@curiouslilbird / curiouslilbird.tumblr.com
Do you like enemies to lovers because it’s hot or do you like enemies to lovers because you think of yourself as unlovable & unworthy of love and therefore like the idea of someone seeing all the worst in you right away and still falling in love with you anyways
I would like to nominate "You promised" "I know" as one of the most heartbreaking exchanges in the english language
It's about the quiet betrayal, about resignation in place of an apology, the helpess admittance that thing have changed, that they know they promised but they have to break it this time, for whatever reason...
archers gloves vs digital artist gloves being opposite of one another
Much like how archers and digital artists are mortal enemies
Behold, the digital artchery glove!
….but Wait…
…….!!!
FUCKA YOUUU!!!!!
Ok but wgat if we held hands…..
and we both had carpal tunnel syndrome 😳
not carpal tunnel syndrome 😫
thinking of whump less as a trope and more as a genre frees you to do a lot more with it
but seriously. it asks you to find something beautiful about pain, to see the suffering for what it is beyond its context. the raw, human desire to feel. it takes things often depicted with disgust and reveres them with love without making it about anything except exactly what it is- free of metaphor, true to itself. tell me thats not at least worthy of consideration as art.
It's so weird, I'm realizing that I liked a sort of "whump" even as a young child. The scenes in kids movies and picture books of characters visibly suffering were always so fascinating to me, perhaps as my brain was developing and trying to understand the human experience of pain and sorrow.
i really hate 'power of love' stories not because i'm a jaded cynic or whatever but because i always find something deeply offputting and misanthropic in how they are almost always set up in a way that implies that the protagonist is the only person in the world capable of love
for your story to hinge on "our protagonist's love is powerful enough to conquer all the evils of the world" you kind of have to implicitly make the backdrop "everyone else's love is garbage, just trash, philosophical zombies the lot of them"
like harry potter is the big modern pop culture template for "the power of love" and even seitting aside yknow any of the modern stuff about jkr i have always found "oh his mother's love protected him from the killing curse" to be kind of deeply repulsive as a plot point. like oh well i guess the moms all those other kids who died just didnt love them enough, guess it was a skill issue
What's the trope name for when someone finds out they're the Chosen One(tm) and is like "No, thank you" and goes and does something else
Refusal Of The Call is the actual trope name. Usually followed by the tropes of The Call Knows Where You Live and You Can’t Fight Fate.
The Call is Trying to Contact you about your Destiny's Extended Warranty.
I Blocked The Call's Number, and The Call Got A New Phone And Called Again
Please Help The Call is Stalking Me
I Told The Call To Take Me Off The Call List And Got Laughed At
I ran an Aliens rpg years back. But the players didn't KNOW it was an Aliens game until halfway through the first session.
They thought it was a sci-fi game but they also thought the monsters were going to be zombies.
Over a period of 2 hours they then proceeded to make EVERY Aliens movie cliche "mistake" known to man. Because at the time they all made sense.
The characters in a story don't know they're in a story or what kind of story it is.
They might think their in a romcom instead of a slasher movie. And if you're not in a slasher movie, why the fuck would you search through every closet in your house just because a cup mysteriously fell off a table in the dining room?
you heard of the academic icarus, now get ready for:
and may I also interest you in:
You know what? one more on the house:
Academic Oedipus: despite all your efforts, it went exactly the way your supervisor said it was gonna go, and now everyone is cursing your name until you’re ready to claw your eyes out.
Academic Persephone: from October to March you’re in hell. Still better than working retail.
I hate you epitome of innocence being represented with blonde hair I hate you lightness representing goodness I hate you "angelic features" automatically being read as blonde hair and blue eyed with pale skin I hate you whiteness as the default for morality I HATE YOU I HATE YOU
A thing that bothers me about wizard schools in popular media – outside of the magic-grade-school stuff, anyway – is that they're typically depicted as being basically magic universities, but their actual curricula and pedagogical approaches look much more like those of a technical institution. Like, buddy, that's not a wizard university, that's a wizard trade school. You can't just slap university student culture on top of trade school pedagogy. It doesn't work like that – the one emerges from the other!
"Well ACTUALLY wizards are" wizards are made up. They can be analogous to whatever real-world class or vocation the author wants. Wizard-school-as-university and wizard-school-as-technical-institute are both perfectly fine; what I am grumping about is wizard-school media that doesn't seem to have a clear picture of how different sorts of educational institutions actually operate.
Okay but now I really want to know what a Wizard technician would look like. Would he wear magical overalls with all kinds of reagents and magic tools sticking out of his numerous pockets?
A guy like that walks into your tower with a toothpick in his mouth, takes one look at your summoning circle and goes
“I see yer problem. You used chalk B12 instead of S3. B12 is only for transmutation circles. Gimme a sec I think I have a piece somewhere here.”
He fixes your circle, test summons an imp and goes.
“There ya go. Fit as a fiddle.”
“It’s the chalk.”
“The chalk? I always use that chalk, it’s never been a problem.”
“Ah - yes. This stuff will work just fine for most circles, but, uh - here, take a look with my loupe. You see the off-color flecks? Can’t hardly see them with the naked eye, but those are impurities. Silicates, might even be some iron in here, to be honest. Usually won’t cause a problem, but - you said you hadn’t tried this particular summons before?”
“First time trying a 5th level, yeah.”
“Those silicates will make your scribing a little fuzzy when viewed from the astral plane. You see, for example, these three fine lines here? With this chalk, on the astral that looks like one thick line with fuzzy edges. They can’t tell exactly what you want, and they’re picky lil’ critters so they just won’t do anything in response.”
“Really? Oh. I always thought the expensive chalk was just fancy to be fancy.”
“Making pure chalk is difficult, you need a dedicated production line or dust gets in the finished product. To be honest, you don’t need to bother with it for most things, but 5th and up, 5th level and up, it actually is necessary. Anything with lines within about two millimeters of each other.”
“So I need to start over?”
“Unfortunately yes. You’ll have to erase all this, but with some good chalk it should work just fine. Next new moon your summons should go off without a hitch.”
“Dang. At least it’s not my sigils, I was worried it was my sigils.”
“Nah Your sigils look good. Even and balanced. You know what you’re doing, it’s just an equipment problem.”
“Thanks for the help, sorry to make you come all the way out here.”
“No problem! It’s my job.”
🤝
i think i dont even really mind the 'mom friend' trope its just that no one ever uses it to flesh out a character and group dynamic, they just use it to shove them to the side
like at least sometimes the question 'why did the group dynamic evolve to have a designated responsible™ person' is asked and answered, but i never see people ask the follow-up question 'how does this affect that character'
like does the mom friend do this out of guilt? trying to make up for some way that they failed? does an absence of real parental/guardian figures make them feel like they have to shoulder more responsibilities than usual for their age? do the other people in the group act more rashly/irresponsibly because they start expecting the mom friend to save them? does the mom friend grow to resent them for it? if they're all kids, does the mom friend lose out on childhood/adolescent experiences? do they feel grief over that?
but nah. usually it's just grounds for shoving that character into the corner until the author needs someone to have common sense for 2 seconds
concept: instead of “time traveller from the past is unimpressed by the present” it’s “time traveller from the past loves things we don’t like about modern society” like they think pollution is badass or something
medieval peasant upon hearing the number of species that go extinct every day: fuck yeah, damn those beafts to hell
My fave dainamiks
Healthy relationships are clearly better in real-life but fucked-up ones are way more dramatically interesting in fiction. In much the same way–indeed, in exactly the same way–that feudal monarchy is a hell of a lot of fun in fantasy and historical fiction novels, but complete shit to actually live under.
Feudal monarchy is so hilarious because it’s just like: “What if we based our entire sociopolitical structure on fucked-up family dynamics?”
i made a late night uquiz: which cliche trope are you?
let me know which results you get!
these doe-eyed hearts you have found in the woods, they know your pain for what it is. they hear the creaking floorboards of your bones and see the broken past in your eyes, yet they do not turn away. they never turn away. find shelter here, in these souls where you have built a home.
It’s actually very simple: all cartoon characters have Schrödinger’s junk. They exist in a quantum superposition of smooth like a Barbie doll and hung like a horse, and when you collapse the waveform it resolves to whichever option makes the joke land.
Other possible quantum states of what’s in a cartoon character’s pants include the following:
