#{a new beginning; plot}

[centeris2]

This seems to be an uncommon opinion but thank god SSO is making (what appears to be) serious headway into the story.

For years it felt like it had stalled out. It was valid wanting main characters and villains to be visually updated before continuing, but it slowed things down.

I'm glad they aren't going "we need to update Mr. Sands, Darko is a pretty old model compared to the Dark Riders, Avalon really needs an update, so does Pi, etc"

Because yes it absolutely would look better if everyone had the same number of polygons. And yes it WOULD be great if SSO picked up those threads mentioned throughout the main story. But if they did that and got all those map areas that had been brought up in the story quests then it'd be another 10 years of filler in the main story until they can 'wrap up'

And honestly I'm tired of waiting. This isn't even an impatience thing, this is a "I've played this game for 10+ years and at this point I don't care how it's wrapped up, as long as it IS wrapped up."

Probably helps that I don't expected a 'satisfying' ending from SSO, I just want AN ending to the main story. I expect Garnok to be 'defeated' and for the Soul Riders to be victorious, probably through the power of friendship. That's all I'm expecting.

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [3/5] motifs -> resurrection

It's different now. I think dying did something to him. It did something to me, too. But none of it was good.

[lazuliquetzal]

I keep on telling people you're the only one who knows how to plot. Can you teach all of us how to plot, please? I love you.

I AM SUMMONED? PLOT BRAIN SUMMONED?

I love plotting. It's my favorite part of the writing process. Plot is "things that happen" and the best part of writing is imagining things that happen. I'm going to assume that whoever may be reading this knows how to imagine The Happenings, so I'm gonna be talking more about structure, but in like, a kinda abstract sense.

A good plot is a little bit more than a string of events. Plot is like music: there's variation in rhythm and sound and melody, but ultimately there's cohesion, because it's all one song. You can have a bunch of wild things happening, but no matter how strange, there should be something that links them all together, because you're telling one story.

Plot structures are patterns in stories. I'm pretty sure most of them were developed as analysis tools (as in, story already exists > look! it follows this pattern) rather than as writing tools, but people use them as writing tools because it's a neat little way to organize the chaos that is "shit happens." Stories follow patterns for the same reasons music follows patterns: we enjoy the certainty of hitting certain beats. But we also like being surprised. A good pop song doesn't sound like a random collection of sounds, but it also doesn't sound like the middle slider of other songs.

There is this shared concept in both music and writing: the idea of tension and release. Basically, you're playing with reader expectation: there's an imbalance in the experience (tension), and we want to see that imbalance resolved (release). All the common plot structures deal with this basic pattern:

You set an expectation

There are complications to the expectation

You meet the expectation

And this rhythm is happening on multiple levels in writing. Scenes follow this structure (we're gonna get past that door, we're gonna find the murder weapon, we're gonna collaborate and come up with a plan) and all those scenes feed into the overarching expectation (we're gonna solve this murder!). I usually think of chapters as their own mini-story, part of the larger whole. And I think of scenes as their own mini-story, part of the larger chapter. I have engineer brain. I see the gears spinning in the clock. That's why all my chapters have at least One Important Thing happening, because that's that particular chapter's Step #3.

And One Last Important Thing:

In music, a delayed resolution is almost always more interesting than the standard resolution. In writing, that means you wanna drag out Step #2 for as long as you can. That's where the bulk of the story is happening, that's how you build tension, that's how you get people to turn the page.

So when you write a fake dating fic, those bitches better not get together until the very end. I came here for fake dating, not for real dating, damn it. If you resolve that expectation early on, you better replace it with a different expectation that's just as engaging.

But also don't drag it out for too long. Sorry. The hard part of writing is learning the difference between too short and too long. Writing is unfortunately a nuanced skill which is why my advice is like "do this but not too much teehee." But tension and resolution is just rhythm, you can build a sense for it if you engage with enough stories.

[lucabyte]

transfem loop + siffrin... you agree

i does agree.... i does in fact ... write a 7k word essay on the subject..... if you would like to perhaps click that link and read it if you were not already aware...... kisses u on the forehead......... sorry its that long but i had to cover all of my bases you know how it is with textual analysis when you're trying to draw a distinction between "headcanon" and "reading of the text" because those are different things.... to meeeeeeee.......

[hotshotsxyz]

the madness on the breeze

(kaos) (orpheus/dionysus) (9.6k) MAJOR SPOILERS FOR KAOS NETFLIX If you haven't seen it, stop reading, go watch it and come back when you're done (pls)

Dionysus doesn’t mean to end up on Orpheus’s doorstep. He doesn’t mean to end up anywhere at all, actually. He’d just… taken a step, and another, and another, and found himself here. Alone. Dionysus hates being alone.

The house is quiet until it isn’t, until broken glass crunches beneath his feet. It’s been days since Orpheus broke that glass, not weeks, not years. Less than a heartbeat in the lifetime of a god, but. But.

But Dionysus isn’t a god, not entirely. Or—he wasn’t always. He isn’t sure he wants to be, not anymore. He kneels and collects the broken glass. He wonders if the shards will cut him. He wonders if he’ll bleed.

(read the rest on ao3)

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[sparklespectres]

I’m really proud of Gwen and Alice for actually talking to each other and trying to open up a little bit? This is very significant character growth from their whole “I know that you know that I know something but I don’t want to say anything before you do even though you aren’t going to say something unless I do first” conversation that they had all those weeks ago !

[catharusustulatus]

Maybe it’s bad to hyper-fixate on one actor but I am so excited for Joe Keery to have bigger roles. I think he’s so great in Fargo this season and I look forward to his upcoming 2024 and post ST slate. It’s high time he’s been cast in some big tentpole films. He leans indie in his choices, which I respect, but dude. Put him in Greta Gerwig’s Narnia. Make him a knight. Put him in a sequel to the DnD movie that came out this year. Make him a cute bartender that’s thrown into a secret plot to steal government info because he’s in the wrong place wrong time. Father son drama. Road trip movie where he falls in love. I could go on….

[clochanam]

" look. i know you don't owe me, nor anyone else, a blessed thing. but i wouldn't have picked up the phone if i'd thought of any other option. and i'm not asking you to do anything bad. i promise. i would never do that. but this does need to be done, and i don't trust anyone else the way i trust you. we just need to follow a few leads. nobody gets hurt. i swear to you, @ziminiysoldat. " / S.C.

[hidey-writes]

wip wednesday

In the drifting silence of his empty apartment, Shen Wei presses the door shut, turns the lock. And then, like his body was waiting until he was alone, his legs give out. Shen Wei tips/topples against/into the wall, sinks down to sitting on the front mat/in the entryway. He sits there for a long time, curled into himself with his arms around his knees. The whole time, his body braced for the sound of Zhao Yunlan’s door opening, the sound of footsteps crossing the hall. Waiting, again, for Kunlun to return to him.  But no sound comes from outside his door. At last, Shen Wei tips his head back against the wall, lets out a soft, streaming sigh. The sound trembles in the still air. It’s the closest he’s come to crying in years, that he can remember.

from the up draft of the answer fic. im cutting it veryyyyyy close to the deadline this time ahahaha (nervous!) but the writing is going relatively smoothly (knocks on wood) and i think it'll turn out pretty delicious!!

[chosetoseethebestinyou]

The Doctor / Me watching Doctor Who, like, once a season:

can't believe I keep falling for this. Even more so can't believe the doctor keeps falling for this.

[fairyroses]

She was the only thing I was living for. I’m sorry for your loss, sir, but right now we need to get you airborne. Police will be here any minute. I’m well aware of that. I’m turning myself in.

— SMALLVILLE, “Bizarro” (7.01)

[childotkw]

hi Jordan!

Just wondering if you have any snippets about izuna causing chaos in HP universe with regulus?????

The sound of shattering had Sirius flinching. Regulus, on the other hand, merely sighed and closed his eyes.

A guilty kind of silence stretched out from the hallway, and as Sirius watched, his brother leaned back in his chair and glanced over at the doorway where his strange friend had disappeared through.

“What was that?” he called, a biting kind of exasperation colouring his tone.

Between one blink and the next, Regulus’ friend was framed in the doorway. Sirius startled at the sudden reappearance. He hadn’t even heard the man walking towards them.

“Some kind of vase,” Izuna answered, his teeth nibbling at his bottom lip. He looked young, younger than Regulus even, and Sirius had to wonder if this kid would even be old enough to be out of Hogwarts if he were one of them. “It was blue and patterned with a scene of trees and mountains.”

Regulus put his face in his hands, and even Sirius winced.

Izuna glanced at them, just a quick flick of his dark eyes, before settling his attention on Regulus. “I take that it was important?”

“It was an heirloom,” Regulus said, his voice muffled by his palm, “and cursed to never break - what the fuck did you do to it?”

Normally, hearing his prim and proper little brother swear would be hilarious, but Sirius was more freaked out over how this random young man Regulus had pulled out of a dumpster somewhere was able to break their great-aunt’s unbreakable fucking vase.

Izuna hummed, sounding genuinely interested at the revelation. “It had dark chakra around it,” he said, as if that made any sense - chakra? was that what he called magic? - but clearly only Sirius was out of the loop because Regulus looked up with a spark of understanding.

“Chakra - you’re sure?” he asked.

Izuna nodded. “Definitely. Which makes me wonder how your family came into possession of a chakra-infused vase when your world doesn’t have chakra.”

“You think…” Regulus began.

“Worth a try,” Izuna agreed.

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, Sirius darting looks between them, before they both suddenly shot off down the hallway. Sirius remained where he was, watching as his little brother left him behind - again - to talk a mile a minute with his new best friend.

Something dark and bitter bubbled in his chest.

[p5x-theories]

Watching through the start of the beta, so far (other than starting with the dream where Joker fights someone who looks like Wonder) things are looking mostly the same, except:

Riko stays a little longer in the first scene she appears in (starts around 19:38)- it looks like after telling the female students to stop blocking the stairs, she mentions students are acting more "selfishly" these days, and also mentions Wonder could've just communicated with them himself

When Wonder leaves Kokatsu after, a woman in a red dress walks past him (21:50), and then at the train station (23:08) he seems her across the street standing on the roof of a building. She throws herself off of it, and Wonder's the only one to really react- the other people around him don't seem to care. Ruferu comments on this, and it seems like this is what makes him decide Wonder really is the one he's looking for

Wonder's Awakening (around 32:41) has been slightly updated, most notably that another Wonder now appears in it talking to him as the kelp wraps around him:

The Mementos lady now waves and rings the bells on her hat when Wonder and Cattle first meet her (about 48:32). She's also voiced now, as she says "Ah" when they run past her, and then disappears, which I don't believe she did before

Shun, Kayo, and Yaoling now appear on the Confidants menu (1:04:23)

The location where Merope sees the Rise poster and gets the idea for Phantom Idols has changed (1:08:48):

Short new cutscene (1:09:24) where Wonder, waiting for the train, tries to delete the MetaNav again, then Kiuchi bumps into him. After Wonder gets on the train, Kiuchi sees a new target

Tomoko accidentally bumps into Wonder when getting off the train after the scene where the girls are gossiping about Ikenami (1:11:11) and she drops her ticket that Wonder picks up (as opposed to previously, I believe, Wonder being the one to drop the ticket she returns to him later)

Another new cutscene (1:15:56) where we see Kiuchi following his new target then slam into her and knock her over

[lizardinkart]

With the heavy caveat that I know people put their heart and soul into this show, having watched 6 seasons of this shit now, The Dragon Prince is just this to me

I root for this show as if it was my child’s little league team playing against the Dodgers. Like, they have the spirit, certainly. Can they actually hit a fastball going over 100mph? I think not.

[smile-files]

i continue to find ii3 baffling. why did they make it (this isn't to hate on the season, i'm genuinely curious)