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#themes and tropes
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five things that you never get tired of writing
I was tagged by @zaffrenotes - thanks D!  
Rules: List 5 things you never get tired of writing - it can be tropes, themes, characters, phrases, whatever brings you joy. Tag 5 people!
in no particular order: 
found family. choosing the people that matter most, unexpectedly strong or close bonds forming between people, accepting differences and supporting one another.  
natural settings. tree lines and coastlines, mountains and fields and ferns and sunsets, lakes, oceans, waterfalls, twilight and starlight and all the colors and smells and sounds, post-apocalyptic forests and extraterrestrial fauna and leaves changing in the fall.  
smooches. all kinds. breathless ones and sleepy ones, tiny pecks on the cheek and kisses to shut the other person up, goodbye kisses and first kisses and light little brushes, words kissed onto skin and kisses that say more than words. 
myths & magic. legends and prophecies, special abilities, fantastical creatures, the force and the currents and the future and all that jazz. 
flangst. fluff + angst. mixing the bad with the good, putting them through it but making it worth it (i hope), getting through tough times together, hurt and sadness but also comfort and happiness, trust and sacrifice but also warmth and healing. 
tagging a few who might want to play along (but of course anyone who sees this is welcome to!) : @something-tofightfor @oonajaeadira @insomniamamma @writeforfandoms @littlemisspascal
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Thumbprint Challenge
Got tagged by @winterandwords here, thanks!
Quickly Tagging (no pressure): @kittensartswriting @mysticstarlightduck @mjjune and @vacantgodling
RULES: Look back on your work, both past and present, finished and unfinished. What are five to ten narrative elements or tropes that continuously pop up in your work? Give a list of these things!
Living outside of whatever is deemed 'appropriate' by whatever society is present
Finding your own way
"You can do this, but you don't have to do it alone"
Angry Is Soft For Sunshine
They're More Guidelines Than Actual Rules
Smarty ones and punchy ones
Otherworldly Wonders
Thanks for the tag!
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avrablake · 9 months
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Themes and Tropes tag
Thanks for the tag @tabswrites
RULES: look back on your work, both past and present, finished and unfinished. what are five to ten narrative elements or tropes that continuously pop up in your work?
brooding sad boys
to my surprise romance plots and sub-plots–I had convinced myself that I didn't like romance but it turns out I do actually
the dad figure–every found family needs one
corrupt/unethical government (MPSA is leaning this way too)
night sky night sky night sky (and characters who love it)
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the-laridian · 1 year
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For Fannish50 I wrote a small essay about food and how it figures into my written works, specifically A Gun for Barns (Fallout New Vegas), Bad Trip (The Outer Worlds), and The Seventy-Sixer/Ironwood (Fallout 76). It's on my Pillowfort and my Dreamwidth if you want to take a look! DW allows for guest comments, which will be screened.
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envydeath · 1 year
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silence lay steadily.
things haunt, joshua jennifer espinoza // giovanni's room, james baldwin // through me (the flood), hozier // flowers in the attic, v.c. andrews // i am in eskew, jon ware // anatomy, kitty horrorshow // the haunting of hill house, shirley jackson
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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 13 days
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Assisting Acquaintance Acquired.
[First] Prev <–-> Next
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#wen ning#wei wuxian#Ignore how Wen Ning's hair looks here because I messed it up. Let's pretend he just sported a different hair style for a brief moment.#I am not exactly great at consistency but I am trying very hard to work on that (immediately messes up again).#Absolutely *love* how Wen Ning clearly remembers and admires WWX...who does *not* recognize him.#This is the best day for Wen Ning and it means *nothing* to WWX. A painful one-sided crush made worse.#It is bittersweet to realize that we care about someone more than they care about us. Sometime we pour love into a relationship-#-with someone who just can't reciprocate. It isn't always a conscious things either. Some people just aren't aware we care.#And painfully - so painfully - You can't make them aware. No act of kindness or gift or self sacrifice will make someone care about you.#You can martyr yourself for someone and they will continue on unchanged.#I think a lot about the parallels between WN and LWJ. Not foils - just reflections. A theme repeated.#People who give so much of themselves to someone who doesn't have the capacity to give any part of themself away.#I will die on the hill of 'Wen Ning would be the love triangle romance if that trope wasn't being avoided'.#And to be honest - thank the stars above that is the case. I do not know any good love triangles in media.#We are skipping some of the sad Jiang Cheng content because I really want to finish season 2 before May.#Sorry JC emo moment lovers...I'll deliver another time.
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kjscottwrites · 1 year
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Alright lads, here's one for any and all writers: what are the top five things readers can basically always expect to see in your work?
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witchthewriter · 10 months
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𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐞'𝐬 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞
⤷ female, ambiguous race, and any size reader. Requests are open, thank you for reading!      
a/n: I know NOTHING about the movie or it’s plot, other than I want to marry Margot and her portrayal of Barbie is bringing so much nostalgia
Warnings: nothing, because in ... Barbie world there’s no hatred, no homophobia, no gender norms etc. It’s perfect...
ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ      
ENFP
Gryffindor
Chaotic Good
Taurus Sun, Aquarius Moon, Leo Rising
𝑺𝑭𝑾🌿  
・First and foremost Barbie is a very independent woman
・She doesn’t need a partner, which makes your relationship all the more special
・She’s chosen you because she genuinely loves you, rather than doing it because ... she has to 
・And it was a big shock to many when they found out that Barbie had chosen a woman to be her partner
・But she wouldn’t hear anything against it: she loved you and that was the end of it 
・Your relationship seems pretty perfect. Because it is. 
・Life with her is perfect 
・All the annoyances of normal daily life don’t occur during life with her
・Even if you don’t live in Barblie World, she still has this magical energy that brightens everywhere she goes
・She isn’t someone who has many flaws; physically, mentally or emotionally 
・Maybe she does act before thinking though, and that can cause a bit of trouble 
・And she’s very specific with both her outfits and yours 
・Her wardrobe is endless
・A lot of pastels, as well as endless pinks 
・She always makes sure your hair and nails are done (you usually have something matching with your nails...and outfits...)
・Always gives you compliments throughout the day; “god you look radiant honey!” “you’re glowing!” “I can’t believe we’re in love!”
・Being around the other Barbie’s and always having light-hearted conversations (dark thoughts don’t bother you here)
・There are mermaids in the ocean, fairies in the trees, princesses in castles and magic around every corner 
・Her nicknames for you are “honey,” “sweetheart,” “my love,” and “bunny.” 
・Barbie’s love language is ... all of them. She loves ‘buying’ you gifts (there is no money currency), she loves spending time with you; exploring, dancing, adventuring. 
・She always wants to hold your hand or have your arm linked in hers. Her words of affirmation are almost constant. With acts of service, she likes to clean and redecorate for you (even if you don’t need her to). 
𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒔  
Overthinking This x Not Thinking At All
Acts Then Thinks x Thinks Before They Act
Chaotic Dumbass Duo
𝑹𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒄 𝑷𝒍𝒐𝒕 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆
Forever In Their Honeymoon Stage
𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈:  
Romantic Flight by John Powell
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justepilepsy · 10 months
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The reason I am harping in on spiderverse so much is because it is otherwise a really good film and story and premise.
People are not wrong for enjoying it. I don't want people to stop enjoying it. But I want them to acknowledge that it's not normal for many even non neurodiverse people to leave the cinema with a headache. You don't need epilepsy to have a photosensitive seizure.
There is a lot of great art and great ideas in this movie beyond the rapid Glitch effects, highly contrasting bright colors on large screen areas, pulsing lights and patterns etc
The film goes on to inspire other main stream and indie animation projects to take after its visuals
But if a large part of those inspiring visuals is inaccessible then I am just worried this inaccessibility will invade media that has otherwise been safe for me or others to consume.
Spiderverse is a trend setting piece of art but the execution and apparently exploitative work environment has lead to the film being a real safety hazard.
Looking at the discourse and responses I keep seeing to the photosensitivity posts surrounding it, I worry that more than just the viewers , but also many great artists may think the bright flashing dangerous lights and colors are the reason the art is good, rather than creative scene transitions or fantastic character design and the excellent blending of various frame rates.
And if strobe lights and all these effects are realy what gets you hyped and pumped for any type of art. Then that is okay too. I suppose there is an audience for everything.
But it would still be nice if there was a safe viewing option for people to whom these things are genuinely dangerous.
I want to be wrong about strobes and the dangerous art direction decisions of spiderverse spreading. But I have not yet reason to think otherwise.
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direquail · 1 month
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One of the many things I find funny and irritating is the slant of a lot of interpretations of Alecto's name (that it's about feminine rage)--on this here wlw internet in the year of our lord 2024, it's easily made to figure as rage against God, or rage against patriarchy, or religious oppression, and therefore an allusion to the idea that she's going to get her vengeance on John for betraying and oppressing her somehow, but like
John is the one who named her Alecto. He's the one who named her that. So, naming her "Alecto" is alluding to the embodiment of John's rage--their rage, since they are joined inseparably (John even explicitly says that when he first perceives her: "You wouldn't stop screaming. You were so scared. You were so goddamn mad").
He says of Alecto to Harrow, "In a very real way, you are [Alecto's] children". At a very surface level, Alecto is (depending on the text or tradition), one of the Furies--famously, in several surviving Greek tragedies, who punish Orestes for the crime of killing his mother. In fact, in Aeschylus' Oresteia, they declare that they are specifically bound to avenge matricide.
So the name "Alecto" alludes to the nature of John's mission and how he sees it.
It also implies that his divine rage, the rage that gives him power, the power that makes him divine, that he either represents or wants to represent, is feminine rage. He was chosen by Earth (which, Furies are sometimes the daughters of Gaia); he is her champion, however he's managed to fuck that up. Once the truth of that comes out, it becomes clear that all of his power comes from her.
And that's why you get statements from Tamsyn Muir like:
“[T]he God of the Locked Tomb IS a man; he IS the Father and the Teacher; it’s an inherently masc role played by someone who has an uneasy relationship himself to playing a Biblical patriarch. John falls back on hierarchies and roles because they’re familiar even when he’s struggling not to. Even he identifies himself as the God who became man and the man who became God. But the divine in the Locked Tomb is essentially feminine on multiple axes – I think Nona will illuminate that a little bit more."
So yes, he plays the role of Emperor and God and Teacher, with all of the things that implies. And I don't think it should be discounted. But he also is (and partly sees himself as) the chosen champion of a goddess, or what is for all intents & purposes for a human like him a goddess. He is her avenger, and while she sleeps, her avatar.
And I don't think we're meant to read him purely as a parasite who's taking advantage of her to gain power for himself, either. Or an oppressive, Kronos-like figure. Especially if you consider Palamedes' theory of the Grand Lysis, even if he was purely motivated by desire for power before (which I really doubt), there are parts of each in the other, now. What was clear and separate before is uncertain and interpenetrated. Is his rage his own, or hers? Is his mission of revenge his, or hers? If he wants power, is that his own selfishness, or her desire to survive?
And does it matter?
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ky-landfill · 8 months
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madfoxx · 11 months
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“In japanese culture they have a myth where they believe, that all soulmates are connected by an invisible red string, and those strings are attached to each of their little fingers.”
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uncanny-tranny · 9 months
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Death to the trope of rewarding disabled characters with an abled body. Death to the trope that a disabled body is a punishment, a sight, something to shame and be ashamed of.
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Trying to include a werewolf in your story often causes an expectation they will transform for your audience. You have a lot of options for this, but once you've committed to one it's said something about the nature of a werewolf.
Painful transformations can make us feel horrified while watching it, and hope we never endure that kind of agony (AAWIL);
A swift and controlled change can emphasize the power a werewolf has, making this curse more aspiration (Underworld);
Instances where the transformation is very gradual over days leading up to the moon can be fairly tragic due to the loss of autonomy these characters experience (Silver Bullet).
It can be tempting to commit to an aesthetic, however it's essential to ensure the themes of your werewolf story match it. A werewolf who transforms relatively quickly and painlessly isn't going to mesh with a horrific and tragic narrative. They can still work. For instance, the emphasis on how easy it is to let go of their humanity, to indulge, how hard it is to keep the beast at bay. These are themes you can explore in a quick transformation. Perhaps, full moon changes are slow and painful because the human side is fighting their beast trying to tire it out before it gains control. In that we see a more heroic element to the lycanthrope.
Please reblog with your favourite werewolf transformations! Pretty sure my fav. is from Hemlock Grove, just so visceral!
youtube
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thunderboltfire · 2 months
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I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.
It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.
The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.
What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.
But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.
There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.
On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.
But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.
My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.
The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.
I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.
It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.
And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?
There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.
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Brandon Sanderson: Fantasy vs. Sci-Fi
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Almost all of BrandoSando's books straddle the line between the two genres, and after seeing @approximateknowledge's post here, I wondered how they would lay out on that chart. I was also inspired by this fascinating WOB about Skyward's genre. These are just my opinions, so let me know if you agree or what you think you'd change!
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