a just a handful.

Q: What does Hasbro think of the d20 System/Open Game concept?

A: The basic ideas were presented to the CEO of Hasbro in 1999 as a part of a wide-ranging overview of the company’s Research & Development efforts.

In the great scheme of things, Hasbro as a corporation doesn’t care one way or the other about Open Games and the d20 System. In fact, the RPG business itself is just barely large enough to be broken out as a separate line item in the financial accounting that Wizards of the Coast provides to Hasbro.

In short, Hasbro’s management and oversight will be a non-factor in the success or lack thereof of the OGL/d20 experiment.

Q: Is the d20 System just another term for “Dungeons & Dragons”?

A: Yes and no.

The current version of Dungeons & Dragons is the basis for the d20 system. The market research done to determine what gamers wanted out of an RPG game was used to determine what kinds of rules, and what level of complexity, would go into the game.

That foundation was also used to produce the Star Wars roleplaying game, and it will be used to create a number of future products now in development at the company.

Over the long term, the two identities will separate. Dungeons & Dragons will mean the specific brand identity of that game, and d20 System will mean the common shared rules and systems used by many different games.

Q: Does a d20 System game have to have classes and levels?

A: No. Nothing in the licenses or the System Reference Document require the use of classes or levels.

Q: Does a d20 System game have to have Armor Class and hit points?

A: No. Nothing in the licenses or the System Reference Document require the use of Armor Class or hit points.

Q: How can Wizards of the Coast publish d20 System games without using the Open Game License?

A: Since Wizards of the Coast is the original copyright holder of the content in the System Reference Document, it is free to license that content in many different ways. One way is through the various tabletop RPGs the company publishes. Another way is through the Open Game in the System Reference Document. A third way is to computer game publishers who use the game in their software.

If and when Wizards of the Coast chooses to include Open Game Content from a third party in any of its games, the company will have to follow the same terms and restrictions as everyone else with regard to that Open Game Content. However, as long as everything the company publishes is strictly its own property, it need not do so.

Q: Will Wizards of the Coast release other RPG games it owns as Open Games?

A: There are no plans to do so at this time. Since one of the objectives of the OGL/d20 project is to reduce the number of widely distributed game systems, releasing other games using the OGL would be counterproductive.

At some point in the future, the distinctive and unique elements of various games Wizards of the Coast owns may be incorporated into the System Reference Document to allow their widespread use as additions to the basic d20 game itself.

Also, there may be official “conversions” created between various other games and d20.

At the moment, active no work is being done on those aspects of the business.

Q: How will consumers learn about the d20 System Trademark?

A: Wizards of the Coast is committed to a long-term marketing strategy focused on raising consumer awareness of the trademark. There will be a constant effort made to draw attention to the mark and to explain its value to the market. Wizards gains tremendous value from this effort just by linking its own game products together in the consumers’ minds, so there is a practical reason to continue to fund that campaign.

Q: Won’t publishers make lots of variations of the d20 System concept, confusing players?

A: Sure, they’ll probably try.

However, using the OGL, anyone who wants to can “fix” that content and publish the fixes, returning the variation to the core d20 system known by hundreds of thousands of gamers. And if those “fixes” are more popular than the variations, pretty soon, the “fix” will become the standard, and the variation will become a curiosity known only to a few people.

Over time, if the effort to vary the basic d20 System rules keeps failing, the number of people who attempt it will decline. At some point far in the future, commercial publishers may stop bothering to try at all.

The interesting thing about “open” projects (software, tabletop RPGs, etc.) is that they tend to suppress, rather than encourage “forks”. Since everyone has the right to take an “open” project and make whatever changes are necessary to conform to the public standard, those who try to deviate from that standard are often perceived as wasting everyone’s time, and being disruptive to the value of the shared community experience. Innovation happens at the edges of the envelope, rather than at the core. Changes to the core require a general consensus from large numbers of people to be successful, otherwise they’ll just be ignored or “fixed” to maximize compatibility.

In fact, one of the biggest groups affected by this force will be the Wizards of the Coast tabletop RPG Research & Development team. When the time comes to make a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, they’ll have to make a very persuasive case to the market to adopt any changes to the core rules they want to make! The R&D team has already made some variations close to the core. The Star Wars rules include a different system for tracking character health, the Vitality Point/Wound Point system. Only time will tell if two variations that close to the core will both be supported by the market.

As for “the OGL keeping D&D alive in the event of another publisher bankruptcy,” I don’t believe that either. The whole thing stank of an impending rug pull, and if WotC had done it in the fall of ‘07 then it’d have taken out the entire sector. The publishers who’d survived and kept their own mechanics wouldn’t have had the market share to capitalize on it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason they waited until 2022 was because they fired whoever they had watching the sector to see how dependent everyone had gotten.

There’s some tension here between the desire for more niche designs and the desire for everything to be available through your local game store. Mystery Booster Commander Edition is making some cards that most likely would never exist otherwise.

Sounds like a poll.

*latches on to you* "doll? doll?"

before you can react to it you feel yourself being hollowed out, skin getting replaced with porcelain as it becomes impossible to move, your body becoming completely inanimate. your heartbeat is slowly replaced by the hypnotic ticks of clockwork, your mind is disoriented yet calmed as your brain is kneaded, compressed and shaped into a new crystalline core. what started as panic recedes into comfort. everything feels softer. peaceful. slowly you can move once more. ball joints have formed, the new articulation is strange yet natural. you, or rather that one, have become a doll.

Screenshot via Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net on bluesky

Tldr Amnesty International, global human rights organisation, published a report called 'A growing threat: the anti-rights movement in the UK'. In it is detailed, amongst others, a whole bunch of transphobic groups and organisations, including Beira's Place, JK Rowling's trans exclusionary sexual violence support service. JK Rowling threw a shit fit and got Amnesty to take the report down by threatening libel. This was obviously not enough, because you can't appease a fascist, so now she's going to bankroll a bunch of lawsuits anyway through the JK Rowling Women's Fund.*

You can read an archived version of the report here, please save it and share it.