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Since I recently pointed out to my partner that Bleeprin is technically impossible, it no longer works for her. Therefore, I was hoping one of you could possibly reduce the effects of a neuralyzer. Maybe. Possibly. If you could than please hurry, because death by one’s own partner would be rather... ah...

I went and decided to start an NYE 2019 holiday RP, since we didn't have any for the winter holidays. I kicked it off today because I figured it might be easier most for people to hop in on the weekend. (I would've done it earlier today but real life happened.)

- Tomash

One of HQ's moderately-sized empty rooms was nowhere near empty a few hours before 2019 began (in UTC on World One, because that seemed like the easiest reference point). A string of large paper numbers covered in gold glitter, spelling out "2019", had been hung from the ends of the ceiling. The far end of the room held tables piled with all sorts of party food (including something rather tasty that looked like blue spaghetti) and drinks. About half of the room contained tables of varying heights, some of which had chairs. The tables had started out with large stocks of noisemakers, paper hats, and masks, though a few of them were running low. The other half of the room didn't have much furniture so everyone could mingle. The dancefloor was near the door, shielded with sound dampening to prevent the rest of the party from being drowned in the music. Balloons hung in the air, either still tied to something or drifting.

Overall, everything seemed to be set up for a good party[1]. Some people were already in attendance, while the main group of partygoers was still filling in.

[1]: Assuming, of course, that the food and drink kept coming. Otherwise, it would be less of a party and more of a minor riot roaming the hallways looking for the promissed free refreshments.

Specifically, between the Summoner and Harry Potter series. Examining tropes can be a valuable tool for the comparison of stories.

That is, unless anyone adds anything this year (there's still time!) or spots any errors. Please let me know if you do!

Link, if you need it again: http://starshadowhall.tripod.com/ppc/songbook/

I'm gonna feel really weird next year when I check and find out I actually did it already. This has happened, like, once before. ^_^;

~Neshomeh

I listened to Mr. Pinstripe Suit and it really put me in mind of the Fleischer-styled games that came out recently - Cuphead, Bendy and the Ink Machine, stuff like that. It also made me realise just how much I'd love to do a full-on high-magic D&D campaign themed around Nawlins in the Roaring Twenties. =]

Anyway, here are some options for you guys. Matt said seven was fine, so seven's what you get:-

1) "Wisteria", Richard Shindell (Somewhere Near Paterson, 2000)

2) "Underneath the Stars", Kate Rusby (Underneath The Stars, 2003)

3) "The Mary-Ellen Carter", Stan Rogers (Between The Breaks... Live!, 1979)

4) "Acadian Driftwood", The Band (Northern Lights - Southern Cross, 1975)

5) "Recruiting Sergeant", Great Big Sea (Play, 1997)

6) "Old Maui", The Dreadnoughts (Uncle Touchy Goes To College, 2011)

7) "Bully In The Alley", trad. arr. var. (Deal Maritime Festival, 2013)

I'll admit that I was very sarcastic about the tropes in these two books, partly for humor and partly because they are very predictable tropes. What I was trying to do with this post is get a collection of books with tropes and the tropes in them as a way to get a sense of what tropes are most common in books, and what genres have a lot of tropes in general. I also wanted to see if I recognized any of the books listed as a way to learn more about the books I like. I definitely wasn't trying to create a list of "bad books"; I enjoyed both of the series that I mentioned. I don't think that having a lot of tropes necessarily makes a book bad, but I do think that it can often make a book predictable and less engaging since you can guess what's going happen. I agree with what you say about only looking at the tropes in a book. I don't read through books looking for tropes, I just notice them while looking back on the book.

Because if anyone has agents in this department, boy, do I have the fic for you! (I have it in more ways than one. I actually wrote this badfic. I was... 10 or so.)

Hey, everyone, I'm Twistey, and welcome to the first installment of Garbage I Wrote, a multi-post series about terrible pieces of writing I created when I was too young to care what a Mary Sue was. Ah, those were the days. So let's get started with one of our only two fanfics that made it into completion, shall we?

"Haunted Children" takes place in the Real World, and stars four children who have powers associated with prominent villains from four continua. They eventually learn they're the reincarnations... somehow. And there's no suspense whatsoever, nor any indication of why we should care about any of this.

Read it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kSu4WJnfDW28OvLH4xDlC5SMyrLL95Vq/view

Creative Things You Could Attempt In Response To This:
- Spork it. I'd totally let you do that legitimately.
- MST it.
- Fix the story to make it a goodfic.
- Fix the story to make it an original fic.
- I dunno... recruit the characters? I'd also totally let you do that legitimately.

-Twistey

Mostly with new cheat code modes and other Easter eggs, but definitely with a lot of new content, too. YandereDev is pretty intent on fleshing out his tropey world. And I'm impressed by the amount of work he's put into it. But I can still see why the folks at your school didn't like people playing a game about violence at a high school.

-Twistey

I listened to "She's a Lady". I haven't read far enough into Harry Potter to see Harry get together with Ginny, but I know they do, and I have a feeling that that'd be Harry singing about Ginny, maybe after they've been married, ignoring a certain cursed book and its cursed plot.

I have a lot of songs to offer, none of them with lyrics, because these are the songs I like to work with. How about we look through them?

1. (Obviously) "Hocus Pocus" by Focus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV0FXiR48Q

2. "Synthesized Angel" by Sakuzyo: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maXsMNFTFo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maXsM_NFTFo

3. "Mr. Chow" by Acoustic Alchemy (starts off sounding kinda stereotyped, but please stick around): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2hOKkNGd4w

4. "Daunter" by Syrsa (don't click if you're in the TF2 fandom, because it's famous there): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8iE5mM-33s

5. "Vindicate Me" by Big Giant Circles (used in the Just Shapes and Beats soundtrack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF5IETKtvGg

6. "Orion" by Ryan Henwood (Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime OST): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTyRvSBFfac

7. "Deep Sea Bass" by Danny Baranowsky (also from the Crypt of the NecroDancer OST): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rJFgTNiRuQ

8. "Symphonica" by Wayne Lytle (if you like this, please check out his other creation, the Animusic animations): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qym5ABtDApk

9. (Also obviously) "Try This" by Pegboard Nerds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggqI-HH8yXc

10. And for a nice mega-challenge, I challenge someone to listen to the entire Lichtspeer soundtrack and come up with a plot based on the music. https://lichthund.bandcamp.com/releases

Now that my huge music dump is done, I'd love to see some replies!

-Twistey

I don't enjoy stories less because of that. I'm a technically minded person, and I enjoy looking at the nuts and bolts of things. I also think there's information to be gained from looking at the similarities and recurring patterns among works, mainly about the cross-cultural propagation of ideas and parallel development in literary styles.

As Mikey Neumann recently put it, "if you repeatedly tear stories down to their bones, all stories look like nothing but bones". To me, it doesn't necessarily matter that genre or stylistic tropes are present in a given work. Far more important is what the author or actor or director or whatever is doing with them. Otherwise, you're not engaging with the work. You're just going THIS HAPPENED SOMEWHERE ELSE DING.

Edward says he wants to know exactly what these "goodies" are before he makes up his mind.

Oh. It seems we have a problem. I'd better hurry up with making that snow army!

*starts building loads of fireproof snowmen*

*uses snow powers to fire snowballs out of the window at the decoys*

I remember when that was making the rounds.

For an unknown reason it was introduced to my schools servers. It just got weird after a while seeing kids get caught playing it.

Not something I'd like to play, but I can appreciate their message.

I didn't recognize a lot of them though, or all the terminology at the top...

Cue music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV0F_XiR48Q

You didn't waterproof it, though. Hey Edward, free goodies from Castle Wolfenstein if you soak that fortress to the ground.

And just in case if not... you didn't fireproof the snow on the ground either. The snow that your fortress is built on. Alright brothers, let's tunnel through the floor and take this baby from the inside out! *ceremonially T-poses and begins digging through the snow*

-Twistey

(Warning: Both of these games are quite edgy. The latter is even NSFW. Tread carefully.)

Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion is about horror tropes. I mean, just look at its monsters. You have murderous science experiments, a Japanese ghost girl, a demon summoned by a cult, another demon living in a fast food restaurant, and many others. And then there's the DLC where you're in a mental hospital. Much trope.

Yandere Simulator is about high school anime tropes, and even stars one, the infamous yandere archetype. Among the other characters are the other dere types, the Japanese equivalent to a mom friend, the genki girl, a bunch of busty women who are in one way or another linked to sex, and of course, your senpai, who everyone else really wants. Better sharpen those knives.

-Twistey

Here's TV tropes list of media with the most tropes per page. Enjoy:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropeOverdosed

Man, it's been a while since I've seen this game on the Board, and I remember it being super amusing and a good creativity boost. So I'm bringing it back!

Da Rules are simple:

1. Post a song. Or two. Or seven. I'll start in this message.
2. Listen to any songs you want; and then write a message which fictional character it reminds you of and why?
3. Post your own songs!
4. Try not to generalize. Like, don't call ever song "that's the agents", "that's the Sues". Get creative! For example, if you hear Caro Emerald's That Man and say "That's Rose Tyler, singing about the Doctor!"

Clear? Cool! I'll start!

1) "She's a Lady" - Tom Jones

2) "Remember Me" from the movie Coco

3) "Mr. Pinstripe Suit" - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

This is my first real post (I'm not counting my introduction post or the Boarders according to Willis thing), so yay! Now that I've been introduced to the PPC I've been noticing tropes in the books I read a lot more than I did before, and thought it might be fun to see what books Boarders have found that contain a lot of tropes.

If you want to add a book full of tropes, please start with the title of the book so others can avoid unwanted spoilers, and list some of the plot and the tropes in the book.

For me, one of the most trope filled series I have read is the Summoner series. It starts out with an orphan being left outside a remote town and adopted by a kind yet stern man, who helps him grow into a good moral boy. This trope often occurs so that we feel empathy for the protagonist but they still have a guiding figure. The boy, named Fletcher, is very hard working and kind. He is fairly poor and is enemies with the son of the richest man in town. This is a huge trope; sometimes it seems that every poor child in a novel has a rich enemy. The rich kid tries to murder him after Fletcher beats him in a tavern brawl with the help of a tramp that the rich kid mocked, but Fletcher discovers he can summon demons in this moment of need. He is forced to flee town and goes to a magic academy where he learns to cast spells and summon more demons. He makes a friend group from other unpopular kids, and they are often picked on by the snotty nobles, because there's no such thing as a nice high-born person. Oh, except the elf Fletcher has a crush on but the nobles hate. So here we have the tropes of the rich and the poor at odds AND a forbidden love type trope. They work hard and catch up to the nobles despite their advantages, and Fletcher manages to win the final magic competition at the end of the year despite the judges cheating and showing favor to the nobles. Another example of the rich vs poor trope, where the hard working poor boy beats the nobles in a "surprise turn of events". He also learns that the demon he owns is very rare and slightly more powerful than average, and one that has only ever been wielded by their enemies. This is another trope, where the protagonist has unusual and slightly dark powers that no one really understands. My summary here is obviously biased towards showing the tropes, but they're apparent at every turn in this novel. (Also, this book has a similar plot and similar tropes to Harry Potter, but I won't go into that)

Another novel with an even more unbearable trope for me is The Ship of the Dead, the last book of the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series. In this book, Magnus has to defeat the god Loki, and challenges him to an insult contest that shrinks the loser down to the size of a powerless bug. But Magnus doesn't win the insult contest through insults, oh no, he does it through telling Loki about how wonderful Magnus's friends are and about the power of friendship, and telling Loki that he is all alone. This is a lovely message, but very, very common. It's also much too in-your-face. Magnus is quite literally saved by "the magic of friendship". Not even by his friends themselves, but by essentially the concept of friendship. If this was through a sacrifice or finding strength in his friends this would be fine, but it's not. It's quite literally a speech/rant that defeats a god.

Well that's all I have, I look forward to learning about other tropes filled books!

The Aviator: Honestly, I would have preferred to stay in the RC with Elanor, but Zeb begged and pleaded and I couldn't say no. Let's see if I can get myself eliminated quickly from this thing.

Zeb: Hey, it'll be good for you to get out of the RC and knock a few heads together.

Ix: I don't like this. I actually feel kind of sick—wait, four Jacques-es?

Charlotte: I don't expect to even come close to winning, especially since this will be my first time participating as a human, but I'm still going to give it my best shot.

Lorson: *flips off the camera*

Dax: *winks at the camera* I'm just here to have fun, really. I'm not going to give it my all—it'd hardly be fair—but I figure this will still be an enjoyable training exercise regardless of what happens. Good luck, everyone! And Jacques, Jacques, Jacques, and Jacques—I'll see you in the arena.