#Nativity Narrative

[a2zillustration]

I carried this thing for MONTHS with the EXPRESS PURPOSE of putting Raphael in it (knowing full well Larian wouldn't let me do that, mechanically) and I had one major miscalculation.

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[cringefail-clown]

the book has arrived. currently im on a page 33. i have Thoughts. idk if yall would be interested in my rambles, but maybe ill post some of em as i get through it

[aerithisms]

rotating the pub scene from 73 yards in my mind i think there is so much being said there about wales and welsh/english tension that is so interesting and is going so under discussed

[northern-passage]

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

[theonescreencap]

i wanna clarify - i do love the skypiea arc but not. everything about it. i like it narratively as the crew's first adventure for adventure's sake, i like the jaya arc's theme of dreams, i like the creative setting and the still-developing dynamics between the strawhats, i love all the meaning and emotion behind ringing the golden bell and "we're right here" and the ideas about human connection and respecting differences and the ways the past affects us in the present

but then the entire backstory part of it is like "this white explorer guy saved the ignorant natives from their restrictive evil customs with the power of science!!' it fully sucks so bad. even though the shandians do get treated with respect by the narrative it still ends up like oh don't worry even though it made everyone sad, noland was still totally right to cut down their sacred trees because he's smart and he was right all along and they should forgive him :( even if he doesn't want them to, because he feels sooo bad about it, they should :( and it Starts to touch on complacency in colonization (re: the skypieans) but doesn't really do anything with it... because it focuses more on complacency in a restrictive religious/governmental system instead. "religion can be used as a tool to inflict fear and gain power and control" yes absolutely- "and it's restrictive and evil, and native people who believe in gods are inherently violent and trapped by their stupidity" NO!! STOP!!!

[rookflower]

been revisiting outcast (via the wcwit podcast!) and given my main issues with the series as a whole it's frustrating to me to remember that they actually DID have a whole deal about needing to address the flaws of a status quo and set of traditional values to adapt and change it, but instead of applying this to the nightmare stagnant oppressive theocracy that is the clans it was instead a white saviour narrative about an exponentially more indigenous-coded group who are narratively presented as too incompetent to thrive (or even brainstorm literally any ideas) by themselves without outsider interference overwriting their culture

[maingh0st]

Yes!!! I was also wondering if there’s different lands located in different countries or continents??? Do they speak any languages other than English???

(anon is referencing this post)

the Folk have their own language, a fact that gets dropped and then criminally underused in tfota!!!

but yeah i'm so curious about this. i think i'm leaning toward the idea that the faery courts are only somewhat tied to geographical locations—like they require physical touchstones to enter them, but are not truly physically "there." for example, the court of termites is underground, and we see kaye entering from a specific physical location, but it's still "separate" and would therefore never be touched by, for example, human drilling or digging.

also, elfhame being the High Court (TM) leads me to believe that even if there are fae courts elsewhere, they don't operate as totally independent powers. i think the faery world is probably more connected even if it's geographically spread out—again because i'm not convinced that geographical "distance" is much of a barrier

to me, this kiiindd of solves the issue of them being in north america, because it means their courts could've been around a long time, but people have only been entering them from north america for a little while. so maybe immigrants isn't quite the right term, but essentially the folk are still newer to north american soil.

honestly the reason i started thinking about all this is because i refuse to accept that the folk have been on turtle island for very long (like pre-european colonization). i just don't appreciate the undertones that carries of erasing indigenous peoples and our ways of understanding the world

[solidandsound]

I remember you closing the shutters and laying down by my side and the light that was just slipping through it was painting your body in stripes

[socksandbuttons]

What kind of Pokemon is Moon; he kind of looks like a power ranger with the visor thing? And do you know what kind of Pokemon Sun is/will be?

Oh he's Lunala! I've pretty decided that from the beginning when I was drawing this au. (you actually see him in a previous minior Lunar post!) dfbk Visor yeah!!

Sun is Solgaleo respectively as well. (The fun thing thats changed is Bloodmoon and Eclipse were originally gonna be the *shiny* versions of them since they were both red.)

[cto10121]

Stupid piece of shit, Twilight literally caused so many myths & misconceptions about Native & Quileute people that the Quileute tribe had to put up an entire site dispelling the shit Stephanie Meyer caused. I literally cannot begin to explain how insanely racist Twilight is as a series with the number of bullshit that happens to not just the Native characters, but other characters of color (but Stephanie Meyer targeted Native Americans specifically). Twilight is an incredibly mediocre and poorly written series created by a fucking Mormon, go read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or Dracula.

You mean that same Quileute people that has come out with their support for the series, talking about how the series garnered tourism, attention, and economic wealth to their reservation? The same Quileute tribe who credited Twilight for their success in moving their reservation to higher ground and even getting that northern boundary approved after 50 years of no progress?

You literally cannot explain how racist Twilight is a series for a reason, anon. Because if all of it boils down to Meyer changing their legends for a whole-ass fantasy AU, then that’s not good enough, anon. Hell, it provided a great opportunity for the Quileutes to educate tourists on their real-life legends, so it’s a win-win for them.

And of course they aren’t offended by the series’ portrayal of them either. The Quileutes have it good in these books overall: They have wolf superpowers but with none of the downsides of actual bloodlust, need to kill, or sociopathy. In fact, they are framed as protectors in the narrative and their power is deeply rooted in their communal blood ties and their positive relationship with nature. In the books the Quileute legends have them be spirit warriors who had a wolf consent to share his body with one of them. And of course all the bad guys, save a typical internecine power grab, are the pale, evil, sociopathic bloodsuckers.

And that’s not counting the fact that a Native male character—drawn complementary with the male hero—is the secondary love interest of the romantic heroine, and so strong a contender he even has passionate fans arguing for his ship to this very day. And that’s not counting the fact that the author personally loves that character, to the point where she could not bear to end the series with him not getting a love interest/happy ending.

Also, I’m literally an English major a hairsbreadth shy of becoming an actual English teacher at some point. And if you think the likes of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and freakin’ Dracula don’t have very similar themes or even their own issues even on the writing level, then I’m not the one who must read them, anon. I think a re-reading is in order.

[ubyr-babaj]

I'm still not over how the fandom was given a book that's 60% author's monologue about her relationship with race and went, no-no, the OG show does a better job discussing colonialism.

[lfcrants]

kinda pissed that my commentators keep talking down on Morocco. like how are you shocked that they are technically gifted and keep creating chances as if they didn’t boss Canada and Belgium all while topping their group??

[alarrytale]

An actual publicist says there are no long term fake relationships these days. I'm confused.

https://www.tumblr.com/sunnywiththescoop/743534350327578624/why-are-the-big-fandoms-so-reluctant-to-accept?source=share

Hi, anon!

Link. So first of all. If this is a real publicist, do you know what a publicists job is? To spin narratives in favour of their client. It's their job to make you believe celebrities relationship are real and not fake and made up by publicists. It also seems like they're trying to call out PR relationships as something that's chosen by celebrities in stead of pushed by publicist. It might be true, or they're trying to place themselves in a good light. So all this coming from a publicist? Colour me skeptical.

Second of all, i think you're misunderstanding what they're saying. They're not saying there are no long term PR relationships anymore, they're saying there are few publicist made up ones. They're saying the celebrity themselves choose this as a tool to promote themselves. It seems like they're saying it's tried and tested and doesn’t work anymore, which i somewhat agree with.

PR relationships are supposed to be short, because it has a single purpose, to promote a film, album or a product. The promotion periode is often a set time, and then they move on to other things to promote. So if a fake relationship last longer than the promo period, either it's a huge success and the celebrities themselves want to continue for their own gain and not the product they're promoting (like Zend*ya and T*m). Oftentimes the reason the fake relationship is long is because it's about something other than PR. It's usually bearding, but can also be for image rehab.

[reshirfuse]

real tired of blue eyed samurai being seen as "novel approach to the take down of japanese xenophobia" and not literally as "japanese people are fascinated by whiteness, were axis power aligned, and only want to dip their toes into the idea of being different but only in a whiter way because they're racist to literally anything else" masked as "mixed race narrative"

[sisterdivinium]

Words escape them.

A golden ray of light falls upon a crucifix, upon naked, intertwined limbs. There is sensation — warmth — and there is memory — love — but there aren't words.

Jillian fears to move, fears a declaration of regret; Suzanne fears herself, the consequences, the punishment — and she fears the loss of the woman in her arms.

The night has gone and passion has left doubtful sobriety in its wake.

They watch. They wait.

Suzanne at last dares caress a cheek. Jillian smiles.

There is no return. Let damnation come, let judgement — a kiss seals their fate before the morning bell.

[coffeestainedprogress]

Trying to romanticize my life in this coffee shop in an attempt to finish editing and revising my writing sample for grad school applications🙃