#Narrative Puzzle

[ancientroyalblood]

Exploring Non-Linear Narratives: Writing Out of Sequence

In the realm of storytelling, the traditional sequence is but one path to follow, a well-trodden road where events unfurl one after another, much like dominos carefully aligned, ready to fall. Yet, in the shadows, there exists another path, a web of narratives intertwined, where each word, each sentence, is a piece of a puzzle not yet complete. This exploration seeks to dissect the notions of…

[ppjeterka]

my thoughts re: the main cast of the new nhl amazon docu-series

[nellasbookplanet]

Mentioning Tusk Love and the potential of other independent stories set in Exandria reminded me of an old discord conversation about how they could Fix the courting of the crick for publishing (seeing as it's canonically a Bad Book due to being super dry and also racist towards drow) without breaking canon:

Rename it 'The Courting of the Kryn - a Reimagining of the Classic Story, by Jester Lavorre'

Present it as an in-universe fanfic-ish rewrite. There's a foreword where 'Jester' elaborates on the inaccuracies of the original, the impact the story had on her, and the importance of Dynasty-Empire relations. There's an acknowledgement section where she thanks Caleb and Beau as 'consultants on Empire culture', as well as an unnamed/under fake name/clearly Essek as an 'expert on the Luxon, dunamancy and Dynasty culture'. All his information on spy networks is eerily accurate and has his former co-workers scrambling. (He makes her keep all the dry historical accounts, but now it's accurate (with added dick-related puns)). She mentions that she reached out to the Bright Queen who reluctantly (after 5 messages in a row) gave some pointers. In her frantic research she possibly made some breakthroughs on the nature on the Luxon that has Essek reeling (there's a 'further reading' section where she lists the academic paper he wrote building on her discoveries and an entire list of the sources her consultants used).

For extra fun and meta-ness, include footnotes where she comments on things she changed/removed from the original and why, how various scenes may have been inspired by a real life couple or events, etc. Some of the footnotes are written by her consultants. Caleb and Essek get into arguments on dunamancy theory which is actually thinly veiled flirting. There's anatomically accurate drow sex (it's unclear whether the consultant was Essek or Caleb or possibly a certain brother, who was also consulted on Dynasty military practices).

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[witchofthesouls]

There are many iterations of MegOp I can believe in... but not TFP.

Feels homoerotic or queer? Sure. A lot of tension? Definitely. A yearning or upon the cusp of something? I'm fucking dying right on that edge.

But TFP Megatron and Orion Pax couldn't even understand each other's histories and motivations, let alone have a hard conversation on their own philosophies, back up plans, and direction for society besides the pretty stuff. Y'all really think they fucked? Even if it's angled as 'hate sex' or casual, they fucking misread each other all the damn time, even if they vibed on the same level, which is so painful to watch. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them tried to subtly hit on the other in their own caste-derived/in-group's specific doublespeak... just for the other guy, who's an outsider, to understandingly not pick it up, but all their associated caste buddies did.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that's why Ratchet and Soundwave have several tons worth of beef with each other's respective friend/war leader. Besides destroying life and civilization as they knew it.

The thing is to remember, Megatron is very much a social butterfly in a way. He genuinely likes people. He likes interaction. He has the flair and disposition for it. His inherent sense for the dramatics just enhances it. But the most important thing, Megatron was literally reared within the structure of the city-states. He intimately knows the social equations for his caste, has a lot of support in terms of emotional via friends, allies, and mecha with similar grievances, and is deft enough to wade through the avenues that are available to him and he takes them with both fists (gladiatorial clades into the political arena). Violence (and emotions) is a language that's easily available to him.

Orion Pax, on the other hand, is more careful. He has to be. This guy literally came from the boonies of Nowhere and got snatched up by a really powerful figure within Iacon inside the very heart of its machinations. People were beyond rage at that treatment. Orion isn't stupid but he's playing really dangerous games with colleagues that despise his very presence and multiple frameworks that literally eat people alive to keep a very brutal status quo. Then accounting Alpha Trion's own status as an Ancient Prime with the very relic with the power to foretell future events across the multiverse... it doesn't paint a kind picture on reasons why the hidden Prime plucked up Orion. The repression and stonewall tactics that Orion, and later Optimus, use really make sense with this in mind. The Iacon Archives are a keystone of the higher castes. Orion had to moderate his entire self around those people that would absolutely snitch if they caught a whiff of 'insubordination' or 'illegal' activities' or 'strangely sympathetic to those undeserving' along with the weird little side quests with Alpha Trion. Orion had to learn really fast how to bend before breaking, especially if he can only rely on himself in a perilous environment.

All I'm saying that these two spoke Neocybex, but absolutely missed all the cultural context of each other's backgrounds that would have easily explained the 'whys, whats, wheres, whens, and hows' of their decisions and behaviors. They legitimately did see something really amazing in each other, but never actually dug deeper thinking that the other mech would immediately understand their motivations and that's what so fucking infuriatingly tragic on why they felt so betrayed by one another.

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

guy who so desperately tries to find god. who wants to have faith in a higher authority to guide him out of the hole he's in. from the weight of guilt from simply existing, as the person he is. but every time he thinks he's answered his higher calling it turns out he's made the Morally Incorrect choice and his path to goodness and holiness was the road to the devil all along

[anghraine]

It's a very little bit funny that I used to be mildly notorious in my corner of Austen fandom for disliking Colonel Fitzwilliam, who at the time was extremely idealized in those fandom spaces, particularly by contrast with Darcy having things like "flaws" and "character growth."

I still don't like Colonel Fitzwilliam as this perfect ideal apart from maybe some extremely minor, defensible faults because he's human after all, someone who would have been exactly suited to Elizabeth really and did love her but truly is too poor to choose her (alas!) and totally is handsome, to boot.

But I do like Colonel Fitzwilliam as a man who is fundamentally decent, good-natured, intelligent, and strong-willed, but with a fundamentally aristocratic perception of himself and the world. I like that he's willing to tease and criticize Darcy as part of flirting with a pretty girl, but leaps to Darcy's and Georgiana's defense when he thinks it's important. I think it's interesting that it would be so easy for him to resent Darcy, and instead they seem to be genuine bffs with healthy respect for each other (likely for a very long time given their blood relationship and close ages) as well as co-guardians and amicable relatives.

Darcy is not a man prone to overstatement, so his description of his relationship with Colonel Fitzwilliam as one of "constant intimacy" is really intriguing to me—far more than Fitzwilliam's casual and rather shallow and self-interested flirtation with Elizabeth, tbh. It's doubly interesting because Fitzwilliam seems to only sort of know the Bingleys, and while he approves of Bingley, my impression is that he knows the whole family through Darcy rather than as general social acquaintances. We never see the Bingleys and Fitzwilliam in the same social settings, even ones where they might credibly interact like Pemberley, and Fitzwilliam makes a point of clarifying to Elizabeth that he only slightly knows Bingley's sisters. There are all these gradations to how Darcy interacts with both social sets, his mentorship-type friendship with Bingley and his intimacy with his cousin, that I don't think a simple consultation of the table of precedence fully explains.

I do find Colonel Fitzwilliam deeply boring when he's reduced to Darcy's rival for Elizabeth's affection despite never having any serious interest in Elizabeth—the kind of "so there, Darcy" vibe that underpins Fitzwilliam-as-rival is meh given their own relationship. But for such a minor character, there is genuinely quite a bit going on, I think.

[waste1andb5by]

i was about to say someone should make a rapple wicked au and then i remembered that ever after high is basically already a wicked au 😭😭

[bloominglegumes]

i think your favourite colour is moss green and i feel like you would play absurd amounts of stardew valley

i do indeed love moss green!! i've been slowly collecting things in warm greens, pastel greens, olive green, army green :)) they are just cozy soft colours to me

as for stardew valley though,, i haven't played it but it's one of those games i've wanted to try for ages and just never gotten around to getting :,) maybe my next birthday as a special treat or something djfjdj

[bellisima-writes]

Further Ramblings From a Very Inexperienced Writer Type Person - Drawing Your Narrative Structures?

Writer friends, do you guys ever draw your narrative structures? I've done it for each of mine stories and find it tremendously fun to look back on once they're done.

Now, I know I play hard and fast with my narratives and POVs etc, having done some funky things, especially in the Last Angel and know most stories (fanfic or not) follow a sequential narrative structure, start to finish. Like so:

Now, my first story, had a split POV and time-bound chapter structure. Meaning, each chapter happened at one point in time across two or more characters. Like so:

The Last Angel was my timey wimey one, jumping around and across different timelines. That was a fun one to draw, it looked like this:

And now, I am writing a story (not a fic) in which we start in the center, and every subsequent chapter includes a flash back as well as progress in the present, creating my FAVORITE image to date:

Do any of you guys ever jot down what your story looks like on paper? Just me? Okay, cool.

[bubble-popping]

I think a big reason why c!drunz isn't the most healthy couple is because they aren't two people who mutually chose to be together.

C!drunz is two people who don't have many other options. They're two people that have been forced into their roles, self-induced or otherwise, and therefore forced together. C!Dream needed someone he could trust. C!Punz believed in the cause, and any doubts were easily dismissed by a little gold and jewels. It's a boss who only has one employee and an employee who sees other potential bosses as completely incompetent.

Their love is as real as it can be for their situation. It's as real as any love that forms during the final days of mankind. Love born from the apocalypse.

When you spend enough time with someone, knowing there's no one else, you grow to need and resent that person. A part of you wishes you met on different terms, but you also know if you did, you wouldn't love them like you do now.

C!drunz didn't choose each other, not willingly. They didn't have a chance to learn and grow and reconcile their differences. The reality is they've settled, and they come to terms with that in different ways.

C!Punz wholeheartedly accepted it. Perhaps they never experienced a connection so deep, so engrained in his being he doesn't know where they end and c!Dream begins. C!Dream is... not thrilled. He knew what it was like to have friends, people he called his soulmates. Whatever he and c!Punz have is not that.

He still cares about c!Punz, a lot. He loves them, truly. As truly as love can be when they both have a foot in the grave.

[houseswife]

this is definitively the worstbest line of the entire series methinks

[tortoise-teapot]

heartbreaking: tumblr user makes a great point but ends it with calling their target audience stupid.

[phoenixwithapencil]

Pitioss fucked with me entirely. Don't ask me what giving the crystal to the chained goddess of unknown name, deep in Solheim's forgotten crypt of shadows and death means because I sure as hell don't know. All I know is that the image demanded to be created and I wasn't given no as an option

[luv-again]

finished playing prince of persia sands of time and- I'm not okay anymore ygs

[jfkisonthemoon]

they honestly couldve done so much with junpei beheaded/dismembered and im disappointed that it ended up just being mira. so much of his character and his relationship with akane is characterized by his lack of bodily autonomy, and him being openly beheaded during the nonary games would be the ultimate example of this. its perhaps the most brutal death in the game, and it never really gets explained or developed beyond the one puzzle that we get with it. junpei has been shown repeatedly to be subject to akane's plans or follow her blindly and i just think that would have been a really interesting angle to approach his beheading from. junpei has willingly signed up for nonary games in two different timelines just because he knew he would see her. he was infected with a deadly virus trying to find her. he grew desensitized to death as he took underground jobs to try and find her. his safety always comes second when shes in the picture, and his beheading wouldve been a prime opportunity to 1. exploit his willingness to let himself die/be injured for her and 2. make akane confront the fact that her confidence that junpei will always follow after her is not necessarily a positive thing.