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Topic: Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content  (Read 21261 times)

Lemon

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content
with Jimmyfranks, Acierocolotl, Kumquatxop, Adam Bozarth, and Lemon.
Content for this episode was compiled by Cheapskate1
Edited by Lemon.
The community of contributors to tvtropes.org are clearly experts in consuming mass media. They've honed their skills in identifying devices, contrivances, holes and structure in various plots, so much so that they may have distilled fiction as a whole into simple, repeatable formulas. Does that make them good writers? Let's find out! This week, The F Plus gets 241's at the Angsty Wang.
   
MUSIC USED
Cibo Matto - Lint of Love
Future of the Left - Notes On Achieving Orbit

1: Cheapskate did this doc, not Montrith, Lemon you idiot

count_actuala

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #1
Oh my god my dreams have come true. I've been wanting another awful writing episode for ages.

Agent (gobble, gobble) Coop

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #2
Thank you! Tv tropes was my first episode and will forever be a top three contender. My prayers have been answered.

advancedclass

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #3
Thanks to either Jimmyfranks or Kumquatxop - whoever reminded everyone else that Gilligan's Planet was a thing that happened. Because god help me, I was wondering the same thing.

Bravo to Cheapskate, too, for finding a bunch of tvtropes writing garbage that wasn't saturated in rape. Give yourself a gold star, man.

Sion

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #4
"HELP!"

"HEEEELP!"

"SOMEBODY HELP!"


That was the best segue.


Thanks to Spacebat for making me realize my typo.
Segway.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2014, 06:05:32 pm by Sion »

Cleretic

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #5
Something that I remember got brought up a lot in the SA mock threads about TVTropes is that a significant majority of people on TVTropes have absolutely no writing education. Most of them are either still in school for non-writing subjects, engineers, work with computers, and the occasional military guy. Generally speaking, the more math-y sorts of jobs.

I think this is very important, because it sheds light on why they write, and talk about writing, like they do. These people aren't writers, have no idea what writing entails, and in fact probably haven't even read a book since school (I remember one troper said the last book he read was Animorphs). Their entire experience with creative pursuits is the media they consume, which is obviously why their ideas are all garbage, but their areas of knowledge shed light on why their actual writing is like it is. They're approaching writing in the way they've been taught to approach things in their own, more quantitative and measurable way. It's all very formulaic, and overly focused on the technical components. This is how they think it works, based on an outward view and no proper expertise. They focus on the wrong things, and produce 'stories' out of the dismantled components that are technically stable by their own definitions, but have absolutely nothing to them because they never learned how to actually do character arcs, subtext, language use, and all that good stuff.

TVTropes is a bunch of engineers, failing at reverse-engineering the process of creative writing. Everything they write is terrible, because they have no clue whatsoever how to write.

I think my personal favorite troper with an issue was the guy writing a story who realized that his hero couldn't win the fight at the end of the chapter, because he didn't have enough healing potions. His question was if his hero should go back into the dungeon and grind for more healing potions.
Mister Smalls Horza hautecouture strifeheart adrenochrome dome Corn Syrup Really_Quite_Nice
« Last Edit: August 24, 2014, 03:19:21 am by Cleretic »

Lemon

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #6
"HELP!"

"HEEEELP!"

"SOMEBODY HELP!"


That was the best segway.
Sion, August 23, 2014, 11:20:50 pm

I'm glad you enjoyed that, because I really had to sweeten it in editing. It was funny in my head, but messy in the recording, so I was able to edit it back to the way I thought it was supposed to go.
I always end up my own jokes in my edit.

montrith

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #7
Considering about 1/3 of all Fplus submissions currently in your In folder are from me, I think we can forgive the Freudian slip you had there Lemon.

Lemon

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #8
Considering about 1/3 of all Fplus submissions currently in your In folder are from me, I think we can forgive the Freudian slip you had there Lemon.
montrith, August 24, 2014, 01:43:57 pm

I don't know about Freudian... Unless, wait, are you an ethical slut?

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #9
the devil mafia was the rap group juicy jay got his start in.

KingKalamari

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #10
It came up briefly in the episode but it needs to be explained for the uninitiated that on TVTropes a "deconstruction"isn't a method of philosophical and literary monster cockysis but is instead, in their own words:

When applied to tropes, or other aspects of fiction, deconstruction means to take apart a trope so as to better understand its meaning and relevance to us in Real Life. This often means pursuing a trope's inherent contradictions and the difference between how the trope appears in this one work and how it compares to other relevant tropes or ideas both in fiction and Real Life.

However, because tropers are morons who really really really want to cram as many examples of tropes into things even this definition is very lax and has sort of devolved to the point where it's basically "A thing that uses a trope in a way I'm not familiar with". And that's how you end up with a list like this which is supposed to be a collection of works that utterly dismantle the genres they portray. Let's see what we've got here...

Digimon Tamers
Dragonball
Naruto
Ouran High School Host Club
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Frozen
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Discworld
Dresden Files
Animorphs
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Colbert Report
Doctor Who
Mystery Science Theater 3000
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Invader Zim

Jacques Derrida's ghost is angry somewhere and doesn't know why.

Also I think TVTropes is a pretty good piece of evidence to support my theory that overexposure to Joss Whedon causes brain damage
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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #11
"Bottomless clip" for a "six-chambered revolver?"

Revolvers don't use clips, asshole. But I guess he had to use that term because it's the name of a trope and God help you if you don't fucking invoke trope names all throughout your posts on TVTropes.

And yes, Acierocolotl, I'm reading this.

Mister Smalls

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #12
No, Isfahan, clearly you're wrong because I played a whole bunch of Borderlands 2 today and I have an upgrade that specifically says "increases revolver clip size", so that means I know exactly as much about guns as that TV Tropes user, and, by extension, more about guns than you.

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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #13
As an aside, the guy Haggis McCrablice who popped up to expound on fart noises has an interesting history behind him. He got an entire "This Troper" video dedicated to him back in the day, wherein you can check out more of his opinions on farting as well as his grotesque facial hair. He's also the proprietor of a very 1990s website , where he tries to sell physical(!) copies of his comic - refusing to make a terrible webcomic out of it like folk with less integrity than him would. The comic, as far as I can work out, is like something David Stiefel would produce if he drew stuff - dated, unfunny "comedy" combined with hard-right political messages.

He also talks about his real life a lot - in short, he's this real Ignatius J Reilly type character, living with his mother and doing menial jobs while patiently waiting for his comics to bring him fame and fortune. He quit university after he was fired from the university newspaper for plagiarising a Saturday Night Live sketch in his column. This was about fifteen years ago and he is still extremely upset about it. His main ambition, after becoming a successful comic person, is to go back to university, force an apology out of the relevant people, and then have sex with co-eds all the time.

At the risk of sounding slightly stalkerish, all this stuff is publicly available, and I once tried to put a document together, but it's more interesting than readably funny, I think. But there you go.



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Episode 148: Exclusive Unoriginal Content #14
TVTropes is a bunch of engineers, failing at reverse-engineering the process of creative writing. Everything they write is terrible, because they have no clue whatsoever how to write.

I think my personal favorite troper with an issue was the guy writing a story who realized that his hero couldn't win the fight at the end of the chapter, because he didn't have enough healing potions. His question was if his hero should go back into the dungeon and grind for more healing potions.
Cleretic, August 24, 2014, 03:15:35 am

The engineer mindset is totally part of it, but tropers are also the sort of people who went and read about the Monomyth or the Hero's Journey and, instead of treating them as descriptive, saying 'these are how a bunch of stories are written', instead they treat them as prescriptive, saying 'this is how you write a story'.  If you end up falling into that trap, then TVT is incredibly alluring because it's a whole site full of that.  A lot of this episode was tropers talking about their writing, but I've read a good deal of troper writing itself and it comes off entirely like someone who's stitched together a simulacrum of creative thought from scraps of all the most recent pop culture they've taken in. 

Anyway, my favorite troper is the one who was explicitly incapable of having creative thoughts.

Tropers: Twentington
Describe Twentington here.

Um, sorry, I can't, I don't know who I am.

In all seriousness, I'm usually known as TenPoundHammer on places such as Wikipedia. I went by Twentington here because the login screen confused me.

Funfact: TenPoundHammer is in the top 100 users on Wikipedia, ranked by number of edits.  But, tropers!

I don't know where mine come from, honestly. Most of the time when I read a book or comic, watch a movie, etc., the ideas never seem to inspire me to base something off them. And I do so little in Real Life that's worth writing about, or if it is, I don't feel like writing about it because I'm not comfortable with deep emotional shit. Quote from

I don't really have the means to live beyond "27 and still living with mom" because I have no MONEY and can't get any. (Which is why I tried out for Wheel of Fortune. No, really. Still waiting on the call, but I'm sure I'll get it.) Quote from

I think part of it is that I have no point of reference for a lot of things. How would my character react if they got into a fight with a drunk guy? Well, I don't know — what do people do when drunk? I've literally never seen one in my life. Character #2 runs a hotel? Hell if I know what they do — I've never known anyone who owned a business of any kind. Do any of them eat lobster? Hell if I know, I've never eaten lobster. Do any of them wear fancy clothes? I dunno; my "fancy" is when I buy clothes that haven't previously belonged to someone else.Quote from

Friend: Just do it how you want.

Me: Okay… what do I want?

or

Me: Is X a good way to do this, or should I go with Y or Z instead?

Friend: X could be good if you want A, but if you're looking for B, then Y or Z would be better.

Me: Okay. Do I want A or B?

Friend: That's YOUR decision.

Me: …

or

Me: Now how does X work in this setting?

Friend: Okay, you know what Y is? It's kinda like that.

Me: …the hell is Y?

Friend: Y is A, B, and C.

Me: …the hell is C?

Friend: C is D, E, and F.

Me: …the hell is F?

or

Friend: Here, watch this show/watch this movie/read this book. It'll help you get a better understanding of X.

Me: I had to give up 15 minutes in. I couldn't understand A, B, C, D, or E, and I didn't see anything pertaining to X. Quote from

I think part of what is getting to me is handling the mundanities. Not every moment in the life of a businesswoman, mail carrier, sporting goods store owner, or male escort is going to be entertaining, I get that. But…

Businesswoman probably got to the top by way of the boring office-drone stuff, but that's the key word: boring. Isn't it a fact that nothing exciting ever happens in the office world? And the last thing the world needs is another work cribbing from Dilbert, a work I absolutely loathe.

The mail carriers I've seen almost never interact with anyone — they just drive their little trucks, put envelopes in the mailbox and/or packages on the doorstep, repeat. Again, boring. Sporting goods store owner? I'm extremely non-athletic and would rather run a potato peeler across my eyeballs then own a treadmill. BORING.

Do any of them drink their coffee black? Do any of them collect comic books? Do any of them wear thong underwear? Do any of them like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain? I don't care, that part's boring. Skip to the part where everyone has sex. Quote from

I think I found part of the problem.

They say Write What You Know. But I know so little. I still live with my mom at 26, I've never held a "real" job, and I mostly just sit on my ass and do nothing. And most of what I do know, I either don't think is worth writing about (Small Town Boredom), would be too personal and cut too closely for me to want to use (my struggles with Asperger Syndrome), or both (my being a church organist and how it intersects with my beliefs). No one wants to hear about the things I do know, like which hymnals have "Amazing Grace" in F major and which have it in G major, or the previous occupants of my town's Goodwill.

So for that, a friend has suggested I expose myself to more media, to get an idea for what's out there and experience things by proxy. Read more, watch more. But so far, nothing I've tried has clicked.

My webcomic has a workplace setting, so he's suggested I try a couple workplace comedies. Clerks? It was boring as all-get-out to me, and 30 minutes in, I felt like nothing had happened, so I turned it off. Office Space? It probably came closest, since I had an "aha" moment about 25 minutes in that made me go from "this is boring" to "okay, I see where this is going now" — and though I was entertained and fully aware of what the movie was doing, I still had no takeaway from it.

My furry slice-of-life story setting is sci-fi-ish, so he's suggested sci-fi shows. Firefly? I was hopelessly lost 10 seconds in, and gave up after 5 minutes. Warehouse Thirteen? Hopelessly lost 10 seconds in, but at least made it to the end of the episode. That said, I still didn't understand a word of what was going on in the pilot, even with a plot synopsis in front of me. Quote from
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