yaoikitty asked: Tumblr just told me that this blog updated 4 days ago. Is this a glitch or am I hallucinating?
Eheheh… I accidentally posted something to this blog instead of my personal blog. But! I do plan on reviving it after my exams are over. So in about two weeks, give or take a few days. Can’t completely abandon a blog that’s seen a steady rate of new followers even though there hasn’t been a new post in months.
Stuffed into the Fridge
A character is killed off in a particularly gruesome manner and left to be found just to offend or insult someone, or to cause someone serious anguish. The usual victims are those who matter to the hero, specifically best buddies, love interests, and sidekicks.
The name of the trope comes from a storyline in Green Lantern, in which the villain Major Force leaves the corpse of Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, literally stuffed into a refrigerator for him to find. Years later, Major Force repeated the gimmick with Kyle’s mother in an oven. (It was just a trick with a mannequin that time.)
If the love interest who gets Stuffed Into the Fridge remains relevant to the ongoing story, continuing to be loved and missed by living characters, sometimes to the point of appearing in flashbacks and dream sequences, and is the standard by which any subsequent love interests are measured by, she is also a Lost Lenore.
The term was popularized by comic book writer Gail Simone through her website “Women In Refrigerators.” On that site, Simone compiled a list of instances of female comic book characters who were killed off as a plot device. The term came to be used more broadly, over time, to refer to any character who is killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of lending impetus to another (usually male) character. Unfortunate Implications may come into play if the killed-off character is female or nonwhite and used to further the journey of a white male character. (Seen sometimes as less egregious if a male white character is killed for the same reason, because a work is likely to have a large cast of white males, but a small number of women or people of colour, and the latter are far more likely to be used as plot devices than developed as characters in their own right).
Mauve Shirt
Nobody in their right mind wants to be a Red Shirt — it’s a death sentence even the most Genre Blind can spot a mile away. It’s been lampshaded to death and back, but it remains a very real trope with very real danger for the nameless fictional people under its thrall. So, if you’re saddled with this Red Death what can you do? Change the color of your shirt!
In Star Trek: The Original Series, “Blue Shirts” were for science personnel and “Gold Shirts” were command staff; both had a much better life expectancy mostly due to rarely being sent away on team missions, the latter more so. The character is less vulnerable than a redshirt, but more so than blue.
Chromatic issues aside, the Mauve Shirt is a former Red Shirt who has managed to get enough screen time and lines to make him stand out from the rank and file, but not enough to be part of the main cast. It can also be accomplished by showing pictures of a spouse or baby (be careful with that, as it’s Tempting Fate all by itself), personal quirks, or just plain old giving them a name (whole or in part). The advantage to this is that they’re less likely to be killed senselessly, because the audience cares for them and it would hit harder than some faceless redshirt no one cares about. The downside is that, since their death would now have more emotional impact, they are more likely to be Killed Off for Real to prove how bad the new villain is. If they’re successful enough, they just might graduate from Mauve Shirt and become a “Gold Shirt” as part of the supporting cast or even the main cast.
Now this character can live, but aren’t as likely to get Plot Armor as major characters. Also, shows where Anyone Can Die love to kill off these characters — we’re getting to know this guy, he must be important, then boom! He’s dead, and the status quo remains safely in power. (If a Mauve Shirt mentions taking the gang out for drinks, he’ll be iced tout de suite.)
Hey guys.
I’m planning on doing one-offs for a while. I haven’t had the time, focus or energy to post the usual for the past few weeks so I figure this will do in the meantime. On the plus side, I can post death tropes which, for obvious reasons, I wouldn’t post examples for. I can also post tv tropes entries that don’t have examples at all. Hope that works for you.
Anyway, thanks for sticking around.
Artist Disillusionment - John Hughes
He once shared why with Alison Byrne Fields, his former pen pal and dear friend.
We talked for an hour. It was the most wonderful phone call. It was the saddest phone call. It was a phone call I will never forget.
John told me about why he left Hollywood just a few years earlier. He was terrified of the impact it was having on his sons; he was scared it was going to cause them to lose perspective on what was important and what happiness meant. And he told me a sad story about how, a big reason behind his decision to give it all up was that “they” (Hollywood) had “killed” his friend, John Candy, by greedily working him too hard.
Artist Disillusionment - Cast(s) of Star Trek
- Robert Beltran, the actor who played Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager. Midway through the show’s run, Beltran started giving interviews to Trek fansites critiquing the rabid fanbase, the ridiculous Technobabble and the weak writing. Reportedly, Paramount shut him up during the final season by giving him an out-of-nowhere relationship with Jeri Ryan’s character, Seven of Nine. There have been stories of fans actually breaking into tears at conventions after listening to his rants, and he’s never shown any indication of changing his stance over the years (an online promo shot in 2008 for a play Beltran was starring in at a Los Angeles theatre had him passive-aggressively mocking his fans and telling them to support him by buying tickets). Surprisingly, the producers never fired Beltran during the show’s run - when he demanded an enormous raise in a deliberate bid to get fired, they simply handed over the cash.
- For many years, the cast of Star Trek: The Original Series showed signs of this, as they were angered over the constant pressure from fans and executives who only saw them as the characters they played on the show. This came to the forefront in the 1980’s for several of them, including William Shatner’s notable anti-Trek rant on an episode of Saturday Night Live, and Leonard Nimoy’s famous tell-all book “I Am Not Spock” (where he categorically stated that there was much more to his life than a character he played for three seasons and a handful of movies). Notably, the 80’s book Trek Memories went into detail about the crew’s hatred of their fame and fanbase, but eventually, they all came around and acknowledged their characters again.
- A notable aversion was James “Montgomery Scott” Doohan, who absolutely loved the convention circuit and went out of his way to accommodate fans. On numerous occasions he has told a story about a fan who came to a convention, only to tell him that she intended to commit suicide afterwards. Doohan pulled a Sheherezade and told her that he expected to see her at the next convention, and the next, and the next, and it apparently worked.
- Gene Roddenberry himself reportedly did not want to be involved with Star Trek: The Next Generation because of all the stress involved with the original series.
- Be careful about mentioning Star Trek: The Next Generation to Patrick Stewart though. He’s apparently heard enough about it that he now takes a rather dim view of fans gushing about his Picard. He’s defended the show itself on several occasions though, so his disillusionment is purely with overzealous fans.
Artist Disillusionment - Hideaki Anno
Anno was reputed to be so sick and tired of the Misaimed Fandom of Neon Genesis Evangelion as well as the death threats his fans sent him after the Gainax Ending of the series that he created a film that more or less replaced the last two episodes as the true ending. Without giving anything away, it was exactly the opposite of what fans of the series wanted and, in some cases, expected. The clincher? The truth is this was the original ending before Executive Meddling, and with the exception of one or two scenes, the work was not intended as a Take That against the fans. He did show the death threats sent to him on screen after the movie was over, and a certain infamous scene of Fan Disservice is interpreted to target some of the fans. Never has a bigger “fuck you” been given to an overly rabid fanbase.
Artist Disillusionment - Arthur Conan Doyle
Eventually became sick and tired of writing Sherlock Holmes stories, to the point where he killed the title character off in The Adventure of the Final Problem. Fans were horrified and outraged, but Dr. Doyle was initially unmoved. He had a change of heart, however, when magazine editors began offering him absurd amounts of money and when his mother asked him to restart writing about him. It seems that Dr. Doyle simply needed some time to recharge his creative batteries, as post-revival adventures like The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, The Adventure of the Dancing Men and The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot are all excellent stories that rival or even exceed some of the early works.
- In a prologue to the final set of stories, Dr. Doyle mentioned how adult men who came up to him and said that his Holmes stories were some of their favorite stories as children didn’t get the response from him that they’d anticipated. On the other hand, he also noted that writing Holmes stories hadn’t prevented him from flexing his literary muscle in other areas. Even if the general public only associated him with his Holmes stories, The Lost World and Professor Challengerwould both develop their own followings, and his non-fiction historical writing won him great praise in high society and even led him to be knighted by his king.
- If those adult men addressed him as “Dr. Doyle” (instead of “Dr. Conan Doyle” or perhaps after 1902, “Sir Arthur”) they would have found him particularly grumpy.
Artist Disillusionment - Dave Chappelle
This was a major factor in why Dave pulled the plug on his eponymous show, as he’d grown sick of all the people who would walk up to him saying lines like “I’m Rick James, bitch!” (once, while he was with his wife and children!), also believing they missed the point of his show’s sketches. In one live concert, Dave chewed his fans out:
“You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you’re not smart enough to get what I’m doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out I was wrong. You people are stupid.”
Artist Disillusionment
Creative jobs — acting, writing, making music or films, etc — are often seen by their fans as some kind of Utopian ideal; you’re creating art, using your imagination, and are apparently freed from the nine-to-five wage slave grind. Writers, actors, voice actors and artists seem to have an edge over the rest of us; they’re doing something they enjoy, something really creative, something that makes people happy. How could you not enjoy a job like that?
Oh, it’s possible. Fact is, creative jobs remain just that: jobs. And while they can be fun and interesting, like any job they can also be draining; factor in deadlines, editing, Executive Meddling, rejection letters, failed auditions, tedious PR drives and, of course, the dreaded Fan Dumb, and it’s apparent that there are things that can make what may have been a dream job seem more like a nightmare. Whilst many artists cope admirably with all of this, others can suffer and become quite disillusioned.
Sometimes this can result in an Artist Disillusionment Farewell, where the character publicly ends his career - often with a heavy dose of Take That, Audience!.
Sometimes, however, it’s only temporary — the artist might simply be having a bad day. Sometimes they might just be a bit shaken by their circumstances and surroundings; whilst some thrive in the limelight, others — particularly more behind-the-scenes figures such as writers and directors — may find being faced with crowds of fans and interviewers unsettling and nerve-wracking, which can make their mood sharper than it otherwise would be. In either case, meet them when they’re in a better mood or in more comfortable circumstances, they’re fine.
True Artist Disillusionment is when the artist just isn’t having any fun at all any more and is making no secret of that fact. They’ve given up being a Slave to PR, and as such are rude and dismissive in public appearances and interviews, snap the head off fans who manage to fray their one remaining nerve, and generally come across as a grouchy, impatient jackass. Their work may even begin to suffer. They just don’t care anymore. And this lack of caring tends to express itself through insults towards their audience and fans.
blooddriveatthelumbercompany asked: Did I read that right? It is your birthday? :O
Birthday Episode
Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
So our characters wake up to a normal day. It’s your typical average day, BUT WAIT, WHAT’S THIS!?!? It’s somebody’s birthday! The Birthday Episode is where an episode is dedicated to celebrating someone’s birthday.
Typically seen in fiction as a device with various possible purposes, ranging from showing what characters were like in the past, having an opportunity to bring non-main-cast characters into the spotlight or even just representing a stage of growth in-series. For an example to count, the birthday, or the celebration of the birthday (they are not necessarily the same thing), has to at least be a significant part of the episode it appears in.
Quantum Mariah Carey Problem
The Quantum Mariah Carey Problem is simple: if you put Mariah Carey into an equation, what would her value be?
This seemed like a Just for Fun question until it became a non-trivial problem when Mariah Carey “emancipated” by squaring herself. She came out with an album called E=MC2 in 2008. She claims it stands for “(E) Emancipation (=) equals (MC) Mariah Carey to the second power.” For purposes of this discussion it is assumed she meant to call it E=(MC)2, since squaring just the Carey part would be silly. Without knowing the quantitative value of Mariah Carey (Q) we cannot know what her bringing herself to the second power accomplished. Did it increase her, decrease her, or have no change? The question has now become a vital key to understanding the consequences of her changed Q-value and navigating past the resulting singularity.
The most likely hypothesized outcome is that there was no change in her value due to Q-values of 1 or 0. 1 is thought to be a likely Q-value due to Mariah Carey being, based on all known evidence, a single person. The result Q=0 is supported by two arguments, one, put forward by the Irrelevantist school is that assigning numeric values to human beings is irrelevant and/or stupid so 0 is the only coherent solution. The other, favored by the Mariah Sucks school, is that Q=0 on the grounds that she has 0 talent. While Q values of 1 and 0 are interchangeable here, they become distinct if Mariah Carey is able to perform some other function on her self such as multiplication or a logarithm where the distinction is non-trivial.
0<Q<1 is in many ways the least frightening Q-value as it leads to a contraction of Mariah Carey. Sadly, hypotheses for this outcome are sketchy at best. The best being that Mariah Carey’s career especially its amazing ability to rebound from such debacles as Glitter imply she has made some sort of deal with a satanic power or possibly a member of the House of The 1000 Year Night for a portion of her soul, thus lowering her Q-value. Most who deal with this problem think this is patently ridiculous and it is most strongly opposed by those in the Dualist school.
Q>1 is the most frightening of all solutions as it implies that Mariah Carey has increased her Q-value and those unknown consequences (known as the Mariah Carey Singularity) are completely unpredictable. The main hypotheses for this solution are as follows.
Chewbacca Defense - Justice Leauge
When the Green Lantern is accused of a crime, The Flash becomes his attorney. He doesn’t have a clue what to use to turn the case around, so he uses a Chewbacca defense. He ends his speech with “If the ring wasn’t lit, you must acquit!” (an allusion to Johnnie Cochran’s closing argument “if [the glove] doesn’t fit, you must acquit” in the O.J. Simpson murder case). This results in both of them getting sentenced to death.
Chewbacca Defense - Community
This is Amoral Attorney Jeff Winger’s go to strategy as a lawyer. One of the earliest examples occurs in the episode “Advanced Criminal Law” where Jeff acts as Britta’s lawyer at a so called “disciplinary tribunal” when she is accused of cheating on a Spanish test. Just as she is found innocent, she confesses:
Dean Pelton: This tribunal is adjourned.
Britta: Wait, I cheated!
Dean Pelton: And we’re back.
Jeff: Objection. My client did not cheat.
Britta: Yes, I did.
Jeff: Yes, she did. But why? That’s the real question, isn’t it? …The world wasn’t the only thing that changed on September 11th.
[Everyone groans]
