Mark Does Stuff

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

In the Mark Does Stuff blogs, Mark... well, does stuff. And by 'stuff', we mean he reviews TV shows, movies, and books. Oh, and HE IS NOT PREPARED. Intrigued? Then it's time to read the Mark Does Stuff All The Tropes page.

MARK DOES STUFF

The Mark Does Stuff Blogs are actually two separate sister blogs, both run by a man named Mark Oshiro. A couple of years ago he embarked upon reading Twilight to see whether it was as good -- or bad -- as everyone said. He managed to get through all four books and decided he really hated them. Afterward, he decided to do the same for the other famous young adult fantasy novels of our generation -- Harry Potter. He reviewed every chapter of every book, and readers slowly watched him descend into pure fan-boy love for the series. This page, however, is not for either of those two blogs, but their offspring.

After finishing Harry Potter, Mark decided to launch two new sites -- one dedicated to his reading and reviewing of books and the other for visual media. One is called Mark Watches, and the other is called Mark Reads. He reads/watches the series with little to no information on them before hand, and reviews each episode/chapter, giving his opinions and insights on them. They're ongoing projects, and ones that don't look due to end anytime soon, as he had whole lists of series he's already promised to look at.

Things Which Mark Is Currently[when?] Reviewing:

Past Books

Past Shows

Tropes used in Mark Does Stuff include:
  • Adorkable: Mark himself.
  • Author Catchphrase: 'Shit Gets Real' and 'You Are Not Prepared', following in the legacy of his last two blogs.
    • In the wake of Doctor Who, series three, the latter phrase sometimes get shortened to YANP, in honour of Professor Yana.
    • Oh, and gifs, even if they're not quite a 'phrase'. Mark has often joked that he's already seen half of Nu-Who "through sheer virtue of gifs".
    • The banner for his reading of His Dark Materials was slightly altered to say "You en't prepared." Then it got much fancier when he partnered with the Pullman fansite Bridge to the Stars for the third book.
    • And at the same time he was going through Battlestar Galactica, with "You are not frakkin' prepared."
    • The Hobbit has it written in Dwarvish runes, which changed to Elvish with The Lord of the Rings.
    • He's taken up "Sweet Summer Child," a reference to A Song of Ice and Fire, when addressing a character that has no idea what the future holds.
    • He didn't take long to pick up "Bless my beard" and "Gandalf's beard" after starting The Lord of the Rings.
    • Mark has a handful of words he seems particularly fond of: "presumptuous", "____ bigot" (even where it doesn't make sense), "privileged", "___ist" (sexist, ableist, etc.), "oppressed"/"oppression"
  • Berserk Button: His hatred of spoilers is the most obvious one, but Mark also has a big problem with words like "crazy" and "insane," seeing them as ableist. Using them in the comments will get you a stern warning.
  • Bold Inflation: A signature of Mark's style. Because nothing says 'mind-blown' like bolded all caps!
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Let's just say that Mark isn't afraid to use swears in his review.
  • Dramatically Missing The Point: Sometimes Mark just misses things that are spelled out in the text. It happens every now and again with Discworld. In Guards! Guards!, he forgot a certain plot point, leading him to misread The Reveal of the villain's identity. He remained convinced throughout the book that Lord Vetinari was the one behind the dragon summoning. Eventually, when the book was over, the audience had to explain what he'd missed.
    • Something similar happened with Maskerade. Toward the end of the book, a minor character is reunited with an old girlfriend and her son--who is also the minor character's son. Somehow Mark managed to misread this as the minor character being reunited with his mother and his brother.
    • And again in Feet of Clay. Despite the text stating overtly that a certain recurring character had stolen so much over the years that he was probably in possession of items that could "prove" that he was both the Dowager Duchess of Quirm AND Commander Vimes, when said character, grateful that he was not burdened with nobility or a crown, thought, It's a good job I never told them about the tiara, the coronet and the three gold lockets, Mark instantly jumped to the conclusion that the character really was royal, after all.
  • Fan Boy: Mark's a dedicated fan to a number of shows, from The X-Files to The Wire, and he's turned into a really big Harry Potter fanboy. And with every new series he takes on, there's a new thing for him to potentially love.
  • Fan Nickname: Commenters use rot13 to discuss spoilers. Sometimes, a character's name in rot13 will be amusing enough to become one of these. For instance: Wbanguna for Jonathan and Furybo for Shelob.
  • Gushing About Shows You Like: When Mark gets into something he really enjoys, like Doctor Who, he will explain how much he loves it. Of course, this won't stop him from pointing out things he dislikes, so avoids making it pure praise.
    • The Sozin's Comet liveblog had him keysmashing and making incoherent gushing comments the entire time. Every couple of minutes or so.
    • By contrast, the one for Daybreak saw him completely disappear from almost the whole middle hour, as he was so wrapped up in the episode and forgot he was supposed to be typing.
    • When he reached the part of The Lord of the Rings where the Ents show up, he declared them the coolest thing ever. The entire review for that chapter was in capslock.
  • Heroic BSOD: Mark's no stranger to talking about his horribly depressing early life, but the Battlestar Galactica episode "Maelstrom" marked the first time a subject struck so close to home that he couldn't bring himself to even discuss it beyond noting the similarity.
    • There are also a few times where he's admitted to weeping so much that he had trouble continuing, like Lyra being separated from Pan in His Dark Materials and Laura Roslin's death in Battlestar Galactica. The latter was particularly awkward as he was at a party at a friend's house, and had to try very hard to make as little of a scene as possible.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: From Mark's review of the Doctor Who episode 'Midnight':

"Oh, and Merlin is there. Sorry, I couldn’t help it, that WAS kind of distracting."

    • Also, the entirity of a on-site Memetic Mutation is composed of saying "Did you know Zhao is voiced by Jason Isaacs?"
    • He anticipated this going into The Lord of the Rings, as one of the few things he knew was that John Noble, who he absolutely loves on Fringe, was in the movies somewhere.
  • Invisible to Gaydar: Mark himself.
  • Mood Whiplash: Following the Next/Last links has the powerful climax to The Hunger Games followed up by the joy of Harry Potter's first entrance into the Wizarding World.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Mark recently asked for support on a charity bike ride, and if he received it he said he would allow his readers to select a work for him to review. The readers chose My Immortal.
    • For another charity bike ride, he's doing videos of him reading bad books/fanfiction. The first he did? Atlas Shrugged
  • Old Shame: Going into Harry Potter, he expected a disposable series of books, and was basically pretty condescending of the series. In his re-read review of the first chapter he said:

"Did most of you think that I was going to tear this series apart back then? Because I can sort of see why I thought what I did at the time, but now I want to vehemently defend this. YOU DON’T GET IT, JUST WAIT SHIT WILL GET REAL. I’ve become all of you. And it is wonderful."

  • One of Us: He has linked to TV Tropes on at least one occasion. He's never mentioned the All The Tropes site, sadly.
    • He's also apparently quite fond of TV Tropes -- which makes very little sense.
    • If only we could convince him to be fonder of this site...
  • Perverse Sexual Lust: For plenty of characters, Mickey Smith in particular.
    • He has called Hagrid his leather-daddy boyfriend, and told Iroh that "[his] body is ready."
    • He now wants to marry Gunn.
  • Rage Quit: Mark managed to get to Chapter 20 of My Immortal before giving up.
  • Review Blog
  • Running Gag: Tolkien being a pony bigot, because he didn't have ponies talk throughout The Hobbit.
    • Within the comments, the fact that 'ahahaha' in rot13 is 'nununun' has lead to many jokes.

Barrells of nuns!

  • Script Fic: Lords and Stuff: A Play for The Lord of the Rings.
  • Sir Swearsalot: YOU ARE NOT FUCKING PREPARED. Ages 12 and under be warned.
  • Something Completely Different: In order to mix things up with his 'Mockingjay' reviews, he once did one from the point of view of Buttercup the cat.
    • Similarly, during Harry Potter he occasionally did reviews from Hedwig's point of view. In fact, this trope was a lot more common in the ealier Twilight/Harry Potter reviews.
    • The Hobbit offers one chapter as Bilbo's journal, and another as a Real Person Fic of what Tolkien's original telling of the story to his kids might have been like.
  • Up to Eleven: Given that he's reviewed some pretty popular stuff, the site server has been put under a good deal of strain. But it was finally brought to its knees by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans, who showed up in such droves after the pilot review was posted that the site was crashed in less than a minute. Mark then had to find a new server so this wouldn't happen every time.
  • You Are Not Ready: All the time, but especially on the topic of Suzanne 'Killed Off for Real' Collins.
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