adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

type prevs url with your eyes closed in the tags

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Imagine a film where, for every story moment in the plot, there are two or more different versions showing the scene from different perspectives and focusing on different characters.

For example, maybe there's an explosion kicking off the action of the plot. One version of the scene is a family in the suburbs having a pleasant time when they hear the distant explosion and rush outside to see the smoke rising from the direction of the city. "Oh no! [Family member] was in the city today. What if they're hurt?" Then the second version of the scene is from the perspective of that family member who's doing stuff in the city when they're caught up in the blast and buried in rubble. Or there might be a third version of the scene about a firefighter who gets called in to the scene of the disaster and needs to help calm someone who's trapped under rubble while they dig them out. Etc.

When you start watching the film, you don't know what story you're going to get, but these scenes can be combined in various ways so that you might be watching a couple on the brink of divorce remembering why they love each other as they come through a disaster, or you might be watching an action story about a plucky firefighter worried about their capabilities and rising to the challenge, or... There could be hundreds of potential versions of the film made by combining these scenes in different ways - some very similar but with slight changes to nuance based on a couple of key scenes, and some wildly different.

Whatever decides which version to show this time has various probably settings so some versions are more likely than others and there's a super rare "villains version" which shows the perspective of whoever was responsible for the explosion and gives their story in a way that makes them understandable/sympathetic to some extent by focusing on their reasons for doing it and the way it impacts them, rather than the people who got hurt. Like maybe they didn't mean the explosion to be so big and only one specific person was meant to get hurt, and they feel terrible about the fact innocent people were, and seeing the story from their perspective, the audience starts to feel bad for them - when in another version of the story, they were just "generic bad guy".

I know this will probably never be made because it would be so much more expensive to shoot and edit together all the different versions - never mind create the mechanism for picking which one to show on any given play through. But I still love the concept.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Leverage captivity ideas

These could all work together, but I don't have a fic plot to put these in, so sharing them to Tumblr in case anyone else wants to take some/all of them and run with them:

The Leverage team are coerced/manipulated into working with Stirling. Partway through the job, he betrays them and they get captured by the bad guys. Later on, he turns around and betrays the bad guys by setting the Leverage team free, saying that he knew that getting them captured would be the best way of getting them inside the bad guy's secure area.

The Leverage OT3 are captured and the bad guys secure Eliot and Parker in over-the-top ways, e.g. straight-jackets, chains, etc. Hardison is just put in ordinary handcuffs and is very resentful about the fact he's singled out as not needed to be so thoroughly secured. He's also the one that needs to be let out after Eliot and Parker have got themselves out.

Eliot gets himself free by doing something extremely painful - e.g. dislocating his own shoulders to get out of the straight-jacket.

We never see how Parker gets out. In one shot, she's fully restrained and in the next she's shrugging off the last of them.

When Eliot gets captured, someone puts a muzzle on him. Later on, Parker bites someone and says she hadn't considered it until she saw them muzzle Eliot.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

An interesting thing about this book is that if I summarised the plot to someone, they'd probably think that they were getting something like The Goblin Emperor - all intrigue and court drama and detail on machinations. But the books are completely different in terms of vibes.

The High King's Golden Tongue is not trying to be The Goblin Emperor or Game Of Thrones or a heavy fantasy drama. It's trying to be an easy-to-read, idiots-to-lovers romance and it's achieving it. The court intrigue is present, but it's more like the painted backdrop of a play - it gives us the setting in broad strokes but no one's really paying attention to it, because the point is watching these two idiots both fretting that the other wants to call of the engagement, or the king bickering with his brothers-in-law.

There are moments that in a different book would be a hundred pages of drama that, in this one, are basically skipped over because they're not the point of this story. There's a moment in the middle where a couple of characters are planning a military operation and then, in the very next scene, we switch to the perspective of another character as the military operation is concluded. We don't actually see the fight, or the logistics of getting to it, because what matters to the story the author wants to tell is the reactions of the protagonists in the aftermath.

I don't want anything to get the impression that this is meant to be a criticism of either The High King's Golden Tongue or The Goblin Emperor, because it's not. The authors of both are aiming to do completely different things with their books and both are nailing it. I just find it interesting that you can start with superficially similar elements - someone new at a royal court, drama, people not wanting the protagonist there, etc. - and end up with such wildly different stories based on what the author chooses to focus on.

I'm reading The High King's Golden Tongue for the second time and apparently I have forgotten everything that happens in this book. A few pieces seem vaguely familiar when I reach them, but so many others are completely new. The murder mystery subplot that appears about a quarter of the way into the book? Never seen that before in my life. The bit where [redacted] has sex with [redacted]'s brother-in-law? Nope, that's completely new.

It's like reading the book for the first time all over again because at this point I have no idea what's going to happen next.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

wilf (wip i’d like to finish)

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

One of my favorite D&D gags that I ever came up with is part of a oneshot I've run a few times where the party is hired by a young wizard to help clear out a few active security measures in a tower that the wizard inherited from her old teacher.

The first obstacle to be cleared is the re-animated skeletons that the old wizard was using for gardening help. It's a pretty straightforward fight, but during the encounter, players may notice one particular raised bed of herbs that is set back in a corner of the garden by itself.

Upon further investigation, this one raised bed is absolutely shining with magical protections. There are runes carved into the wood of the bed, gemstones inlaid in the top of it, this bed is absolutely protected out the ass... and an arcana check shows that the protections are all pointed inward, attempting to keep what's in there from getting out.

What's growing in that raised bed, you may ask? What is so dangerous that the old wizard felt the need to place all these protections?

Mint.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

i fucking hate the “this is the good luck post.” Girl stop contributing to a superstitious environment with ur anecdotes there’s a million goddamn notes on it it’s statistically reasonable that a bunch of people remember the good things that happen after they reblog it

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

A doctor saying "Good news! Your labs look great" is like if you were watching a cop show and the chief walked in like "Great news, everybody! The best news! The killer is still at large and we have no leads."

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Monster fucker this, monster fucker that. What if I want a monster RELATIONSHIP huh?! Monster HAND HOLDING, monster INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS, monster COMFORTABLE SILENCE??

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

I'm reading The High King's Golden Tongue for the second time and apparently I have forgotten everything that happens in this book. A few pieces seem vaguely familiar when I reach them, but so many others are completely new. The murder mystery subplot that appears about a quarter of the way into the book? Never seen that before in my life. The bit where [redacted] has sex with [redacted]'s brother-in-law? Nope, that's completely new.

It's like reading the book for the first time all over again because at this point I have no idea what's going to happen next.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

I scrolled down slightly further and saw two more posts from people I don't follow and three posted to communities I'm not in.

From the timing of it, I assume it's related to the fact that I made my first community post a few minutes before I saw the first anomalous post.

Has this happened to anyone else?

@staff fix this bug

Why do I have a random post from someone I don't follow on my dashboard? It's not blazed. It's not tagged with anything, so it's not to do with followed tagged. I double checked my dashboards settings and the based on your likes/liked by people you follow are both still turned off.

Why is this post here?

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Why do I have a random post from someone I don't follow on my dashboard? It's not blazed. It's not tagged with anything, so it's not to do with followed tagged. I double checked my dashboards settings and the based on your likes/liked by people you follow are both still turned off.

Why is this post here?

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

I made my first experimental post to a community and even though I marked the post as "for everyone" it got tagged as mature.

It really isn't.

Is this some weirdness with communities? My only theory is that because the creator of the community said that it might contain mature content, every post to that community is automatically tagged as mature, regardless of whether or not it is.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Three times RDA was what the doctor described as "starting me off slowly" because they want to check how my calcium levels react. So I've got to go back in a few weeks to get yet more blood taken for testing. Yay.

Vitamin D supplement bottle: Don't you dare take more than one of these a day, or else!

Doctor: Yeah, you're going to want to take three of those a day.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Vitamin D supplement bottle: Don't you dare take more than one of these a day, or else!

Doctor: Yeah, you're going to want to take three of those a day.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

This is so fucking funny. Late 90's early 00's syndicated scifi was great.