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#ref – @roadtohell on Tumblr

like a spirit in the night

@roadtohell / roadtohell.tumblr.com

zann. musicals, movies and more.
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One of the stranger things about training brand new nurses is explaining how to min max small talk. It feels very weird to coach people on how to chat.

if I make and post an insanely detailed powerpoint on the twenty different equations I run mentally during casual conversation to make it flow better, everyone has to say that it's sexy and cool and not weird at all

remember, everyone promised to be cool! also disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer assume I said all the things you'd say to be like "i know human interaction is complicated, i know some of what i listed here would be very annoying to some people," and all that

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reblogged
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callmebliss

Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?

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macleod

I've seen this passes around a few times, and I have one thing to say:

It's online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.

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Here's THE masterpost of free and full adaptations, by which I mean that it's a post made by the master.

Anthony and Cleopatra: here's the BBC version

As you like it: you'll find here an outdoor stage adaptation and here the BBC version

Coriolanus: Here's a college play, here's the 1984 telefilm, here's the 2014 one with tom hiddleston

Hamlet: The Kenneth Branagh 1996 Hamlet is here, the 1964 russian version is here and the 1964 american version is here. THe 1964 Broadway production is here, the 1948 Laurence Olivier one is here. And the 1980 version is here. Here are part 1 and 2 of the 1990 BBC adaptation. Have the 2018 Almeida version here.

Henry IV: part 1 and part 2 of the BBC 1989 version. And here's part 1 of a corwall school version.

Henry V: Laurence Olivier (who would have guessed) 1944 version. The 1989 Branagh version here. The BBC version is here.

Julius Caesar: here's the 1979 BBC adaptation, here the 1970 John Gielgud one.

King Lear: Laurence Olivier once again plays in here. And Gregory Kozintsev, who was I think in charge of the russian hamlet, has a king lear here. The 1975 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here. The 1974 version with James Earl Jones is here.

Macbeth: here's the 1961 one with Sean Connery. Here's the 1971 by Roman Polanski, with spanish subtitles. Here's the 1948 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljZrf_0_CcQ">here. The 1988 BBC onee with portugese subtitles and here the 2001 one). The 1969 radio one with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is here and the 1966 BBC version is here. The Royal Shakespeare Compagny's 2008 version is here.

Measure for Measure: BBC version here.

The Merchant of Venice: here's a stage version, here's the 1980 movie, here the 1973 Lawrence Olivier movie, here's the 2004 movie.

The Merry Wives of Windsor: the Royal Shakespeare Compagny gives you this movie.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: have this sponsored by the City of Columbia, and here the BBC version.

Much Ado About Nothing: Here is the kenneth branagh version and here the Tennant and Tate 2011 version. Here's the 1984 version.

Othello: A Massachussets Performance here, the 2001 movie her is the Orson Wells movie with portuguese subtitles theree, and a fifteen minutes long lego adaptation here. THen if you want more good ole reliable you've got the BBC version here and there.

Richard II: here is the BBC version

Richard III: here's the 1955 one with Laurence Olivier, and here's the 1995 one with Ian McKellen. (the 1995 one is in english subtitled in spanish. the 1955 one has no subtitles and might have ads since it's on youtube)

Romeo and Juliet: here's the 1988 BBC version.

The Taming of the Shrew: the 1988 BBC version here, the 1929 version here, some Ontario stuff here and here is the 1967 one with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

The Tempest: the 1979 one is here, the 2010 is here. Here is the 1988 one.

Timon of Athens: here is the 1981 movie with Jonathan Pryce,

Troilus and Cressida can be found here

Titus Andronicus: the 1999 movie with Anthony Hopkins here

Twelfth night: here for the BBC, herefor the 1970 version with Alec Guinness, Joan Plowright and Ralph Richardson.

The Winter's Tale: the BBC version is here

Please do contribute if you find more. This is far from exhaustive.

(also look up the original post from time to time for more plays)

Oh, I have additions!

A Misdummer Night Dream: Here’s the 2013 globe production (the one with The Kiss, you know it)

Romeo and Juliet: Here’s the one that was going to be a stage show and then lockdown happened so they filmed it! Stars Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley

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versegm

Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.

It's gonna come as a surprise to most of you, but if you don't want to do that for whatever reason you're allowed to not reblog this post. I'm not holding a gun to your head here I'm just trying to spread the word for people who do want a backup of their stuff.

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reblogged

GPOY — a 2012 Tumblr-inspired theme

happy April Fools! this theme is a joke. and by "joke" I mean, unfortunately, I spent time making this Tumblr theme that you can now use. consider it a late Ides of March gift or something.

What does GPOY mean?

oh, my little Tumblr baby. I'm so glad you asked!

GPOY is short for "Gratuitous Picture Of Yourself," and is usually accompanied by a picture of yourself or something that you do. It was a very common reply and tag on Tumblr in the early 2010s, essentially meaning the same thing as "me" or "same".

GPOY comes with the following features:

  • I spent a ridiculously long time making sure this looked as close to the Tumblr dashboard from 2011-2012 as I could, so it includes absurd, long-obsolete features such as...
  • Reblogged post commentary is nested in blockquotes, that can and will be unreadable and break when there are too many (don't worry, if you don't like this you can disable it).
  • Like and reblog buttons are at the top of posts (so convenient!)
  • This theme supports all post types! That being said, some of them look like absolute shit (as David Karp originally intended)
  • 3 font sizes (original 14px - for ants, 15px, and 16px)
  • 5 post sizes and 5 sidebar widths
  • 9 built-in color schemes (Default, Modern, Dark, Galaxy 1-3, Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Supernatural) plus a custom scheme for your own uploaded background image (the most low-res, high-contrast, over-saturated image you can find would be great)
  • "Followed tags" section to host your favorite blog tags
  • "Suggested blogs" section to recommend your favorite blogs
  • An optional fake "create a post" section at the top of the blog
  • Unlimited custom links (visit the help desk FAQ for a tutorial)
  • Custom titles for Home, Ask, Submit, and Archive links
  • Pagination or endless scroll

you can install this theme via the source code here! the theme is still pending approval in the theme garden, and I'll add that installation link later. as always, thank you so much for using my themes, even the hellishly ugly themes like this one. it means a lot!

my themes are free to use, and always will be — but if you love my work, I'd be so happy if you bought me a coffee. thank you!

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saw a post abt HBO removing shows that suggests ppl just “burn dvds” but everyone doesnt know how to do that so here is one way to do that

- get blank dvds (Both +R or -R work, I think +R is slightly cheaper, the difference is rewritability), these are not very expensive for the amount you can get in bulk (if you are in the US 100 of them is about 30$ at walmart)

- an external DVD drive that plugs in via usb is also around 20-40$ (it tends to be closer to 20)

- download DVDFlick (free)

- if you don’t already have the mp4/mpeg of whatever media you want to burn, you can download movies/shows off of sites like gomovies.sx and soap2day

gomovies.sx will have a download button that looks like this

below the video you can choose one of these

if you click streamlare for example and then the download button it will take you here where the mp4 is

(if you’re on an iphone/ipad, clicking download will save it to your files app)

- if you cant find the download button on soap2day you can also install a video downloader extension which will find the movie for you

- at this point you can drag and drop it into a google drive or keep it on your computer but if you still want it on dvd ->

- open dvd flick, drag and drop the video

- click “project settings”

- give it whatever title you want, you can change encoder to “normal” (default is below normal if you are doing other things on the computer). you dont need to change target size or thread count (unless you want to)

- insert a blank dvd into your drive, make sure you click “burn project to disc”

- click accept then click “create dvd” next to menu and project settings. it will create a destination folder and this dialogue box will pop up when you click “create” on more dvds, just click “yes” and then “okay” on the box that appears after it

it’ll take a couple hours, once its done take a sharpie & write whats on it and stick it in a case . or dont . im not ur mom

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caimofnoceur

47 more free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Music

  • Gnoosic is your place go for new music recommendations. It asks for three of your favourite bands, and based on them, spits out an artist that you might like. You can also “like”, “dislike”, or mark it as something you aren’t familiar with – which further refines the results.
  • NoCopyrightSounds is a copyright free / stream safe record label, providing free to use music to the content creator community. NCS Music is free to use for independent Creators and their UGC (User Generated Content) on YouTube & Twitch - always remember to credit the Artist, track and NCS and link back to our original NCS upload.
  • Radio Garden take a trip ‘round the world’s airwaves! Just pick a city — literally any city — and Radio Garden will play you whatever its local radio station is broadcasting.
  • Radiooooo Radio Garden walked so Radiooooo could run. This site adds a timeline function so you can listen to radio from not just anywhere, but anywhen. Get down to those 1910s Germany bops!

Art

  • Krita free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and 2D animation.It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and Chrome OS
  • 29a.ch interactive site that lets you color what looks to be a map of the cosmos, but I’m honestly not sure. Whatever it is, it’s mesmerizing.

Games

  • Patatap is an interactive website that responds to the keys on your keyboard with a sound and a brief animation. Now imagine hammering in entire sentences – and you got an explosion of sounds, colors, and movement! Once you start typing in random paragraphs, it becomes almost hypnotic, in a way.
  • Drench a very simple browser game, Drench gives you a board with different colored tiles, and you use the buttons to flip the colors around. Do this until your board is full of tiles of a single color only.
  • River Styx an interactive point-and-click game that takes you through the river Styx and the Underworld. You will meet many Greek Gods and Goddesses here, and you will also be learning a lot about their myths and legends.
  • 2048 this website lets you play a game called 2048, which is kinda like Tetris but with addition. Use your arrow keys to try to combine numbers until you reach 2048, or go ~beyond~ and try to reach 4096.
  • Little Alchemy 2 fun little time killer. As its name suggests, the website deals with the process of transformation you achieve when you start mixing different things. You start with Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. The goal is to create as many different materials or objects as possible. For example, earth and air will form dust. There are no rules just mix and match your creations to create new ones. You will not even know where your time went.
  • Akinator website is magic or rather feels like one. You can think of any character in this entire world and through a series of question, it will deduce the name. Don’t believe me, go try for yourself.
  • Find the Invisible Cow You’re going to want to make sure your sound is on in this fun finding game! Find the invisible cow in this laugh out loud version of hot and cold.
  • CookieClicker How fast can you click for cookies? Level up and become a cookie pro with this fun time-wasting website!

Knowledge

  • Zooniverse A really neat website that brings people together to create one of the largest platforms for people-powered research. Volunteers come together to assist professional researchers. There is no need for a specialised background or training; all you have to do is to answer simple questions.
  • Cool Hunting is a really cool publication platform that uncovers the latest in design, technology, style, travel, art and culture. If you are into art, architecture, and culture, then this website is perfect for you.
  • OCEARCH Shark Tracker This one looks right on the money for the folks who can’t get enough of sharks! With OCEARCH Shark Tracker, you can keep a track of tagged sharks as they are busy swimming around the deep ocean. Moreover, the website also lets you zoom in on a particular location to check where sharks have been swimming for the past year.
  • Ad Astra-app An essential tool for every astronomer. The star atlas and skyguide that makes it really easy to pick the best objects, make your own observation list and use it when you are outside
  • 100,000 Stars is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on the web. It shows a representation of galaxy with stars inside it. You can take a tour which starts from the Sun and takes you to the outer edges of the galaxy while teaching you valuable insights in between.
  • wikiHow is an online wiki-style publication featuring how-to articles on a variety of topics. For example: How to make ginger ale, How change a lock or How to survive an encounter with an ostrich.

Cooking

  • Cooking for Engineers is a godsend for those who love to cook. This website has it all, from recipes, to kitchen gear, to cooking tests, down to a handy dictionary. The best part about this website is its classic 90’s layout, which makes accessing the recipes and files intuitive and easier.
  • My Fridge Food at this point, your fridge probs has, like, three random items in it, and you’re starting to panic about meal options. Enter My Fridge Food, which inputs everything you have in your kitchen and outputs a recipe. Bless.

Work, or relax

  • Da Font Tired of your basic Times New Roman? You can spend hours downloading new fonts from typography artists to spice up your new document!
  • A Soft Murmur If you’re looking to create your own ambient background music to listen to while you work or read, A Soft Murmur is the fun website for you! Create your own mix of white noise and other natural sounds to relax and waste some time.
  • Rainy Mood Get all the benefits of rain without getting caught in it with Rainy Mood! This is perfect for setting a relaxed and chilled out mood.
  • I Waste So Much Time The website is designed to literally allow you to waste your time. There are no long articles, just funny pictures with embedded texts. A very good time waster for short breaks.
  • This Is My Website Now The website truly kills your time. It is just a collection of small games which you can play on your browser. Effective for less than 10 minutes of usage, it’s good for a short break.
  • Instructables If you’ve always wanted to learn how to DIY but didn’t know where to start, try Instructables. They have community posts with step-by-step instructions to help you become a DIY master in no time.
  • OBS Open Broadcaster Software is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers. only downside to it is that you have a power director watermark in the corner of your video, but its not very large.
  • Sleepytime is your sleeping schedule out of whack? This fun website calculates exactly when you need to go to sleep and wake up in order to get a good night’s sleep.

Boredom

  • MapCrunch Go on an adventure without leaving your home — because you can’t! This site plops you down in a random location on the globe, and all that’s left to do is explore.
  • List of Conspiracy Theories Get sucked down the dark rabbit hole of the internet that will have you denying history and wearing tinfoil hats. Wikipedia’s list of conspiracy theories will have you scrolling for ages!
  • This Person Does Not Exist If AI and deep-fakes fascinate you, this is a website that will either make you very excited, or give you nightmares about whether ‘The Matrix’ is real, and if you, at some point in your life, took the blue pill instead of the red one. Either way, the website generates fake people using GAN (or generative adversarial networks), and displays them to you. You can refresh the page to see a different face. Also, if this interests you, you might also like:
  • This Cat Does Not Exist. You know, because why stare at human faces when you can look at cats instead.
  • The Useless Web Want to see what the Internet truly has to offer? Take a peek at The Useless Web to see what truly is out there.
  • Not Always Right Had a bad day at work? Did that one annoying, pesky customer or client who just wouldn’t shut up tried to give you a hard time, and succeeded? Then this website is just perfect for you! It’s a collection of stories about customers who just don’t know when to shut up.
  • Zoom Quilt If you’re looking to be hypnotized, then check out this site, which is basically a picture that infinitely zooms in to reveal new pictures.

Just for fun

  • Tickld is your go-to spot for anything humorous and funny, for anything that’s really cool and interesting, or stuff that’s just plain WTF.
  • Paper Toilet Just because stores are sold out of toilet paper doesn’t mean you have to live without. This site features some interactive TP that you can roll up or down.
  • The Passive-Aggressive Password Machine Type a password (real or fake) into this site and it’ll shade you for how much it sucks.
  • CoolThings is a collection of cool things. From entertainment, to gadgets, to even toys and inventions, there is bound to be something here that will interest you.
  • This Is Why I Am Broke This is a great website for discovering new gift ideas which are distinct. The products range from a few dollars to a few thousand. There’s something for everyone here.
  • PostSecret is a very interesting website. Visitors are encouraged to send in anonymous postcards on which they write their secrets. There are all sorts of secrets on all kinds of postcards, and the variations make this a really interesting project. However, be warned – these secrets are very real… and very heavy.
  • NOIYS – Post, read, forget is a place to post an anonymous note to be viewed by many people, only to be deleted within 24 hours. It’s the perfect website for venting anonymously and not worry about the consequences, as it will be deleted within a day. The best part (or maybe worst) is that strangers can reply to your note, too. That way, you can have a running conversation with a complete stranger.
  • Scream Into the Void Take your outrage about our current situation (or any problem in your life) and throw it into the void. Just type out your feels and then click the “Scream” button, which does exactly what you think it does.

And lastly…

  • Dildo Generator Welcome, good citizens of the web, to my favorite site of all time. It’s right in the name: You can generate a custom dildo by length, width, base, contours, and so many more variables. Things get wild pretty fast.
  • Eyebleach Did you see something on the internet that was just too scary? Or just need to get it out of your head? Click on Eyebleach to be fed adorable pictures of puppies, kitties, or babies!

Earlier post

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As a purveyor of weird/quirky internet things, there are few things I love more than coming across a new little tool to make fun things with. Here’s a running list of some of my favorites that I’ve found!

Games

  • Bitsy is a “little editor for little games or worlds” and one of my personal favorite tools on this list. A good first start if you want to make a game and have never made one before. It’s got a pretty extensive wiki if you want to add audio, animations, etc.
  • Flickgame is just about as simple as it gets. You get 16 colors and 16 slides, and clicking colors is how you get to different slides. Super easy and fun!
  • Flicksy is both of the above combined! Make more complicated sprites that lead between branching rooms. Full disclosure, I’ve never actually made something with this, but it’s been on my radar for a while.
  • Twine is almost too mainstream to put on this list, but it’s a great one to know about. It’s a tool for making those interactive fiction games where you click on the words to progress. So fun and hugely customizable.

Music

  • Beepbox is my current favorite way to create music. You get 16 measures and a pretty expansive set of preset instruments, with the option of making your own adjustments. The song is stored in the web address, so sharing is as simple as copy pasting the link! You can also export your music (so that you can add it to your games) UPDATE: Turns out you can have more than 16 measures! I just can’t read. That makes it more cool!

Art

  • Piskel is an easy way to make pixel art sprites and animations. It’s easy to use and you can resize sprites too!

Websites

  • Neocities!!! I cannot recommend this one enough. Build your own websites from scratch! Revel in the vibes of the internet in the late 1990s - early 2000s! This does require some coding knowledge, but there are plenty of resources out there to help. Speaking as someone who had 0 coding skills before making my site, it’s very easy to pick up.
  • Domino is another tool that I’ve never actually used but have always wanted to. It’s “a tool for collaging fragmentary thoughts and ideas without the friction of assembling them into linear writing”, and is essentially a bunch of boxes that connect to one another, sort of like a mind map.
  • ProBoards is a free(!) forum creation website. You can even customize the layout with your Neocities coding knowledge!
  • Carrd is in no way underground, but as far as easy website tools come, it’s one of the best, so it deserves to be here. Plus you can definitely make interesting and quirky things with it - this little game is one of my favorite carrds I’ve ever seen!

Please add any tools you love in the notes! I just adore finding things like this, and I’m sure there are some I’ve missed. It’s important for creativity to sometimes spend an afternoon making a weird song or website that you never would have normally. I hope this inspires you to create!

Additions.

EleutherAI - text generator! Very helpful for inspiration.

Grapedrop - Alternative to Carrd for the more expert out there. More customization!

Scratch - make games or other stuff! It’s a simple programming language.

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cryptonature

Sharks make excellent pets if you follow this simple two-step care guide.

1: Leave them in the ocean.

2: Visit them in your imagination to give them daily compliments.

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tanoraqui

3. Check out the OCEARCH Shark Tracker app, which lets you learn names and facts about many individual sharks, and see where in the ocean they’ve been swimming recently!

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reblogged

hey followers. have you ever wanted to know how it feels to be inside a bag of cornflakes

I fucking hate this website because not only did I click this goddamn link expecting it to be a joke of some sort, but it wasn’t a joke and I sat here spinning the screen around enjoying myself in a stupid bag of cornflakes like the dumbass monkey I am on Tumblr.com, enthralled by being in a bag of corn flakes in

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Screaming crying because I hate every piracy guide I come across on here.

HERE IT IS

check out my piracy guide GOGOGOGO

STEAL MAIM KILL!!!

tell me if i got any more splainin todo. i am open to suggestions. reblog this so more people can pirate. DO IT!

THE REVIEWS ARE IN

thank you so much for the support over the last three days! i got over 10k hits on the website!!!

i wish i could upload faster/more often but i have been busy & tired. i did make a number of small updates today though! including links to VPN leak checks, where to find roms and emulators, more torrenting sites, and a small dictionary section that has VERY SIMPLE definitions of some words that i used.

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gorps

This is legit the only piracy guide I've seen on tumblr that is not full of terrible advice go read and do this rn or else

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Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

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elaena

if any of you guys are interested in giffing or well just p1rating I'm compiling a list of free resources i use on my edits (video+programs+assets+non edit stuff) and like my general presence because piracy is always moral and right

I'll start with a few disclaimers:

- Although there are a few direct download sites I put here, I deal mostly with Torrenting, in which you WILL have to download a client in order to get your stuff;

- uTorrent/Bittorrent has not been deemed trustworthy since a few years ago for discreetly putting a Bitcoin miner in their software. Use clients such as qBittorrent for desktop and LibreTorrent or Flud for mobile (Android).

- Avoid The Pirate Bay, period. Not even recommended uploaders are safe anymore, and just because you got one or two safe downloads from there doesn't mean the next one won't be fucked up.

- Links with * on them mean that the site is direct download (DDL), meaning you don't need a torrent client.

- I live in a country which generally doesn't need VPNs for pirated downloads/streams, however I know Canada, the US and some parts of EU have very strict regulations and can get you a notice from your ISP before legal action is taken. Research reputable VPNs, it's worth getting one.

- Whatever you do, use uBlock.

The following list will be divided between editing software, editing assets, where to get TV shows/movies, etcetera, under the cut.

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Sometimes I’m looking for something online - often “how to” articles - and I want to filter for - like - a website that was clearly built in 2010 at the latest, which may or may not have been updated since then, but contains a vast wealth of information on one topic, painstakingly organized by an unknown legend in the field with decades’ worth of experience. I don’t want a listicle with a nice stolen picture in a slideshow format written by a content aggregator that God forgot. I want hand-drawn diagrams by some genius professor who doesn’t understand SEO at all, but understands making stir-fries or raising stick insects better than anyone else on this earth. I don’t know what search settings to put into Google to get this.

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greenjudy

thank you for articulating this cri de coeur for me

ngl these days i’m just happy when it’s not a video

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averixus
The search engine calculates a score that aggressively favors text-heavy websites, and punishes those that have too many modern web design features.
This is in a sense the opposite of what most major search engines do, they favor modern websites over old-looking ones. Most links you find here will be nearly impossible to find on a regular search engine, as they aren’t sufficiently search engine optimized.

“It is a search engine, designed to help you find what you didn’t even know you were looking for. If you search for “Plato”, you might for example end up at the Canterbury Tales. Go looking for the Canterbury Tales, and you may stumble upon Neil Gaiman’s blog.

If you are looking for fact, this is almost certainly the wrong tool. If you are looking for serendipity, you’re on the right track. When was the last time you just stumbled onto something interesting, by the way?

I don’t expect this will be the next “big” search engine. This is and will remain a niche tool for a niche audience.“

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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

An incomplete list of really useful or interesting reads from TvTropes.

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

this is just a really short list of examples I encourage people who write or otherwise create stories to browse around on this site it’s so useful

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If you want to discover some obscure music, check out Basic mode on Radiooooo, which lets you pick a decade (1900s-2020s) and a country and it plays music from there

It’s not hard to find mood music playlists if your setting is the standard pseudo-Medieval adventure-land, but what if your campaign is a fictionalized version of Australia in the 1930s or Uzbekistan in the 60s or Senegal in the 90s? Now it’s easy!

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