#coherent plot lines

[foldingfittedsheets]

I had another rom com dream, and since it was pretty coherent I’ll share.

A girl is meant to be going on a date with a guy she’s liked for a long time. She shows up but her date doesn’t. She’s sitting at the bar depressed when a Hot Girl shows up and commandeers her night with a force of personality like a hurricane. The First Girl is like. Oh. Okay, guess my night is gonna be crazy and follows the Hot Girl on a series of wild and exuberant adventures.

They get closer throughout the night and it becomes clear it’s absolutely a date. In a quiet moment after the adrenaline from running out of their latest troublemaking wears off the Hot Girl admits she has a confession. She was the guy, back before she transitioned. She didn’t want to miss out on a date with the First Girl because she’d had a crush on her for a long time, but she also was too scared to come clean at first.

The First Girl is tired, and stunned (possibly concussed) from their wild night and is trying to process hearing that. But the Hot Girl is so tense and ready for rejection that she stands up and says “Whatever, I can see from your face you don’t accept me, I’m leaving”. The First Girl tries to call her back but she’s too upset and flees the scene.

So the First Girl goes on a crusade trying to contact the Hot Girl, enlisting her friends, calling her, sending letters, all to no avail. The Hot Girl is too scared to pick up and deal with her feelings. So the First Girl starts walking the city calling the name of the Hot Girl’s dog, hoping that the dog will run over dragging his owner behind him. Bizarrely, this works. (He was a really cute corgi, not sure how he dragged anyone).

Hot Girl is upset that First Girl won’t leave her alone and First Girl pulls out a list to read to the Hot Girl. But Hot Girl interrupts and says she isn’t interested in hearing anything on the list because she already knows it’s First Girl ripping into her for being deceitful. First Girl finally loses steam in the face of all this rejection and just drops the list, turning to walk away.

Hot Girl looks down and sees that the list is all the things First Girl loved about their date with lots of doodles and scribbles about their fun adventures. Hot Girl realizes she’s been a total ass and runs after her. She confesses how scared she’s been to open up and come out after her transition and First Girl just kisses her and says how long she’s been waiting to do that. The end, I woke up after that.

#rom com #ramblies #love story #it was all in all a really coherent plot line #the dog was like a cartoon whereas everything else was real so that was a little weird #dream #story #writing #ffs foibles

[panvani]

I actually finished Monster a few days ago but I will state my feelings on it for posterity's sake: I think Monster, while composed of a number of well written and evocative vignettes, ultimately fails to execute its overall emotional arc well. If the story had been explicitly framed episodically with an overarching B-plot connecting these episodes, I might feel more positively towards it, but the fact that it must nominally develop its "main plot" each chapter while devoting most of its screen time to tangentially related stock characters was extremely frustrating. None of the twists or reveals actually felt consequential because information about the main plot is fed to you so painstakingly and in a way that's so repetitive that its conclusion is largely predictable and almost anticlimactic.

Monster ultimately does not do a very good job of developing any of its main cast. Its story and characters warp around Tenma, who is just not very interesting. I was frankly just fed up with him and the unilateral adoration that every character holds for him by the end of the story. Nina was extremely underdeveloped for the character she should have been and supposedly was within the story and any pathos that could have been elicited by her was neutered by first having her be barely present for the vast majority of the story, and second by also relegating her into being a Guy Who Just Loves Tenma. Eva was probably the closest any character had to a real character arc and her writing was just so absurdly misogynistic for nearly the entire story I couldn't enjoy any time she was on screen. Johan should have been an interesting character, but the manga got so long and drawn out that by the end I was just fed up with him.

The story overall was weirdly saccharine in a way that felt almost childish in contrast to its intended tone, and while that's not in itself a bad thing, its attempts to portray humanity as Overall Good felt simplistic and often cheap. It kinda goes hand in hand with how horribly it attempts to address WWII. "Well, The Nazis Felt Really Bad About It" and "If You Think About It, Japanese People Were The Real Victims" are not, uh. Themes that show a willingness to contend with complex morality or any real belief in human goodness aside from superficial self-reassurance. Also Urasawa Naoki is insanely insanely insanely afraid of sex.

Ultimately I think Monster would have been way, way better if it had just been shorter and had treated its main plot in any reasonable manner. It had a lot of interesting, evocative moments, and a lot of the ideas of the main plot could have been really good to chew on if the main plot hadn't lost momentum long before it was actually wrapped up. Nina and Johan are given very interesting treatment on occasion, and I have been thinking about their characters and relationship quite a bit since finishing Monster, but the plot was so bogged down in the Various Extraneous Dipshits and the need to conform every aspect of Nina's character around Tenma that there's no actual interesting conclusion to be drawn from them.

I think on an arc-by-arc level, Monster is quite well written, and it has a few really strong moments. It just makes such poor use of its format overall that it sours the whole experience.

#logxx #I feel like it legit would have been better if the story began with no explanation of Tenma's background or why he's running around Germany #And everything had been addressed on an arc-by-arc basis with the Tenma stuff being built up such that the Nina and Johan stuff #Is compiled/addressed almost entirely within a final arc #Instead of the way it was actually executed where it feels like Urasawa forgot about the main plot ofr like 5 chapters #And then threw in some bullshit line or event so it could be nominally claimed that the plot was progressed #The need to stretch out information that... was literally in universe resolved over a single conversation over several chapters #Was incredibly frustrating #Also the bizarre transmisogyny moment with Johan which would have been bad in any case #But at least would have felt actually relevant and coherent within the text IF THE THING IT WAS FORESHADOWING WASN'T DRAWN OUT OVER 3 ARCS #UGHH

[meg-noel-art]

Aaahhh! Your OCs are so precious!! That smooch is perfection. I also love their hair! Do they have lore? (If you wanna share!)

hellOOO THANK YOU!! Ask me about my OCs and I'll never stop ✋️😭

I AM working on lore. I have bits and pieces of a larger universe and cast of characters. But it's sorta haphazard and while I've posted bits in my other OC works I've put here, my tldr is that my OC universe is a More Mature combo of AtLA and She-Ra (spop).

These two, just literally sun and moon gays,,,like aesthetically and also they just have sun and moon magic powers 😭😭😭

#I'm trying HARD to make a coherent plot line #and a more defined world #but it's HARD #slow going #for now...many doodles #thank you SO MUCH for asking #asks #oc universe #original character #oc #salamanders-please #have a good day!

[heretherebedork]

Okay, so I got Gun and Korn mixed up again, I think. But I have no idea what's going on with Gun and Pitch and Zo and the complicated relationship there. Very sad to have gotten no GunPitch scenes, those are my favorite and I love a piner pining after another piner who's pining for someone else... it's so... piningfull.

But I do like the idea of Pitch and Zo, they are cute and Zo's pining is serious. He's tiny and jealous and trying not to be so hard. I still like Gun and Pitch a lot, honestly, but I don't think Gun is leaning that way. He's got his own stuff going on and lots of it. But who knows!!? They can't even settle on a name for him.

At least Weha and Wayu are cute and still going with no hint of a pause. Just very sweet boys who have each other's backs and are slowly falling in love despite rules that say they're not allowed to do that and I appreciate it deeply.

(Oh, hey, am I the only one who was hoping Pitch had actually fainted on the stage for the Drama of it All? Because I very much was)

I saw this shot and instantly thought of @respectthepetty which is doubly amusing because they're dressed like this for their show characters so... you know... theming is on point in the fictional BL inside the real BL?

This show is just the soap opera of BLs with too many characters, too many names and subtitles in which every character has like five different names depending on who's typing them, apparently.

I have given up on about half the cast but I think I've got, like four or five of them down.

#house of stars #bl series #thai bl #thai drama #thai series #thaibl #bl drama #thai bl series #asianlgbtqdramas #asian lgbtq dramas #this is a soap opera to end soap operas #i mean at least one person is in a mental hospital #there's a guy cheating on his fake girlfriend who thinks she's his real girlfriend #there's a stalker #there's a BL being made in the BL #there's everything #except a coherent plot line and character names and distinguishing characteristics between everyone #you know everything else

[tomwambsmilk]

really curious to see how people's finale opinions will develop once we get some distance.... personally I feel like I'm still reeling so hard from the gut-level emotional response that it's difficult to really assess or analyze it esp. within the framework of the whole show and I kind of wonder if others feel the same

#I think it was overall EXCELLENT but there are specific nitpicky things i have gripes about i think? #but whenever i try to express them i actually talk myself into liking them lmao #so I think its an emotional response #ngl I'm a little surprised by just how bleak the ending is bc I dont think the show has ever been so unreservedly bleak #usually there's always a silver lining. a glimmer of hope #like the s3 finale - they fail but they fail together #and so even tho I expected a tragic ending I expected. something??? some tiny little glimmer of something positive?? #and I think that feeling is amplified by the abruptness of the ending #but like. all the individual plot beats and character arcs are 1000% yes. make sense and are thematically coherent #so im like. i dont actually have a reason for my gripes about the ending beyond. huh. not what i expected #and even then gripe is a strong term because i do LIKE it im just like. wow. that sure is a lot to process #still not 100% sure how i feel about it i think

[snow-and-saltea]

i know that in media you're constrained with things like budget, time slots and stuff, but sometimes i'm just like. my god. the insane shortcuts people take to write "smart / intelligent" characters, especially in plot-heavy stories, always pisses me off. they write them like they're sherlock holmes (bbc version, derogatory) but they fail to realise that even sherlock holmes (arthur conan doyle) was written with a lot of thought, suffered his own subconscious prejudices and had to learn from mistakes.

i guess what i'm trying to get at is—"smart" people don't magically get good at things overnight, the only difference between them and others is how much they're willing to go through to hone their mental acuity. which means when they try something new, they're going to make obvious mistakes, not understand how things work beyond the surface level, and make mistakes in judgements (like when you don't understand something well enough, your analogies and metaphors aren't 100% accurate or concise).

but it feels like there's a assumption hanging over our heads that, as readers, we don't WANT to see the smart one go through the entire nitty gritty of the learning process. we just want to see them do cool things, piece the puzzle together with a flourish, and clap our hands at the end. and in some parts, yes! that is what i want to see! but i am also interested in how they pieced it together. the joy of mysteries is, to me, that everyone is exposed to the same pieces of information, and we're given the chance to try to piece it ourselves. but then the smart character comes along and interprets those pieces of information in a not-obvious way to us, and it's cool!! years of living with a mind that is primed to turn things over in their head, to make sense of things, reveals to us how differently we experience the same reality, and it's wonderful. i'm able to learn from someone who sees life differently than me, and interpret information differently than me!

but right now i'm often left out feeling flat and confused in the mystery-type plots i've seen. the smart person will have been exposed to information we didn't even get the chance to see and interpret, and then they piece things together and everyone in the story claps their hands at the artificial pedestal that's been propped up under that character's feet. explanations of in-setting magic that can be retconned in and out at any point in time, so there's no logical consistency for us to nitpick or understand, so there's no basis to stand on that the story should be taken seriously. plot twists that make no sense as a gotcha. so many things!!

like. this particular example just my beef with g*nshin, so ignore it if you don't agree or smth. but the use of red herrings in the stories piss me off. the red herrings are either too obvious or nonexistent. they always use some random guy acting suspiciously and have the other characters react to it, as if we can't understand it on our own? but like. these red herrings, in the real world, aren't even red herrings. sometimes people just "act suspiciously" just by virtue of being human, not because they're complicit in some bigger overarching plot. sometimes people just stutter because of their anxious disposition, not to hide a guilty conscience. sometimes people are just defensive and irritable because they're a defensive and irritable person, it doesn't mean they're the ""bad guy"" who you need to crack down on and interrogate even further, especially if there's literally nothing that indicates this character is guilty other than their outward appearances.

but like. the smart characters/protagonist almost never get proven wrong. the stutterer was guilty all along and they're just a bad liar. the defensive guy is selfish and obnoxious, they're defensive because they're hiding something, not because it's a natural reaction on having one's sense of privacy and personal space violated.

the game sure loves trying to do nuance with "not everyone is 100% good or bad, we're all Flawed" but they can't put their money where their mouth is. everyone who is not guilty acts in completely transparent and "good" ways. everyone who is guilty acts in completely opaque and "suspicious" / "bad" ways. end of story. how the hell am i supposed to think anyone in this game is smart when they don't even have to use their brain to sift through, critique, weigh and interpret information? what use is there to do so? just use your eyes and ears. the stutterer is nervous for hiding a secret. the anxious is guilty. the angry is scornful.

there's also another rant here about how g*nshin fucking sucks at writing unique and flawed characters, because they like to make everyone the Specialest Guy In The World, but that's for another day.

#yuu rambles #☠️☠️☠️☠️ #they got better at writing plots with f*ntaine i have to admit. but im going to expect better from the company that makes millions #every month from character banners. if you're going to be a gacha game that exploits people who are prone to addictive habits #you better have a good fkn story to back up for being a blight on society's moral problems. we have enough of those already #also when i mean they got better with f*ntaine i literally meant i was impressed by the bare minimum #as in they finally followed coherent story beats and had decent pacing #ive also had enough of the bullshit magic explanations using ley lines and shit. its so stupid that they even make their in game characters #explain how ''no one really understand how it works but it doesnt matter here's what happened as a result'' #what a waste of talent and money paying the VAs for that kinda bullshit infodump #ok i think thats enough tags for the algorithm to hide my #genshin impact #tag bc i dont want this to show up randomly to ppl who are just vibing and enjoying the game #im critical for my own reasons but i dont want to be a party pooper. you know what i mean? #anyways yeah see ya #also censored a lotta stuff so it doesnt show up in the post tags LMAO

[allegorism]

while i think it's fair to worry about how much they're going to change certain stuff, i also think there's Way too much doomposting surrounding bg3's changes in characterisation

#'they changed lae'zel' its literally a greeting. #which changes w different levels of affinity #and according to what i've read it was always in the game files but wasn't working? #she's pretty much still the same in the main plot and in her romance #and the whole thing w gale being more lenient about the magic items is literally bc he would leave if you closed the inventory #without giving him anything #like literally the only real change in characterisation that i've seen has been astarion and his opinion on the mizora thing #that and the gortash gay letters that were changed #other than that the changes have only added scenes (mostly related to epilogue stuff which may have felt lacking at first) and fixed bugs #i will also say that wyll's part in all of this has been Very lacking because he truly needs more content in comparison to astarion #but if they're willing to listen to fans? maybe they Will add stuff? #and about the added lines to the gortash scene.... adding more dialogue options is Not changing the characterisation of a character #it's literally giving you more options. if you don't like them you can literally NOT press the button #OH. i've just remembered. halsin's new thing. not going romantic on you if you didn't flirt with him #that's also another characterisation change i noticed. but that's a coherent one #if you didn't flirt with halsin why would he. yk. #anyways. i'm seeing too much doomposting. worrying about this is normal but people are being so pessimistic #mona.txt

[theprissythumbelina]

Planning on redoing my WIP/introduction page, any tips on more/better things to put on it?

#writeblr intro #writer advice #wip intro #I think I'm def going to expand the characters #and now that I have a 1/2 coherent plot line #need to update tags too

[netheris]

The overwhelming urge to write/draw an entire graphic novel, but the lack of motivation to draw, think of an actual story and plot, and no idea what to actually write.

Oh the humanity!

#i wish i could just #*manifests art* #and boom there's page 1 #also wish my ADHD riddled brain could stitch enough details together to create a full coherant plot line for once in my life #i want to write #i want to draw #but without any of the hard parts which is most of it #graphic novel #writing #writer problems #artists problems

[silverislander]

prof said congrats for writing up a proposal so early i am going to get a good grade in. well this is literally going to be graded. but yk the meme

#i really hope its decent proposals are really hard for me to write. i never really understand how much im supposed to say #also i dont plan stuff in advance! i hate drafts and proposals why cant i just jump in and run w my topic #i dont Know exactly what im going to cover just yet can i get back to you once ive covered it #levi.txt #i spent One page just opening the two page proposal so. i know it needs some cleaning up #but the last time i wrote one of these i only got a 75 (not a bad grade but i could do significantly better) bc. and i am not kidding. #i wrote a several page intro abt the themes of a story i was super pumped to write. and forgot the /plot characters and title/ #a 75 was honestly generous. that prof already liked me and knew my work so i got very lucky #also i just think the guy im working with for my essay is so cool and i want to impress him bfhshsk #ive taken 2 classes with him before he is so smart and so enthusiastic. i was 1 of only 3 who was there for every class both times #everyone whos helped me has been so cool and very nice to me i want to do a good job and prove that im as capable as they think #and also jesus fucking christ ive worked so hard for this degree PLEASE #if i dont get honours im walking into the forest laying down and letting the fae take me as they will #side note: i have 1.5 movies left (its late and im finishing army of the dead tomorrow + watching evil dead rise)!! thats so exciting #theyve (mostly) been really fun and i feel like i have a really good general idea of where im going w my essay now #the movie eras are starting to kind of organize themselves into coherent themes in my mind #i think its smth along the lines of racism/xenophobia -> social change -> satanic panic -> action and militarism -> prejudice/bias #and i actually think were in smth of a thematic reckoning w zombies rn as a culture that im excited to discuss!! #for so long weve accepted that zombies arent people but weve really been starting to interrogate that since abt the mid 2010s #w tropes like searching for a cure (not just a vaccine) or movies like warm bodies or evil dead where you can truly turn back #and im really excited to see where the future takes the zombie genre!!

[awestruck-atrophy]

hi yes hello what happened this episode

#loki #loki season 2 #what is happening #I feel like that’s the general consensus for this episode though #loki spoilers #loki s2 spoilers #I feel like I zoned out at the beginning and came back but yk. that might be the dissociation #this is starting to. Hello? Was this a coherent plot line???

[drunk-on-starlight]

So, you think Burntrap and Glitchtrap are Afton?

I don't think steel wool knows at this point.

#Fnaf #I don't think there's a yes or no answer because I don't think the plot is coherent enough to guess #What I will say is burntrap doesn't make much sense as the mimic. Unless Gregory was being real generous when he said a long time #Mimic1 doesn't line up with glitchtraps behavior either.

[mkstrigidae]

!!!!!! I FINALLY managed to map out the ch 16/17 outline for APWH!!! (16 and 17 because it's all thematically similar but it's gonna be literally seventy pages or something if it all goes in one chapter so we're breaking it up)

The good news about that, other than the fact that this part's been stumping me for ages, is that chapters 18 and 19 are MUCH clearer in my mind and have been planned out for a while.

Anyways i'm super tired but really excited about that

#my writing process #just apwh things #personal #fanfiction #i've been thinking of the story as having sort of 2 major parallel plot lines #The Winterfell theater and the Braavos theater #Winterfell is Sansa/Robin/The Starks/etc. and is honestly the harder of the two to write because it involves a lot of emotional nuance #and keeping up with the eight million people who seem to be currently occupying winterfell #versus the Braavos theater which encompasses the course of the investigation and is headed up by Oberyn and Daemon #which is more about procedural aspects and requires me to keep my timelines METICULOUS #and double back a lot like 'is this plausible? is this how investigations work?' #like 'what makes the most sense for them to uncover next and how does it drive both theaters forward?' #because that reveal at the end of chapter 15 is gonna end up being a big fuckin deal in case i haven't been obvious enough with it haha #god there is NOTHING like the feeling of your plot actually managing to come together in a semi coherent way

[manifestmerlin]

Anyways I had to rush a semi major assignment done in like. An Hour before it was due after trying and failing to work on it allll night and getting no sleep at all. Why? Because i was busy reading Alternate Universe by Unda and going insane thoughts in the tags.

#unlike the other two unda fics ive read #where the title is basically just a one off line from an early chapter #the title really matters here and not becahse it gets meta like mce! #also while i liked it a LOT im unsure if thisll be one i reread much. mce has that crown with like. a billion already. #i reread mce and reread it eight after #and occaisionally reread parta of dbdc but its a lot longer so that stalls out #au tho has a lot less downtime in it. once the plot starts realllly happening it doesnt stop and its reveal after reveal after reveal #so a bit emotionally exhausting #also unsure about hlw sollux and dave are so impkrtant... but not primary pov characters it causes some problems... ik for plot reasons but #like i love rose here. even compared to mce this might be the best rose of the three #but it causes some conflict between plot focus and story focus as time goes on from early where its all davesolkat but mostly solkat #to: rose is more important than both sol and dave agency wise #not bad just. a conflict there #anyways go read it if you havent. likely easy to get jnto for non hs readers actually #just some minor references and name stuff youd miss #totslly coherent plot wise #ALSO GETTING TO PREDICT STUFF WAS GREAT #I FELT SO SMART FIGURING OUT KARKATS SPECIES LIKE... CHAPTER 4 OR SMTH. MAYBE 3 #EVEN IF THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN INTENDED

[toughtink]

oh god…they want…12 seasons? TWELVE SEASONS????!

unpopular opinion but uhhhh miraculous should have planned for 3-4 seasons and never gone beyond their initial 7 miraculouses.

#also they should have given the peacock a different power. #ml #mlb #miraculous ladybug #of course this is because i prefer stories that put their story above thier bottom line #i like stories with good endings #but zag really doesn’t care about a good ending or a coherent plot #they care about their main cashcow #so it must go on forever despite clearly being designed to have an end point #so instead it’ll keep becoming less coherent #and adding more world-breaking abilities #they should never have gone into time travel #also they need better parameters on the butterfly fuck #the peacock is dumb #senti lore is incosistent and world-breaking

[fluff-e-boy]

“The poet is like this monarch of the clouds”

- The Albatross (Charles Baudelaire)

#art lore #traditional art #lily fable art #cure for rain art #Michael Pavone is such a neat character #mf has like three whole lines of coherent dialogue #and so much plot impact