#but that is not actually relevant to the plot or important | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr was created by web developers David Karp and Marco Arment.

#but that is not actually relevant to the plot or important

ssgirl · 2 days

Text

Having some writer's block on my Tevan "Evan Buckley vs the HOA" fic. Still need to write most of the actual semi-plot relevant first half of this chapter. On the bright side I have the second half which is about 1200 words of domestic, family fluff that spawned from a throwaway line in the first half of the chapter written (And, most importantly, yes Jee does get to meet and pet Mr. Scruffles the dog). Here's a little preview from that half of the chapter:

After eating and cleaning up breakfast, Evan pulled out the clipboard that held the checklist he made for the lunch cooler and beach bag they would be taking to the waterpark. He walked over and took a knee in front of his niece’s chair, looking at her very seriously, “Okay, Miss Buckley-Han, you have a very important job this morning. You get to be in charge of the checklist, okay? You’ll read each item out and then Tommy and I will get it and put it in the bag or cooler. Once we put it in you can put a checkmark by the item on the list. Alright?”

Jee nodded excitedly while Tommy watched the two with a soft smile. She had inherited her uncle’s love of being in charge of a clipboard. Despite the earlier than intended start, today was definitely going to be a good day.

#911 abc #bucktommy #evan buckley #tevan #tommy kinard #jee yun buckley han #fluff #fanfic #Mr. Scruffles the dog

29 notes · View notes

rjalker · 2 years

Text

If you're publishing actual books then here's a tip:

Make sure the titles of your books are fucking relevant and memorable.

Exibit A of what not to do: The Murderbot Diaries.

The name for the whole series? Great. Descriptive. Can't be confused with anything else or easily forgotten.

The names for each individual story? Terrible.

They are, in chronological order (not publishing order), and the I only reason I know their names is from googling it despite having read each of these stories 4+ times now. This doesn't include the super short stories like the prequel or what I call book 4.5

All Systems Red

Artificial Condition

Rogue Protocol

Exit Strategy

Fugitive Telemetry

Network Effect

None of these titles are actually relevant to the story they tell in any meaninful, memorable way. I have read these books 4+ times now, and the only one whose title I can match up with its order is literally the first one, All Systems Red, because it's literally the first one.

The rest??? If you sent me a title at random I'd have no fucking clue which one it is or what happens in it!

These titles were very blatantly just chosen to follow a theme and sound cool and technological, and like,,,,,,that doesn't fucking work if you actually want people to be able to remember which one is which.

Let's compare this to another of Martha Wells' series, where she actually gives them memorable, meaningful titles!!!

The Cloud Roads

The Serpent Sea

The Siren Depths

The Edge of Worlds

The Harbors of the Sun

All of these titles are descriptive and relevant and meaningful to the story they tell! Once you read them, and hear the name, you're going to know exactly which one is which and what happened in it!

When picking a title for your books, do not just fucking pick some random words that sound cool but have nothing to do with your story! Even All Systems Red is kind of a fucking weird title for the story it actually tells. It sounds way more dramatic than it warrants.

None of The Murderbot Diaries book titles are actually descriptive or memorable in relation to the story they tell. Literally what in the fuck do the words "Rogue Protocol" have to do with the events of the third book??? If the title of your story requires readers to bend over backwards and reach for the farthest edges of their imagination to fit the title to the story, your title fucking sucks.

Your title is meant to do multiple things, including at its most basic, identify the story it tells. It has to be relevant and fitting with the theme of your story. The Cloud Roads does this. It's evocative, it's memorable, it's relevant, even if not literally.

Rogue Protocol does none of these things. Network Effect does none of these things. None of the titles for The Murderbot Diaries evoke anything of the story they tell.

This also applies to The Animorphs, but the Animorphs are absolute shit in every other way possible, so that's not surprising.

They are entirely and completely forgettable. And that's a problem, because literally the entire point of the title is that people remember and are able to identify it.

The titles could work if they were all just like,, normal short stories being published as a compilation. Like chapter titles. But they're not, they're separate books being sold by themselves.

More examples of titles that do their job correctly:

The Golden Compass

The Subtle Knife

The Amber Spyglass

All three of these titles are memorable and identifiable and relevant to the story they tell!

The Crystal Star

the only Star Wars book's name that I can ever remember off the top of my head. A major part of the plot is--you guessed it--a crystalized star!!!!

TLDR:

The title for your published book needs to be memorable and relevant, not just random cool sounding words!

#writing tips #writing advice #Rjalker reads The Murderbot Diaries #Rjalker reads The Books of The Raksura #And like Martha Wells did this with The City of Bones too.#like that title is useless.#yes there's some random offhand not actually relevant lore of people using bones #to tell fortunes.#but that is not actually relevant to the plot or important #there's no epidemico f people being murdered for their bones #it's a bad title #it coudl have worked if that was the name of a SERIES set within the same city #but it's literally just the one book that has next to nothing to do with using bones to tell the future!!!#so it's literally just there to sound cool and be irrelevant

31 notes · View notes

thefirstpaleontologist · 7 months

Text

you might think a show about 4 detectives solving a murder would be very pro cop but instead the show had all 4 detectives, individually and at different times, act outside of and go against the police institution in order to do what is right.

And they made all the other cop characters evil and corrupt.

#bodies 2023 #bodies Netflix #And even the detectives are shown to not be entirely good and do unethical things.#and the 4 detectives are all different minorities and being of said minorities is actually plot relevant and important #and. and most importantly. several cops die

670 notes · View notes

bidokja · 4 months

Note

as a fellow orv fan i think you have good taste. what is this damn reincarnation you speak of............

damn reincarnation—officially titled "my blasted reincarnated life" but who the fuck is gonna take that seriously. not me!—is a manhwa about hamel, one of the heroes who saved the world from the demon kings, but who tragically died just before the party could kill all of them. in hamel's final moments, vermouth—the strongest of the heroes—promises to kill the rest of the demon kings no matter what. hamel then reincarnates as the descendant of vermouth to find the world at peace as they'd all hoped...except the final few demon kings are still around. despite their promise, vermouth struck a deal with them instead of finishing them off.

just why did this happen? did vermouth betray him, or were there other reasons? are the demon kings really to be trusted? why did he reincarnate as vermouth's descendant? what happened to his former companions? what did they have to say about all this? are any of them still alive? who can he trust? just what is he meant to do?

this is what damn reincarnation is about. basically, i like it because of two reasons. one, the writing is well done. it's paced well, with plenty of room for characters to grow, for events to be set up and revealed, etc. low low bar but it solidly clears it which is more than i can say for plent of other similar series. and two...oh my god fucking finally a reincarnation series where the reincarnation bit is vitally relevant for the entire rest of the plot, not just a Get Strong Quick scheme that's never actually plot relevant aside from maybe an identity crisis angst chapter. like. it is a Get Strong Quick scheme too dgmw, I'm not saying damn reincarnation is a masterpiece or reinventing the wheel or anything, but it's just really engaging and fun to read.

#another series where the reincarnation is actually relevant is Duke Pendragon #though its more a Mix of regression and reincarnation #plot is good in that one #but the women arent just passively Meh theyre just Badly Written #which is a shame since their base personalities are varied and show potential #but they're like...never actually important and always end up relegated to 'mc fangirl' roles #it sucks lmao #but yknow. typical shitty misogynist action manhwa writing ykno #at least in damn reincarnation the girls/women are like. interesting and have their own stuff going on that Doesnt involve the mc #like. they do also revolve aeound the mc but its as much as any other character since hes like. The MC ykno dhskd #....ANYWAYS read damn reincarnation its Fun #ask #damn reincarnation

18 notes · View notes

titsthedamnseason · 10 months

Text

i’m much more excited now for the rwrb movie than i was originally because the clips actually look great but i still can’t get past them cutting june. LIKE THATS MY GIRL???? it feels like a betrayal to watch it without her. plus alex does not have only child energy AT ALL he is so little brother. and who is supposed to have homoerotic subtext with nora now? ellen is going to be giving terrible speeches. THEYRE ALL GOING TO CRUMBLE BECAUSE JUNE WAS THE MOST LEVEL HEADED PERSON IN THAT WHOLE BOOK

#and look….not that bea isn’t important in her own way as well #primarily in terms of keeping henry sane #but if they were going to cut a sister she has like 10 times less relevance in terms of actual plot #rwrb #rwrb movie #mine

34 notes · View notes

thefirstknife · 1 year

Note

Mara said Nezarec is out of the picture so does that mean it's over? That was all there was for Nezarec :(

Pretty much yeah! We might get some extra info on his role in the Collapse, but he is not going to be an active character in the future. Link to the video where she says it.

And he never was an active character! This is something that I actually wanted to touch on because I've seen way too many comments and sentiments about Nezarec that are incredibly incorrect. A lot of it is on Bungie's handling of this lore, which I and others have spoken about at length before; the introduction was clumsy and disjointed and left a lot of people wondering about how relevant he is.

But also a lot of it is on the fandom mystification of random story elements and characters, as well as the fandom's inability to distinguish between important topics and curiosities that exist to spice up the setting. This is a problem in general with media, not just Destiny. Fandoms tend to not have a filter when it comes to things mentioned in the story and the setting. The truth is that some things that are mentioned are simply not important or are less important and will never be brought up again.

Long post below where I go into details about this trend in the community and specifically about Nezarec, tangentially related to the ask:

A really good example for this is Suraya Hawthorne. I know. I want more about her too. She was a really cool character and I love getting updates about her. But is she relevant and important enough to have more special storylines dedicated to her? Not really. A part of it is on the fact that she has fulfilled her character arc back in vanilla. She served as the human element to the Red War and was a face for the civilians impacted by the invasion. She served as someone who survived due to her exceptional skill and reluctance to join the rest of us in the City; she was not there when the attack happened, which saved her. Her survival skills in the wild helped her survive while on the run and allowed her to save others, including us! She fought alongside everybody to retake the City, a place she shunned but nonetheless felt connected to.

It ended with her accepting her role as an exceptional human that can help the City grow; she accepted that her potential is fulfilled when she joins everyone else in the City and helps humanity, instead of pretending that everyone should live on their own in the wilds. Destiny is inherently about people coming together against insurmountable odds and Suraya's story showcases that and ends with her understanding that message. Her story is over. There is nothing more to be said. Outside of small lore snippets that are really nice to see (Suraya playing Guardian Games, Suraya visiting her dads often), there is nothing to add to Suraya's story and theme. Sometimes we have to understand when a character arc ends. It's a good thing. The story has been told in a cohesive way and it ended.

There's also meta reasons such as VA availability. Amanda fills almost the same niche as Suraya and her VA is available since she also voices Caiatl so Amanda featured more often than Suraya. This also doesn't mean that no story can ever be made involving this character; just that expecting her to be a part of some big ongoing plot is not reasonable. Getting minor updates is fine.

There's a lot of this in Destiny. The game has A LOT of characters. There are plenty of others that fit the same issue as Suraya; their stories have concluded or they weren't as important as people thought in the first place. We always want more about our blorbos, no matter how niche they are. Sometimes, the more niche they are, the more attractive they are. The element of mystery often makes the interest skyrocket.

This is where Nezarec comes in. I want people to fully understand that Nezarec was just a name mentioned twice. He was never a character. It's highly unlikely that he was created with the idea of him being a disciple in mind; he was created as a mystery. It's a cool sounding name on a cool looking exotic with a mysterious lore tab. This immediately sparks people's curiosity. Nezarec's Sin was literally the only information about this character we had.

I've seen a lot of people claiming that Nezarec was a huge thing being set up for 5 years; this is simply incorrect. He is definitely a concept that was of personal interest to people who like digging and imagining solutions to mysteries, but he was never "set up." It was a cool name. The fandom created and enhanced the mystery around it, trying to "solve" who that was for years. The game did nothing to encourage this until Season of the Haunted.

There was a brief mention in Y2 where Drifter mentions that he's been to the "Fourth Tomb of Nezarec." Or rather, Shin mentions that Drifter mentioned it. This was meant to sound cool. That's all. You can tell because Shin mentions other mysterious things that Drifter claimed he's seen, none of which have ever been given the same scrutiny because people understand that they are supposed to be cool names;

"He says he's seen the deep side of Jupiter. Been to the Core Mines of Saturn. Name drops old myths no one's heard—the Luvial Crux, the Shift Chasms Below Elios, the Fourth Tomb of Nezarec. Goes on about the Idols of Lower Sul, the Treasure of Exodus Prime, the Solar Engine of Dead Star-Six.

Every single one of these is a "cool name" concept that you can speculate about for a thousand years. They don't mean anything, or at least they didn't in 2018. Nezarec only popped out because the exotic exists and people started imagining, again, that this is some incredible set up for epic reveals in the future about a character that will become super important and relevant and be the raid boss or whatever.

In a lot of writing, especially big ongoing MMO games and projects that last for years, things will be mentioned to spice up the setting and its mystery and size without the writers actually knowing or even planning to ever know what those things are. But then later, if they ever need to use something, they can look at those unexplained mysteries and pick one and use it to explain current content. It's easier than coming up with something brand new AND it gives you credit with the diehard fans who will see their niche blorbo being explained.

I can't confirm this obviously because I don't work for Bungie, but this is most likely what happened to Nezarec. He was never planned as a disciple, he was never planned as a big player or a huge character or a huge reveal. It was a mystery to make the setting exciting.

When they needed mysterious cursed artifacts for the pirate season AND they needed to tie that in with the current big story (Witness and its disciples) AND they needed to tie it with a location they can use AND that location has to be something known to people and mysterious in of itself AND they need a reason to talk about a very important historical event that shaped the world (the Collapse) which was also reframed in the current expansion by Savathun telling us we don't know anything about it = "revealing" that Nezarec was a disciple tied to the Lunar Pyramid whose body is used as evil artifacts is the perfect solution. Why invent a new character when you can name drop people's niche blorbo?

I'm mentioning this because people still insist that Nezarec was some huge mystery planned for years that kept us teased and primed for the eventual huge reveal. In reality, it really wasn't. That's personal bias talking, which I am also a subject to because I was obsessing about a name mentioned in two lore tabs as well. But it's important to recognise when the game is actually setting up an important plot point and when it's not.

All that said, you'd think that it doesn't really matter HOW it came to this. It only matters that now, Nezarec is no longer just a niche lore tab; he is a character! Which is true, to a certain extent. Once again, people tend to overblow the importance of something that is perceived as a big reveal.

Nezarec is certainly a character, but he is not an active one. He has been established as dead and gone ever since he was first mentioned. There have been vague hints about how he persists after death and how "he shall rise again." Persisting after death is not uncommon in the Destiny universe (Ahamkara are the most notable example), but it doesn't mean the character is active. Hints about him wanting to return are there, but don't necessarily signify that the character WILL return. Just that he wants to, as our villains tend to want. It's not exactly something to write home about? Taniks came back like 8 times and he's not even a disciple of the Witness (that we know of...............).

In Plunder, it was definitively established that Nezarec is dead and has been dead for a millennium. It was established that his body parts still have residual energy that whispers and influences people, but that keeping them apart effectively nullifies it. It was also established that these things can be cleansed and used for good, effectively ending Nezarec's influence and ambitions to return. Which is what happened and was always going to happen.

He is a character from our past who was always meant to be a mystery. Any further extrapolation of what that means is purely fandom speculation and fandom overhype of a name. He doesn't have a personality, he doesn't have a character arc, he doesn't have a story, he doesn't have relationships. Some of these might be explored in the context of the Collapse if they're relevant. He is part of our history and always was. Whatever the fans decided to overthink about him is on the fans.

And that's fun! I still like overthinking about him and speculating. Enrichment! The problem is when Bungie eventually says "there is nothing more to this" and people get disappointed and angry because of ideas they themselves conjured out of thin air. Bungie never gave us any reason to think that Nezarec is the next big villain that we will talk to and fight in the game. No more than they are implying that any of those mysteries mentioned by Shin are going to be new in-game locations or raid bosses.

Again, a lot of this is obviously on the storytelling itself. While there are obvious markers of stuff that's just here to enrich the setting and make players think and speculate and imagine, sometimes these markers aren't clear or they don't land well. I think with Nezarec a lot of this has to do with the additional hype created by the relase of Nezarec's Whisper glaive in Haunted that casually dropped flavour text about him being a disciple after not having heard of this niche mystery for 5 years. People lost their minds (me included) because that was an obvious hint that he is no longer purely a mystery.

And then we had to wait three more months in which people speculated to hell and back and conjured a story about how he MUST be an incoming next big bad disciple for us to fight. Only to be told, in Plunder, that he's a corpse. People's instinct is to say "No WAY they brought this guy back after 5 years just to have him be body parts." But there was never anything to "bring back." He was a name. Plunder gave information about that name. It's not like there was a treasure trove of information before or a promise that this specific concept will be the next villain.

Much like Destiny community insisting there's a secret mission when there isn't one, they're like that with this type of lore as well. Parsing through the overwhelming amount of information to figure out which bits and pieces are relevant and which are flavour for the setting is difficult, but it's something that has to be done. Every character is the most important character to someone in the community, every niche concept mentioned once is the most important next big hint to someone. And sometimes they will be correct! But in most cases they will not. And instead of sighing and moving on, a lot of it turns into "the writers are bad" spiel.

And sure. Everyone makes a bad storytelling decision sometimes. But that includes the fans as well. We can all be exceptionally bad at recognising and distinguishing between intended important events, plots and themes and those that are background information meant to enrich the setting.

Personal example would be the Aphelion. I desperately want to know more. I want an entire expansion about this. I think this is one of the most fascinating things in the entire setting. But that's just my personal preference. Bungie never explicitly stated that the Aphelion is some incredibly important concept that will be explored in the future. It's a flavour. It's meant to be mysterious. It's meant to be a cool scifi concept. I would love to see more, but if I never do, I will understand why that is. Bungie can obviously flip the switch and actually turn this into a big plot if they want to at any point in time, but we can't be angry with them if they don't.

This was not entirely related to the ask, but I had the need to write something about this anyway and it sort of fits. I've seen a lot of this recently especially with Nezarec. People have been claiming that Bungie "wasted" the potential of a super important character like Nezarec to end with him being turned into soup. They also tend to insist that it's impossible that his story is over and that he will still be some big villain or that it will turn out that he is possessing Osiris or something. The latter of which makes zero sense since Osiris had a storyline akin to this already. He will not have it again. I hope we can put that to rest. Osiris is Osiris and he will remain Osiris.

And the truth is that Nezarec was never an important character. He was never set up for anything extraordinary in the future. He is a curiosity from our past that has ties to the Collapse. He certainly WAS important in-setting for whatever happened back then, but he is now dead. Bungie didn't "waste" anything; whatever importance the fans projected onto Nezarec was the fans' own invention.

Remember back in Splicer when a completely new dialogue dropped where Mithrax mentioned the old Eliksni legend about "Skira the Watcher" and how it terrorised the Eliksni for a long time? And how it sparked about 7 billion posts and videos and theories about who this is and how this is hinting to the next big bad and how it has ties to everyone and everything and how this is obviously the next raid boss or whatever? Yeah. Does anyone remember now? Not really. It wasn't a hint for the next big bad. It was what it said on the tin; an old Eliksni legend.

Furthermore, Mithrax explained how it was defeated before the Eliksni had the Traveler and they did so by staying silent about it. I don't think that really spells "raid boss" or "big bad." Whatever it was, pre-Golden Age Eliksni were able to deal with it. It's probably not the Witness' next greatest agent.

Curiously, the new dungeon is called "Spire of the Watcher." I could make a clickbait video about this. Is there a connection for real though? Unlikely. And Bungie will not have "wasted the potential" of it to be, because it's not supposed to be. There's a difference between something being possible and something being probable. It's always possible because Bungie controls the setting, but it's not very probable.

You can genuinely make any connection to anything and blow a single mention of some lore thing out of proportion. And sometimes you'll be correct! A single lore mention of something called "Nefele Stronghold" led me, and others, to the conclusion that Rasputin has to be involved somehow with the story of Neomuna before Lightfall and that Rasputin needs to be brough up as a season this year. And we were correct!

To an extent, we were also correct that Nezarec was more than a flavour text on an exotic helmet. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he's the next big thing. Sometimes things are mildly important, or just temporarily important or important just for specific context. Just because something exists in the setting or was important in the setting once before, doesn't mean that it will remain important forever or that its narrative arc can't end.

#destiny 2 #nezarec #long post #lore vibing #ask #this has been on my mind for a while now and this was a good opportunity to touch on it #we all love our blorbos but we have to be able to understand that not all of them are important enough to be a persistent plot #some things are just cool. some things have been dealt with. some things are both (siva...)#there are characters we like and want the game to be dedicated just to them but they've really wrapped up the extent of their story #i don't think we'll get any significant mentions of shiro-4 again for example. would i like it? yes! is it likely? not really #most of the time our blorbo mind overstates the actual plot and setting relevance of a character #and of course. bungie can literally change that at any moment #but for most of the stuff they won't #we have to be able to recognise when to stop expecting it and name calling writers because they haven't picked up on ...#... a plotline about our faves that are objectively not crucially important characters #and ofc it's okay to be sad about it!#if it were up to the fans then every single little detail would have 100 hours of gameplay dedicated to it

44 notes · View notes

vonkarma2 · 3 months

Text

bullshitting oc lore wrt what the afterlives are like the first one you wake up as a furry with no memories in an ancient rome slash wild west type society but also everyone is subject to mind control from a giant tree on occasion. but like its a recognizeable world in which you can live. when you die in that you are reincarnated into a 2 dimensional white void of shape and color and turn into waves and circles that disperse across an endless plane and eventually fade into nothing and also linear time does not exist because everyones souls are turned into art on a canvas observed by some inexplicable third (?) dimensional entity. but tbh I havent put much thought into what the fourth world is like maybe I should make everyone reincarnate into like 2003 canada where you have to live as a minimum wage gas station employee who gets shot in a robbery after a year and thats how they move on to the next life. anything can happen

#this is joking I do want to flesh that aspect of the world out more and take it seriously bc I think its conceptually very interesting #+its pretty important to make it thematically + aesthetically coherent at the very least lol #even if its not relevant to the main plot #I did want to make the world a little bit more surreal bc i feel like that would go with the theme of not focusing on big abstract concepts #instead of peoples actual well being #its like against dissociating from reality or putting yourself inside a false narrative i guess. is part of the point #or at least shows up with a lot of characters especially rocio and angel #i know thats pretty vague I do want to clarify it lol and focus on more specific implementations. of that #my ocs

4 notes · View notes

cluescorner · 1 year

Text

We better be burning Irminsul in Yoimiya’s SQ because otherwise why the fuck was that scene in the Fatui reveal trailer making us go all insane? FOR REAL WE ARE FUCKING FINISHED WITH SUMERU AT THIS POINT THE MOMENT YOIMIYA’S SQ IS DONE WE ARE LIKELY NO LONGER HAVING PERMANENT CONTENT THAT IS MAJORITY BASED IN SUMERU! And if we burn Irminsul in an event, something that new players have no way to access in-game, I am going to fucking scream.

#genshin impact #yoimiya #honestly I hope she burns it #hell yeah girly become plot-relevant you have earned it #I don't actually think this will happen but bro imagine how funny #Yoimiya sets off a firework so big it literally explodes the fuckin earth #sumeru #it's time to say goodbye to it soon #RIP to a confusing region that can't decide if it wants inequality between the desert folk and rainforest folk to be relevant or important #I just want to burn Irminsul and kiss Jeht on the mouth and then we can dip #imagine if Dottore shows up in Yoimiya's SQ and it's like 'IDK who tf you are but you look like the shadiest mfer alive so lets fight'#Yoimiya kills a guy who can rival the gods more at 8

3 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

frankypyjammas-blog

MOeFist

killmygoldenn

netamoto

movie/novel

spanglypants-mcfuckyou

Provence Residence

theepoxyresins

The Epoxy Resin Store