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Apple Tree posted:To be fair, it's written from the point of view of a character who refers to regular people as 'organics', so it's supposed to sound like a robot. The point of the digression is, I think, to establish that 'Snowball' is not an 'organic'. That is really what I was trying to get at. While I don't read a lot of sci-fi, I'm sure robot narrators have been done well... and by that I mean without the tonal contradictions you bring up, and by not writing something that moves at the speed of a glacier.
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Jan 10, 2014 12:06
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| # ? May 25, 2024 00:11 |
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TV Tropes Writer's Block never disappoints. Oh wait did I say never? I meant always. quote:I'll start off with this point: I'm an African-American (a fact that i myself was unaware of until my early teens). 
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Jan 10, 2014 21:31
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The more I read that the less sense it makes to me.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:34
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Djeser posted:TV Tropes Writer's Block never disappoints. Sure smells like transethnic over here. e: either that, or white guy found out that his great great great grandfather was black and now thinks he is LeVar Burton. DoctorPresident fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 21:35
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Mention a random quirk of your world!quote:Personal shields are virtually non-existent in my sci-fi setting I'm worldbuilding at the moment. The only personal shields that do exist come out of a gauntlet and extend to be like a tower shield. However they don't do anything to protect you from lasers. I even considered making personal shields power the laser as they went through, making a shot from a laser pistol say, have the same power as if you were hit by a sniper rifle laser, then I thought "That's far too OP" and kept the shields as having no effect on deflecting lasers. quote:My D&D/fantasy novel setting. World War I era technology in a world where society evolved with both science and magic. quote:story about a parallel Earth which consisted of one large island in a vast ocean, located in the same general location as Madagascar and accessible via an interdimensional ocean barge, where interdimensional rifts had deposited plants and animals and people from various eras of the history and prehistory of our Earth. The island continent was inhabited by an ethnically distinct group of humans closely related to the aboriginal Australians but with deep-red hair, coexisting with dinosaurs and other hominids like Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis (which the Homo sapien tribes worship, believing them to be their ancestors, and having religion centered around ancestor worship).
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Jan 10, 2014 21:38
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So...not humans? I don't think that troper knows much about evolution.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:49
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DoctorPresident posted:Sure smells like transethnic over here.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:02
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DoctorPresident posted:Sure smells like transethnic over here. I know someone who didn't know her dad was black passing as white until he died, and she met her aunt(s?) and uncle(s?) for the first time.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:10
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Maybe his family are all black albinos.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:47
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DoctorPresident posted:Sure smells like transethnic over here. I dunno, I could honestly see a black kid struggling with the gap between the African-American literary canon they hope to emulate and the less-highbrow writing they actually enjoy doing. It's just phrased in the most Troper-y way possible. "I'm black, black people write like this, I like to write like that, so instead of questioning my incredibly shallow knowledge of literature based on a website that specializes in reducing artistic concepts to their most simplistic elements and sorting them into bins, I'll ask how I can write like the website tells me black people should be writing! Genius!" EDIT: Wow, I totally missed the part where he didn't know he was black until his early teens. I certainly hope this is about genealogical discoveries and not transethnicity, but this makes it even more tragically BEEP BOOP MUST FIT ASPIRATIONS INTO CLEARLY LABELED TVTROPES-APPROVED BIN.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:50
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The part that takes it from regular weird to troper weird is the fact that he only recently learned he was black. Now, this could be actually finding out one of his grandfathers was black or something, not not just weird transethnic stuff. But the thing is that this guy went "wow, guess I'm black" and then thought "guess I have to write black stuff now". It's not just phrased in troper-language, it's a very troperish way of seeing things.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:55
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It isn't just tvtropes that stereotypes black writers, out whole culture does that.
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Jan 11, 2014 00:56
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I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant it like "I wasn't aware of race and what it meant to me until my teens" or something like that.
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Jan 11, 2014 01:11
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Morkyz posted:It isn't just tvtropes that stereotypes black writers, out whole culture does that. Oh, yeah, I'm not saying this is a phenomenon unique to TVTropes or anything. It's just a particularly uncomfortable manifestation of the tendency with Tropers to accept societal biases and stereotypes as the unvarnished truth or immutable laws of the universe, instead of things that can be questioned or judged.
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Jan 11, 2014 01:13
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Animal Crossing is a cute little Nintendo game. Let's see what TvTropes has to say about it:Ho Yay posted:
 They also have an entire separate page for "Getting Crap Past the Radar" because of course they do.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:12
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Would any of you guys know if there's a thread in TV Tropes that has some tropers blabbing about their homebrew RPG settings? Well, besides their fiction, but you know what I mean. Seems like a goldmine of troper tripe. Egregious Offences fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 04:14
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Egregious Offences posted:Would any of you guys know if there's a thread in TV Tropes that has some tropers blabbing about their homebrew RPG settings?
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Jan 11, 2014 04:37
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quote:No attention is paid to the concept of mechanical rules You don't say.
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Jan 11, 2014 04:48
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Sympathetic Slaveholdersbackpack posted:I have an idea for a story, and I’m having a bit of trouble walking one particular tightrope. I want the protagonist to be: 1) a slave-owner from a slave-owning culture, 2) not any more progressive than the rest of his culture, and 3) sympathetic. So basically, This Troper wants to make a slaveowner sympathetic. Certainly, there are ways to go about this. You could, for instance, portray him as someone who treats his slaves well in a society where this doesn't really happen. But our artiste has decided to take away that angle. Our protagonist slaveowner can't be any more progressive than the rest of the slaveholders in this culture. Now, if the slaveowner is presented in a more progressive light than the rest of the country, you have a recipe for an interesting character study - a person who wrestles with his conscience over the ownership of slaves in a society that expects him to. If the slaveowner is no different from society, it loses that angle and changes the message of the story dramatically - if slaveownership is normal and everyone treats their slaves fairly well, the message is "These are good people! They own slaves! You can still be a good person and own slaves!" Because our hypothetical slaveowner is no more progressive than the rest of society, it makes the mention of rape even more squicky. If rape does occur (and in slaveholding societies it will, sure as the sun rises), then our "sympathetic" protagonist might well engage in it too. If not, he could also creep on his slaves too, which doesn't have quite the social stigma. None of the replies to this post really address this angle, just encourage the OP that nothing is wrong. Topazan posted:It's not such an impossible task Judah Ben-Hur was a slaveowner, and he was sympathetic. Matt Striker posted:If you can imagine a sympathetic feudal lord, you can also do so with a slaveholder. In many parts of the world, the difference between 'serf' and 'slave' was largely a question of semantics for a long, long time. In many ways, an ancient roman slave was actually better off than a peasant somewhere in medieval germany. I guess since slaves were better off in the southern USA than they were in Africa, that means that holding someone in involuntary servitude is okay! backpack comes in to clarify his setting a little. backpack posted:I thought I should give you guys some introduction to how the story starts off: Oh god this is going to end in rape, isn't it  resetlocksley posted:This is an interesting idea. I think you've mostly got it figured out alright. backpack seals the deal with his next post backpack posted:(btw, one more concern I'm still holding is that I feel a bit like Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil is too much of a modern value, but at the same time I know that past cultures have made rapists outlaws) Yep this is ending in rape.  resetlocksley tries to get in a word of common sense before going off the rails resetlocksley posted:breadloaf is right about trying too hard to make him sympathetic, since accidentally portraying slavery in a positive light is definitely to be avoided. However, I would advise caution in going too far the other way if the story isn't meant to have "slavery is bad" as an Aesop. I mean, obviously it shouldn't say "slavery is good" but if the story's simply not meant to drop an anvil about slavery, shoehorning an Aesop in might not work so well. You know what I mean? It could just be left as a neutral thing that the audience feels is bad but the story doesn't try too hard in either direction. Just make it clear that your main character isn't a total jerk and it should work okay. peter34 posted:"Sympathetic slave owner" is no different from "sympathetic dog owner". If you can wrap your head around that, you'll be good to go. The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Post Your Favorite (or Request) > TvTropes Pleads the Fifth: "Sympathetic slave owner" is no different from "sympathetic dog owner" I'm sure there's more gold to be found in this thread but it's destroying my faith in humanity's better nature. 
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Jan 11, 2014 05:08
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Oh wow. About halfway through the first page and we get a gem of a post.Bluespade posted:They have two phrases used as common greetings: one is formal and polite, while the other is simple and casual, the Orc equivalent of "hi." The casual greeting basically means "Hey, wanna gently caress?" However they have an old superstition that a child conceived by rape will be cursed to a life of misfortune. Because of this, many Orcs actually consider rape to be worse than murder, and treat rapists accordingly. Though they will gladly proposition any person they take a liking too, they are generally polite about it and perfectly fine taking no for an answer. It goes on... posted:Elves age 3 times slower than humans, physically, but also somewhat mentally. Thus a 30 year old elf would appear roughly 10 years old, and have the mind of a 10 year old as well (though obviously they will have had considerably more lifetime experience than an actual ten year old). Young elves (those younger than 100 or so) are very curious and excitable, with analytical minds that want to know and experience everything they can. They often travel the world for the sake of wonder and adventure. As an elf gets older though, they become more and more introspective and philosophical, becoming more and more entranced with the theoretical and less interested in the world around them. This often leads to adult elves who have to hire human servants to handle their daily needs, since they themselves are so spacey and withdrawn that they forget to eat or take care of their house. Since elves live so long, most of them end up with the funds to maintain such a lifestyle.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:30
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Some Idiot posted:He/she will have food, water, and air as I do (not to say the same amount, the point is if you have some, you can’t let them starve) I shall shed no blood, break no bones through malicious intent (note that these two don’t forbid physical punishment, just limit it. Furthermore, they mean you’re not responsible for accidents, and if you kill a slave in self-defense you’ve done nothing wrong). I'm sorry, what? Punishment is explicitly malicious intent. It is meant to punish. How can you go from swearing an oath to never harm your slave, to saying that a little physical punishment is still okay? And then he follows it up by saying that you've done nothing wrong if you kill a slave in self defense. Gee, I wonder why a slave would want to kill his owner, who by virtue of his birth is given hereditary ownership of you, while you're stuck doing his dirty work? gently caress tropers.
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Jan 11, 2014 05:31
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Egregious Offences posted:
I take it the human age of consent still applies, though, right? 
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Jan 11, 2014 05:52
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Egregious Offences posted:Oh wow. About halfway through the first page and we get a gem of a post.  ery, are the elves supposed to have litters of ten or something? Because that's what they'll need to survive as a species if they have a 10% birth rate. 
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Jan 11, 2014 06:01
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Yeah, I'm not going to go through that entire 101 page long thread. The trope page just links back to posts in the thread. No summation or explanation, just a post about some troper waxing about the stuff in the setting. And that's what gets me, that nothing about it seems complete, that they've put Also, this: The blandest summation posted:Colonisation and exploration. The New Lands are filled with wondrous and never-before-seen creates, environments, and artifacts, rich with untapped Ley Lines, and fraught with danger.
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Jan 11, 2014 06:02
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Deliberately ignoring the obvious I don't know, for a setting that's trying to divorce the various fantasy races from their normal Tolkien roots, they're failing. Sure, Dwarves are now good at magic and have "kickass" steampunk artificial limbs because of some weird hereditary disease that stunts growth, but they still live underground in mines, are skilled craftsmen, are greedy, etc. Elves are almost exactly the same as they are in standard fantasy; long lives, seclusion, low birth rate, but now with added agoraphobia and gooniness.
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Jan 11, 2014 06:19
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Egregious Offences posted:I don't know, for a setting that's trying to divorce the various fantasy races from their normal Tolkien roots, they're failing. Sure, Dwarves are now good at magic and have "kickass" steampunk artificial limbs because of some weird hereditary disease that stunts growth, but they still live underground in mines, are skilled craftsmen, are greedy, etc. Elves are almost exactly the same as they are in standard fantasy; long lives, seclusion, low birth rate, but now with added agoraphobia and gooniness. The fact that tropers still think in terms of fantasy races is a big problem with their fiction, and hell, fantasy fiction in general;. I know this is for a tabletop game, but fantasy races are essentially 19th century racial stereotypes (except for the elves, who are just bits and pieces of European myth welded together by various authors, or possibly an allegory for noble white people). They're the equivalent of the one theme sci-fi planet in star trek, a monolithic group with no individuality, who all operate on a weird biotruths logic with no regard to how a society of these people would or even could function. Now, as a one off thing in a sci-fi show, this works, because the planet is just a plot device to further a theme. But when you're trying to create a believable world, insisting on including the rock Jews or the aryan asexual manchildren from the get go ensures that your world will feel thrown together and disjointed, especially since framing it as racial differences basically cuts out any social commentary, since racial prejudice becomes justified due to inherent differences in people's biology. Political Whores fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 08:44
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Fiat Banking Nazi posted:They're the equivalent of the one theme sci-fi planet in star trek, a monolithic group with no individuality, who all operate on a weird biotruths logic with no regard to how a society of these people would or even could function.
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Jan 11, 2014 08:53
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That page doesn't even go into why it's not a good idea to use it for anything more than a one-off story. Instead we get a full paragraph on how to best implement this trope in our fiction. quote:Writers love to use the hat planet to represent controversial issues in society whenever they can. This way the show's characters can take a thinly disguised public stand on an issue that the network execs would otherwise consider too taboo to openly discuss. We can't have our heroes discussing euthanasia, but should they stumble across a Planet Of Hats where everyone who gets sick is put to death,then it's okay. Eventually the plots will run out with an entire race of identical people so one or more of the species will have their hat fall off, declaring My Species Doth Protest Too Much. Alternately, the show may explore why Klingon Scientists Get No Respect. For maximum typing, the characters can also be physically uniform, as in People of Hair Color Nope, just the standard "tropes are good and you are a good writer if you use them."
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Jan 11, 2014 09:16
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Egregious Offences posted:Also, the name of the setting is "Domhain Sceal", which, according to them, roughly translates to "Land of Tropes" in Irish. Scéal means "story" in Irish; domhain is the genitive of domhan, which means "Earth" (the planet, not dirt) in Irish. So if "Of the Earth, story" is what they were going for, then they nailed it. Here's what's stupid: every goddamned Irish legend is about the Land of Something, from the Tír na nÓg to the Tír fo Thuínn. The Land of Tropes is obviously the Tír na {whatever they think "tropes" are; if they think "stories" are good enough, then Scéalta, but my guess is that there is an Irish word for "literary trope"}. Feel free to correct my admittedly lovely Irish. AlbieQuirky fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 10:02
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AlbieQuirky posted:Scéal means "story" in Irish; domhain is the genitive of domhan, which means "Earth" (the planet, not dirt) in Irish. It apparently translates to "Tale world", if my own rusty Irish is right and google translate isn't full of poo poo, but by troper standards that's not a half-bad stab at it (you seem to be right about it being world as in a planet, as opposed to how they mean, though). Too bad they're just using it to be a bunch of pretentious shitbags, because if you went full Irish mythology with something like this it could almost be interesting.
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Jan 11, 2014 18:20
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Soulcleaver posted:Oh! Oh! I know the trope for that! What do I win? (Aside from a Missing the Point merit badge?) There's a trope for what you did too! I wonder what sort of examples it has! quote:Two Breast Expansion fetish mangas explore this concept with hilarious or saddening results:  "Flesnolk posted:Too bad they're just using it to be a bunch of pretentious shitbags, because if you went full Irish mythology with something like this it could almost be interesting. In the third thread, some troper made a story centered on a creature from Irish mythology (leanan sidhe or something like that). It took what was a good premise for a horror story and turned it into a really lovely porn story. I believe that was Enemy Mayan, the same troper who also gave us an story about a schoolgirl being used as a knife rack erotically and something else with the immortal line "The dickgirls opened fire." What I'm saying is that giving their story a stupid name and then never writing it is really the best-case scenario for these people. Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 11, 2014 18:37
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Flesnolk posted:It apparently translates to "Tale world", if my own rusty Irish is right and google translate isn't full of poo poo, but by troper standards that's not a half-bad stab at it (you seem to be right about it being world as in a planet, as opposed to how they mean, though). Too bad they're just using it to be a bunch of pretentious shitbags, because if you went full Irish mythology with something like this it could almost be interesting. Nah, the cases are wrong (and I've never seen domhan used for planet in general, that's pláinéad). Even if domhan can be used for planet, it's still wrong; instead of planet of tale, it's tale of planet. But they probably got it right off Google Translate, which doesn't seem to understand case structure in Irish at all.
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Jan 11, 2014 18:47
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Arcsquad12 posted:I'm sorry, what? Punishment is explicitly malicious intent. It is meant to punish. How can you go from swearing an oath to never harm your slave, to saying that a little physical punishment is still okay? And then he follows it up by saying that you've done nothing wrong if you kill a slave in self defense. Gee, I wonder why a slave would want to kill his owner, who by virtue of his birth is given hereditary ownership of you, while you're stuck doing his dirty work? He has some dumb ideas but you're misreading it. It limits punishment. Bruises are okay, whipping is not, no permanent damage, etc. Though apparently beating your slaves all day for fun is allowed?
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Jan 11, 2014 19:03
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That troper doesn't want to make a slaveowner sympathetic. They want to make a system of slavery sympathetic.
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Jan 11, 2014 19:26
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Lottery of Babylon posted:
I think I remember seeing that, didn't some goon take it and rewrite it into something actually decent? Yeah though, we should be glad most of them never bother putting key to doc.
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Jan 11, 2014 19:28
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Djeser posted:TV Tropes Writer's Block never disappoints. Because fiction can't ever be allegorical or symbolic. 
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Jan 11, 2014 19:55
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Flesnolk posted:I think I remember seeing that, didn't some goon take it and rewrite it into something actually decent? It was a while ago.  Hopefully it's held up. La Belle Dame Sans MerciBut yeah - I barely even remember the original. I just remember thinking it was too good a premise to be pissed away on some Troper yanking it to anime tits.
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Jan 12, 2014 03:46
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Oh, hey, look what I found while going through one of my image folders. I don't even remember having this, must have gotten it from a previous version of this thread  BEEP BOOP STORYTELLING: 
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Jan 12, 2014 06:22
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Those examples at the bottom say more than anything else in the image does.
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Jan 12, 2014 06:25
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U.T. Raptor posted:Oh, hey, look what I found while going through one of my image folders. I don't even remember having this, must have gotten it from a previous version of this thread
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Jan 12, 2014 07:31
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