So I Got Into Grad School Today With My Shitty 2.8 Gpa And The Moral Of The Story Is Reblog Those Good

((I kinda imagine this is what Acryla's Flowerium looks like nowadays. Same concept of background flowers shooting elemental attacks and flower demons popping up to fight alongside her, it's just more difficult to figure out which flowers are dangerous.))

   Azaleas in Exbury Gardens, New Forest, Hampshire

Looks like the Dirtuns are joining the humans for their festivities. Palette’s giant Dirtun ought to make a nice float, but I doubt she’ll be happy about her car having walked away.

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

(source)

..... Who’s going to tell him he’s not a Gentleshrimp?

DO NOT DO THIS.

This makes me so angry.

If you work in a movie theater and you do this I have no respect for you.

My younger brother is Type 1 Diabetic.

When we go to a movie theater, we always get him diet soda. If he were to get regular when we asked for diet, we would not give him the insulin he would need for it. If that happens, his blood sugar level could go so high he could go into a coma, go blind, or even die.

If somebody gave him regular soda instead of diet without telling us, that person could be responsible for a nine-year-old being killed or blinded.

Just thinking about that makes me so angry. I get scared every time we take him to a movie in case the people working there saw this picture and decide to do the same thing.

Please signal boost this so people know.

Promo!!

Starzy here again! After quite some time, I decided, hey, why not bring back the Squeaks blog? And so I’m doing just that, but instead of changing up the old one, I just made a fresh new one under the same URL!

So, that said, could you guys please reblog if you’d be interested in interacting with the Squeak Squad, + Dark Nebula as well? It’d be greatly appreciated!

– 10+ years of RP experience, 6 on Tumblr – Semi-selective, but very willing to check out new folk! – Will write anything from crack/meme interactions to full-on threads – Will also write anything from casual and fluff to fighting and angst, BUT no smut or anything of that nature – VERY crossover friendly! – OC friendly, as long as you have an info page for them!!

Important P.S! Whether you’re a returning follower or a new one, I HIGHLY suggest you read Info page along the Rules page, as there’s been some important changes regarding the history of this blog and the muses on it!

What would you say the best part about your job is Tablet?

And people think I’m greedy. 7^7((So, Tumblr is already dropping the ball on notifying me when I’ve got asks 83Lovely))

(( @mutesword sorry I took so long to respond. Life's been crazy busy recently <XD))

Varnish urged a few Spongies through the gate before his phone started chiming again.

Varnish brought his phone back out and had it read the messages aloud.

The guard dog chuckled lightly. "I wouldn't say a royal ass, it's not the worst mistake."

FROM: Varnish TO: Unknown

🍴: You're fine. Just making sure that second message wasn't a cry for help or something.😊

🍴: By the way, who are you, if you don't mind me asking?

tabletdemedium‌:

Varnish sat in front of the gate to Medium’s castle. The Canvas Plains had been rather uneventful today, and his rising boredom seemed ready to spawn a surprise nap.

Until, that is, his phone went off.

Varnish took out his phone and had it read the new notification.

 "New message from: Unknown Sender. Testing?“

    Oh, Varnish thought. Someone must have texted the wrong numb-

 "Arl-teesh-dla S.M.R.”

     … the Hells?

With nothing else demanding his immediate attention, and some worry for the well-being of the text-sender after that jumble of sounds in the second text, Varnish replied.

FROM: Varnish TO: Unknown

🍴: Are you okay? 😕

Link was still reeling from accidentally sending everyone that stupid text without realising it. He was meant to be the hero of time, but now he was the… fool of chime. Because phones chimed. No one said Link was good at wordplay.

His phone went off again and he jumped. If people could stop acknowledging his mistake and started praising his awesome heroic deeds instead, that would be great.

Luckily, the sender knew Hylian, or their language had been translated for Link.

FROM: Link TO: Varnish

Just apologise and move on, Link.

▲: i made a royal ass of myself

Or do that. Whatever works.

▲: sorry for disturbing you