Hey, all! We're Two Professional Writers who critique writing advice from around the internet. Check out the whole playlist right here: ua-cam.com/play/PLW3Q6zalzJ8X_yZtvcYPdWqkJ1-PlyGDY.html
Hey, Gus, Henry. This is something I've been wanting to send you for a while. I came up with this film synopsis. I was thinking about you guys while writing this because this seems like a story you'd want to see told, and also this seems like a something that Dreamworks would do (mostly because it was partially inspired by their canceled film, "Me and My Shadow"). Tell me what you think: "Inner Child" centers around 35-Year-Old mother Victoria Lane, a workaholic mother who has long since lost her childhood whimsy. Her only child, 11-Year-Old Alex, regards her as a total killjoy who doesn't know how to have fun. This comes to a head when she tries to get his head out of comic books, anime and video games (things that any kid would be interested in). While working late that night, she gets confronted by what seems to be her when she was 12. Kid Vicky (represented in hand-drawn animation) wants to show what she lost when she became a grown-up. Thus starts an incredible and fantastical slapstick adventure that sees Kid Vicky teaching Victoria the values and perks of having an inner child. They'll come across old friends, each with their own Inner Children. At the same time, Victoria starts to realize he has a lot more in common with her son than she wants to admit. "Inner Child" has a phenomenal cast featuring Ashely Tisdale, Adam McArthur, Ariel Winter, Alec Baldwin, Josh Gad, Vincent Matella, Tara Strong, Ashleigh Ball, Andrea Libmen, Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Kristen Schall, Lin Manuel-Miranda and many more! With music by Video Game Music legend Grant Kirkhope, songs from Lin Manuel-Miranda, and the revolutionary implementation of hand-drawn animation in a CG space, the film will be the directorial debut of World of Possibilities creator Ty-Sean "Lightning Twister" produced by Phil Lord, Chris Miller and Jennifer Lee and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic co-creator Lauren Faust and Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch as executive producer. The film releases in theaters on June 21, 2025. In this film, "Inner Children" are representations of an adult's childhood depicted in hand-drawn animation, which could represent a simpler time (e.g. childhood). This was inspired by an idea of a single mother having a split personality: one side being a normal grown-up, the other being that of an 11-Year-Old, which Kid Vicky represents (as it's implies that she brings out Victoria's repressed inner child). I hope you like it. Tell me what you think, I would love to hear from you!
To answer your question the reason why short hair or coloured short hair has a bad rep is because (and it’s a stupid reason) the way a lot of mainstream content does female characters lesbian SJW or strong women characters tend to have short hair to try and be progressive but it ends up just being strange because why can’t a lesbian have long hair long hair isn’t weakness lol
„Commentsection is gonna be spicey.“ Well, yeah, can you blame us for cringing at this Guy? His deifntion of Self-Insert-Character is ‚ALL Main Characters, especially if written by a woman.’ That’s laughable. At least he did say Woman and not ‚Female’.
There's something ironic how Tumblr had these very smart people actually showing facts and good advice, yet Lily Orchard gives the worst advice on Twitter, despite her being an active user in Tumblr
I think it's strange to say tumblr "had" very smart people on there since it still does. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on what you would deem smart
@@TindraSan Whilst true on definitely an intuitive level, tumblr doesn't release the number of accounts made, let alone how many active accounts there are. However, since 2019 there has been an increase in the total of blogs on the website. The numbers I found indicate an increase of 31.5 million blogs since October 2019, and I doubt all of those are from pre-existing members
Haven't watched the video yet and was browsing the comments, and lemme tell you the level of horrified concern I had when I read the first part of this actually made me laugh once I realized what you were talking about
well, if you think about it, even without context is always true. genocide cant be justified, they werent done in real life because they could be justified. people just didnt care enough or didnt have the power to stop them, so if youre gonna do it on a story, just do it straight.
@@gamongames I mean, yeah technically. But usually "we don't have to justify x" is said by people who have done x. Also, whilst they might not be justified to an external standard, genocide committers do justify it to themselves. That's why they do it. The justification for the holocaust was Hitlers hatred of Jewish people and him blaming them for being why Germany lost WW1. It's by no means a good justification, but it is a justification nonetheless.
@@john-paulhunt2604 sounds like you don't have a good sense of humor either, if you're offended by some excellent trolling. But yeah I can't imagine people on Tumblr like Sam Harris very much.
„Commentsection is gonna be spicey.“ Well, yeah, can you blame us for cringing at this Guy? His deifntion of Self-Insert-Character is ‚ALL Main Characters, especially if written by a woman.’ That’s laughable. At least he did say Woman and not ‚Female’.
Thinking of that scene where Goku was like "Why do you need to be with your pregnant wife who is about to give birth at any moment?" And Vegeta was like "How are you still married?"
It's crazy how much character devolpment Vegeta has gone through, coupled with the absurd character assasination on Goku's end. If this were the Cell Saga, that conversation would have been reversed.
Tumblr is so full of passionate, incredible fanfiction writers, a thriving narrative roleplay community, tons and tons of original poetry... it's insane. I find writing advice that helps me there all the time.
Literally. This isn't an attack on people who don't do this at all, but for the most part I see grammatically correct passages, neatly spaced paragraphs, etc....it's just really nice, and the writers cover more niche characters which I greatly appreciate
i found that its such a nicer place for art too than say, twitter or tiktok. personally its a cozy space for me to retreat into when those other 2 platforms are starting to be a little too much
The "commas are like dogs" advice is poison for me. Not only do I use long, comma filled sentences way too often, to the point that its pretty much my most common writing mistake, I am also allergic to dogs.
Sameeee, not the dog thing but the comma thing. I think it's cause when you construct the sentence in your brain, you start to automatically think about how you would say it out loud and the answer is; in one, long, drawn out sentence. That's how you end up with long, comma-filled sentences. This is a pretty easy thing to fix though as you can just look at wherever you place a comma and replace them with fullstops if the core sentiment of the sentence is complete. Commas should be used to connect two (or more) sentences to enhance what is being said, or to imply the tone of what is written. Fe. you can do "I went to the store, they were out of bananas." or "I went to the store. They were out of bananas.". Both work structurally but a reader will read them differently, as I'm sure you've noticed when you read them in this comment.
@@handsoaphandsoap this describes my problem perfectlyyyy thank you. i also tend to see periods/fullstops as so final, as if i cant continue my current "train of thought" if i end the sentence :/ its just a matter of looking out for commas in particular when i proof read and psyching myself out
When you give your hero a tragic backstory to garner sympathy but you give your villain the exact same tragic backstory to justify why they're a genocidal tyrant
It's usually pretty intentional. They are often foils. These two characters had the same thing happen. Why are they not the same? Explore that and you can get pretty interesting writing.
A lot of people I know who complain about teen heroes are adults consuming media that is meant for teenagers. The protagonists are teens because of that's the target demographic. That's why it's not Grandpa Joe and the Chocolate Factory.
I still don't really agree that you have to have a teenage lead for a story made for teenagers, right? I mean, when I was a kid I didn't care about relating to the age of the character, I'd just watch Dragonball Z because those characters are cool and I just wanted to see the cool people do cool things. I genuinely feel like the demographic element of stuff like that is kind-of overhyped, if you make a story where an old man is doing a bunch of really loud, energetic, cool things then kids are going to like it no matter what. I'm pretty sure that's why Skamoto Days is getting so much traction in Shonen Jump right now, right? Because on the surface it's the story of an old man working as a grocery store clerk, but then he's also a secret former assassin that beats people up and goes on all kinds of adventures and that contrast is meant to be funny. But if you're a kid, even if you don't really get the joke, it's still a lot of fun to just see the goofy old man turn into a badass and do the cool guy thing, right?
@@dracocrusher in book-books, a protagonist your own age, or only slightly older, is often considered more relatable- it’s like the fascination with representation, something that I didn’t realize was an actually meaningful thing until I read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and saw someone like me written as a protagonist for the first time
@@runeanonymous9760 Maybe it's because I'm a white guy so I've never really been lacking for choices, but I've never really had that experience where I'm put off from watching a thing because I can't identify with how someone looks? I mean, as a kid I'd avoid things I thought were 'girl shows' like Sailor Moon or Card Captor because they didn't feel masculine enough, but I'd also just watch Static Shock and be like "Static is great and this sidekick kid sucks", or I'd play the female-lead Misadventures of Tron Bonne and get invested in that character. I mean, I get that people like seeing themselves in things and I think there's absolutely value in that, but at the same time I don't think I've ever had an experience where something had a lead character that was different from me and it hurt my enjoyment in any way, if that makes sense. It's sort-of like how people seem to like making game characters that look like themselves, I guess. Like, I get the idea, I get that other people like to see themselves in things, but it always felt weird to me. I'm the type of person who will just make a character that feels cool and then run with it, and it'll probably be a girl just because.
"if you are on tumblr its because you clearly care about something" oh absolutely, like its literally the chillest place right now on internet it feels like. last place of old internet that isnt shit like 4chan. No influencer nonsense, just random people posting about stuff they care. and its always just funny how if you get tumblr famous you can barely do anything with it you have no power over people like others do and thats what i appreaciate
@@electricfishfan I actually prefer Reddit because it feels more structured in terms of conversation, and the rooms actually have boundaries (different subs with different rules and cultures, have to choose threads to engage with rather than scrolling through whole posts or at least the first parts of them, etc.). Tumblr feels a bit too much like I’m walking into somebody’s living room and I have no idea if my contribution will be welcome. Like everything is technically out in the open, but it sometimes feels like people think they’re speaking in cozy, intimate spaces and I don’t know if my outside contribution will be welcome because I don’t know what that group’s unspoken social contracts are. Maybe my Reddit experience is just informed by frequenting smaller subs, though; I can see how the crowded feel is true of the high-volume communities! And I hope we can also agree that both are leagues better than Twitter lol
@@RisingSunfish As an active Tumblr user, I can say that you'll be fine 99% of the time. It's easier to go unnoticed on Tumblr, which is terrible for an aspiring artist who still posts their art on Tumblr despite knowing it's harder to get recognition...but it also gives you the freedom to scream into the void without consequences.
The most yoy get when being :tumblr famous" is "oh its thay user that made those funny posts in Seymour's videos" and thays all the recognition you get, and i think thats wonderful, it feels like there's this unspoken understanding that everyone's on the same level and nobody is ever getting "above" anyone or "under" As someone once put it, "Flaunting about how many followers you have in Tumblr is like flaunting about how many clowns gave you a thumbs up in your life when you told a joke"
Something I find low-key funny about the Mulan hair cutting scene is if we're going off ancient China she wouldn't even need to do that since men traditionally had long hair they tied up due to cultural(and during some periods, official law) reasons.
yea... turns out early disney didn't to a TON of cultural research. that being said it did get the point across to the target audience of american consumers so at least there's that going for it.
I'm still a regular Tumblr user, and yeah, Tumblr is legit my favourite social media platform, and the only one that I actively want to spend time on. On to the writing advice, yeah, I pretty much roll my eyes at all the people who hates "one-dimensional villains" and has a raging hard-on for "grey morality." First of all, a work having quote-unquote "one-dimensional villains" does NOT mean it's bad. An uncomplicated villain can be great, especially if they are entertaining to watch and charismatic (see your classic Disney villains). And second, the real world is full of assholes who don't need any deep reasons to be assholes. Sometimes it's about the banality of evil, and how we deal with them. Terry Pratchett's Discworld is very good about this. The point I want to make is, read more Discworld.
I find "grey morality" kind of funny, because it's usually trying to be nuanced but in a manner that lacks actual nuance. People are complicated, but prototypical grey morality just muddles everything and calls that complexity. As a counterexample: Claude Frollo is the most complex and nuanced Disney villain. Also, he's completely unambiguously evil, he's so despicable it's kind of shocking, and he's never heard of a sympathetic motivation in his life.
I believe grey morality is more realistic to real life, since in real life there is no such thing as good and evil. But, fiction isn't meant to be realistic it's supposed to be entertaining.
@@freshcupofangst It's not as simple as *everything* being either good or evil, obviously, but the idea that good and evil *don't exist* in real life (what Xander Owl actually said) is a baffling and frankly extremely privileged position to hold.
The stuff about TV Tropes is how I always thought TV Tropes was *supposed* to be used. I was initially very confused when it started getting a bad reputation.
@@Percival917 That statement could be true of any crowd-edited website. It's still a good jumping-off point. The Wikipedia of memes (in the Dawkinsian sense).
I use it cause a lot of people will point out things in the story that I missed and it helps me get a better hold of understanding the story. If that makes sense? Lol
That might be how it was at first, but very quickly it became utter garbage nonsense. It's roughly equivalent to a cookbook that says "a cake has eggs, flour and butter" and ends it there. It's a list of blocks that are wikifiller but no explanation for how to use them or why you would. It's just what it is and acts like that's good enough.
Self inserts aren’t inherently good or bad, every writer puts a little bit of themselves into each character because at the end of the day we only have our own perspective. Most of the time people who throw it around left and right are usually just looking to justify not liking a protagonist
Plus self inserts are usually very good for short comedic comics too. In terms of story telling, I think as long as your character has some differences from you, and isn't weirdly like... perfect I think is the word I'm looking for, then it's fine. I have a character that isn't exactly a self insert, but is heavily based off myself. I basically took some of my characteristics, and blew them up massively in him, which includes flaws I've noticed in myself. In fact, most of his character is based of these hyper inflated flaws, which slowly get resolved over the course of the story, or at least most of them do.
Here's a cool thing to do with Self-Inserts - Make them the equivalent of an NPC - Put them in a comedic timing - Make them self-aware but everyone doesn't listen to them
So I'm Pan and suspected of being autistic, yeah, half of my characters are queer and have autistic traits. I write a lot of male characters, I have gender issues and relate more to men. Most characters I write have obsessions with either F1 or steam engines and/or work in those fields, like I wish to. Yet I often write in traits I've seen in my friends.
I see what you're all saying, it's nice to know that the whole world won't automatically hate a story I want to create just because the main character is a self insert. But, as someone who's a bit too self-destructive and sensitive, it's hard to ignore all the people who will hate on something just because they can't give actual criticism
31:45 Honestly this person is spitting straight facts, I agree with a lot of 'em. I hate the reductive "self-insert" garbage that people say when criticizing stuff because y'know... Art is created by people, so naturally it has a lot of the artist behind them. All that matters is if the art itself is actually any good or not. Honestly I was plesently surprised by the large amount of good advice, normally this series tears into bad advice than good advice.
Ulysses by Jame Joyce is widely regarded as the greatest novel in the english language and the two main characters are literally Joyce as a 25 year old and Joyce as a 40 year old. See also, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby-Dick, The Bell Jar and so many others.
@@sinvector8020 that and the people that think art can be objective, as if such a broad, amorphous spectrum of ideas and sentiments can be simplified into a small 'x trope is good/bad' box regardless of how its used.
I think the only part I disagreed with, is that you can't use Mary Sue/Gary Stu as a criticism. Just because women-hating incel weirdos have appropriated the term as their pejorative against female writers and characters, does not invalidate the criticism across the board. Where people get confused, is that Mary Sue characters aren't actually that common, and most people know better than to write one. The only notable examples of Mary Sues you can easily find are celebrities making cameos in other media, and needing to be written a certain way for their public image. But we should still be critical of this
I am always going to say this: If anyone tries to dunk on self-inserts, politely remind them that possibly the most well-known iteration of the afterlife, The Divine Comedy - is essentially a giant self-insert fanfiction by Dante Alighieri
the final part with TvTropes reminds me a lot of usual understandings (and misunderstandings) of Music Theory: both are descriptive! They shouldn't be used as a recipe to make anything, but rather as an extensive, never complete catalogue of what we have done in regards to music or storytelling and a way to be able to talk about works. And failing to see them as such, believing that instead they are how-to's on making stories or music... leads to bad, stiff works.
So, I'm a fulltime professional writer who got my start on TvTropes, and that last one really hit something for me: tropes are TOOLS, but most tropers use them as BRICKS. There's this weird malformed tvt cargo cult idea of storytelling where you just stack tropes on top of each other and eventually you'll have a completed MS, but if you acknowledge that they're just ways of understanding stories, you can actually take hold of them and use to do some real fucking work. You know, they're not material in-and-of themselves, they're just ways of understanding, but those ways ARE useful.
I got insulted on a writing server when I offhandedly mentioned I use TV Tropes to help with my writing and essentially got told that using tropes is like baking a cake with all the embellishments, but not the primary ingredients. It pissed me off because it's not like I was fully dependent on the site, I frequent it to analyze what made a story work for me to the point I liked it, and knowing what I like helps me understand what I want to see more of or think I could do better.
‼️I know this is a really old comment but I agree mostly but I do believe there's one exception to the rule. Framing devices. I have never read or seen a framing device that was just as good and compelling as the story they are telling. I dislike them so much i get angry about it. It's unfortunately common in a lot of historical fiction or fantasy. There will be this really interesting historical story about this woman accused of being a witch or something like that. But instead of just telling that story. HALF the book is the boring main character in modern times in the library researching this or somehow learning about the historical incident . And it ALWAYS cuts off to the boring perspective when something dramatic is happening. I have never EVER seen a framing device done well. Assassin's Creed ruins it as well. Why do you even need to add this crazy ancestor tech sh instead of just having the game!! No one is playing the game because of the framing device. Framing devices are extremely unnecessary. And honestly just come off as filler. As if the author wanted to tell the historical story but wanted the story structure to be more interesting or they wanted to just pad the word count. So frustrating. Framing devices don't work. They are completely unnecessary. Just tell the interesting story instead. I do not believe framing devices are a tool at all.
Honestly the one about self inserts, mary sues, and misogyny is fucking spot on and I wish people talked about it more. I rarely see people criticize stories written by men for having self inserts, every time I see it it's always about women. I think the term "mary sue" being feminine kinda speaks for itself. When a woman writes a competent female protagonist, it's always a "mary sue" in the eyes of some people. If we held male self inserts to the same standard, Luke Skywalker would be a blatant self insert and John Wick would be a shameless mary sue. But I think some people just don't want to examine _why_ they always have the knee jerk reaction to assume every new powerful female protagonist written by a woman is a "mary sue" until proven otherwise, and _why_ they hold female writers to a much higher standard of quality than male writers, because if they *did* examine their behavior they'd be forced to acknowledge that they assume women are inherently less competent than men, and that they must prove they are a rare exception in order to be taken seriously. (Note: It's not just men who do this either. Anyone is capable of spreading misogyny, and often they don't even realize they're doing it.)
Mary Sue was originaly an oc in a star trek fanfic from the 80's, I think that's why the term is mostly linked to femlale characters. The term Gary Sue (mary sue as a man) exist but it's rarley ever picked up on despite the fact that a lot of male protagonist would be a Gary if they were held to the same standards.
You do realise that the term Mary Sue was created by a woman, and was meant to be a parody of the characters in fanfiction always getting with the leads and being perfect?
@@themonarchofbaddecisionmak1405 you do realize that it doesn’t matter if the word was made by a woman and that these days it’s a buzzword commonly used to demean women by misogynists?
@@TheSlipperyNUwUdle it does matter, because it shows that it's not something that only misogynists use, and that dismissing every instance of pointing out mary sues as "incels hating on strong female lead" could mean ignoring actual criticism by those who aren't misogynists
"when a woman writes a competent female protagonist, it's always a 'mary sue' in the eyes of some people" Not always, unless when "competent" means having no flaws or struggles. Or being so uninteresting they feel like a mary sue anyway. Look at when they're interesting competent characters, it should be clear that only actual misogynists remain in that stance Not everyone who uses the term are those "some people", and dismissing them as such might only leave out actual criticism
I feel I might know who they mentioned about the twist villain, but I distinctly remember the problem was that 90% of Disney/Pixar movies for a while had twist villains, with wildly varied success.
If we are thinking about the same person, while that's definitely what started it, they've moved on to hating the trope in ANY media, I think the most recent being squid game. It went from "this trope isn't universally good so Disney/Pixar needs to stop putting it everywhere and instead recognize when it is and isn't appropriate instead of throwing it in there in hopes of making the story better" to "this trope is bad and objectively ruins stories and always horrible, it is universally poor writing and anyone who throws it in their media is making their story worse". Basically going from criticizing black and white thinking when it came to the twist villian trope, to taking part in that black and white thinking but from the opposite side.
@@MeowMeowMeowX3333 He didn't. He said he liked Omni-man as a twist villain when he talked about Invincible. He just has a higher bar for the villains in general now because he hates Disney's overusage of it.
I once read writing advice on Tumblr that took the "Everything needs to be plot-relevant" advice to the extreme. Basically advocating that everyone be straight, for instance, unless the plot or sub-plot revolved around them being gay or bi or whatever. Because LGBT+ peoples' lives begin and end at coming out I guess.
I feel like people took that advice...a bit too literally? I think by plot relevant they mean "story relevant." Because things don't have to move the plot forward, they could just expand your understanding of the world or give more details into the inner workings of your characters or their plot development.
@@randomthoughts0829 A rule I think is generally good is that every scene should further at least 2/3 in terms of plot, character and world(building). So a scene can develop characters and world without furthering the plot and still be a necessary scene, but if it only does 1 of those things there's a chance that you either need to add more to the scene or remove it entirely
@@sofastuffing I kinda disagree on that. As long as said scene is either expanding our understanding or the characters/world OR moving the plot forward, it should stay. I don't think every scene needs to have both, but a lot should
I think that the person who mentioned small physical actions at around 24:00 in was referencing Autistic Stimming somehow being demonstrated in a character, or something similar. It can be very hard to portray, though I feel it is important to include tactfully if you've opted to have an autistic or neuro-divergent character in your story- but the important thing to remember is that stimming happens FOR A REASON, it is a response to stimulation and emotions. Flapping your hands when your happy, digging the tip of your thumb into your seat when you're nervous, maybe someone wrings at the hem of their shirt so often that the stitches have come loose in certain spots. Maybe another character notices why the person does a certain action, even if the person doing that action is entirely unconscious of it. I don't think it was writing advice as much as it was "God I hope some writer out there somewhere sees this and understands, because I just want to feel seen and appreciated for once in my life." Because between the doctor-savants who are written like sociopaths and whatever in the fuck is going on with Sheldon Cooper, the landscape of Autistic portrayal right now makes me want to jump off a fucking overpass.
I did an honours degree studying autistic protagonists in YA fiction years back. I was examining them for the presence of particular tropes because of the lack of diversity in the genre. Anyway, I recommend Marcelo in the Real World (trigger warning; a lot of stuff happens and I can give more specific trigger warnings if someone has specific triggers but would otherwise want to read it). It’s not perfect but it was by far my favourite that I read. The character has empathy, acknowledges he’s autistic, he’s not a savant although he does have special interests, he’s not the white boy stereotype, and his differences seem genuinely respected by the text. M is for Autism is short but it’s a book written by a class of autistic girls who felt poorly represented by media depictions of autism, so they wrote their own book with the help of their teacher. I recall the story focussing on feelings of anxiety and feeling different, before being diagnosed with autism and being able to understand yourself and your differences better. While it is a simple and short story I do think it would’ve been a nice story for many autistic girls that age to see themselves reflected in. I despise Curious Incident.
Gatchaman Crowds (an anime) has an autistic protagonist, or at least a heavily coded as such one, and honestly half the cast is coded as such? Season 2 can be kind of triggering, as the protagonist of that season does something kind of quiet hands adjacent to the original protagonist in the seventh or so episode
I didn't understand why the spells have to serve a purpose. I (ADHD) would absolutely just play around with spells if I could. just juggle without using my hands, creating a yoyo out of pure energy to throw around, levetating an inch of the ground all for no reason but because its fun
I’m more of a non-fiction/academic writer and what helps me in those areas is to write the meat of what I want to say (or what the research is telling me) and then going back and writing the intro and conclusion. I’m not sure that would work in for narrative writing but it sure does for more non fiction, academic, or essay style writing. At least for me.
I do the same thing for lab reports. It's much easier to write an abstract if you have the rest of the report already written. The abstract is the first thing a reader sees, but it's the last thing I write.
"none of (the villains) can stay evil unless they're the last season baddy. That guy's just Satan" Not true! Unfortunately we live in a world in which Supernatural also attempted to give redeeming character traits to literal Satan, AFTER using him as a final season big baddie! So, it's worse!
I mean, Satan is _clearly_ the most tragic character in the Bible: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! _how_ art thou cut to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
Another good example of self insert: Rohan Kishibe. He's literally the perfect artist, but also, *a massively creepy weirdo*. almost feels like Araki was self deprecating.
12:44 There was a guy in my playwriting class in undergrad who was *exactly like this.* He loved every single one of the movies you named ("Goodfellas", "The Godfather", "Scarface", etc.) and worshipped the ground Tarantino and Coppola walked on... and every single one of his scripts sounded exactly the same. Even if he ostensibly wasn't writing about gangsters and whatnot. He also couldn't write women for shit. So he definitely could've benefited from that bit of advice.
My favorite example of a villain who's, in some ways, complex and humanized, but who's not justified in the slightest, is Claude Frollo from Disney's Hunchback. Think about it.
You should make a community post asking people for their own writing advice, and then you respond to your own audience's writing advice. I have my own piece of advice, but it applies to creating an ensemble cast. If you need to make ONE more character or another character for an ensemble cast, just think about what you DONT have in your cast, and build your new character from that
Honestly, probably a good tip for any character interaction in general. Having two people who act the same isn't as interesting as having people who contrast each other. It's like balancing a stew or something, too much salt makes things feel too dry, but if you're going for a milder flavor then you also want to avoid anything unnecessarily spicy that could throw off the balance. It's all about finding that right combination where each thing you add compliments what you're trying to achieve.
@@dracocrusher just adding to this though, sometimes it’s fun to have characters who are very similar on some levels, and I think it can make for a very interesting and endearing dynamic to have two characters who are very alike and just have a Grand Old Time. Obviously, not very good for a story to have two completely identical main characters, but I think there’s room for two main characters who are very similar in some regards!
46:20 "sure it might sound weird to have an army made up of 13 year olds because of the kids you see around you. But back in the day, that was the norm, it's only unusual sounding by today's standards." I am going to need her to define what "back in the day" refers to, because I am currently studying the Augustan period of Ancient Rome (approx. 40 BC - 13 AD) and that wasn't the norm then. Augustus joined his great uncle Julius Caesar for military campaigns when he was 16, and this was seen as unusually young. Augustus's own mother actually opposed this - despite her ambition for her son - because of his young age. "Just google the age of King Tut and you'll be surprised how wrong you are" This point does not follow from the previous sentence. Monarchs are an exception to age restrictions and such; it doesn't mean people didn't still view them as young. Monarchs are usually chosen by a set of convoluted rules to determine who is next in line, and if that person happens to be a child, or even an infant, so be it. That is why regents existed as well - adults who would take the reigns until the child monarch was old enough to rule.
Honestly hearing bad advice torn apart can be every bit as useful and educational as hearing good advice. Especially when you pick out the nuggets of truth.
Okay I know this is kind of off topic, but I love how you guys actually complement advise, explain how it’s helpful and don’t just shit all over it. It’s surprisingly refreshing not to see another “UGH these dumb internet people don’t know what they’re doing” and actually see you critique and offer alternatives to the bad advice. Sorry for the paragraph, just keep doing what you’re doing :)
About that writing advice regarding giving character tics with specificities, I think it was in context that the characters portrayed are neuroatypicals? Tho the advice did word it kinda weird if that's the case and, yeah, it DEFINITELY can also be read as a weird "chuunibyou" idea of something cool if written down because it adds action to an idle scene. Personally I believe either reading are valid.
I like the idea because it's like even if a character isn't meant to be ADHD or something, giving them a little physical quirk like that can help to characterize them to some extent. But it's like they said, right? It works way better physically. Like if your character spins their gun as they holster it like Robocop then that's a good minor bit of characterization, but you also should at least try to tie it to the character in some small way or have it used sparingly. Like if you spin your gun before you put it away then that paints the character as a bit of a confident show-off, right? And that can go a long way to sell that idea if you have other things characterizing them as such. But if they're literally spinning their weapon every other conversation for fun then it stops being charming and it starts to get tedious. That's where I'm at with it, at least. Like it's a good trick IF, and only if, you don't overuse it or use it too randomly. Like if your character is meant to be a depressed honed military man and they're still doing twirly gun tricks then that would just detract from the character, right?
Yeah, the impression I got was distinctly that this piece of advice was less for people writing characters as part of a holistic story and more for people creating OCs as imaginative play outlets/mascots. There is a (perhaps outsized) emphasis on originality and standing out in the crowd, and this is just another avenue through which to do that. Utility is not the point because these characters are more an end unto themselves than a piece of a larger whole. I hadn’t considered it being an ND thing, though, so I’m glad the comments mentioned that. In that case I would say the most effective execution, assuming this IS part of a larger story, would be to establish the tic early on in the character’s introduction (probably via narration) and then reintroduce it at meaningful points where it will serve as a barometer to how your character is feeling.
5:00 on the topic of men getting mad at women with dyed hair. I saw a Reddit thread of a man who was very mad at women who dye their hair calling the dirty Sjw S***. Worst part was that all 500 comments agreed with him and were absolutely riddled with slurs. Some people man…
And they're probably the kind of people who jerk off to cosplayers who dye their hair for certain cosplays or to characters that don't have natural hair colors.
The word bed looks like a bed 🛏 I found out about this when I was six bc the teacher was explaining to my classmate the difference between the b and the d and she used the word bed to explain it and I just kinda noticed that the word looks like the object, I like to tell people about this because I am still proud to this day that I was able to notice that even tho I was 6.
These days, I only really identify a "mary sue" by one distinct trait: when their presence actively damages other characters or the setting by warping their personalities to meet the sue's needs. When you notice characters tend to hold the idiot ball and act completely out of character in order to either praise or act as a strawman for another, that's how you know what you're dealing with.
"If you're still on Tumblr after everything, it's because you care deeply about something." I care about the friends I made there. I care about the customization on my blog space, making it more reflective of myself and my interests. I care about having a niche platform where I can RP, publically, with people I never would have known otherwise, and in a format that promotes interaction and sharing. I care about the heaps of advice and references and acceptance and assurances that you are FINE and IT WILL BE OKAY, from both LGBT and neurodivergent communities. I care about the place where I found myself, going from a depressed teen ready to die at the end of high school to a married LGBT, knowingly neurodivergent woman, and also growing close to my wife-to-be in the process. Tumblr has its problems. In a lot of ways, it keeps degrading. In some rare instances, it has been improving. I've been on the site since late 2012/early 2013. I am the cockroach scuttling around the debris after the nuclear blast. They can try to drive me away, but I'm not gettin' out of me chair!! Because... where else would I go...? Posts like the ones you read carried me through my worst years, and helped me embrace myself and mlthe world around me. You laugh at the niche, specific advice to add a ridiculous mental prison scenario in your fiction story. But over-the-top things like that being celebrated and encouraged really promoted a culture where... everything was accepted. Can you not see any value in a thing? Well, is it hurting anyone? "No, but it's cringe!!!" So? Does it make you happy...? THEN DO IT ANYWAY, DAMMIT!! And a lot of people do! A lot of times it turns out silly, yes. But often, you get incredibly powerful and touching short stories that come from prompts just as ridiculous as the scenario you read. Tumblr has always said to be yourself. Be proud of your interests. Indulge in them. And fuck whatever anyone else says. As long as it makes you happy, there's nothing wrong with being a little childish at times. ❤
I honestly saw this going one of two ways, either: There was going to be some proper cringeworthy "advice" by authors with illusions of grandeur (not aspirations) --OR-- There was going to be genuinely great nuggets of advice that expanded a writer/artists way of thinking. Man I'm glad it was the 2nd one! I wholeheartedly agree with allowing villains to just be bad/crappy people. Lord Dominator was a cruel ball of charisma and an absolute hoot! Dr. Robotnick in Sonic SAT AM was a genuinely menacing character! Red Death from the Venture Bros. is funny and can be legitimately scary! LET BAD GUYS BE BAD GUYS!
The lack of a content-serving algorithm is actually something I really like about Tumblr. A lot of other social media is just too overwhelming for me nowadays because of the way they constantly throw new content at you.
I’d like to add my thoughts about the self-insert and Mary Sue thing. I would agree that, especially in fanfiction, there are A LOT of stories with female main characters that very obviously are self-inserts and usually are also “perfect”. I used to write like this. My little sister did it, too. I think it stems from the desire to be perfect (17, beautiful but doesn’t know it, great powers without any obstacles…). I saw it many times on Wattpad. I feel like media and stereotypes can push teenage girls to want to write a woman, BUT STRONG. Which is (obviously) a trap, because no character is inherently strong or not, at least not based on gender alone. I grew out of this mindset, my sister did, and I imagine many other girls did as well. HOWEVER. In current media, many main characters are used to live out male fantasies, too. For example, there are so many movies where the male character is just _existing_ and women flock to him like no tomorrow. Bonus points if he is considered “average-looking” or below and the love-interests that inexplicably fall for him always look like models! I remember watching several movies like this with my bf, and I am still mad about this trope. TL;DR: female and male self-inserts/mary sues both exist and are used in different ways to live out a fantasy, while female characters like this are much more likely to receive hate in today’s media (in my personal experience).
this is my first time watching this channel and i was worried it would turn into “women can’t write” and i was so glad it didn’t. i’m also really happy about the JKR hate lol
Gotta say, I love all the comments speculating on what UA-camr I'm talking about. I'm not gonna name any names, but it does strike me as funny when people can tell who I'm talking about just from the description, then are like "But they're not like that!" Then how did you know it was them I was talking about if the description isn't accurate?
Maybe it would be better to just say who it is in the future? The mystery draws attention to it and gets people talking, and chances are it’ll still get back to that person- or get back to a completely different person if the speculators were wrong. “Not naming names” is not being virtuous here, we’re not talking about sensitive or private information- we’re talking about opinions on fiction that this person has chosen to make public. And if you can’t express this particular point of dissent in a respectful way, and _that’s_ why you aren’t naming names… maybe examine that? I really liked this video and I don’t think you guys are bad dudes by any means, and maybe there’s context to this situation I’m missing here, but doubling down here reads as confirming the speculation without doing so explicitly, you know? Plausible deniability and all. And I don’t think that’s a cool habit to open the door to, is I guess how I’d put it. (Again, I really did enjoy this discussion, and I’d totally listen to more if you’re up for doing more. Writing discourse on Tumblr can get pretty unhinged, and while I was pleased to see most of this advice was quite good, I’d be fascinated to see how you’d respond to some of the discussions I’ve seen floating around. Like off the top of my head there was this comic doing the rounds about a young kid almost being summoned to be the Chosen One of a magical realm, but his mom steps in and yells at the fairy or elf or whatever to leave the kid alone because he’s 10 and this will traumatize him. And this was kind of funny and cute, but the notes were full of people unironically lambasting the trope of child heroes in adventure stories, because exposing children to that kind of danger and responsibility is cruel. And I was just reading this wondering what planet these commenters were on, but I’d be super curious to hear that viewpoint being properly dissected and analyzed! Not to simply confirm my views, mind, but maybe there’s something I hadn’t considered.)
Funny thing that I saw this comment when that part happened. Why do people care who you are talking about? It’s your opinion and not naming names, so who would you criticize? There are many people with similar tastes that can be places here. But there are people who are dedicated to find out
In his best works he's Superman yeah but he's portrayed to be stubborn, a bit holier than thou, afraid to intervene in certain events because of how he's perceived by the world and in the case of people close to him he can be overprotective
watching this video right after lily orchard's is light night and day bc no matter how outragious it is, no matter whether you guys agree with it or not, at least, it _is_ actual advices and tips and not an excuse for petty fandom beef
I’d say a character that charges straight into Hell with a shotgun and chainsaw over the death of his pet rabbit probably does have issues. It’s just that, as the writer of that post stated, those flaws aren’t focused on.
Especially in the new games, I feel like Doomguy does get a bit more character because he's just a completely blank sociopath. Like people are trying to give him lore and stuff and he just walks past them to continue killing demons, like there's a bit in Eternal where an office worker is freaking out and begging for his life and Doomguy just grabs the key card tied around his neck and drags him by the card over to the reader to scan it in as the guy's freaking out. In a different story this character would absolutely get way more introspection to his behavior.
@@dracocrusher Doomslayer is a killing machine but isn't mindless. LIke you said the cutscenes show he has humanity. It's not nice but he's not going out of his way to be a dick.
The bit about TV Tropes is exactly the reason I argue reading fanfiction actively made me a better writer. Reading the same characters interpreted differently, the way different authors used the same elements from canon, how people fill in plotholes in canon, etc etc, done either really well or really badly, has allowed me to compare elements a lot, and figure out what makes one story work better than another. I.e., it taught me to read bad writing and learn from it. ALSO, it taught me how to see what makes a story shine. There's a HUGE difference between a story that is just bad all the way through, and a story that had a nugget of genius in it but that whose author didn't have the skill to make it shine. And that taught me to find these nuggets of genius in my own writing and build upon them. Find out what makes a character compelling and deepen that. Find out why a scene feels essential and deepen that. And, in the same way, find out what scenes have no purpose, what pieces of dialogue are superfluous, what scenes don't hit as they should because the environmental descriptions somehow are absent. It taught me how to see BOTH flaws and nuggets of genius, and by extension what to remove and what to expand and take advantage of. It's been a magical journey Edit: Wanted to add that it also helped me with editing regarding larger plotpoints. Reading AUs teaches you that you can completely change a story and still keep the dynamic of two characters (ej. two characters are, I dunno, rivals at a magic school in canon, and the fanfiction makes them siblings in a regular home - since they were already around the same age and had a similar dynamic, it works. It's baffling how well some fanfiction authors make it work), and what-ifs allow you to see what possibilities other people explored and how characters change - like the two alternative endings of a visual novel, people will write bad guys as twist good guys and make it work, and have a character form relationships that they didn't in canon and somehow make it work. It taught me that there is no such thing as characters inherently having no chemistry - there is always something you can put them through to make them get closer and start interacting in ways that are actually interesting. The variation in writing level taught me to fix issues with my writing, and the endless remixing taught me how to reinterpret things to make them work in ways that make sense for the plot and characters. It's been really neat
This is kind of a random thought, but regarding the post about how all characters are flawed, and the quality of their writing just depends on how well the writer identifies them, it made me think about how modern Spongebob episodes treat Mr. Krabs as opposed to how the classic episodes do. Mr. Krabs has always been a bit of a scumbag, but one of the biggest differences in how he's written in modern episodes is how he is treated for his actions. When Gus was talking about "The Krusty Sponge" in one of the last Spongebob Boyz episodes, the scene that stood out to me most was the one where Krabs is taken to court after poisoning his customers with rotten meat. Rather than treating the court scene as a punishment for Krabs' actions, its just treated like any other obstacle that he and Spongebob need to figure out how to get past, leaving him facing no repercussions and having no room for character growth, as if he didn't need it. An example of a classic episode that handles his flaws much better would be "Born Again Krabs," where he keeps being greedy to the point where it culminates in him selling Spongebob's soul to The Flying Dutchman for 62 cents, leaving him needing to come to terms with his own greed and repent for his actions before he gets Spongebob back.
Been watching Diregentleman for a year, still have not touched Less is Morgue. I'll consider it if I'm especially bored, which I doubt I will be considering all the unbelievably attractive people I've been fuuuucking
@@TheShanicpower damn what a coincidence I was getting anally destroyed while watching this very video, but I'm pretty used to it so I still got most of it.
To take a more adversarial approach to that last post; I do think TVT can be a useful tool (specially for breaking the barriers between "good" and "bad" media), but I definitely want to challenge the idea that it can be a substitute for more formalized advice. Yes, it's not only fun but also useful to recognize that these stories are made of the same building blocks (i. e. they employ the same tropes), but to actually go in depth into what makes these works good or bad means going further than what you could get if you ONLY read TVT. That sort of knowledge could only come if you 1) Experience the work itself, and 2) Are capable of examining WHY the pieces fit the way they do beyond the scope of what specific tropes are involved. TVT only provides exhaustive lists of the pieces and the works that have employed them, but the wiki falls short when it comes to answering WHY and HOW they are well employed in good works. These are answers that you would have to look somewhere else for. Again, the use of TVT is not the problem, but it is only useful as complementary to the sort of mechanical advice other writing classes or resources provide. Yes, sometimes intuition can help, but it can only go so far and to dismiss the advice of previous writers who have faced the same problems we have seems oddly self-complicating. Addendum: I am aware that I am arguing against a position that the titular writers do not hold, but I still wanted to complement the commentary they provided.
I agree. I always found tv tropes to be a great idea generator. Like if I want to write a certain type of character or scenario and I need a bunch of references to draw from, here's a whole list of them from several different mediums. Of course, It doesn't replace professional advice or guidance, but it's still a useful free resource.
For the working backwards tip, I think, as a musician, that can be extremely useful. When working on a piece, we sometimes backwards chain to see where a piece is heading. This allows us to evaluate the cadences and apexes leading up to it, as well as give appropriate emotion and weight to preceding parts of the song.
the fact that i've seen most of these posts on the actual site is such an L for me--not a diss to the writing advice which is decent, mostly juts an @ for me for staying on a dead blogging platform for nearing on a decade at this point. ALSO one of my fav pieces of writeblr advice didn't make it to the video! which is "if you're stuck on a scene, change the weather" which i think kinda goes hand in hand with the "Ten sentences back" rule. I think its a bit simplistic but even thinking about how different weather might affect the story tends to lead me to some realization about what exactly needs to change
I agree with the one dimensional villains thing, in my favourite movie (The Warriors) the protagonist asks the villain why he did what he did and the villain responds with “No reason, I just like doing things like that”, and it doesn’t make the story any worse, in fact, if the villain had launched into a grand speech about how his backstory was so tragic and he had a life long grudge against the main characters and how their ideologies clashed it would totally ruin the momentum of the scene and his character, sometimes people are mean and petty and sometimes those people have power and use it against others
As another fun example, Porky Minch specifically in Mother 3. Yeah, there is an underlying lack of friendship outside of Ness that makes him that indulgent and horrible parents if the Lardna Minch waiters and possibly him in the Absolutely Safe Capsule is of any note, but most of him ruining the Nowhere Island’s life is basically because he is bored and wants excitement, and his really weird justifications about how humanity is doomed to repeat its past sins are basically coincidental ramblings.
For weird quirks, I think even if they don't have any in-story purpose, they can provide some nice representation. Some people just need to fidget and a lot of storytelling dismisses these details as worthless and as such doesn't include them. On the other hand, it's nice to have these details _and_ give them purpose.
PLEASEEE i literally clicked on this expecting the worst, expecting yall to just shit on tumblr and call it cringy and dead but i was so pleasantly surprised! (and completely called out at the end when you predicted that a big part of this videos demographic was going to be ex tumblr users like me 😭) this was honestly such a well constructed video and i really enjoyed it, subscribed!!
My mother's friend does this weird thing where she reads/listens to stuff that she's completely apathetic to. She just checks out new books or audiobooks from the library and consumes them even if they bore her. To her, reading is just the done thing. Like washing dishes.
okay i do wanna say i agree with everything else you said was bad about tumblr but the lack of a content serving algorithm is fantastic and one of the main reasons I'm still there instead of another site. give me all the things posted by the people i follow in reverse chronological order and that's it thank you
The section about TV Tropes was a part I thought particularly interesting. Even though I really get a kick out of both the Troper Fails series and your video on Echo Chamber, I'm not ashamed to admit that I browse TV Tropes fairly frequently, and have even made my fair share of contributions there. I too see it as a great resource for learning about different storytelling pieces, as well as learning stuff about a work I like that I maybe didn't consider upon first viewing, and even just behind the scenes trivia. I can also attest to the fact that it allows one to see the common threads in two or more vastly different works that might not be apparent at first glance - there are pages on there called "Surprisingly Similar Stories" and even "Surprisingly Similar Characters" that are entirely devoted to that, and the vast majority of my contributions are to those two pages alone. However, stuff like Troper Fails and Echo Chamber makes me thankful for every day that goes by that I'm not one of those weirdos that views everything JUST through the lenses of tropes.
Furthermore, that is a thing they had to repeat because they initially had a cargo cult around specific memes they had seriously had to disintegrate into distinct pieces or rework to reduce the worship around specific tropes. So while it can be used as a crutch, Tv Tropes itself has been trying to actually be neutral and informative.
The way you talk about outlines during the discussion on the "write the ending" bit is kind of interesting, because at least for me, your take on the advice being inflexible just isn't true. I would never be able to finish a story without knowing exactly how it ends. The trick is that just because I have a detailed outline doesn't mean I can't change it. Actually, I think that's something pantsers don't always fully understand about planners. Something being written down never means it's set in stone. We talk about it like it's scaffolding, but really it's blueprints, and consummate planners like me draft them like pantsers draft chapters.
Even as someone who doesn't write detailed outlines myself and writes off the cuff, I feel like you should always have a note of where you are going and have goals along the way to that ending. I find this also works well with writing scenes in stories and chapter writing. You are absolutely right that having something planned doesn't mean its set in concrete. I feel like a lot of new writers don't take enough advantage of being able to draft something multiple times and taking advantage of the fluid nature of being the rough drafts.
yeah, am not exactly what most people would describe an outliner (or planner ig) bc i often don't actually write it down since in the past, it had led me to feel like i've actually written the whole story and thus lost any drive to work on it further. but i do make and keep the outline of my stories in my head. i think the disconnect largely stems from a lot of pantsers entirely abide by the "discover as you go" mindset and thus view anything other than that as some form of restriction. prolly also doesn't help that, at least from my point of view, planners are often characterised both in writing advice articles and stories as rigid, structured storytellers.
When you say twist villain hate I’m gonna assume you mean shaffrillis (can’t be bothered to spell his name) I like him, but he does seem very against twist villains, just because Disney isn’t good at executing them- any time there is a good one, he views it as an exception
Schaffrillas’ problem with twist villains is mostly that Disney and Pixar have been overusing them / poorly executing the villain’s reveals and motivations. It isn’t even that he hates them on principle, he just wants more variety which he’s gotten with the last few movies. I might be wrong, but I don't remember him talking about twist villains for a while now. That said, I can understand why people would find him constantly shitting on the trope annoying.
I’m pretty sure that’s a specific gripe he has with Disney (though idk him, he might just generally dislike the trope), as modern Disney likes to beat a dead horse when it comes to their tropes and rarely innovate.
Yeah, the issue here is that Disney can't seem to write anything else, and sometimes it's right for the story, sometimes it's not, but regardless, they keep doing it even when it's not the right move, and kind of bungle the ending because it just has to be that way for some reason.
I love the last post you guys talked about because it's the only time I've seen someone talk in detail about how TV Tropes *should* be used by writers outside of TV Tropes itself.
Right around the 33 minute mark, I heavily agree with that point on self-inserts. Especially given how the phrase "write what you know" is the most common writing tip, what does one know better than their own self? Take parts of yourself and build it into a character who works for the story.
Regarding the "self insert" discussion: when I write nearly all my characters are like 10% to 20% self inserts. Like one character I created. I gave him my enjoyment of whisky (all though he prefers scotch and I prefer bourbon) and my enjoyment of chess. The villain is a victim of bullying who ended up realizing that the only way he can win is to use his intelligence as a weapon which... Yeah, also me. But that character went a darker route with that thought than I did. Another story has a bisexual guy who constantly lands in trouble because he improvises everything and never thinks about potential consequences, and because he tends to piss people off by being a snarky prick. Those three are all traits I see in myself (all though those last two are dialed up by a 100 compared to me). The other main character has all my doubts (again dialed up by a 100) and is generally me when I manage to calm down enough to actually make a plan. I find that inserting parts of my own personality in a character helps me identify myself with them easier. It's a window for me in to their inner process. I guess it's a crutch, but hey, crutches are useful.
I'm gonna put my two cents in here, since that is why the comment section exists, so let's lay down a wall of text. Advice will be addressed and numbered biased on the order they are addressed in the video. 1. Interestingly enough, cutting ones hair has a bit of a cultural thing, where the cutting of long hair is meant to symbolize a resolve to change a core aspect of yourself. With the example you said about Sakura, the point was that she was acknowledging her vanity and vowing to leave it behind to get better as a shinobi. The payoff is supposed to happen much latter when she fights her former friend turned rival as the next part of the Chunin exam, and is able to match her one on one. 2. The big takeaway is that "Why not?" is always a valid question, so long as you answer honestly. Every story that can incorporate evil shared mind prison can have that, because it can open up so many possibilities, and that can make writing that story very fun. 3. The inability to see the full scope of what a character has to offer, in both the good and the bad, is a limitation that a lot of writers struggle with. Just like every character has flaws, every character has the potential to contribute something that works to further their own goals. A writer that fails to see what a character can contribute to their role, will waste a lot of that character's potential. 4. The best part about writing for obscure demographics is that people won't disregard your work just because they weren't a part of your demographic. Just look at Undertale, a game made for people who wanted to have peaceful solutions to RPG encounters. I can guarantee that the countless fans Undertale got were not all part of that original demographic. 5. I needed that advice. God, I needed that advice. I'm gonna call it the ten sentence recap rule to make it easier to remember. 6. Run on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences. Whenever someone gives you that advice you can use this obnoxious example to show why that is absolutely wrong. Feel free to make it as long as you need to emphasize the point. Then tell them to read it out loud to make it as clear as possible. 7. It's not bad advice, but bear in mind that your ending is prone to change, and committing to a specific ending is a dangerous idea. Writing is more like calibrating a finnicky GPS then making a puzzle. You might very well find that their are better roads to travel, and better destinations to travel to. 8. That's why you try to set up the habit as being a part of the character. So that your reader can see them doing those things whenever the circumstances show up without the author having to bring it up every single time. 9. This is more work related advice. Focus on the work until your done, then you can release that pent up stress in a harmless way. 10. Oh boy, a multi part multi advice. If I was lazy, I would simply say that most tropes are not inherently bad, even if some are particularly infamous. But I don't know how to say no to a challenge that looks fun so I am gonna use a number letter system to talk about the tropes that are defended here. 10A. They say write what you know, so if you know you then self inserts have every right to exist. A character should be judged by what they bring to the story, not whether they resemble the author. 10B. Flashbacks are a narrative device that help contextualize the current events. There is a big difference between a device that is used poorly and a bad narrative device. 10C. I'm actually a sucker for this trope. Kung Fu Panda is my favorite example of "the chosen one" in action. 10D. Sailor Moon, Power Rangers, and Captain Planet are all my childhood. I will fight people on this trope. Also, Warhammer 40K wouldn't be nearly as cool if the Space Marines weren't genetically engineered juggernauts. 10E. People can be vindictive, petty and even outright malicious. Having a bad guy whose motives and goals are simple is fun. 11. I can't add to perfection. Solid advice. 12A. I guess that's why I get most of my creativity during work. Writing it down in my free time would really help retention though. 12B. Again, how can one add to perfection? Remembering your goals will make writing scenes easier. 12C. That goes back to the thing I said about writing being like calibrating a finicky GPS. Sometimes you got to look ahead on the route to understand where you need to go. 13. I did not expect the advice to take that turn. Treating TV Tropes like a library that you can use to learn how to use writing devices is pretty clever. All things considered, this turn out to be a gold mine of advice.
Okay, you win. This is the one that shamed me into listening to Less is Morgue. How dare you. I love it. I listen to it whenever I'm working, or riding my bike, or chilling. How dare you, again.
so on point about marry sues. It is not about whatever a character is flawed or perfect, but how those are handled. it is not however perfect the character is, but how their actions and flaws impact the story and have consequences. A mary sue is a character that warps the world around them by being unrealisticly sucsessful, loved or hated, where the impact they have on the world and other characters stands in no relation to who they are. Rey gets massiv points for a mary sue due to unrealistic jumps in forceabilities . . . but also that after hans death, leia feels it to be more imperative to console her, over chewie!!! on the otherhand uncle iroh is pretty much the perfect character, but everything he does is in relation. he is impactful to people because of years of wisdom that also help him navigate his weaknesses. He is genuinly kind and warm and aspirational and that moves people and he did not develope those qualities in the blink of an eye, but through years or errors and sorrow. He still fails with Zuko, he does not get overused and magically resolves all problems . . . .he is belivable in a way neither rey nor luke are, cause really, Luke is just as bad as rey, peole just noticed less cause they wanted to be in his place instead of regarding him criticaly.
The whole "The problem is 10 sentences back" thing is so true! Idk about 10 sentences specifically, I've never paid attention to how far back exactly the problem usually is, but whenever I run into an issue I can always find the source a few paragraphs previous. For me, it's most often continuing a conversation that should have been ended, a character saying something they shouldn't have, or changing topics to the wrong thing. It's almost always those conversations getting away from me. I can't work backwards through a story for many reasons. I can't work with too much of an outline, and I don't know what a character is going to do in a certain situation, because I haven't written everything they do/happens to them before that. I can't even jump around in a story, I need to write straight from beginning to end. Can't jump around as in, I can't jump ahead, I can and do jump backwards to change stuff I've already written.
I agree with the comma-person. Coming from another language, it always frustrates me just how few commas, English uses. It really messes with reading rhythm, and English missses out on some pretty funny and subtle possibilities with sentence structure, because it vehemently refuses to use proper punctuation. This is the hill, that I will die on. Furthermore, English needs to adopt proper compound words, and its lack of them is also a waste (All comma errors above are deliberate)
@24:52 I'm an animator and I was nodding my head being like yeah, that's decent advice. And I don't think there has to be a 'deeper reason.' For what deep reason do some people favor their right or left side when they walk? Or why do I press my thumb against my palm when I'm nervous? I mean I'm sure they have reasons, but that's really not important when dealing with moment to moment acting: in fact it would be an absolute pain in the butt to have to justify every little acting quirk. The best thing is to observe and build an intuition for that kinda thing. Sometimes you have to feel it and not reason it, you know.
As someone who is on tumblr in the year of our lord 2021 (although the thing I care about that’s keeping me there is mainly the friends I’ve made there, lol), I really loved this video. There’s some awesome and insightful advice buried in the unsearchable archives of tumblr and I’m glad you guys found some of it!
I don't think its Schaff because even in that very viral video he never criticizes the actual concept and brings up multiple ones he likes, but he did start a trend of people missing the point in that video and just complaining about it on concept.
On the topic of people regularly consuming media that they don't like: I have a friend who reads a lot of YA Dystopian and Sci Fi, who was complaining to me about how they liked some of the themes presented but they hated how the characters were always immature teenagers. I literally had to explain to them that YA isn't a genre...it's an age category.
I agree with the self insert thing. I actually have a main character that started out as a better more perfect version of me, but as time went on and I finally started my webcomic, she and I became very different people. Don't be afraid to make your character a little self-indulgent, just, make them an interesting character.
Agreed. My first ever story was a creepypasta self insert. Now that character has been deconstructed and shaped into a ton of more well made characters.
"Doomguy" NEURON ACTIVATED For pretty much every game up to Doom 2016 (and even IN that game, to an extent) Doomguy has been, as you say, a player-surrogate. There have been subtle hints at a story throughout (the dead bunny at the end of the first game, the possible links to trauma in Doom64) but ostensibly (as confirmed by Romero) he was initially intended to be a blank slate to put the player right into the action. The 2016 reboot added a little bit of lore with all the Night Sentinel stuff in the backdrop, but Eternal went whole hog with it. Granted, the story can be completely ignored if you're not in it for that. But the story this time around is both a great example of incorporating the prior games' hints of lore with a modern story that both takes it into account and turns it absolutely PSYCHOTIC. There are subtle hints of things like Doomguy hating himself for letting his family die (see the photograph under his desk at the fortress) and gargantuan things like the fact that his sigil is EVERYWHERE on Taras Nabad. Nerding over because I wanna keep this short, but yes, he's both a player surrogate and an interesting character, in my eyes. It's more about what the games allude to, for me, than what they directly state. After all, it's just a game where you kill demons. Quake didn't give us this much about the Ranger character, so it's interesting that Doom went the way it did with the man who eventually became the Doom Slayer.
also he is best friends with isabelle animal crossing and i think that adds a layer of complexity and opens up an interesting social commentary about the arbitrary borders we place around game genres and demographics, in this essay i will-
As someone who still routinely uses tumblr, I'm so happy that you've found the niche writer's advice. Tumblr is home to very useful niche advice much in the same way smaller subreddits used to be. Reddit is certainly more organized, but Tumblr is still kicking, and it's only kicking because the people that CARE remain. If people are truly passionate, then they'll eventually happen upon some neat tricks to share with others, and i think it's very cool that tumblr acts as a small goblin cave for them.
In regards to the eye twitch thing, I couldn't help but think of Brock Sampson's eye twitch. It's a memorable quirk that I believe existed back when he was more stoic but persisted after he gained more depth and expressiveness. It only exists to show that he's angry and stressed but I can imagine Brock without it. Not much of a point, but I feel he is a good example of a main character with a minor quirk.
On the subject or chosen ones, I want to talk about Wheel of Time for a bit. Especially since the show is coming out in a few days. Robert Jordan was writing in a time where all the chosen ones were eager for adventure or really wanted to jump at their destiny. He was a guy who had grown up around small town farmers and thought that was unrealistic. So he rights a story where the heroes have to be dragged kicking and screaming on the journey. Where being the chosen one doesn't guarantee success. In many ways being chosen means pain and suffering. Going on an adventure absolutely sucks when the hereos are still just inexperienced hicks. They don't trust the wise mentor because she's also Shady af. The chosen one in his story represents a lot of things and drives a lot of conflict and discussion in the books. Because within the story most characters have their own conceptions about what a chosen one is. Will they single handedly defeat the evil? Do they fulfill the prophesies to be called chosen one? Are the prophesies just signs? Is it within the chosen ones right to just shape Everybody's destiny?
So I went into this being like "this will either have the most incredible advice or the nonsensical, off the wall, satirical, and oddly specific advice ever written down by a human"; luckily I managed to get both but with like 4 times more advice in the "incredible" category. Tumblr is such a funny mixed bag you honestly never know what to expect - it's nice to see some good rep for its users aside from some of the golden memes that've surfaced from the site, because oftentimes it really is just flat out hate. Thank you once again for a great video, time for me to try writing and hopefully not get entirely distracted once again >:)
God, this was so fucking good. A few notes: - In one of Steven Erikson's books, there's a character named Clip who sorta forcibly inserts himself into the PoV party at one point. He has this weird physical habit of spinning a chain around and around his finger, and it really weirds some of the characters out. Later on, we find that he's a skilled assassin, and this is his weapon of choice, giving the habit a new air of menace. Even for persistent characters, this can be pretty cool :D - It's surprising to me that the first thing people think of for self-inserts is women authors, which is also depressing. At least in the booktube circles that I hang out in, the biggest and most oft-ridiculed example is a man (Onision, for the curious)... - Military targeting teen protags? Anyone here still an Animorphs fan? Man, that series was so ahead of its time, I'm shocked it doesn't have broader appeal in progressive circles Glad to contribute an hour of my day to watch this. Tumblr ended up exceeding my expectations, by a lot
Anyone who thinks Frodo is an example of the "chosen one" trope is not media literate. It's explained several times in the books and movies that the reason Frodo can carry the ring is specifically BECAUSE he's NO ONE. Gandalf and Galadriel and Boromir and EVEN ARAGORN (the actual example of the chosen one trope in LOTR) CAN'T carry the ring because they're already important people with power and ambitions/goals. They would be tempted to use it no matter what. Frodo can carry the ring because in the worst case scenario, he becomes Gollum 2.0, not Sauron 2.0
"You just read them (the Harry Potter books) as a kid, that's why you think they're good." I mean... That's disregarding that Harry Potter was a huge hit with children and adults alike. It is one of very few works of fiction I can actually discuss with my mother. Like, being opposed to J.K. Rowling due to her more recent statements and actions is fair and all, and I'll even admit that there are certain elements of Harry Potter that feel retroactively *pretty yikes-y* looking at what Rowling has been using her platform for in recent years... But that series wasn't *just* a cultural phenomenon because it was good wish-fulfillment for kids. Of course it had its problems, both in terms of plotting and characterization and the fact that... the House Elves were a thing that existed and that literally only one person seemed to have a problem with... but its popularity did not come out of nowhere.
Yeah, that bit bugged me too. I don’t know these guys’ content, this video just got recommended to me randomly, but it does feel like a lot of people wait for Popular Thing to fall from grace before they start in on the “it was never that good” arguments. It feels disingenuous to me, comes across as touting yourself as a Cassandra who the idiot plebs wouldn’t listen to. Especially since there are a lot of people in HP fandom who feel betrayed and abandoned by the author, and now they have to deal with people who never cared anyway taking easy potshots at them and the thing they loved and are probably mourning. JKR has abhorrent views and at best failed to properly examine the implications of a lot of her worldbuilding, often getting laughably lazy when it came to doing research or soliciting advice from outside of her cultural comfort zone. She also created something that fostered community and friendship and creativity, something that undoubtedly inspired positive growth in many of the people who read it, and something that spun off into the best worst piece of fanfiction ever created. Both of these can simultaneously be true. It is not necessary to throw HP fans under the bus to cement either Writer Cred or Allyship Cred, especially since this is just about the easiest franchise in the world to enjoy without supporting the creator monetarily lmao. I’ve had conversations with a friend whose main kidlit squeeze was Percy Jackson, and he was quick to point out that those books don’t hold up nearly as well as HP in terms of the writing quality, but Rick Riordan makes an effort to write inclusively and is humble about not being able to do so perfectly, so the cognitive dissonance doesn’t bite as much and most people overlook the flaws in the writing. And sure enough, I see a lot of unabashed praise for PJ in passing! So I do think a lot of the qualitative opinions people throw out, especially those who don’t necessarily have a dog in this race, are more rooted in social expectations and where the wind is blowing than we might like to admit. (FWIW things I think HP does well: good pacing, distinctive and memorable characters, a world that feels lived-in in spite of construction that doesn’t really stand up to even mild scrutiny, an effective sense of danger that builds as the books go on, clarity in character objectives and motivation, and emotional beats centered around loyalty, which is often very satisfying and heartwarming. The appeal is there, and it’s worth talking about (if you want to!) rather than simply dismissing.)
Yeah, realizing that I have to separate out things that Harry Potter does well, and things it does not, and be critical of which ones I borrow, was a difficult conversation to have with myself. But the list of "things it does well and people should learn from" is far from empty.
I re read the harry potter books as an adult and I'm gonna be honest they weren't as good as I remembered them being. Not like they were bad, but they definitely weren't above most other books I've read.
29:20 is making me think of my current project where, sadly, i am writing about a character who is very polite and not swearing and i keep putting him in situations where he deserves to say fuck. doesnt help that i personally swear all the fucking time.
Hey, all! We're Two Professional Writers who critique writing advice from around the internet. Check out the whole playlist right here: ua-cam.com/play/PLW3Q6zalzJ8X_yZtvcYPdWqkJ1-PlyGDY.html
It’s a hell of a journey!
Hey, Gus, Henry. This is something I've been wanting to send you for a while. I came up with this film synopsis. I was thinking about you guys while writing this because this seems like a story you'd want to see told, and also this seems like a something that Dreamworks would do (mostly because it was partially inspired by their canceled film, "Me and My Shadow"). Tell me what you think:
"Inner Child" centers around 35-Year-Old mother Victoria Lane, a workaholic mother who has long since lost her childhood whimsy. Her only child, 11-Year-Old Alex, regards her as a total killjoy who doesn't know how to have fun. This comes to a head when she tries to get his head out of comic books, anime and video games (things that any kid would be interested in). While working late that night, she gets confronted by what seems to be her when she was 12. Kid Vicky (represented in hand-drawn animation) wants to show what she lost when she became a grown-up. Thus starts an incredible and fantastical slapstick adventure that sees Kid Vicky teaching Victoria the values and perks of having an inner child. They'll come across old friends, each with their own Inner Children. At the same time, Victoria starts to realize he has a lot more in common with her son than she wants to admit.
"Inner Child" has a phenomenal cast featuring Ashely Tisdale, Adam McArthur, Ariel Winter, Alec Baldwin, Josh Gad, Vincent Matella, Tara Strong, Ashleigh Ball, Andrea Libmen, Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Kristen Schall, Lin Manuel-Miranda and many more! With music by Video Game Music legend Grant Kirkhope, songs from Lin Manuel-Miranda, and the revolutionary implementation of hand-drawn animation in a CG space, the film will be the directorial debut of World of Possibilities creator Ty-Sean "Lightning Twister" produced by Phil Lord, Chris Miller and Jennifer Lee and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic co-creator Lauren Faust and Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch as executive producer. The film releases in theaters on June 21, 2025.
In this film, "Inner Children" are representations of an adult's childhood depicted in hand-drawn animation, which could represent a simpler time (e.g. childhood). This was inspired by an idea of a single mother having a split personality: one side being a normal grown-up, the other being that of an 11-Year-Old, which Kid Vicky represents (as it's implies that she brings out Victoria's repressed inner child). I hope you like it. Tell me what you think, I would love to hear from you!
To answer your question the reason why short hair or coloured short hair has a bad rep is because (and it’s a stupid reason) the way a lot of mainstream content does female characters lesbian SJW or strong women characters tend to have short hair to try and be progressive but it ends up just being strange because why can’t a lesbian have long hair long hair isn’t weakness lol
„Commentsection is gonna be spicey.“
Well, yeah, can you blame us for cringing at this Guy?
His deifntion of Self-Insert-Character is ‚ALL Main Characters, especially if written by a woman.’ That’s laughable. At least he did say Woman and not ‚Female’.
There's something ironic how Tumblr had these very smart people actually showing facts and good advice, yet Lily Orchard gives the worst advice on Twitter, despite her being an active user in Tumblr
It's because Lily only listens to Lily.
@@WeRNotAlive Exactly, that's the problem with people only interested in telling instead of asking.
I think it's strange to say tumblr "had" very smart people on there since it still does. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on what you would deem smart
@@vangobango7627 there are less smart ppl on tumblr now bc there are less people in general, ever since the purge. RIP
@@TindraSan Whilst true on definitely an intuitive level, tumblr doesn't release the number of accounts made, let alone how many active accounts there are. However, since 2019 there has been an increase in the total of blogs on the website. The numbers I found indicate an increase of 31.5 million blogs since October 2019, and I doubt all of those are from pre-existing members
You laugh, but antagonist putting the protagonist in an evil shared mind prison HAPPENS WORD FOR WORD in Animorphs
“You’re laughing? An antagonist put us in a shared psionic mind prison, and you’re laughing?”
also the final episode of Drawga season 2
tempted to think that post was a joke abt animorphs
And Animorphs is as popular as it is. I rest my case.
I read that in TVtropes
I had forgotten!
XD
"We don't need to justify genocide" is one of those sentences that is acceptable in this specific context and in no other
Haven't watched the video yet and was browsing the comments, and lemme tell you the level of horrified concern I had when I read the first part of this actually made me laugh once I realized what you were talking about
well, if you think about it, even without context is always true.
genocide cant be justified, they werent done in real life because they could be justified.
people just didnt care enough or didnt have the power to stop them, so if youre gonna do it on a story, just do it straight.
@@gamongames I mean, yeah technically. But usually "we don't have to justify x" is said by people who have done x.
Also, whilst they might not be justified to an external standard, genocide committers do justify it to themselves. That's why they do it. The justification for the holocaust was Hitlers hatred of Jewish people and him blaming them for being why Germany lost WW1. It's by no means a good justification, but it is a justification nonetheless.
I read this like three times trying to figure out what it meant then I was like OH NO
It's not that we don't need to justify genocide, it's that we shouldn't. Because genocide is bad, no matter what the reason or excuse is.
“Ten sentences back” is legit. Every time I find that somethings not working, it’s always because I made some decision that I can’t work with.
i dont use thumblr. i cancel them as cancel culture.
@@john-paulhunt2604 Ah you must be mistaken, cancel culture hasn't been happening on Tumblr for like 3 or 4 years. What you're thinking of is Twitter.
@@cheyannegiles9772 Is sam harris on Tumblr asking to get troilled again by assholes with no sense of humor again?
@@john-paulhunt2604 sounds like you don't have a good sense of humor either, if you're offended by some excellent trolling. But yeah I can't imagine people on Tumblr like Sam Harris very much.
„Commentsection is gonna be spicey.“
Well, yeah, can you blame us for cringing at this Guy?
His deifntion of Self-Insert-Character is ‚ALL Main Characters, especially if written by a woman.’ That’s laughable. At least he did say Woman and not ‚Female’.
Thinking of that scene where Goku was like "Why do you need to be with your pregnant wife who is about to give birth at any moment?" And Vegeta was like "How are you still married?"
It's crazy how much character devolpment Vegeta has gone through, coupled with the absurd character assasination on Goku's end. If this were the Cell Saga, that conversation would have been reversed.
Tumblr is so full of passionate, incredible fanfiction writers, a thriving narrative roleplay community, tons and tons of original poetry... it's insane. I find writing advice that helps me there all the time.
Literally. This isn't an attack on people who don't do this at all, but for the most part I see grammatically correct passages, neatly spaced paragraphs, etc....it's just really nice, and the writers cover more niche characters which I greatly appreciate
Exactly!
i found that its such a nicer place for art too than say, twitter or tiktok. personally its a cozy space for me to retreat into when those other 2 platforms are starting to be a little too much
The "commas are like dogs" advice is poison for me. Not only do I use long, comma filled sentences way too often, to the point that its pretty much my most common writing mistake, I am also allergic to dogs.
Dogs are great and also there are definitely situations in which there can be too many dogs.
o lorde we found em. mother day Oscar wilde *insane kazoo solo*
We can tell.
Sameeee, not the dog thing but the comma thing. I think it's cause when you construct the sentence in your brain, you start to automatically think about how you would say it out loud and the answer is; in one, long, drawn out sentence. That's how you end up with long, comma-filled sentences. This is a pretty easy thing to fix though as you can just look at wherever you place a comma and replace them with fullstops if the core sentiment of the sentence is complete. Commas should be used to connect two (or more) sentences to enhance what is being said, or to imply the tone of what is written. Fe. you can do "I went to the store, they were out of bananas." or "I went to the store. They were out of bananas.". Both work structurally but a reader will read them differently, as I'm sure you've noticed when you read them in this comment.
@@handsoaphandsoap this describes my problem perfectlyyyy thank you. i also tend to see periods/fullstops as so final, as if i cant continue my current "train of thought" if i end the sentence :/ its just a matter of looking out for commas in particular when i proof read and psyching myself out
When you give your hero a tragic backstory to garner sympathy but you give your villain the exact same tragic backstory to justify why they're a genocidal tyrant
It could work to show how people react to a same event and choosing what tondo with it creating a parallel to the character
'MY FAMILY DIED IN FRONT OF MY FACE!'
'MIND TOO WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE???'
“EVERYONES GOT DEAD PEOPLE!”
Sounds like a parallel dude. In most cases that is intentional.
It's usually pretty intentional. They are often foils. These two characters had the same thing happen. Why are they not the same? Explore that and you can get pretty interesting writing.
A lot of people I know who complain about teen heroes are adults consuming media that is meant for teenagers. The protagonists are teens because of that's the target demographic. That's why it's not Grandpa Joe and the Chocolate Factory.
Now that's a premise for a remake!
@@Hell_With_Perks I think they're doing that with Timothy Chamomile
I still don't really agree that you have to have a teenage lead for a story made for teenagers, right? I mean, when I was a kid I didn't care about relating to the age of the character, I'd just watch Dragonball Z because those characters are cool and I just wanted to see the cool people do cool things. I genuinely feel like the demographic element of stuff like that is kind-of overhyped, if you make a story where an old man is doing a bunch of really loud, energetic, cool things then kids are going to like it no matter what.
I'm pretty sure that's why Skamoto Days is getting so much traction in Shonen Jump right now, right? Because on the surface it's the story of an old man working as a grocery store clerk, but then he's also a secret former assassin that beats people up and goes on all kinds of adventures and that contrast is meant to be funny. But if you're a kid, even if you don't really get the joke, it's still a lot of fun to just see the goofy old man turn into a badass and do the cool guy thing, right?
@@dracocrusher in book-books, a protagonist your own age, or only slightly older, is often considered more relatable- it’s like the fascination with representation, something that I didn’t realize was an actually meaningful thing until I read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and saw someone like me written as a protagonist for the first time
@@runeanonymous9760 Maybe it's because I'm a white guy so I've never really been lacking for choices, but I've never really had that experience where I'm put off from watching a thing because I can't identify with how someone looks? I mean, as a kid I'd avoid things I thought were 'girl shows' like Sailor Moon or Card Captor because they didn't feel masculine enough, but I'd also just watch Static Shock and be like "Static is great and this sidekick kid sucks", or I'd play the female-lead Misadventures of Tron Bonne and get invested in that character.
I mean, I get that people like seeing themselves in things and I think there's absolutely value in that, but at the same time I don't think I've ever had an experience where something had a lead character that was different from me and it hurt my enjoyment in any way, if that makes sense.
It's sort-of like how people seem to like making game characters that look like themselves, I guess. Like, I get the idea, I get that other people like to see themselves in things, but it always felt weird to me. I'm the type of person who will just make a character that feels cool and then run with it, and it'll probably be a girl just because.
"if you are on tumblr its because you clearly care about something" oh absolutely, like its literally the chillest place right now on internet it feels like. last place of old internet that isnt shit like 4chan. No influencer nonsense, just random people posting about stuff they care. and its always just funny how if you get tumblr famous you can barely do anything with it you have no power over people like others do and thats what i appreaciate
@@electricfishfan I actually prefer Reddit because it feels more structured in terms of conversation, and the rooms actually have boundaries (different subs with different rules and cultures, have to choose threads to engage with rather than scrolling through whole posts or at least the first parts of them, etc.). Tumblr feels a bit too much like I’m walking into somebody’s living room and I have no idea if my contribution will be welcome. Like everything is technically out in the open, but it sometimes feels like people think they’re speaking in cozy, intimate spaces and I don’t know if my outside contribution will be welcome because I don’t know what that group’s unspoken social contracts are.
Maybe my Reddit experience is just informed by frequenting smaller subs, though; I can see how the crowded feel is true of the high-volume communities! And I hope we can also agree that both are leagues better than Twitter lol
@@RisingSunfish As an active Tumblr user, I can say that you'll be fine 99% of the time. It's easier to go unnoticed on Tumblr, which is terrible for an aspiring artist who still posts their art on Tumblr despite knowing it's harder to get recognition...but it also gives you the freedom to scream into the void without consequences.
the only thing you can really do with tumblr fame is like, advertise your commissions.
I don't think it's the fact that tumblr has changed to much over the years, it's just the rest of the internet has gotten so much worse.
The most yoy get when being :tumblr famous" is "oh its thay user that made those funny posts in Seymour's videos" and thays all the recognition you get, and i think thats wonderful, it feels like there's this unspoken understanding that everyone's on the same level and nobody is ever getting "above" anyone or "under"
As someone once put it, "Flaunting about how many followers you have in Tumblr is like flaunting about how many clowns gave you a thumbs up in your life when you told a joke"
Something I find low-key funny about the Mulan hair cutting scene is if we're going off ancient China she wouldn't even need to do that since men traditionally had long hair they tied up due to cultural(and during some periods, official law) reasons.
yea... turns out early disney didn't to a TON of cultural research. that being said it did get the point across to the target audience of american consumers so at least there's that going for it.
@@ymmijx6061Yeah, but compared to the sequel and the live-action, it did EVERYTHING so much better than those two.
@@ymmijx6061 not to mention it didn't get the disclaimer on Disney+ like Aladdin did
I'm still a regular Tumblr user, and yeah, Tumblr is legit my favourite social media platform, and the only one that I actively want to spend time on.
On to the writing advice, yeah, I pretty much roll my eyes at all the people who hates "one-dimensional villains" and has a raging hard-on for "grey morality." First of all, a work having quote-unquote "one-dimensional villains" does NOT mean it's bad. An uncomplicated villain can be great, especially if they are entertaining to watch and charismatic (see your classic Disney villains). And second, the real world is full of assholes who don't need any deep reasons to be assholes. Sometimes it's about the banality of evil, and how we deal with them. Terry Pratchett's Discworld is very good about this.
The point I want to make is, read more Discworld.
I find "grey morality" kind of funny, because it's usually trying to be nuanced but in a manner that lacks actual nuance. People are complicated, but prototypical grey morality just muddles everything and calls that complexity.
As a counterexample: Claude Frollo is the most complex and nuanced Disney villain. Also, he's completely unambiguously evil, he's so despicable it's kind of shocking, and he's never heard of a sympathetic motivation in his life.
I believe grey morality is more realistic to real life, since in real life there is no such thing as good and evil. But, fiction isn't meant to be realistic it's supposed to be entertaining.
@@xanderowl9041 How can you look at the state of the world and say there's no such thing as good and evil?
@@Pablo360able because it isn't that simple...?
@@freshcupofangst It's not as simple as *everything* being either good or evil, obviously, but the idea that good and evil *don't exist* in real life (what Xander Owl actually said) is a baffling and frankly extremely privileged position to hold.
The stuff about TV Tropes is how I always thought TV Tropes was *supposed* to be used. I was initially very confused when it started getting a bad reputation.
It is, in fact, explicitly how TV Tropes tells you to use it. But it's not how the short-lived TV Tropes show used it, for some godforsaken reason.
@@Pablo360able There are a fair number of misinterpretations and outright falsehoods on the site.
@@Percival917 That statement could be true of any crowd-edited website. It's still a good jumping-off point. The Wikipedia of memes (in the Dawkinsian sense).
I use it cause a lot of people will point out things in the story that I missed and it helps me get a better hold of understanding the story. If that makes sense? Lol
That might be how it was at first, but very quickly it became utter garbage nonsense. It's roughly equivalent to a cookbook that says "a cake has eggs, flour and butter" and ends it there. It's a list of blocks that are wikifiller but no explanation for how to use them or why you would. It's just what it is and acts like that's good enough.
Self inserts aren’t inherently good or bad, every writer puts a little bit of themselves into each character because at the end of the day we only have our own perspective. Most of the time people who throw it around left and right are usually just looking to justify not liking a protagonist
Plus self inserts are usually very good for short comedic comics too. In terms of story telling, I think as long as your character has some differences from you, and isn't weirdly like... perfect I think is the word I'm looking for, then it's fine. I have a character that isn't exactly a self insert, but is heavily based off myself. I basically took some of my characteristics, and blew them up massively in him, which includes flaws I've noticed in myself. In fact, most of his character is based of these hyper inflated flaws, which slowly get resolved over the course of the story, or at least most of them do.
Or when the character isn't a well-written self insert. Which was why they weren't liked in the first place
Here's a cool thing to do with Self-Inserts
- Make them the equivalent of an NPC
- Put them in a comedic timing
- Make them self-aware but everyone doesn't listen to them
So I'm Pan and suspected of being autistic, yeah, half of my characters are queer and have autistic traits. I write a lot of male characters, I have gender issues and relate more to men. Most characters I write have obsessions with either F1 or steam engines and/or work in those fields, like I wish to. Yet I often write in traits I've seen in my friends.
I see what you're all saying, it's nice to know that the whole world won't automatically hate a story I want to create just because the main character is a self insert. But, as someone who's a bit too self-destructive and sensitive, it's hard to ignore all the people who will hate on something just because they can't give actual criticism
31:45 Honestly this person is spitting straight facts, I agree with a lot of 'em.
I hate the reductive "self-insert" garbage that people say when criticizing stuff because y'know... Art is created by people, so naturally it has a lot of the artist behind them. All that matters is if the art itself is actually any good or not.
Honestly I was plesently surprised by the large amount of good advice, normally this series tears into bad advice than good advice.
There is no such thing as a character who doesn't contain a piece of their creator. Anyone who says otherwise is someone who has never written.
Ulysses by Jame Joyce is widely regarded as the greatest novel in the english language and the two main characters are literally Joyce as a 25 year old and Joyce as a 40 year old. See also, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby-Dick, The Bell Jar and so many others.
@@sinvector8020 that and the people that think art can be objective, as if such a broad, amorphous spectrum of ideas and sentiments can be simplified into a small 'x trope is good/bad' box regardless of how its used.
I think the only part I disagreed with, is that you can't use Mary Sue/Gary Stu as a criticism. Just because women-hating incel weirdos have appropriated the term as their pejorative against female writers and characters, does not invalidate the criticism across the board. Where people get confused, is that Mary Sue characters aren't actually that common, and most people know better than to write one. The only notable examples of Mary Sues you can easily find are celebrities making cameos in other media, and needing to be written a certain way for their public image. But we should still be critical of this
I am always going to say this: If anyone tries to dunk on self-inserts, politely remind them that possibly the most well-known iteration of the afterlife, The Divine Comedy - is essentially a giant self-insert fanfiction by Dante Alighieri
My favorite female hair cutting scene is when Zuko cuts his ponytail
the final part with TvTropes reminds me a lot of usual understandings (and misunderstandings) of Music Theory: both are descriptive! They shouldn't be used as a recipe to make anything, but rather as an extensive, never complete catalogue of what we have done in regards to music or storytelling and a way to be able to talk about works. And failing to see them as such, believing that instead they are how-to's on making stories or music... leads to bad, stiff works.
Some people decided to write down a bunch of patterns they noticed, and a bunch of other decided it was a checklist
TV Tropes have good examples for references and understanding why a certain thing works, or doesn't.
Using tropes as a checklist, on the other hand...
So, I'm a fulltime professional writer who got my start on TvTropes, and that last one really hit something for me: tropes are TOOLS, but most tropers use them as BRICKS. There's this weird malformed tvt cargo cult idea of storytelling where you just stack tropes on top of each other and eventually you'll have a completed MS, but if you acknowledge that they're just ways of understanding stories, you can actually take hold of them and use to do some real fucking work. You know, they're not material in-and-of themselves, they're just ways of understanding, but those ways ARE useful.
I got insulted on a writing server when I offhandedly mentioned I use TV Tropes to help with my writing and essentially got told that using tropes is like baking a cake with all the embellishments, but not the primary ingredients. It pissed me off because it's not like I was fully dependent on the site, I frequent it to analyze what made a story work for me to the point I liked it, and knowing what I like helps me understand what I want to see more of or think I could do better.
‼️I know this is a really old comment but I agree mostly but I do believe there's one exception to the rule. Framing devices. I have never read or seen a framing device that was just as good and compelling as the story they are telling. I dislike them so much i get angry about it.
It's unfortunately common in a lot of historical fiction or fantasy. There will be this really interesting historical story about this woman accused of being a witch or something like that. But instead of just telling that story. HALF the book is the boring main character in modern times in the library researching this or somehow learning about the historical incident . And it ALWAYS cuts off to the boring perspective when something dramatic is happening.
I have never EVER seen a framing device done well. Assassin's Creed ruins it as well. Why do you even need to add this crazy ancestor tech sh instead of just having the game!! No one is playing the game because of the framing device.
Framing devices are extremely unnecessary. And honestly just come off as filler. As if the author wanted to tell the historical story but wanted the story structure to be more interesting or they wanted to just pad the word count. So frustrating. Framing devices don't work. They are completely unnecessary. Just tell the interesting story instead. I do not believe framing devices are a tool at all.
Honestly the one about self inserts, mary sues, and misogyny is fucking spot on and I wish people talked about it more. I rarely see people criticize stories written by men for having self inserts, every time I see it it's always about women. I think the term "mary sue" being feminine kinda speaks for itself. When a woman writes a competent female protagonist, it's always a "mary sue" in the eyes of some people. If we held male self inserts to the same standard, Luke Skywalker would be a blatant self insert and John Wick would be a shameless mary sue. But I think some people just don't want to examine _why_ they always have the knee jerk reaction to assume every new powerful female protagonist written by a woman is a "mary sue" until proven otherwise, and _why_ they hold female writers to a much higher standard of quality than male writers, because if they *did* examine their behavior they'd be forced to acknowledge that they assume women are inherently less competent than men, and that they must prove they are a rare exception in order to be taken seriously. (Note: It's not just men who do this either. Anyone is capable of spreading misogyny, and often they don't even realize they're doing it.)
Mary Sue was originaly an oc in a star trek fanfic from the 80's, I think that's why the term is mostly linked to femlale characters. The term Gary Sue (mary sue as a man) exist but it's rarley ever picked up on despite the fact that a lot of male protagonist would be a Gary if they were held to the same standards.
You do realise that the term Mary Sue was created by a woman, and was meant to be a parody of the characters in fanfiction always getting with the leads and being perfect?
@@themonarchofbaddecisionmak1405 you do realize that it doesn’t matter if the word was made by a woman and that these days it’s a buzzword commonly used to demean women by misogynists?
@@TheSlipperyNUwUdle it does matter, because it shows that it's not something that only misogynists use, and that dismissing every instance of pointing out mary sues as "incels hating on strong female lead" could mean ignoring actual criticism by those who aren't misogynists
"when a woman writes a competent female protagonist, it's always a 'mary sue' in the eyes of some people"
Not always, unless when "competent" means having no flaws or struggles. Or being so uninteresting they feel like a mary sue anyway. Look at when they're interesting competent characters, it should be clear that only actual misogynists remain in that stance
Not everyone who uses the term are those "some people", and dismissing them as such might only leave out actual criticism
I feel I might know who they mentioned about the twist villain, but I distinctly remember the problem was that 90% of Disney/Pixar movies for a while had twist villains, with wildly varied success.
If we are thinking about the same person, while that's definitely what started it, they've moved on to hating the trope in ANY media, I think the most recent being squid game. It went from "this trope isn't universally good so Disney/Pixar needs to stop putting it everywhere and instead recognize when it is and isn't appropriate instead of throwing it in there in hopes of making the story better" to "this trope is bad and objectively ruins stories and always horrible, it is universally poor writing and anyone who throws it in their media is making their story worse". Basically going from criticizing black and white thinking when it came to the twist villian trope, to taking part in that black and white thinking but from the opposite side.
For anyone wondering, 'that person' is Schafrillas because one of his biggest videos was on Disney having bad recent twist villains
@@MeowMeowMeowX3333 He didn't. He said he liked Omni-man as a twist villain when he talked about Invincible. He just has a higher bar for the villains in general now because he hates Disney's overusage of it.
I once read writing advice on Tumblr that took the "Everything needs to be plot-relevant" advice to the extreme. Basically advocating that everyone be straight, for instance, unless the plot or sub-plot revolved around them being gay or bi or whatever. Because LGBT+ peoples' lives begin and end at coming out I guess.
That sounds like ✨ homophobia ✨
Because being straight is obviously plot relevant by default, apparently.. I've never understood this argument.
I feel like people took that advice...a bit too literally? I think by plot relevant they mean "story relevant." Because things don't have to move the plot forward, they could just expand your understanding of the world or give more details into the inner workings of your characters or their plot development.
@@randomthoughts0829 A rule I think is generally good is that every scene should further at least 2/3 in terms of plot, character and world(building). So a scene can develop characters and world without furthering the plot and still be a necessary scene, but if it only does 1 of those things there's a chance that you either need to add more to the scene or remove it entirely
@@sofastuffing I kinda disagree on that. As long as said scene is either expanding our understanding or the characters/world OR moving the plot forward, it should stay. I don't think every scene needs to have both, but a lot should
I think that the person who mentioned small physical actions at around 24:00 in was referencing Autistic Stimming somehow being demonstrated in a character, or something similar. It can be very hard to portray, though I feel it is important to include tactfully if you've opted to have an autistic or neuro-divergent character in your story- but the important thing to remember is that stimming happens FOR A REASON, it is a response to stimulation and emotions. Flapping your hands when your happy, digging the tip of your thumb into your seat when you're nervous, maybe someone wrings at the hem of their shirt so often that the stitches have come loose in certain spots. Maybe another character notices why the person does a certain action, even if the person doing that action is entirely unconscious of it. I don't think it was writing advice as much as it was "God I hope some writer out there somewhere sees this and understands, because I just want to feel seen and appreciated for once in my life." Because between the doctor-savants who are written like sociopaths and whatever in the fuck is going on with Sheldon Cooper, the landscape of Autistic portrayal right now makes me want to jump off a fucking overpass.
I did an honours degree studying autistic protagonists in YA fiction years back. I was examining them for the presence of particular tropes because of the lack of diversity in the genre. Anyway, I recommend Marcelo in the Real World (trigger warning; a lot of stuff happens and I can give more specific trigger warnings if someone has specific triggers but would otherwise want to read it). It’s not perfect but it was by far my favourite that I read. The character has empathy, acknowledges he’s autistic, he’s not a savant although he does have special interests, he’s not the white boy stereotype, and his differences seem genuinely respected by the text. M is for Autism is short but it’s a book written by a class of autistic girls who felt poorly represented by media depictions of autism, so they wrote their own book with the help of their teacher. I recall the story focussing on feelings of anxiety and feeling different, before being diagnosed with autism and being able to understand yourself and your differences better. While it is a simple and short story I do think it would’ve been a nice story for many autistic girls that age to see themselves reflected in.
I despise Curious Incident.
Gatchaman Crowds (an anime) has an autistic protagonist, or at least a heavily coded as such one, and honestly half the cast is coded as such? Season 2 can be kind of triggering, as the protagonist of that season does something kind of quiet hands adjacent to the original protagonist in the seventh or so episode
Exactly! It's definitely fine to portray seemingly "unreasonable" actions since people IRL do them a lot too.
I didn't understand why the spells have to serve a purpose. I (ADHD) would absolutely just play around with spells if I could. just juggle without using my hands, creating a yoyo out of pure energy to throw around, levetating an inch of the ground all for no reason but because its fun
@@superrinusblick4222 the purpose of spells like that in a story would be to show readers a bit about the character using them.
I’m more of a non-fiction/academic writer and what helps me in those areas is to write the meat of what I want to say (or what the research is telling me) and then going back and writing the intro and conclusion. I’m not sure that would work in for narrative writing but it sure does for more non fiction, academic, or essay style writing. At least for me.
I do the same thing for lab reports. It's much easier to write an abstract if you have the rest of the report already written. The abstract is the first thing a reader sees, but it's the last thing I write.
"none of (the villains) can stay evil unless they're the last season baddy. That guy's just Satan"
Not true! Unfortunately we live in a world in which Supernatural also attempted to give redeeming character traits to literal Satan, AFTER using him as a final season big baddie! So, it's worse!
I mean, Satan is _clearly_ the most tragic character in the Bible:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! _how_ art thou cut to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
@@davidsandrock7826 only because milton draco in leather pants’d him P:
the BBEG was literally Thee biblical god. and after stealing his powers and making him mortal, everyone died :)
*shaking in unspeakable anger*
Henry you're great and these videos wouldn't be the same without you don't put yourself down like that lmao
❤️
For real.
Henry carries this channel hard
Nice profile
Another good example of self insert: Rohan Kishibe. He's literally the perfect artist, but also, *a massively creepy weirdo*. almost feels like Araki was self deprecating.
And he literally gets punched in the face by his own favorite character (Josuke)
@@rockhistoria2537 damn,didnt know Araki was into that
@@rockhistoria2537 and gets his house burnt down.
Damn guess that means I’d rail Araki
Massively creepy weirdo with way too much pride, see also Josuke gambling with Rohan.
12:44 There was a guy in my playwriting class in undergrad who was *exactly like this.* He loved every single one of the movies you named ("Goodfellas", "The Godfather", "Scarface", etc.) and worshipped the ground Tarantino and Coppola walked on... and every single one of his scripts sounded exactly the same. Even if he ostensibly wasn't writing about gangsters and whatnot. He also couldn't write women for shit. So he definitely could've benefited from that bit of advice.
My favorite example of a villain who's, in some ways, complex and humanized, but who's not justified in the slightest, is Claude Frollo from Disney's Hunchback. Think about it.
Last Time I was this early, Lily Orchard wasn’t even halfway done with that Writing tips thread.
Last time I was this early, Lily Orchard was Lily Sapling.
@@nairsheasterling9457SO very glad you didn't go with the transphobic joke for this one
You should make a community post asking people for their own writing advice, and then you respond to your own audience's writing advice. I have my own piece of advice, but it applies to creating an ensemble cast.
If you need to make ONE more character or another character for an ensemble cast, just think about what you DONT have in your cast, and build your new character from that
Honestly, probably a good tip for any character interaction in general. Having two people who act the same isn't as interesting as having people who contrast each other. It's like balancing a stew or something, too much salt makes things feel too dry, but if you're going for a milder flavor then you also want to avoid anything unnecessarily spicy that could throw off the balance. It's all about finding that right combination where each thing you add compliments what you're trying to achieve.
@@dracocrusher just adding to this though, sometimes it’s fun to have characters who are very similar on some levels, and I think it can make for a very interesting and endearing dynamic to have two characters who are very alike and just have a Grand Old Time.
Obviously, not very good for a story to have two completely identical main characters, but I think there’s room for two main characters who are very similar in some regards!
46:20 "sure it might sound weird to have an army made up of 13 year olds because of the kids you see around you. But back in the day, that was the norm, it's only unusual sounding by today's standards."
I am going to need her to define what "back in the day" refers to, because I am currently studying the Augustan period of Ancient Rome (approx. 40 BC - 13 AD) and that wasn't the norm then. Augustus joined his great uncle Julius Caesar for military campaigns when he was 16, and this was seen as unusually young. Augustus's own mother actually opposed this - despite her ambition for her son - because of his young age.
"Just google the age of King Tut and you'll be surprised how wrong you are"
This point does not follow from the previous sentence. Monarchs are an exception to age restrictions and such; it doesn't mean people didn't still view them as young. Monarchs are usually chosen by a set of convoluted rules to determine who is next in line, and if that person happens to be a child, or even an infant, so be it. That is why regents existed as well - adults who would take the reigns until the child monarch was old enough to rule.
Honestly hearing bad advice torn apart can be every bit as useful and educational as hearing good advice. Especially when you pick out the nuggets of truth.
Okay I know this is kind of off topic, but I love how you guys actually complement advise, explain how it’s helpful and don’t just shit all over it. It’s surprisingly refreshing not to see another “UGH these dumb internet people don’t know what they’re doing” and actually see you critique and offer alternatives to the bad advice. Sorry for the paragraph, just keep doing what you’re doing :)
About that writing advice regarding giving character tics with specificities, I think it was in context that the characters portrayed are neuroatypicals? Tho the advice did word it kinda weird if that's the case and, yeah, it DEFINITELY can also be read as a weird "chuunibyou" idea of something cool if written down because it adds action to an idle scene. Personally I believe either reading are valid.
I like the idea because it's like even if a character isn't meant to be ADHD or something, giving them a little physical quirk like that can help to characterize them to some extent. But it's like they said, right? It works way better physically. Like if your character spins their gun as they holster it like Robocop then that's a good minor bit of characterization, but you also should at least try to tie it to the character in some small way or have it used sparingly. Like if you spin your gun before you put it away then that paints the character as a bit of a confident show-off, right? And that can go a long way to sell that idea if you have other things characterizing them as such. But if they're literally spinning their weapon every other conversation for fun then it stops being charming and it starts to get tedious.
That's where I'm at with it, at least. Like it's a good trick IF, and only if, you don't overuse it or use it too randomly. Like if your character is meant to be a depressed honed military man and they're still doing twirly gun tricks then that would just detract from the character, right?
Yeah, the impression I got was distinctly that this piece of advice was less for people writing characters as part of a holistic story and more for people creating OCs as imaginative play outlets/mascots. There is a (perhaps outsized) emphasis on originality and standing out in the crowd, and this is just another avenue through which to do that. Utility is not the point because these characters are more an end unto themselves than a piece of a larger whole.
I hadn’t considered it being an ND thing, though, so I’m glad the comments mentioned that. In that case I would say the most effective execution, assuming this IS part of a larger story, would be to establish the tic early on in the character’s introduction (probably via narration) and then reintroduce it at meaningful points where it will serve as a barometer to how your character is feeling.
“villain with mind powers trapping the hero in mental prison” is actually a common action media trope. One time a hero does it to a villain.
5:00 on the topic of men getting mad at women with dyed hair. I saw a Reddit thread of a man who was very mad at women who dye their hair calling the dirty Sjw S***. Worst part was that all 500 comments agreed with him and were absolutely riddled with slurs. Some people man…
A lot of subs on reddit are fucking weird man
Dyed hairs are nice, I don't know what some people have against it.
And they're probably the kind of people who jerk off to cosplayers who dye their hair for certain cosplays or to characters that don't have natural hair colors.
Some people need to mate with grass holy hell
The word bed looks like a bed 🛏
I found out about this when I was six bc the teacher was explaining to my classmate the difference between the b and the d and she used the word bed to explain it and I just kinda noticed that the word looks like the object, I like to tell people about this because I am still proud to this day that I was able to notice that even tho I was 6.
that was actually how my teachers taught it, back when i was first learning to read.
If you squint car kinda looks like a bike/porsche 917 open pit
These days, I only really identify a "mary sue" by one distinct trait: when their presence actively damages other characters or the setting by warping their personalities to meet the sue's needs.
When you notice characters tend to hold the idiot ball and act completely out of character in order to either praise or act as a strawman for another, that's how you know what you're dealing with.
"If you're still on Tumblr after everything, it's because you care deeply about something."
I care about the friends I made there. I care about the customization on my blog space, making it more reflective of myself and my interests. I care about having a niche platform where I can RP, publically, with people I never would have known otherwise, and in a format that promotes interaction and sharing. I care about the heaps of advice and references and acceptance and assurances that you are FINE and IT WILL BE OKAY, from both LGBT and neurodivergent communities. I care about the place where I found myself, going from a depressed teen ready to die at the end of high school to a married LGBT, knowingly neurodivergent woman, and also growing close to my wife-to-be in the process. Tumblr has its problems. In a lot of ways, it keeps degrading. In some rare instances, it has been improving.
I've been on the site since late 2012/early 2013. I am the cockroach scuttling around the debris after the nuclear blast. They can try to drive me away, but I'm not gettin' out of me chair!! Because... where else would I go...?
Posts like the ones you read carried me through my worst years, and helped me embrace myself and mlthe world around me. You laugh at the niche, specific advice to add a ridiculous mental prison scenario in your fiction story. But over-the-top things like that being celebrated and encouraged really promoted a culture where... everything was accepted. Can you not see any value in a thing? Well, is it hurting anyone? "No, but it's cringe!!!" So? Does it make you happy...? THEN DO IT ANYWAY, DAMMIT!! And a lot of people do! A lot of times it turns out silly, yes. But often, you get incredibly powerful and touching short stories that come from prompts just as ridiculous as the scenario you read.
Tumblr has always said to be yourself. Be proud of your interests. Indulge in them. And fuck whatever anyone else says. As long as it makes you happy, there's nothing wrong with being a little childish at times. ❤
I honestly saw this going one of two ways, either:
There was going to be some proper cringeworthy "advice" by authors with illusions of grandeur (not aspirations)
--OR--
There was going to be genuinely great nuggets of advice that expanded a writer/artists way of thinking.
Man I'm glad it was the 2nd one! I wholeheartedly agree with allowing villains to just be bad/crappy people. Lord Dominator was a cruel ball of charisma and an absolute hoot! Dr. Robotnick in Sonic SAT AM was a genuinely menacing character! Red Death from the Venture Bros. is funny and can be legitimately scary! LET BAD GUYS BE BAD GUYS!
The lack of a content-serving algorithm is actually something I really like about Tumblr. A lot of other social media is just too overwhelming for me nowadays because of the way they constantly throw new content at you.
That post about self-inserts is one of the most cathartic and true things I’ve ever read about writing.
I’d like to add my thoughts about the self-insert and Mary Sue thing. I would agree that, especially in fanfiction, there are A LOT of stories with female main characters that very obviously are self-inserts and usually are also “perfect”. I used to write like this. My little sister did it, too. I think it stems from the desire to be perfect (17, beautiful but doesn’t know it, great powers without any obstacles…). I saw it many times on Wattpad. I feel like media and stereotypes can push teenage girls to want to write a woman, BUT STRONG. Which is (obviously) a trap, because no character is inherently strong or not, at least not based on gender alone. I grew out of this mindset, my sister did, and I imagine many other girls did as well.
HOWEVER.
In current media, many main characters are used to live out male fantasies, too. For example, there are so many movies where the male character is just _existing_ and women flock to him like no tomorrow. Bonus points if he is considered “average-looking” or below and the love-interests that inexplicably fall for him always look like models! I remember watching several movies like this with my bf, and I am still mad about this trope.
TL;DR: female and male self-inserts/mary sues both exist and are used in different ways to live out a fantasy, while female characters like this are much more likely to receive hate in today’s media (in my personal experience).
this is my first time watching this channel and i was worried it would turn into “women can’t write” and i was so glad it didn’t. i’m also really happy about the JKR hate lol
Gotta say, I love all the comments speculating on what UA-camr I'm talking about. I'm not gonna name any names, but it does strike me as funny when people can tell who I'm talking about just from the description, then are like "But they're not like that!"
Then how did you know it was them I was talking about if the description isn't accurate?
Maybe it would be better to just say who it is in the future? The mystery draws attention to it and gets people talking, and chances are it’ll still get back to that person- or get back to a completely different person if the speculators were wrong. “Not naming names” is not being virtuous here, we’re not talking about sensitive or private information- we’re talking about opinions on fiction that this person has chosen to make public. And if you can’t express this particular point of dissent in a respectful way, and _that’s_ why you aren’t naming names… maybe examine that?
I really liked this video and I don’t think you guys are bad dudes by any means, and maybe there’s context to this situation I’m missing here, but doubling down here reads as confirming the speculation without doing so explicitly, you know? Plausible deniability and all. And I don’t think that’s a cool habit to open the door to, is I guess how I’d put it.
(Again, I really did enjoy this discussion, and I’d totally listen to more if you’re up for doing more. Writing discourse on Tumblr can get pretty unhinged, and while I was pleased to see most of this advice was quite good, I’d be fascinated to see how you’d respond to some of the discussions I’ve seen floating around. Like off the top of my head there was this comic doing the rounds about a young kid almost being summoned to be the Chosen One of a magical realm, but his mom steps in and yells at the fairy or elf or whatever to leave the kid alone because he’s 10 and this will traumatize him. And this was kind of funny and cute, but the notes were full of people unironically lambasting the trope of child heroes in adventure stories, because exposing children to that kind of danger and responsibility is cruel. And I was just reading this wondering what planet these commenters were on, but I’d be super curious to hear that viewpoint being properly dissected and analyzed! Not to simply confirm my views, mind, but maybe there’s something I hadn’t considered.)
Funny thing that I saw this comment when that part happened. Why do people care who you are talking about? It’s your opinion and not naming names, so who would you criticize? There are many people with similar tastes that can be places here. But there are people who are dedicated to find out
last time i was this early, lily orchard hadn't even called me a colossal turd yet
She’s the fastest slanderer in the west
@@henrygalley2831 *gunslanderer? no? just me?
"But Superman has no flaws--" Yes, yes he does.
In his best works he's Superman yeah but he's portrayed to be stubborn, a bit holier than thou, afraid to intervene in certain events because of how he's perceived by the world and in the case of people close to him he can be overprotective
He's fallen prey to the 'for the greater good' train of thought before, as a starting example.
Not any flaws I care about really. He's way too invincible for me, I need that constant physical threat of death yk.
Put him in a room full of kryptonite
watching this video right after lily orchard's is light night and day
bc no matter how outragious it is, no matter whether you guys agree with it or not, at least, it _is_ actual advices and tips and not an excuse for petty fandom beef
Duuuude, that semicolon advice is much appreciated; you're my hero.
Happy to help!
I’d say a character that charges straight into Hell with a shotgun and chainsaw over the death of his pet rabbit probably does have issues. It’s just that, as the writer of that post stated, those flaws aren’t focused on.
Idk, I think that is a very appropriate response
A perfectly healthy response.
Perfectly healthy response.
Especially in the new games, I feel like Doomguy does get a bit more character because he's just a completely blank sociopath. Like people are trying to give him lore and stuff and he just walks past them to continue killing demons, like there's a bit in Eternal where an office worker is freaking out and begging for his life and Doomguy just grabs the key card tied around his neck and drags him by the card over to the reader to scan it in as the guy's freaking out.
In a different story this character would absolutely get way more introspection to his behavior.
@@dracocrusher Doomslayer is a killing machine but isn't mindless. LIke you said the cutscenes show he has humanity. It's not nice but he's not going out of his way to be a dick.
The bit about TV Tropes is exactly the reason I argue reading fanfiction actively made me a better writer. Reading the same characters interpreted differently, the way different authors used the same elements from canon, how people fill in plotholes in canon, etc etc, done either really well or really badly, has allowed me to compare elements a lot, and figure out what makes one story work better than another. I.e., it taught me to read bad writing and learn from it. ALSO, it taught me how to see what makes a story shine. There's a HUGE difference between a story that is just bad all the way through, and a story that had a nugget of genius in it but that whose author didn't have the skill to make it shine. And that taught me to find these nuggets of genius in my own writing and build upon them. Find out what makes a character compelling and deepen that. Find out why a scene feels essential and deepen that. And, in the same way, find out what scenes have no purpose, what pieces of dialogue are superfluous, what scenes don't hit as they should because the environmental descriptions somehow are absent. It taught me how to see BOTH flaws and nuggets of genius, and by extension what to remove and what to expand and take advantage of. It's been a magical journey
Edit: Wanted to add that it also helped me with editing regarding larger plotpoints. Reading AUs teaches you that you can completely change a story and still keep the dynamic of two characters (ej. two characters are, I dunno, rivals at a magic school in canon, and the fanfiction makes them siblings in a regular home - since they were already around the same age and had a similar dynamic, it works. It's baffling how well some fanfiction authors make it work), and what-ifs allow you to see what possibilities other people explored and how characters change - like the two alternative endings of a visual novel, people will write bad guys as twist good guys and make it work, and have a character form relationships that they didn't in canon and somehow make it work. It taught me that there is no such thing as characters inherently having no chemistry - there is always something you can put them through to make them get closer and start interacting in ways that are actually interesting.
The variation in writing level taught me to fix issues with my writing, and the endless remixing taught me how to reinterpret things to make them work in ways that make sense for the plot and characters. It's been really neat
This is kind of a random thought, but regarding the post about how all characters are flawed, and the quality of their writing just depends on how well the writer identifies them, it made me think about how modern Spongebob episodes treat Mr. Krabs as opposed to how the classic episodes do.
Mr. Krabs has always been a bit of a scumbag, but one of the biggest differences in how he's written in modern episodes is how he is treated for his actions. When Gus was talking about "The Krusty Sponge" in one of the last Spongebob Boyz episodes, the scene that stood out to me most was the one where Krabs is taken to court after poisoning his customers with rotten meat. Rather than treating the court scene as a punishment for Krabs' actions, its just treated like any other obstacle that he and Spongebob need to figure out how to get past, leaving him facing no repercussions and having no room for character growth, as if he didn't need it.
An example of a classic episode that handles his flaws much better would be "Born Again Krabs," where he keeps being greedy to the point where it culminates in him selling Spongebob's soul to The Flying Dutchman for 62 cents, leaving him needing to come to terms with his own greed and repent for his actions before he gets Spongebob back.
Been watching Diregentleman for a year, still have not touched Less is Morgue. I'll consider it if I'm especially bored, which I doubt I will be considering all the unbelievably attractive people I've been fuuuucking
I listened to it once, but unfortunately I was busy anally destroying a girl at the time, so I missed most of it.
@@TheShanicpower damn what a coincidence I was getting anally destroyed while watching this very video, but I'm pretty used to it so I still got most of it.
Do you two know each other?
@@phantomkitten73 We met once! Unfortuntely, I was busy anally destroying a girl at the time, so I didn’t get to know them very well.
@@TheShanicpower: Cause it kinda sounds like this is your girl.
To take a more adversarial approach to that last post; I do think TVT can be a useful tool (specially for breaking the barriers between "good" and "bad" media), but I definitely want to challenge the idea that it can be a substitute for more formalized advice. Yes, it's not only fun but also useful to recognize that these stories are made of the same building blocks (i. e. they employ the same tropes), but to actually go in depth into what makes these works good or bad means going further than what you could get if you ONLY read TVT. That sort of knowledge could only come if you 1) Experience the work itself, and 2) Are capable of examining WHY the pieces fit the way they do beyond the scope of what specific tropes are involved. TVT only provides exhaustive lists of the pieces and the works that have employed them, but the wiki falls short when it comes to answering WHY and HOW they are well employed in good works. These are answers that you would have to look somewhere else for. Again, the use of TVT is not the problem, but it is only useful as complementary to the sort of mechanical advice other writing classes or resources provide. Yes, sometimes intuition can help, but it can only go so far and to dismiss the advice of previous writers who have faced the same problems we have seems oddly self-complicating.
Addendum: I am aware that I am arguing against a position that the titular writers do not hold, but I still wanted to complement the commentary they provided.
I agree. I always found tv tropes to be a great idea generator. Like if I want to write a certain type of character or scenario and I need a bunch of references to draw from, here's a whole list of them from several different mediums. Of course, It doesn't replace professional advice or guidance, but it's still a useful free resource.
For the working backwards tip, I think, as a musician, that can be extremely useful. When working on a piece, we sometimes backwards chain to see where a piece is heading. This allows us to evaluate the cadences and apexes leading up to it, as well as give appropriate emotion and weight to preceding parts of the song.
the fact that i've seen most of these posts on the actual site is such an L for me--not a diss to the writing advice which is decent, mostly juts an @ for me for staying on a dead blogging platform for nearing on a decade at this point. ALSO one of my fav pieces of writeblr advice didn't make it to the video! which is "if you're stuck on a scene, change the weather" which i think kinda goes hand in hand with the "Ten sentences back" rule. I think its a bit simplistic but even thinking about how different weather might affect the story tends to lead me to some realization about what exactly needs to change
I agree with the one dimensional villains thing, in my favourite movie (The Warriors) the protagonist asks the villain why he did what he did and the villain responds with “No reason, I just like doing things like that”, and it doesn’t make the story any worse, in fact, if the villain had launched into a grand speech about how his backstory was so tragic and he had a life long grudge against the main characters and how their ideologies clashed it would totally ruin the momentum of the scene and his character, sometimes people are mean and petty and sometimes those people have power and use it against others
As i said many many times "just for shit and giggles" is one of the most fucking scary motivations, just look at 4chan.
As another fun example, Porky Minch specifically in Mother 3. Yeah, there is an underlying lack of friendship outside of Ness that makes him that indulgent and horrible parents if the Lardna Minch waiters and possibly him in the Absolutely Safe Capsule is of any note, but most of him ruining the Nowhere Island’s life is basically because he is bored and wants excitement, and his really weird justifications about how humanity is doomed to repeat its past sins are basically coincidental ramblings.
For weird quirks, I think even if they don't have any in-story purpose, they can provide some nice representation. Some people just need to fidget and a lot of storytelling dismisses these details as worthless and as such doesn't include them. On the other hand, it's nice to have these details _and_ give them purpose.
Another thing about the self-insert or Mary Sue/Gary Stu thing is that some of the people who creates those are children. Have some mercy. lol
“Commas are like dogs, you can never have too many”
But…you can have too many dogs?
PLEASEEE i literally clicked on this expecting the worst, expecting yall to just shit on tumblr and call it cringy and dead but i was so pleasantly surprised! (and completely called out at the end when you predicted that a big part of this videos demographic was going to be ex tumblr users like me 😭)
this was honestly such a well constructed video and i really enjoyed it, subscribed!!
My mother's friend does this weird thing where she reads/listens to stuff that she's completely apathetic to. She just checks out new books or audiobooks from the library and consumes them even if they bore her. To her, reading is just the done thing. Like washing dishes.
okay i do wanna say i agree with everything else you said was bad about tumblr but the lack of a content serving algorithm is fantastic and one of the main reasons I'm still there instead of another site. give me all the things posted by the people i follow in reverse chronological order and that's it thank you
I love the commitments Gus has whenever he screams on the show.
The section about TV Tropes was a part I thought particularly interesting. Even though I really get a kick out of both the Troper Fails series and your video on Echo Chamber, I'm not ashamed to admit that I browse TV Tropes fairly frequently, and have even made my fair share of contributions there. I too see it as a great resource for learning about different storytelling pieces, as well as learning stuff about a work I like that I maybe didn't consider upon first viewing, and even just behind the scenes trivia. I can also attest to the fact that it allows one to see the common threads in two or more vastly different works that might not be apparent at first glance - there are pages on there called "Surprisingly Similar Stories" and even "Surprisingly Similar Characters" that are entirely devoted to that, and the vast majority of my contributions are to those two pages alone. However, stuff like Troper Fails and Echo Chamber makes me thankful for every day that goes by that I'm not one of those weirdos that views everything JUST through the lenses of tropes.
I mean, that is indeed how tv tropes is supposed to be used :'D "Tropes are tools" is basically site mantra in terms of how often its repeated
Furthermore, that is a thing they had to repeat because they initially had a cargo cult around specific memes they had seriously had to disintegrate into distinct pieces or rework to reduce the worship around specific tropes. So while it can be used as a crutch, Tv Tropes itself has been trying to actually be neutral and informative.
The way you talk about outlines during the discussion on the "write the ending" bit is kind of interesting, because at least for me, your take on the advice being inflexible just isn't true. I would never be able to finish a story without knowing exactly how it ends. The trick is that just because I have a detailed outline doesn't mean I can't change it.
Actually, I think that's something pantsers don't always fully understand about planners. Something being written down never means it's set in stone. We talk about it like it's scaffolding, but really it's blueprints, and consummate planners like me draft them like pantsers draft chapters.
Even as someone who doesn't write detailed outlines myself and writes off the cuff, I feel like you should always have a note of where you are going and have goals along the way to that ending. I find this also works well with writing scenes in stories and chapter writing. You are absolutely right that having something planned doesn't mean its set in concrete. I feel like a lot of new writers don't take enough advantage of being able to draft something multiple times and taking advantage of the fluid nature of being the rough drafts.
yeah, am not exactly what most people would describe an outliner (or planner ig) bc i often don't actually write it down since in the past, it had led me to feel like i've actually written the whole story and thus lost any drive to work on it further. but i do make and keep the outline of my stories in my head. i think the disconnect largely stems from a lot of pantsers entirely abide by the "discover as you go" mindset and thus view anything other than that as some form of restriction. prolly also doesn't help that, at least from my point of view, planners are often characterised both in writing advice articles and stories as rigid, structured storytellers.
When you say twist villain hate
I’m gonna assume you mean shaffrillis (can’t be bothered to spell his name)
I like him, but he does seem very against twist villains, just because Disney isn’t good at executing them- any time there is a good one, he views it as an exception
Schaffrillas’ problem with twist villains is mostly that Disney and Pixar have been overusing them / poorly executing the villain’s reveals and motivations. It isn’t even that he hates them on principle, he just wants more variety which he’s gotten with the last few movies. I might be wrong, but I don't remember him talking about twist villains for a while now. That said, I can understand why people would find him constantly shitting on the trope annoying.
I’m pretty sure that’s a specific gripe he has with Disney (though idk him, he might just generally dislike the trope), as modern Disney likes to beat a dead horse when it comes to their tropes and rarely innovate.
Yeah, the issue here is that Disney can't seem to write anything else, and sometimes it's right for the story, sometimes it's not, but regardless, they keep doing it even when it's not the right move, and kind of bungle the ending because it just has to be that way for some reason.
I love the last post you guys talked about because it's the only time I've seen someone talk in detail about how TV Tropes *should* be used by writers outside of TV Tropes itself.
Right around the 33 minute mark, I heavily agree with that point on self-inserts. Especially given how the phrase "write what you know" is the most common writing tip, what does one know better than their own self? Take parts of yourself and build it into a character who works for the story.
Many of my characters share personality traits of mine, but they all are different ones to service the themes of the story.
Regarding the "self insert" discussion: when I write nearly all my characters are like 10% to 20% self inserts.
Like one character I created. I gave him my enjoyment of whisky (all though he prefers scotch and I prefer bourbon) and my enjoyment of chess. The villain is a victim of bullying who ended up realizing that the only way he can win is to use his intelligence as a weapon which... Yeah, also me. But that character went a darker route with that thought than I did.
Another story has a bisexual guy who constantly lands in trouble because he improvises everything and never thinks about potential consequences, and because he tends to piss people off by being a snarky prick. Those three are all traits I see in myself (all though those last two are dialed up by a 100 compared to me). The other main character has all my doubts (again dialed up by a 100) and is generally me when I manage to calm down enough to actually make a plan.
I find that inserting parts of my own personality in a character helps me identify myself with them easier. It's a window for me in to their inner process. I guess it's a crutch, but hey, crutches are useful.
I'm gonna put my two cents in here, since that is why the comment section exists, so let's lay down a wall of text. Advice will be addressed and numbered biased on the order they are addressed in the video.
1. Interestingly enough, cutting ones hair has a bit of a cultural thing, where the cutting of long hair is meant to symbolize a resolve to change a core aspect of yourself. With the example you said about Sakura, the point was that she was acknowledging her vanity and vowing to leave it behind to get better as a shinobi. The payoff is supposed to happen much latter when she fights her former friend turned rival as the next part of the Chunin exam, and is able to match her one on one.
2. The big takeaway is that "Why not?" is always a valid question, so long as you answer honestly. Every story that can incorporate evil shared mind prison can have that, because it can open up so many possibilities, and that can make writing that story very fun.
3. The inability to see the full scope of what a character has to offer, in both the good and the bad, is a limitation that a lot of writers struggle with. Just like every character has flaws, every character has the potential to contribute something that works to further their own goals. A writer that fails to see what a character can contribute to their role, will waste a lot of that character's potential.
4. The best part about writing for obscure demographics is that people won't disregard your work just because they weren't a part of your demographic. Just look at Undertale, a game made for people who wanted to have peaceful solutions to RPG encounters. I can guarantee that the countless fans Undertale got were not all part of that original demographic.
5. I needed that advice. God, I needed that advice. I'm gonna call it the ten sentence recap rule to make it easier to remember.
6. Run on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences, running on sentences. Whenever someone gives you that advice you can use this obnoxious example to show why that is absolutely wrong. Feel free to make it as long as you need to emphasize the point. Then tell them to read it out loud to make it as clear as possible.
7. It's not bad advice, but bear in mind that your ending is prone to change, and committing to a specific ending is a dangerous idea. Writing is more like calibrating a finnicky GPS then making a puzzle. You might very well find that their are better roads to travel, and better destinations to travel to.
8. That's why you try to set up the habit as being a part of the character. So that your reader can see them doing those things whenever the circumstances show up without the author having to bring it up every single time.
9. This is more work related advice. Focus on the work until your done, then you can release that pent up stress in a harmless way.
10. Oh boy, a multi part multi advice. If I was lazy, I would simply say that most tropes are not inherently bad, even if some are particularly infamous. But I don't know how to say no to a challenge that looks fun so I am gonna use a number letter system to talk about the tropes that are defended here.
10A. They say write what you know, so if you know you then self inserts have every right to exist. A character should be judged by what they bring to the story, not whether they resemble the author.
10B. Flashbacks are a narrative device that help contextualize the current events. There is a big difference between a device that is used poorly and a bad narrative device.
10C. I'm actually a sucker for this trope. Kung Fu Panda is my favorite example of "the chosen one" in action.
10D. Sailor Moon, Power Rangers, and Captain Planet are all my childhood. I will fight people on this trope. Also, Warhammer 40K wouldn't be nearly as cool if the Space Marines weren't genetically engineered juggernauts.
10E. People can be vindictive, petty and even outright malicious. Having a bad guy whose motives and goals are simple is fun.
11. I can't add to perfection. Solid advice.
12A. I guess that's why I get most of my creativity during work. Writing it down in my free time would really help retention though.
12B. Again, how can one add to perfection? Remembering your goals will make writing scenes easier.
12C. That goes back to the thing I said about writing being like calibrating a finicky GPS. Sometimes you got to look ahead on the route to understand where you need to go.
13. I did not expect the advice to take that turn. Treating TV Tropes like a library that you can use to learn how to use writing devices is pretty clever.
All things considered, this turn out to be a gold mine of advice.
Okay, you win. This is the one that shamed me into listening to Less is Morgue. How dare you. I love it. I listen to it whenever I'm working, or riding my bike, or chilling. How dare you, again.
WELCOME TO THE FAMILY, FRIENDO!
so on point about marry sues. It is not about whatever a character is flawed or perfect, but how those are handled. it is not however perfect the character is, but how their actions and flaws impact the story and have consequences. A mary sue is a character that warps the world around them by being unrealisticly sucsessful, loved or hated, where the impact they have on the world and other characters stands in no relation to who they are. Rey gets massiv points for a mary sue due to unrealistic jumps in forceabilities . . . but also that after hans death, leia feels it to be more imperative to console her, over chewie!!!
on the otherhand uncle iroh is pretty much the perfect character, but everything he does is in relation. he is impactful to people because of years of wisdom that also help him navigate his weaknesses. He is genuinly kind and warm and aspirational and that moves people and he did not develope those qualities in the blink of an eye, but through years or errors and sorrow. He still fails with Zuko, he does not get overused and magically resolves all problems . . . .he is belivable in a way neither rey nor luke are, cause really, Luke is just as bad as rey, peole just noticed less cause they wanted to be in his place instead of regarding him criticaly.
"Commas are like dogs. You can never have too many."
I'm a cat person.
The whole "The problem is 10 sentences back" thing is so true! Idk about 10 sentences specifically, I've never paid attention to how far back exactly the problem usually is, but whenever I run into an issue I can always find the source a few paragraphs previous. For me, it's most often continuing a conversation that should have been ended, a character saying something they shouldn't have, or changing topics to the wrong thing. It's almost always those conversations getting away from me.
I can't work backwards through a story for many reasons. I can't work with too much of an outline, and I don't know what a character is going to do in a certain situation, because I haven't written everything they do/happens to them before that. I can't even jump around in a story, I need to write straight from beginning to end. Can't jump around as in, I can't jump ahead, I can and do jump backwards to change stuff I've already written.
I agree with the comma-person. Coming from another language, it always frustrates me just how few commas, English uses. It really messes with reading rhythm, and English missses out on some pretty funny and subtle possibilities with sentence structure, because it vehemently refuses to use proper punctuation. This is the hill, that I will die on. Furthermore, English needs to adopt proper compound words, and its lack of them is also a waste
(All comma errors above are deliberate)
I can't help but read your comment as if it was said by William Shatner. It fits perfectly.
@24:52 I'm an animator and I was nodding my head being like yeah, that's decent advice.
And I don't think there has to be a 'deeper reason.' For what deep reason do some people favor their right or left side when they walk? Or why do I press my thumb against my palm when I'm nervous? I mean I'm sure they have reasons, but that's really not important when dealing with moment to moment acting: in fact it would be an absolute pain in the butt to have to justify every little acting quirk. The best thing is to observe and build an intuition for that kinda thing. Sometimes you have to feel it and not reason it, you know.
It may take a while, but it's always worth it to listen to a "Two Professional Writers" episode!
As someone who is on tumblr in the year of our lord 2021 (although the thing I care about that’s keeping me there is mainly the friends I’ve made there, lol), I really loved this video. There’s some awesome and insightful advice buried in the unsearchable archives of tumblr and I’m glad you guys found some of it!
38:58 pretty brave of you to just call out schaffrillas productions like that
tHaT wAs HiS mIsTaKe-
IIRC he listed several twist villains that he actually liked though, so I’m not sure if they’re talking about him.
The Diregentlemen will never eat lunch in this town again /j
schaff does like some twist villains tho, he just thinks they arent done well too often
I don't think its Schaff because even in that very viral video he never criticizes the actual concept and brings up multiple ones he likes, but he did start a trend of people missing the point in that video and just complaining about it on concept.
On the topic of people regularly consuming media that they don't like: I have a friend who reads a lot of YA Dystopian and Sci Fi, who was complaining to me about how they liked some of the themes presented but they hated how the characters were always immature teenagers. I literally had to explain to them that YA isn't a genre...it's an age category.
I agree with the self insert thing. I actually have a main character that started out as a better more perfect version of me, but as time went on and I finally started my webcomic, she and I became very different people. Don't be afraid to make your character a little self-indulgent, just, make them an interesting character.
Agreed. My first ever story was a creepypasta self insert. Now that character has been deconstructed and shaped into a ton of more well made characters.
My self insert has too much flaws with no redeeming qualities
Y'all always give me the motivation to pick up my pencil and work on the comic I want to make soon
"Doomguy"
NEURON ACTIVATED
For pretty much every game up to Doom 2016 (and even IN that game, to an extent) Doomguy has been, as you say, a player-surrogate. There have been subtle hints at a story throughout (the dead bunny at the end of the first game, the possible links to trauma in Doom64) but ostensibly (as confirmed by Romero) he was initially intended to be a blank slate to put the player right into the action.
The 2016 reboot added a little bit of lore with all the Night Sentinel stuff in the backdrop, but Eternal went whole hog with it. Granted, the story can be completely ignored if you're not in it for that. But the story this time around is both a great example of incorporating the prior games' hints of lore with a modern story that both takes it into account and turns it absolutely PSYCHOTIC. There are subtle hints of things like Doomguy hating himself for letting his family die (see the photograph under his desk at the fortress) and gargantuan things like the fact that his sigil is EVERYWHERE on Taras Nabad.
Nerding over because I wanna keep this short, but yes, he's both a player surrogate and an interesting character, in my eyes. It's more about what the games allude to, for me, than what they directly state. After all, it's just a game where you kill demons. Quake didn't give us this much about the Ranger character, so it's interesting that Doom went the way it did with the man who eventually became the Doom Slayer.
also he is best friends with isabelle animal crossing and i think that adds a layer of complexity and opens up an interesting social commentary about the arbitrary borders we place around game genres and demographics, in this essay i will-
The two best sources or writing advice thus far are tumblr and a vore forum
Doomguy is impulsive and it gets him into trouble quite a bit.
Advice on the internet ranges from Vore Forums to Lily Orchard to Jeff Bezos
As someone who still routinely uses tumblr, I'm so happy that you've found the niche writer's advice. Tumblr is home to very useful niche advice much in the same way smaller subreddits used to be. Reddit is certainly more organized, but Tumblr is still kicking, and it's only kicking because the people that CARE remain. If people are truly passionate, then they'll eventually happen upon some neat tricks to share with others, and i think it's very cool that tumblr acts as a small goblin cave for them.
In regards to the eye twitch thing, I couldn't help but think of Brock Sampson's eye twitch. It's a memorable quirk that I believe existed back when he was more stoic but persisted after he gained more depth and expressiveness. It only exists to show that he's angry and stressed but I can imagine Brock without it.
Not much of a point, but I feel he is a good example of a main character with a minor quirk.
I popped hard when Henry mentioned Johan from Monster.
Can of coke for you lads, keep up the awesome work n' stuff :D
had this on in the background while photographing bugs and plants for inaturalist
On the subject or chosen ones, I want to talk about Wheel of Time for a bit. Especially since the show is coming out in a few days.
Robert Jordan was writing in a time where all the chosen ones were eager for adventure or really wanted to jump at their destiny. He was a guy who had grown up around small town farmers and thought that was unrealistic. So he rights a story where the heroes have to be dragged kicking and screaming on the journey. Where being the chosen one doesn't guarantee success. In many ways being chosen means pain and suffering. Going on an adventure absolutely sucks when the hereos are still just inexperienced hicks. They don't trust the wise mentor because she's also Shady af.
The chosen one in his story represents a lot of things and drives a lot of conflict and discussion in the books. Because within the story most characters have their own conceptions about what a chosen one is. Will they single handedly defeat the evil? Do they fulfill the prophesies to be called chosen one? Are the prophesies just signs? Is it within the chosen ones right to just shape Everybody's destiny?
So I went into this being like "this will either have the most incredible advice or the nonsensical, off the wall, satirical, and oddly specific advice ever written down by a human"; luckily I managed to get both but with like 4 times more advice in the "incredible" category. Tumblr is such a funny mixed bag you honestly never know what to expect - it's nice to see some good rep for its users aside from some of the golden memes that've surfaced from the site, because oftentimes it really is just flat out hate.
Thank you once again for a great video, time for me to try writing and hopefully not get entirely distracted once again >:)
You can do it!
God, this was so fucking good.
A few notes:
- In one of Steven Erikson's books, there's a character named Clip who sorta forcibly inserts himself into the PoV party at one point. He has this weird physical habit of spinning a chain around and around his finger, and it really weirds some of the characters out. Later on, we find that he's a skilled assassin, and this is his weapon of choice, giving the habit a new air of menace. Even for persistent characters, this can be pretty cool :D
- It's surprising to me that the first thing people think of for self-inserts is women authors, which is also depressing. At least in the booktube circles that I hang out in, the biggest and most oft-ridiculed example is a man (Onision, for the curious)...
- Military targeting teen protags? Anyone here still an Animorphs fan? Man, that series was so ahead of its time, I'm shocked it doesn't have broader appeal in progressive circles
Glad to contribute an hour of my day to watch this. Tumblr ended up exceeding my expectations, by a lot
Anyone who thinks Frodo is an example of the "chosen one" trope is not media literate. It's explained several times in the books and movies that the reason Frodo can carry the ring is specifically BECAUSE he's NO ONE. Gandalf and Galadriel and Boromir and EVEN ARAGORN (the actual example of the chosen one trope in LOTR) CAN'T carry the ring because they're already important people with power and ambitions/goals. They would be tempted to use it no matter what. Frodo can carry the ring because in the worst case scenario, he becomes Gollum 2.0, not Sauron 2.0
49:05 I'm really mad at myself that I was able to actually follow along with this
"You just read them (the Harry Potter books) as a kid, that's why you think they're good."
I mean... That's disregarding that Harry Potter was a huge hit with children and adults alike. It is one of very few works of fiction I can actually discuss with my mother. Like, being opposed to J.K. Rowling due to her more recent statements and actions is fair and all, and I'll even admit that there are certain elements of Harry Potter that feel retroactively *pretty yikes-y* looking at what Rowling has been using her platform for in recent years... But that series wasn't *just* a cultural phenomenon because it was good wish-fulfillment for kids. Of course it had its problems, both in terms of plotting and characterization and the fact that... the House Elves were a thing that existed and that literally only one person seemed to have a problem with... but its popularity did not come out of nowhere.
Yeah, that bit bugged me too. I don’t know these guys’ content, this video just got recommended to me randomly, but it does feel like a lot of people wait for Popular Thing to fall from grace before they start in on the “it was never that good” arguments. It feels disingenuous to me, comes across as touting yourself as a Cassandra who the idiot plebs wouldn’t listen to. Especially since there are a lot of people in HP fandom who feel betrayed and abandoned by the author, and now they have to deal with people who never cared anyway taking easy potshots at them and the thing they loved and are probably mourning.
JKR has abhorrent views and at best failed to properly examine the implications of a lot of her worldbuilding, often getting laughably lazy when it came to doing research or soliciting advice from outside of her cultural comfort zone. She also created something that fostered community and friendship and creativity, something that undoubtedly inspired positive growth in many of the people who read it, and something that spun off into the best worst piece of fanfiction ever created. Both of these can simultaneously be true. It is not necessary to throw HP fans under the bus to cement either Writer Cred or Allyship Cred, especially since this is just about the easiest franchise in the world to enjoy without supporting the creator monetarily lmao.
I’ve had conversations with a friend whose main kidlit squeeze was Percy Jackson, and he was quick to point out that those books don’t hold up nearly as well as HP in terms of the writing quality, but Rick Riordan makes an effort to write inclusively and is humble about not being able to do so perfectly, so the cognitive dissonance doesn’t bite as much and most people overlook the flaws in the writing. And sure enough, I see a lot of unabashed praise for PJ in passing! So I do think a lot of the qualitative opinions people throw out, especially those who don’t necessarily have a dog in this race, are more rooted in social expectations and where the wind is blowing than we might like to admit.
(FWIW things I think HP does well: good pacing, distinctive and memorable characters, a world that feels lived-in in spite of construction that doesn’t really stand up to even mild scrutiny, an effective sense of danger that builds as the books go on, clarity in character objectives and motivation, and emotional beats centered around loyalty, which is often very satisfying and heartwarming. The appeal is there, and it’s worth talking about (if you want to!) rather than simply dismissing.)
Yeah, realizing that I have to separate out things that Harry Potter does well, and things it does not, and be critical of which ones I borrow, was a difficult conversation to have with myself. But the list of "things it does well and people should learn from" is far from empty.
I re read the harry potter books as an adult and I'm gonna be honest they weren't as good as I remembered them being. Not like they were bad, but they definitely weren't above most other books I've read.
29:20 is making me think of my current project where, sadly, i am writing about a character who is very polite and not swearing and i keep putting him in situations where he deserves to say fuck. doesnt help that i personally swear all the fucking time.