#narrative threads

[thenalexica]

how characters navigate family drama as subplot

Avoids picking sides at dinners Makes excuses to leave gatherings Keeps secrets between family members Mediates fights during holidays Hides relationship from relatives Deals with parental disappointment daily Creates buffer between arguing siblings Maintains diplomatic group texts Dodges nosy family questions Balances divided family events Protects younger ones from drama Carries emotional family baggage Plans careful seating arrangements Manages multiple family opinions Navigates cultural expectations

[archerdepartures116]

Ill post this au( inspired by tweet above) i started on my twt on Tumblr too

First part

more comic panels below

Second part

Third part

Fourth part

Shenanigans side extra

this is currently an ongoing series, if this does well here, I will continue posting these in bulk (～￣▽￣)～

feel free to ask me ab this au and give your suggestions!

[enchantingepics]

Story Prompt 38

In a small town where the sunsets painted the sky in hues of orange and pink, there lived an ambitious soul ready to face a formidable opponent - math homework. Our protagonist, armed with determination and a pencil, stared down the menacing equations on the crumpled sheets.

The room was silent except for the occasional tap of the pencil on the desk. It was a battlefield, and our hero, with a furrowed brow, was ready for the fight. The numbers on the paper seemed to mock, but our protagonist had a steely resolve.

As the night progressed, frustration turned into whispered negotiations with the stubborn math problems. "Come on, you can't be that difficult," muttered our hero, as if trying to reason with the elusive solutions.

Suddenly, the window creaked open, letting in a gentle breeze. A mysterious figure, clad in the shadows, appeared. "Need a hand with those tricky numbers?" the enigmatic stranger offered, a mischievous glint in their eye.

Our protagonist, cautious yet curious, nodded. The stranger took a seat, and with a flair for the dramatic, began explaining math concepts in a way that made them sound like the plot twists of a gripping novel.

[cloudbends]

[ID: a digital drawing in two parts, depicting characters from pokemon horizons, facing with their back to the viewer: the first drawing depicts the three original explorers heading away towards the light, as lucius hugs rystal and gibeon's shoulders. the second drawing depicts liko and amethio, their descendants, standing still and facing the light. end ID.]

"our adventure isn't over yet, isn't that right?"

[gloriousmonsters]

love when you can ask the Narrator why the Princess is a Princess and he's like 'well i uhhhh YOU did that. maybe it's because uh... something something about her being above you... but still approachable... look i don't want to analyze or anthropomorphize your--' my guy. i am a primal being of Order and Eternity and Shaping. You're the one who convinced me I was some dude and were quite willing to take credit for shaping my view on the world through narration five seconds ago. Are you gonna look me in the eye and tell me the desire to interpret something worthy of adoration and more powerful than me as a dommy princess is written in the very nature of the universe or are you going to show me your browser history like a man

[lykoiii]

and i never wanted anything from you

except everything you had

and what was left after that too

[magnetic-rose]

the pitt does the same thing that ER does where they'll have these funny, almost nonsensical cases (the woman asking dr robby if he wants to see her vagina, the patient with the dog collar super glued onto him) interwoven with tragic cases (the old man with dementia, the teen who's brain dead).

and it just creates this sense of heightened chaos where you're laughing one moment and then crying in the next scene.

[incesthemes]

there is interesting johndean subtext and insinuations across kripke era, usually through an antagonist insinuating parent-child sexual violence in order to exert dominance over dean. this type of mockery exploits that ambiguous relationship between john and dean and reminds dean that he never had a normal relationship with his father, and that makes him gross and wrong. it doesn't actually matter in the end whether john was sexually abusive to dean. the core of their relationship was damning enough: dean was made to take the place of john's wife—to comfort john and raise sam—while simultaneously being his son. the codependent nature of their relationship implies the incest that underscores their dynamic. again, this is regardless of what literally occurred between dean and john because there is enough doubt toward the nature of their relationship that multiple antagonists can use it against them.

sonwife, brotherhusband—dean is stuck in a liminal space between family and lover and is unable to put his feet firmly on just one side and instead has to accept both together or abandon both together. he doesn't get to have a relationship with his family without it being simultaneously incestuous. he plays the role of wife to john and mother to sam as mary's replacement; he therefore becomes more than a son and transcends the boundaries of the familial into the incestuous. it's baked into the dynamic and he can't hope to escape the liminality in which he's stuck without abandoning his entire family altogether.

this ambiguous relationship is further acted out with sam, where people perceive them as lovers rather than brothers; where their mutual devotion trumps, neglects, and disallows any other close relationship outside each other; where their physical closeness is viewed through an unusually sexual lens despite no literal sex acts between them taking place on screen. once again dean is stuck in a liminal space, paralleling the ambiguous and uncertain relationship he had with john.

in the end, sex (and sexual violence) is just a symbol of this codependency and uncertainly incestuous dynamic. sex acts in kripke era end up being symbolic: misinterpretations of sam and dean's relationship; accusations of sexual violence; literal, on-screen sexual moments between the brothers and someone else. it's a literary device that highlights the incestuous themes of the show. dean hand-picks women for sam to fuck because it allows dean to be symbolically part of sam's sex life. henricksen accuses john of raping dean because it is a symbol of the unhealthy, codependent relationship dean had with his father. the samulet stays on during sex because sam is symbolically integral to dean's sexual gratification (seen too in the way both dean and cassie in 1.13 appear to kiss the amulet at least once in the dark room). sex is used to signify more than what's literally on the screen, and the connections between the literal sex acts and the blurred lines of dean's familial relationships allow for a reading of incest between both john and dean and sam and dean.

it never mattered whether johndean or samdean had a sexual relationship in the canon because that was never the point. the point is the liminality that permeates the narrative. sam, dean, and john all stand upon a threshold between acceptable and taboo. the point of it all is the doubt and anxiety, the are-they-aren't-they that is never answered. the absence of incest within the text invites the understanding that the incest was, in fact, always there.

[snackboyz]

sensing a common theme here

[stump-not-found]

Did me sending that ask inevitably result in a poll with the overwhelming majority voting for bill to die, thus sealing his fate when it may have turned out otherwise had i not sent this question? have i doomed saved permanently affected us all? is Bill going to seek revenge upon my mortal soul for cursing his end? should i have never asked, thereby fucking around and finding out? i'm scared.. Find out on next episode of dragon ball z part of theseus' guide

here's the thing

[stardustedknuckles]

It's looking like there's a growing divide between Campaign watchers and Tlovm watchers in terms of like. We're here for the characters. 12-episode seasons aren't. They can't be. I'm already making peace with everything we'll lose in the Mighty Nein show, and I know I will enjoy it for what it is but I also know that almost nothing that made the story so special will translate to the screen, because turning it into a show automatically means (in this day and age) that plot must be the number one priority. They've already come out and told us it's going to be different, the characters we know and love but new stories.

Because that's how this has to work. And I feel bad for campaign one lovers, because while it is certainly the easier of the two to translate to a big, overarching story, even though it's a more "traditional" high fantasy story with easier archetypal characters, the archetypes and the plot aren't what cemented most people's love for the campaign. So much of the love for critical role is stored in the interpersonal dynamics and the payoff that comes from hundreds of hours of tiny interactions that one day become cornerstones of development and even affect or dictate the plot.

There's no room for that. There's no room for Bard's Lament in a story that cannot afford to remove and replace a main character. A lot of tlovm is for people who have been here for all of campaign one. Most of it, however, isn't. It's for a new crowd. While CR may have creative control, you can bet your ass that there were months and years devoted to figuring out how to map a character-focused love of the show into a plot that hits the right beats to be viable in the show market.

And it worked. Tlovm has consistently high viewing numbers, and its popularity has brought and will continue to bring new people into the universe who have never interacted with CR previously. That's not a bad thing - imagine finishing your favorite show and discovering it has another FIVE HUNDRED HOURS of the equivalent of behind the scenes content. That's incredible for these newcomers. But man, it is in many ways a loss for us.

[ariadne-mouse]

Caleb: yesterday was, ah, not great

Nott: yeah, well, we'll do better today, right?

Caleb: sure - sure we will

[allofthebeanz]

Hey guys, remember when Fraser said he thinks love at first sight happens and the shot focuses on Ray 'so this love at first sight is that legit' Kowalski? Like.. do you remember? Do we all remember that? WOW

[aliusfrater]

similar cinematographic choices to portray the same imagery with insanely different circumstantial contexts

[leifyposting]

a couple people asked for a jean analysis thread so…

Why I Love Repressed, Overburdened, Walking Dumpster Fire Jean Gunnhildr - And Why You 🫵 Should Too!

jean is NARRATIVELY and PERSONALLY vital to mondstadt's story and in this post i'll explain why

ok let’s go:

first off: jean is NARRATIVELY important to mondstadt because she acts as a representative for its most important themes and ideals

in other words: jean's story is the story of mondstadt itself

"but leify,” i hear you say, “shouldn't venti be the representative of mondstadt?”

well… yes and no! more on that later

but first let's talk about what the story of mondstadt even is:

in broad strokes, the story of mondstadt is the story of a people being given freedom - and using that freedom to confine themselves and others (see: vennessa)

it's the story of freedom offered but not demanded (see: dvalin)

to understand how jean's story matches up to this, we have to go all the way back to the archon war to meet her ancestor gunnhildr. unhappy with decarabian's rule, she led her clan outside the walls - and then returned to seek freedom for the people who were still trapped within

it's interesting to note that gunnhildr toppled a god - and then immediately became first priestess for another god. again: she was offered freedom from kings and authority, but since it was not demanded of her, she chose not to take it

fast forward to present day and the gunnhildr clan have become pretty much THE de facto protectors of mondstadt. there's an old joke in the taverns that "a gunnhildr learns to say 'for mondstadt as always' before learning to say 'mommy'"

but this duty isn't always a good thing!

the gunnhildrs have taken the freedom offered to them and chosen to confine themselves with it - to sacrifice it to uphold the freedom of the people around them

and jean is no exception. she's sacrificed her own freedom to become a protector of the freedom she doesn't get to taste

you can also see jean's mondstadt-representative traits in her relationships with the people around her

jean at her best uses her autonomy for the good of her people. jean at her worst uses it to imprison them (klee) and dictate what she feels is best for them (noelle)

if that sounds familiar, it might be because that's the major conflict between decarabian and boreas during the archon war

decarabian believed he was a good king, imprisoning his people "for their own good." boreas chose to die rather than make them sacrifice their freedom or wellbeing

and i’m not trying to argue that jean is wrong for the decisions she’s made re: klee or noelle. i think she’s doing the best she can under the circumstances!

what i AM trying to argue is that jean, like all her mondstadt forebears, is constantly trying to draw the line between freedom and constraint. this question of freedom without rules and rules without freedom is at the heart of her story - and of mondstadt's story as well

but wait!

back to venti for a moment. why wouldn't mondstadt's god be the representative of his own nation?

i think the simplest answer is that venti has long ago abdicated that position. in choosing to step down from his position of authority, he has in a sense let go of the right to dictate mondstadt's story. that's what it means to be a nation of true freedom!

okay but why is this important? who cares that jean's story mirrors mondstadt's or vice versa?

well - short answer is that what happens to jean in endgame will also be what happens to mondstadt

(assuming of course that the genshin writers don't fumble)

jean represents the best and the worst of mondstadt - but almost more importantly, she represents their 2000-year experiment in freedom

in the end, will mondstadt's people rise to the occasion and throw off the confines they and the gods have placed upon themselves? in the end, is freedom - even imperfect freedom - worth fighting for? the way genshin wraps up jean's story will reflect their answer to those questions

which brings me to my second point, which is that jean is PERSONALLY important to mondstadt - and to the whole mondstadt cast

it's pretty clear to see that the people of mondstadt love her. 20 playable characters have voice lines about her (some archons don't even have as many!)

but on a more meta level, jean is personally important to the mondstadt cast because her uprightness gives them someone to foil off of

in other words, jean's straightforward representation of mondstadt's ideals gives other characters the chance to interrogate those same ideals

for example: jean represents constraints placed on freedom - which offers klee the chance to interrogate the question of how far unchecked freedom truly goes

in the same vein, jean represents duty fulfilled - which gives diluc the chance to interrogate duty abandoned for love

i can keep going! if jean didn't represent justice carried out in the light of day, rosaria could not represent justice carried out in the dead of night. if jean didn't represent being rooted in her family legacy, kaeya could not represent being uprooted in his

i think of this role as a kind of narrative version of the straight man, which is a role that plays off the funny characters and that is used to heighten the comedy of a scene by reminding the audience of the baseline reality

ultimately, jean represents mondstadt to the player, revealing the themes that are most vital to the story - but she also represents mondstadt to ITSELF, reminding the characters around her of the nation's ideals, whether they then choose to stand in agreement or opposition

[sparring-spirals]

I was initially clipping this to capture the overwhelmingly accurate, absolutely devastating hilarity of "you went for realistic, and sadly, you nailed it". And then just kept recording because I really fucking love the discussion about how to balance the line between like:

You are trying to tell a story that feels good and gives you the kind of lift you might be looking for in an explicitly fantasy story,

vs

How to ensure it still feels grounded and rewarding in a way where you can "bring this good feeling back to earth" at the end.

Like they're talking about TTRPG's but they clearly make parallels to other forms of storytelling/worldbuilding mediums, like movies, and. like. Yeah. Yeah.

Like the framing of "you really recreated the feeling of powerlessness..." and wanting the fantasy element to manifest in there being the clearer, straightforward ways to solve complex issues, vs trying to ensure that you can have a victory and it feels feasible and substantial and applicable in some way, and has something you can take out of the fantasy world and hold with you back on "terra firma".

Its tricky! Its a tricky thing to balance, and I don't think there's a single "right" answer nor should there be because it depends. It depends on the story, and the intent, and the setting, and the medium, and etc. Big fan of this framework to explain it.