#narrative stuff

[bardnuts]

the longer i study narrative theory the more I become absolutely convinced that "character traits" are a lie.

Real people don't have character traits--they have certain patterns of behavior they're prone to, yes, but that behavior is defined by a combination of motivations, mood, emotions, and external context. You cannot point to any one behavior as a singular "character trait."

And yes, characters aren't real people, and it's useful to have a shorthand to fall back on for quickly sketching out what a character might do in a given situation, but overall I'm beginning to believe that over-reliance on traits is unnecessarily limiting and makes for less organic characters. You build a character's personality over time, by revealing things about that person in the context of the narrative, and not by deciding ahead of time that this character has [x trait], [x trait], and [x trait]. People are built in real time by their active choices.

That's why nothing a character does at the beginning of a story can be "out of character." You've just met them--they're necessarily a foundation, a blank slate. I might do something radical and start leaving character design out of my planning process entirely: allow the characters a core motivation, but otherwise let the narrative do the heavy lifting. I think I'll end up with fundamentally more organic individuals.

#writing advice #narrative stuff #i've been thinking about this a lot #some of this thought process is absolutely coming from a place of #'i have ocd and ruminate entirely too much on having 'perfect' characters so maybe if i just stopped it would hellp'

[thatweirdenby]

I love villains with a moral code

Hero shocked that even the villain finds something immoral

The villain: I have morals darling, they just aren’t yours

#narrative stuff #love me a marvellous bastard #villains stuff #the best

[wellspringrpg]

INCOMING TRANSMISSION: [MIRAGECO_WELCOME] WOULD YOU LIKE TO LISTEN? > Y // N

Alright: we're gonna be up front with this. No cherry picking and painting this place as some kind of perfect fantasyland. First things first: welcome to the broadcast.

And second things second: the world itself is trying to kill us.

See, it's succeeded once before; we've built our foundation on the bones of a dead civilization. Some of the Archivists think they were the ones who brought it out. They built temples of steel. Mountains of concrete and glass. Technology that drank deep from the Wellspring and burned bright with progress. And it was only then that the Gloom rose up.

That's the only logical progression of events, anyway. We know from experience: a footprint that big couldn't have been left if they were like us. Under threat from the start. The thing is, we don't know why the Gloom came to be. Maybe it was a consequence of their way of life. Or maybe it was something like us, brought to the world by pure chance. Whatever the cause, even they didn't stand a chance against it.

The Gloom scraped them from the face of the world. Sucked dry the mana from their great civilization and left it as nothing but wastelands.

Then we fell here.

We didn't really choose this place—the Grand Shift placing us here was something of a cruel act of fate. Once we arrived, we couldn't leave. A disparate array of people from worlds we no longer remember. Trapped on—say it with me now—a world that's trying to kill us.

That was a long time ago, though. And you may have noticed that we're still here.

Whoever we were once is lost to history, but it turns out the people who came here in the Grand Shift were a stubborn bunch. They banded together to survive. They learned how to fight back.

Now, we are the Great Family. One people united against an apocalypse that never ends. There's not many of us, but we've managed thus far. Pushing back the Gloom little by little. Building a civilization in the face of ever-present doom. Learning from the people here before us. We've made ourselves a place here, and we'll be damned if we let this world get the better of us.

(We know, that's a lot of history right up front. Don't worry, we're about to get to our point. The reason you're hearing this broadcast.)

The Gloom still looms. Its threat is ever present. No matter how many victories we claim, there's a lot of world, and only a handful of us to fight back.

That's why we're calling on you, Traveler. Why this transmission has reached your eyes and ears. We need you to give in to that siren song of wanderlust. To venture out into our world. Whether you want to delve into the mysteries it holds or fight in the name of the Great Family is up to you. We just need protagonists for this story.

Don't worry—we've made sure to prepare a guide for you. We wouldn't just throw you into the deep end like that. Everything a new traveler might need to know—just give it a read.

When you're done, tell 'em the Mirage Company sent you. We'll have your back out there.

#Mirage Company transmissions #narrative stuff #we were going to prepare some images to go along with this but we have our hands rather full with preparing for combat

[druid-for-hire]

[images ID: three images of a comic titled "one must imagine sisyphus happy" by druid-for-hire. it is a visual narrative beginning with someone with wrist pain (depicted by bright orange nerves) working at a drafting table. the reader is shown the same wrist as the person uses it for many everyday tasks such as carrying a grocery basket, pushing elevator buttons, typing, and doing dishes, until the pain dissolves all the panels into chaos. the person then performs several physical therapy exercises until the pain subsides. they sit back down at a desk with their laptop, sigh, and begin typing. a small spark of pain reappears. end id]

a fun little piece i made during the semester and submitted into our school comic anthology! (which you can buy at the Static Fish table at MoCCAFest in NYC ;] ). it's about artists and injury

#comic art #comics #original comic #chronic pain #carpal tunnel #tendonitis #my art #original #edit: what a delightful surprise to see this take off #this was made for class on very low fuel and very few thoughts and late at night and exhausted #the prompt was just a wordless narrative essay. three pages. and i had nothing and no ideas #and my head hurt and i was too tired to think about doing any of the like. research and mind mapping and ideating i'd do otherwise #but my arm hurt #so i decided to do a thing about arm hurty #i'm surprised to see so many people finding it resonating with them #but then again i shouldn't be. the universal lies in the specific #i should make more things about smaller stuff

[agentravensong]

thinking about how the extra area added on to a pacifist run of undertale, the true lab, is about alphys's past mistakes. how it ends with the story reaffirming that, despite the pain she's caused, the thing that matters is that she has now made the choice to do the right thing. she's still worthy of her friends' love.

thinking about how undertale doesn't expect the player to get a pacifist ending for the first time. how it's more likely than not that the player will kill toriel the first time they battle her, how lots of players don't initially figure out how to end undyne's fight without killing her, etc. what it expects — not even expects, really, but hopes — is that the player, if they care enough, will use their canonically acknowledged power over time to make up for those mistakes.

no matter how many neutral runs a player has done before committing to the pacifist run, the thing that matters to the characters, to the story, is that you've chosen, now, to do the right thing.

compared to alphys, the player honestly gets off lightly, in that you're the only one (other than flowey) who really remembers any harm you might have caused. and any direct guilting the game could have done about it is long past at this point. instead, as undertale often does, it makes its point via parallels: alphys caused harm, and she knows it. she has committed to being better. in doing so, she has unlocked for herself a better ending to her story. and she deserves it. she's forgiven.

those structural narrative parallels are all over undertale, if you know where to look. and that's one of the things that makes it so fuckin' good.

#undertale #alphys #true lab #this inspired by a mutual's alphys posting #and a discord convo i had a couple weeks back about ut's stance on ''punishing'' the player vs the monsters for their actions #and thoughts i've had generally post a certain fangame with a color in its name about just how well ut is structured as a narrative #everyone rightfully praises toby fox's character writing but stuff like this i think flies under the radar a bit by comparison #and it deserves to be appreciated #there's obvious Lore reasons why the true lab is only visited in a pacifist run (what's revealed about chara and flowey) #but this is the other half of it: the message of alphys's story hits hardest on a paci route post neutral runs #toby fox is a good writer more often than not

[finisnihil]

“They finally made this theme more blatant-" Why does it need to be blatant. What's wrong with subtlety? Concepts can be underused but subtlety is not neglect.

Blaring all your concepts and themes is not good writing. It's so disruptive to a story's flow when the characters look off the screen to be like "See? This is the concept. The idea. The theme."

If you can feel the hand of the author becoming too heavy that's bad.

For example: I see people saying Azula's abuse in ATLA is more blatant in the live action and it's good because "it's being discussed more". It already was discussed at length. The show made it clear she was a victim at every turn, every behavior, every reaction, it came from a place of trauma. It was made clear that she was scared of ending up like Zuko because Zuko was an example of what would happen to her if she failed. When she says she's better than Zuko it wasn't just because she was raised to think hersef superior to him but because Zuko failed and failures get mutilated and exiled, failures are abandoned. In that final Agni Kai the music is morose and somber because this isnt some epic battle its a fucking tragedy, the burning out of "Ozai's brightest light" and Azula finally succumbing to her terror and trauma she was repressing now that her worst fears are realized. How can you see a fourteen year old girl chained to a sewer grate wailing and writhing and breathing fire desperately as unsympathetic? Even Katara and Zuko are horrified as to what has become of her.

The writers weren't looking us in the eye and saying "See? She's a victim too" when they wrote this, they weaved it in. They weaved it into her obsesison with symmetry, her extreme perfectionism, the way she talks about Ozai, the ways she calls herself a monster, her isolation from those with healthy home lives, all the ways she held herself together and ultimately all the cracks and seams that she shattered down when she fell apart. It did not need to be blatant to be clear.

#Finis Analyzes #Nihil Dreams #ATLA #avatar the last airbender #Azula #I’m so fucking sick of people saying stuff like this #Please learn media literacy I am begging you #The narrative is not going to hold your hand and play tour guide and point out everything #Stop acting like it has to #You can analyze it yourself I promise

[tyxaar]

A compiled list of various severe crimes committed by one Mr Scar of the Good Times, exact counts pending. Cannibalism (Multiple counts) War profiteering Trading of Souls Grave robbing Fraud of multiple varieties Racketeering Arson (Like a lot of it) Unethical experimentation Acts of Terror Spiritual possession Contract killing Sale of human remains Ritual sacrifice Oathbreaking Violation of the real life Geneva Convention Deceptive marketing Kidnapping Desecration of a sacred place Whatever tf Area 77 had going on Insider trading Extortion Patricide Matricide Unsafe building practices Holy war Desecration of corpses Market manipulation Treason Tax evasion Murder (Lots and lots) Large-scale extreme vandalism Mass enviromental destruction Political corruption Identity fraud

#goodcrimeswithscar #note: ALL OF THESE ARE CANON #if you want to ask about any of them send it to my inbox pls! #like it's all stuff I recall him doing at some point lol #I'm only counting crimes that are considered like reaaaallly bad. stealing and other misc stuff is not on this list for a reason #also going by the law of narrative significance (unless it's funny) #and including stuff that isn't technically a crime but also basically is #tyx is being silly #tyx’s ramblings #traffic smp #life smp #trafficblr #mcyt #hermitblr #hermitcraft #goodtimeswithscar #gtwscar #gtws #your honour it is impossible for him not to be a criminal

[little-pondhead]

DP x DC Prompt

…

There are no more heroes.

Well, okay. Rewind a bit.

Danny has been doing the hero thing for a while now. He’s had a big reveal; everyone has accepted him (including his parents), the GIW disbanded, the Anti-Ecto acts repealed, and generally, everything is going great. Some of the A-Listers are even training as junior ghost hunters to help give him a break from his rogues! (Being Ghost King makes things hectic sometimes, and he just needs the extra help. Sue him!)

The point is, literally nothing is wrong with Danny Phantom’s afterlife.

And then Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress, disappears in front of his eyes.

Danny is baffled! She’s just…gone! Valerie just popped out of existence, like she was never there. But no matter how hard he searches in the Ghost Zone, he can’t find her soul anywhere. His core isn't broken in grief. So she’s not dead. Which is good. So then, where is she?

Some of the others come forward with ideas on how to find her. A few ghosts volunteer to go out into the mortal realm, an area Danny had declared off-limits, to see if she was out there. Danny approves it. He rounds up some of the friendlier (i.e., discreet) ghosts and Amity Parkers and demolishes the outside travel ban.

So everyone spreads out, looking for their dear frenemy and teammate. But it becomes apparent very quickly that something is wrong with the rest of the world.

There are no more heroes.

Every single living superhero on the face of the Earth has just…vanished. Villains are running amok; the countries are in chaos! Some aliens are invading Earth, mythical deities are trying to take over, and society is crumbling to the ground. Everything is on the brink of collapse.

Well, Danny was still there. And so were his people. They were pretty spread out, so could they just…take up the mantles? He also knew where to find the souls of dead heroes in the Zone; surely they wouldn't mind coming out of retirement for a little bit, especially if they couldn't die again. Oh! And that skeleton army leftover from Pariah Dark's reign might be useful in repelling those invading forces.

Honestly, there were more than enough hands to go around! And with the heroes gone, Danny didn't mind letting everyone out for a little break, as long as they followed his rules. They wouldn't stop the search for the other heroes, but hopefully, when they found them, the heroes wouldn't mind Danny's intervention too much. :)

In other words:

Someone fucks up, and all of Earth's living heroes are either wished out of existence or are whisked away to some far-off realm where Danny hasn't checked yet. In the attempt to figure out what's going on, Danny lets the dead run amok over the Earth as they search for clues. The skeleton army repels the invading armies, the souls of dead heroes deal with the world leaders, and his rogues and other Amity Parkers set up shop in place of famous heroes, trying to get the cities under control again.

Basically, they just do their best to keep everything from imploding until the Justice League and others are back.

(And why is it that Danny hasn't disappeared? Well, whatever caused everyone to go poof! only affected living heroes. Anyone heroes that were dead in the first place, or even just half-dead, stayed behind.)

#pondhead blurbs #danny phantom #dpxdc #reveal gone right au #ghost king au #for plot reasons #it doesn't count if the hero had died and then came back to life #lots of heroes would still be around then #but this is me pushing the halfa!jason todd narrative work with me here he deserves the fun #deadman is there too #and he's just thriving honestly. it's so nice to be around his own kind even if the world is ending #maybe ellie is whooshed away too cause she never technically died but she took up danny's moniker when he was crowned #vlad is ecstatic cause danny put him in charge of several states while they looked for clues including Wisconsin #skulker is replacing superman and just has a shitty S painted on his chest and just eats kryptonite like candy the first time he meets Lex #Kitty and Johnny take over in gotham and sam is now the new wonder woman #idk man just stupid stuff like this #the press is flabbergasted cause the fucking KING OF GHOSTS just showed up and he's 14 and just looking for some friends #Danny: hey guys sorry about the zombies and fire i'm just here to find my coworker and lil sister and maybe the other heroes #Danny: in the meantime i'll just let my army into the mortal realm to defend it while we figure out what's going on pls don't yell at us :) #the press: how do we explain this to the justice league when they come back. how do we explain that earth was saved by a 14 year old boy- #also idk which heroes are technically dead but are still kicking so if you feel like someone deserves liminal status slap it on them idc #some villains are trying for world dominance and some are just trying to find their buddies. their fight buds. where'd they go? :( #joker gets bitch slapped by a skeleton two days in and waylon becomes bffs with wulf #danny uses the watchtower as a base of operations and it's the only thing he doesn't want to give up when the heroes are back #i have no plot ideas beyond this #i just want everyone to be baffled that an army of the dead showed up while they were gone and just made sure everything stayed cool #later danny realizes he was technically the ruler of the world for a bit since his people were everywhere keeping the villains in check

[swedenis-h]

After a mission

#happy dinlu- I mean Valentine’s Day!! #I posted about it on my Insta but drawing sappy stuff like this reminds me how sad they are in the future #like they don’t even know they’re doomed by the narrative #hashtag nevarro trip ammirite ladies #yea it’s the nevarro cottage #LMAO 😭 #art #fanart #digital art #fan art #my art #star wars fanart #star wars #dinluke #Luke Skywalker #din djarin #valentines day #long post #comic

[meggannn]

having to pay for sebastian, the only straight romance option in da2, is still funny on its own but I feel there’s also metatextual humor if we take the “varric is narrating this whole thing” to another level

like it’s no secret varric cannot stand this guy so the thought of cassandra piping up like “wait, wasn’t the champion also friends with the prince of starkhaven? you haven’t mentioned him at all”

and varric rolls his eyes so far back into his head he almost gives himself a migraine, then she insists “no, he is! I know I heard this, stop lying to me dwarf!”

he’s like “andraste’s nutsack, fine, but if you wanna hear about him I’m gonna need some financial incentive to jog my memory. he was so boring I often forget he was even there”

“you can’t be serious, are you saying you’ve completely forgotten everything about him?”

“seven sovereigns for the choir boy, seeker, take it or leave it”

#cannot get over the thought of him charging cassandra to make him tell dlc stories #Varric is the ultimate gaslight gatekeep girlboss of the da2 narrative #da stuff #da2 #varric tethras #cassandra pentaghast

[carlyraejepsans]

was it foolishness? (was it fate)

#biscia continues to experiment with painterly styles. more at eleven #HI I AM VERY INSANE ABOUT FRISK TODAY. DONT TOUCH ME #undertale #frisk #myart #this is not possession btw i know it looks like red soul puppet stuff. but i just wanted to depict ''fate'' somehow #the narrative is alive and it tripped you down a big fucking hole. rip bozo #anyway you know how flowey said the first time he was able to reset/use his save powers was when he was so afraid to die #that he clung to life with everything he had? i think frisk had the exact same experience falling down mt ebott for the first time

[ladylightning]

the way the absence of john winchester haunt sam and dean in ways that are more real than any ghost they have ever faced. the way john echoes so loudly in the narrative even in episodes he’s not mentioned, in seasons where he never appears. the way john possesses dean when he’s angry and sam when he’s grieving. the way john is the one true god of the narrative, the absent father who does not answer prayers or phone calls. the righteous man who does not break in hell but breaks down and hands his child a gun. john and the memory of his holy mary. john the prophet and his sacred text. john and his prodigal son that he knows has to die. 

#john winchester #john as a character and narrative tool is so fascinating to me #the way the show utilizes both his presence and absence #the intergenerational trauma and cycle of abuse stuff is what elevates the show #even when the writers are fumbling the motw stuff or the season arcs #the impact of john is still so apparent and raw and visible #a lot of that is on the actors vs the writers tho #john winchester hate club #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #SPN

[sagescider]

instead of doomed by the narrative like. moderately inconvenienced by the narrative

#deltarune #sage’s art stuff #sage’s krisandsusie stuff #krusie #kris x susie #THE IDEA THAT THE NARRATIVE HAS ITS OWN ROLE IN DTR..

[frau-kali]

Black Sails Anniversary Week

Day 2: Favourite Dynamic - Jack Rackham vs Woodes Rogers

"If no Anne, if no rescue, if this is defeat for me, know this - You and I were neck and neck in this race until the very end, but Jesus, did I make up a lot of ground to catch you."

#black sails #jack rackham #woodes rogers #blacksailsedit #bsanniversary #my stuff #another thing i really love is character conflict #and theirs is excellent #their conflict sort of encapsulates one of the narratives of the show too #where jack is this outcast from society and woodes is representative of that society #but they're both still more complex than that #i am living in this kinda thing

[olliecoded]

anyway the reason shauna could never have been antler queen is because she's too marked by blood at that point. she's the one who bleeds out the victims and prepares them for consumption; she is the slaughterer, seen as too violent. never mind that that's the role they actually gave her themselves. even before what happened with lottie, she was a reminder of everything they'd lost and what they'd DONE with everything they'd lost. but nat ... nat is a sacrificial lamb. nat is the martyr, the one who was SUPPOSED to die but whom the wilderness loved just so much that it killed someone else for her. she's pure. she's clean, and there's no blood on her hands like there is (literally) on shauna's. the thing about these girls is that they cannot acknowledge their own monstrousness. they cannot, cannot, cannot make the butcher their queen.

#this is also if we're ignoring the supernatural elements at play bcs i do think it's a narrative combo of supernatural stuff and pure trauma #but like. shauna. girl. why would these girls ever ever ever vote u wilderness queen #yellowjackets #shauna shipman

[hopeworth]

obi-wan & anakin: you are cain and he is abel and this is how it always ends

[star wars: episode iii - revenge of the sith novelisation // star wars: episode i - the phantom menace (1999) // john darnielle // star wars: episode ii - attack of the clones (2002) // dante émile, 'after abel' // star wars: episode iii - revenge of the sith (2005) // rosanna warren, gods and mortals: modern poems on classical myths, 'turnus' // obi-wan kenobi (2022) 1x06 // richard siken, 'planet of love' // star wars: episode iv - a new hope (1977) // richard siken, 'war of the foxes']

#tragedy #the narrative #doomed by the narrative #brothers #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #poetry #star wars #prequels #kenobi series #web weave #web weaving #webweaving #my stuff #obi-wan & anakin #sibling dynamics make me insane go figure #thicker than water