#cause you need to know how to translate shape language from human to cat and whatnot in order to make them recognizable on first glance

[worblewobble]

whatever. go my vbros kittys

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space orcs, “Revelation.”

Hey guys, I had a bunch of trouble writing last night for some reason, but I managed to get something out, so I hope you like it :) 

“So what do you think, am I more of a Han Solo type or a Captain Kirk type because you know if I am being honest it really depends. I think I would like to think of myself as a Han Solo type, you know dashing and sarcastic, the hero you want to have come in to save the day, but Captain Kirk I can also see. You see I make dumb decisions sometimes and get everyone into trouble. Oh oh oh!! wait ! How about Captain Malcom Renylds. I feel like he is just enough of an idiot and just enough of a badass to work, what do you think detective?”

The Detective groaned loudly and took a long slow breath, “Admiral, listen to m-”

“You know I was also thinking about other parallels. You know how about that old animated movie Titan EA. I think I kind of look like Cale, and Sunny acts just a bit like Stith, you know, the angry chick with big legs. I liked captain Korso of course, just for simple aesthetic reasons, than he had to go and be a bad guy, but damn that redemption arc was surprising and well timed, at least I think, others may disagree.”

“ADMIRAL VIR I-”

“You know I have seen every space related science fiction movie and TV show that ever existed, and I am totally cool to keep talking. I mean I have to pass the time somehow until my lawyer gets here. You see my mother always said I liked to talk. I talked early, in fact, my brothers don’t like the fact that I talk so much, they say I talk TOO much, can you believe that.”

With an angry yawl like a Cat who just got their tail stepped on, the detective rose to his feet, hands to his head, “That is IT, that is IT. We will continue this interrogation LATER.” He turned on his heels and stormed out of the room muttering to himself the entire way, “I need a break.”

Adam Vir watched him go with an expression of pure innocence on his face as the door closed, only to morph into an expression of devilish amusement not dissimilar to that of the grinch in his original animated form. He leaned back in his chair resting his hands behind his head. The Detective had seen fit to undue his cuffs as it might make him more cooperative. The irony being that he would totally love to cooperate if someone was willing to cooperate with him, and actually believe his story.

He cleared his throat wishing he had accepted the drink of water offered to him earlier. He had been talking for about five hours now, straight. Apparently a filibuster isn’t just something you can use in politics. It is apparently a very effective way of driving young and inexperienced detectives insane.

He smugly leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

Interrogation techniques were designed to work on the guilty, or, if done wrong, on the slow, but he was neither of those things. Granted he was kind of an idiot, but he was more of an idiot in the way of his idols like captain Kirk and Malclom reynolds and less of an idiot like every disney villain’s cronies. He was smart just…. Selectively.

He cracked an eye as the door opened opposite.

At first he expected to see the detective ready to go another round already, but instead a group of Drev guards walked in. He smiled his best winning smile at them and rose from his seat, “Back to the cells boys.”

The Drev didn’t say anything.

He tried a different tactic, “Zhad chal dana tsa najastich.” May the sun watch over you: A traditional, and respectful, Drev greeting 

The two creatures pulled up in their tracks.

“Tsa Dzhal cheeych” You speak Drev

“Yid.” Yes 

His little greeting had the desired effect, and soon he had the two Drev warriors conversing like two Rundi at a political debate. They laughed together as they walked down the halls of the precinct.

Still in Drev, the three of them continued to converse, Adam talking animatedly, “So then I told him that I can’t hit kids right,  and he was all like. Then you can fight me.”

“What happened.”

“Got my ass beat. You don’t just challenge a sentinel to open combat as a rookie, and you know, at only six feet tall.”

The Drev chirped with laughter, coming around the corner to nearly run face first into the Detective who was open mouthed and staring, holding a fresh mug of coffee before him. The Drev’s laughter died down seconds to late, and the man narrowed his eyes, glowering at them.

“What are you doing?”

Adam turned to look at the other drev, “Tin Najastich.” watch this.

HE turned to look back at the Detective, “Ne’e j’ya eeneenat nehtehich.” He can’t understand us.  He didn’t do much, but he could tell by the face the detective made, he had done it right. 

It was a little trick he had learned from Sunny, a Drev dialect that tended to cause breaks in the middle of words as if adding a apostrophe, while simultaneously pronouncing all the ts and ks as clicks, the ts as a forward mouth clicks and the ks glottal clicks at the back of the throat. Either way, it was like putting on a thick southern accent to confuse an alien translator, and it seemed, it simultaneously worked for Drev.

The Drev began to laugh and babble at each other in the dialect as the detective sat there in frustrated anger, “What are they saying!” He demanded.

Adam frowned allowing his face to go straight as he deadpanned, “I wouldn’t know. I am xenopobic and would never dane to learn an alien language, you know, like Drev, or Vrul, or.” he leaned towards the Dredv, “I am currently working on learning tesraki.”

The Drev continued to laugh as they pulled him back towards his cell.:

Adam grinned and waved at the Tesraki guard as he walked past, “You know I have it on good authority that stock prices are about to go way up for holywood inc. They are working on becoming intergalactic. I would suggest getting on that bandwagon”

The Tesraki looked surprised, but grinned and waved at him as he was moved into the other room.

Behind him, the Detective was practically blowing steam out of his ears as the door slammed shut.

***

The human glanced over at Krill for the fifteenth time eyes wide in an expression of barely concealed terror.

Krill would have rolled his eyes if his eyes could roll.

Catching the look, Sunny frowned and leaned in, “You did threaten to eat him.”

Krill scoffed, “I don’t even have TEETH sunny, how was I supposed to eat him!” He turned to glance over at the man who was still giving him a bit of a side eye. He frowned, “Well, I suppose blending him up and turning him into a meat smoothie could work.”

It became pretty evident in the next few seconds that they hadn’t been speaking quietly enough, at least when it came to the comment about a meat smoothie.

Krill waved him off with a hand, “Oh just ignore us, now when is this meeting supposed to take place.”

“Ten minutes, maybe.”

Sunny tilted her head back, looking overhead at the darkened sky and approaching rain. 

It was just beginning to drizzle when the man nodded and pointed forward into the darkness, “There.”

Sunny squinted hard, just barely able to make out a shadowy shape slipping through the darkness.

Sunny nudged him forward, “Well, go on. If you do this for us, I won’t let captain cannibal hurt you.”

WIth that urging, it didn’t take long for the man to vanish off into the dark, boots slapping on the wet concrete.

Krill turned to look at her in annoyance, “Its only considered cannibalism if you eat your own species.”

“Whatever,” She muttered, moving into a low crouch and slipping into the shadows off to the side. She managed to parallel the movement of their man for a few streets by ducking behind dumpsters and concealing herself within dark alcoves. At one time in her life she might have considered such actions to be heretical against her beliefs, but her opinions on such things had changed as of recently, and she continued to inch forward through the darkness.

Besides, this was about saving Adam.

Didn’t matter what she had to do, she was going to do it.

The human was close now stopping a few feet away from the shadow. The way the rain fell, it almost concealed the two figures as they spoke. Any bystander just passing by might not have noticed them, but Sunny was not just any bystander.

As the two figures disengaged, she had eyes only for one.

The human, likely scared out of his skin went sprinting off into the darkness likely thinking about krill and his meat blender, but his escape didn’t matter to Sunny. She could find him later if she had to, they had his name after all. What they didn’t have was knowledge about this strange hooded figure in black. The one who had paid the humans to incriminate adam, and themselves by proxy. 

Sunny didn’t know much about stealth as a general rule, but She, still, somehow managed to make it up the street without being seen, tailing the small dark figure. That was her first clue, whoever it was was either a very short human, or not human at all. Now that didn’t really narrow things down as there were several species who could fit into that category, burg iotins even some rundi, or a finnari to name a few. Not that she would ever assume a finnari of doing something like this.

She watched as the figure slipping into one of the large buildings, door shutting quietly behind it. She might have worried about losing the tail if she hadn’t already considered that, and lowjacked the package.

She crouched in the darkness her hands resting on the ground before her, eyes narrowed,

A soft rustling behind her, and she turned nearly jumping out of her skin as a figure scuttled from the darkness, its movements disjointed and aggressive.

“SHHH!” Krill hissed

She snorted fuming, “What the fuck, krill you scared the shit out of me.”

“What, why.”

“Oh I dont know, maybe it has been your recent pension for violence, or the fact that you keep talking about eating people, or your uncanny ability to sneak up behind me.”

“You know, I find all of this to be very insulting. You can stab people in the face, and adam can threaten to punch people in the trachea, but the moment I do something that is even slightly off color, it bothers everyone, and then people get all uppity.”

Sunny sighed, pulling her hood up over her head to block out the deluge, “Generally Adam and I don’t threaten to eat people, Krill. That is the difference.”

“Well no one ever told me there were rules.” He said, gripping onto sunny’s cloak as they inched forward into the darkness, following the signal towards the dark building. They didn’t take the same entrance as the cloaked figure, instead going for a more discreet entrance, finding themselves in a maintenance tunnel lined with pipes and power boxes.

The only illumination they got was afforded to them by the glowing dimness of red lights above and the occasional emergency strip. Somewhere, a distant roar alerted them to the presence of some sort of generator. 

They moved up the hall in near silence as the rumbling continued, and Sunny was forced to stop a few times, listening to the distant echoes of footsteps up the hallway though none of them ever came close enough to cause a real problem.

KRill followed at her back.

Soon enough, they had made it out of the maintenance corridors, following a set of slim metal steps upward and into a nice, tiled hallway. The make was very modern for Tesraki, emulating human style which was rather popular in the galaxy these days, and signified wealth despite the fact that humans were hardly the wealthiest of species.

Fake plants, or maybe real ones --sunny didn’t know-- lined the hallways as little fountains of water trickled through artificial streams on the floor.

The aesthetic was rather pleasing, giving an almost outdoor field inside a city that hadn’t seen green in over a thousand years.

They were almost to the end of the hall when sunny went very still freezing in her tracks fast enough to cause krill to plow into her open back.

“What are you doing.” krill hissed glancing over her shoulder, pausing when a pointed finger motioned him to the target.

“No. That can’t be right.

“I am afraid it is.” ***

Adam woke that night not knowing why.

It was almost as if he had hard a strange noise somewhere in the darkness, but when he sat up, the only thing he could see was the glowing blue/purple wall of the containment field.

He tried rolling over and going back to sleep, but something just felt wrong.

Eventually he forced himself to sit up and look around. In the galaxy, human intuition was nothing more than mere myth, but, despite what others said, he believed in it, and wasn’t about to ignore it’s prodding as it moved him up towards the edge of the containment field to peer into the darkness.

His eyes were almost immediately drawn to one of the other cells -- the one where his attackers had been staying--. Squinting past the glowing surface and into the darkness, he thought he could sense movement.

It was at that moment, that the containment field went down, and he was left blinking into the darkness backing away into his little field of light. When nothing happened, he inched forward and out into the darkness.

Had the containment field malfunctioned?

He took another step into the darkness before turning on the infrared on his mechanical eye and flipping up his eyepatch.

He immediately froze in palace gasping in shock.

“NO!”

[wordsysayswords]

Someone needs to put down a wet floor sign because Tucker’s pretty sure his heart has melted into a puddle around his shoes.

Or, Tucker gets to see Wash interact with children, including Junior, for the first time ever and, to quote Grif, he's so fucked.

--

Merry Christmas @washingtubb!  I hope you enjoyed this fluffy Blue Team bonding with just a pinch of Tuckington thrown in for good measure. Thanks for being so patient with this fic getting posted. @redvsbluesecretsanta

--

“Have you guys seen Junior?” Tucker asks, poking his head into the common room.

Carolina, who is sat perfectly still on the couch and in the process of having her long hair braided by three children, glances Tucker’s way without turning her head.

“He was with Caboose’s group earlier,” she says, blowing a stray strand of hair out of her face. “In the mess hall.”

“Yeah, apparently they got told to leave because Grif tried to organize the kids into storming the kitchen. The things that guy will do for chocolate pudding.”

“BLARG!” Cries one of the twin Sangheili infants in Carolina’s lap. She rubs the alien’s back soothingly and raises an eyebrow at Tucker in a silent question.

“She’s ready for a nap,” Tucker translates.

There haven’t been a whole lot of opportunities for Tucker to exercise his Sangheili conversation skills on Chorus. That all changed two days ago when a ship full of Sangheili and human refugees landed, fleeing their own war-ravaged planet halfway across the galaxy. They had received Epsilon’s message and come seeking help because the reported conditions on their planet made Chorus seem like an idyllic paradise. Among the refugees were an almost comical number of children, outnumbering the adults six to one. The situation became a lot less funny when you realized 80 percent of the children were orphans.

“Here,” Tucker says, pulling out his datapad and selecting a playlist of classic Sangheili nursery rhymes. “They’ll recognize these. Puts ‘em right to sleep. You’ll have the songs stuck in your head for days, though.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Carolina gives a crooked smile as she accepts the datapad. “Can’t be worse than the crap Wash listens to.”

“Speaking of Wash, any idea where he’s hiding?”

Carolina cocks her head—as much as she can considering one of the aliens curled up against her shoulder is batting at her braid like a particularly curious cat. The kids finish up on her hair, and a little boy passes Carolina a pink hand mirror. Tucker bites his lip to keep from laughing as the Freelancer turns her head this way and that, inspecting the no less than eight messy braids sticking off her head at ridiculous angles.

“Looks great,” Carolina whispers, causing the kids to giggle and blush.

She turns her attention back to Tucker. “What makes you think Wash is hiding?”

“I don’t know, have you seen what it’s like out there?” Tucker asks, gesturing towards a window overlooking the track where groups of kids are playing frisbee or jumping rope, supervised by the lieutenants. “I’m having trouble keeping up, and I’m a dad!”

“Eh,” Carolina shrugs, “you’d be surprised.” She looks around at the cluster of children, “Do you remember our deal?”

The kids nod excitedly.

“If we take a nap, you’ll show us how to punch good!” A girl with wilting daisies woven into her hair punches the air, beaming.

Carolina raises an eyebrow. “And the rule?”

“Only in s-self, um,” lisps the boy missing his two front teeth, “s-self defenssse!”

“That’s right,” Carolina says, tapping the datapad. Plucky music starts to play as the kids curl up on the couch. She looks over at Tucker.

“Try the barracks,” she tells him. “They might have gone to get Caboose’s crayons and coloring books.”

“Thanks,” Tucker says, tossing a salute her way as he backs out the door. “Let me know if you need another teacher for punching class.”

“Sure thing. Watch out for—”

“HONK BLARG!”

A dark shape shoots out from under the couch and latches on to Tucker’s leg before he has time to blink.

“Holy fu—” Tucker catches himself. “Fudgsicles. Holy fudgsicles. Definitely what I was going to say. Right, little buddy?”

The small Sangheili wrapped around his leg hoots happily and starts gnawing on his boot laces.

“I think she’s teething,” Carolina explains. “Her brother is with Caboose’s group. Mind taking her with you?”

“No problem,” Tucker says, lifting his foot to get a better look at the alien. “And what’s your name, champ?”

“Firo 'Srattin,” yawns the little girl draped over Carolina’s shoulder.

“Strattin,” muses Tucker. “Good, strong clan name. Well, come on, Firo. Let’s go find your brother.”

“Say goodbye to Captain Tucker,” Carolina tells the children. A chorus of honks and goodbyes follows the teal soldier out of the room.

In the hall, Tucker looks down at his passenger. She’s given up on his laces and is now digging through his cargo pants pocket looking for snacks.

“All right,” Tucker says. “Which way should we try first, hm?”

Firo sniffs the air for a moment before pointing down the hall. “BLARG!”

“The barracks? Good choice. Let’s roll out, soldier.”

It ends up being a long walk to the barracks—and not just because Tucker has a honking deadweight wrapped around one leg.

Passing the empty lot behind the mess hall, he and Firo walk past the Reds organizing a game of football for the kids, and the pair promptly get roped into playing referees. They leave at halftime while Donut’s group of kids performs an impromptu cheerleading routine (The man’s created surprisingly passable pompoms out of old caution tape).

Despite the rest of the base swarming with children, the barracks are oddly quiet.

“I could’ve sworn they’d be here,” Tucker tells Firo after checking Caboose’s room and finding it empty.

“BLARG,” she agrees around a mouthful of a granola bar—wrapper included.

“I mean, I guess we could check bomb disposal range. Maybe they’re playing fetch with Freckles?”

“BLARG?”

“No, fetch with Freckles basically involves vaporizing tennis balls straight out of the sky. So, there’s no real ‘fetching’ happening.”

“BLARG CHONK.”

“I know, right? That’s what I said!”

“CHONKA CHONKA.”

“Watch the language!” Tucker chides. “I don’t want the parents thinking I taught you that.”

Just then, Firo perks up, her large grey snout sniffing the air intently.

Tucker stops walking. “What is it? Did you get their scent aga—whoa, hold up!”

In the blink of an eye, Firo lets go of Tucker’s leg and tears off down the hall.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Tucker calls, sprinting after her. “Firo 'Srattin, get back here! If you had a middle name, you bet I’d be using it right now!”

Firo only stops long enough to stick her tongue out at the sim trooper before racing away down another corridor.

“Why you little,” Tucker mutters to himself and looks up at the ceiling. “Mom, if this is what I was like as a kid, I am so sorry. Firo!”

Tucker skids around a corner just in time to see Firo squeeze through an ajar door and disappear inside.

“Oh fuck,” Tucker groans, picking up speed. He hisses. “Firo! Get out here! That’s somebody’s room, and they don’t want to wake up to an alien chewing on their socks!”

The maze of two-person bunk rooms all looks the same to Tucker, so he’s halfway up the hall before he realizes the alien just escaped into his room. His and Wash’s room.

“Damn it,” Tucker mumbles, screeching to a halt outside the door, a hesitant hand on the handle.

Okay, okay. No need to panic. Maybe Firo hasn’t turned any of Wash’s meager possessions into chew toys yet. The Freelancer isn’t one for trinkets or homely touches. If it wasn’t for Tucker, the man would still be living out of his footlocker rather than the closet and chest of drawers available to him. But that means any nonessential items Wash does keep around are all the more meaningful. Like Caboose’s messy drawings or the ugly-ass cat figurine that Tucker carved him out of a bar of soap (“No, no, Tucker, I appreciate the gift. It’s a cute giraffe.” “It’s supposed to be a cat!” “Uh, cat. Right. That’s what I said.”)

“Alright, whose turn is it to turn the page?”

Tucker freezes. Fucking of course Wash is hiding out in the desolate barracks while the base is swarming with children. Tucker’s never seen him interact with someone younger than the lieutenants outside of a military setting. You don’t exactly see a whole lot of kindergarteners toddling around an active military base (Caboose doesn’t count). Long story short, Tucker has been putting off even introducing him to Junior because everything about Wash; his anxiety, his control-freak nature, his stickler-for-the-rules attitude; screams that he and children do not mix.

So who the hell is Wash talking to?

“BLARG!” A high-pitched Sangheili voice shouts.

Tucker’s brow furrows. He’s just about to push the door open when someone else speaks up.

“It’s Ure’s turn,” a young voice translates.

“Alright, Ure, you can do the honors,” Wash says. “Careful this time.”

Tucker hears the sound of a page being turned.

“Great, where were we? Right,” Wash clears his throat. “The BR55HB Service Rifle entered service in 2548 and is employed as a medium-to-long-range marksman rifle.”

The fuck?

“Though its barrel is longer than that of the BR55, the weapon performs almost identically to its predecessor,” Wash continues. “The magazine housing is built directly into the underside of the stock of the rifle and is located behind the grip. And look, here’s a picture.”

That’s it; Tucker can’t stop himself from sneaking a peek around the door.

Wash is sat on the floor, leaning back against his cot. And around him are no less than twelve children and young Sangheili, cuddled up against him, hanging off his arms, sprawled across his lap, and peering over his shoulders at the yellowed paper gun manual in his hands. After turning the book for everyone to see the battle rifle diagram, Wash goes back to reading,

“Though the BR55HB SR is a select-fire weapon, it is most often used in its three-round burst mode.”

“This is my favorite part,” whispers Caboose to the three kids comfortably sharing his lap.

“Despite firing a very powerful cartridge, the weapon is subject to little recoil, even when being fired automatically.”

Curled up in the arms of one of the Sangheili is Firo, happily sucking on her brother’s shirt as she listens to Wash read with rapt attention, along with the rest of the children. Huddled up among them sits Junior, head resting in his hands as he drowsily listens with a content smile on his face.

Someone needs to put down a wet floor sign because Tucker’s pretty sure his heart has melted into a puddle around his shoes.

“Whose turn is it to turn the page now?” Wash asks, and a tiny boy pulls his thumb out of his mouth just long enough to raise his hand.

Wash smiles, and it’s so warm and natural Tucker momentarily forgets how to breathe. “Want some help?”

Thumb back in his mouth, the boy nods, and the Freelancer helps him turn the page with his free, chubby little hand.

“Great job. Now, it fires M634 X-HP-SAP round from a 36-round magazine, which fits flush in the receiver...”

Suddenly, Grif is there next to Tucker, whispering. “You’re so fucked, dude.”

Tucker startles so hard he stumbles face-first into the door. He turns to glare at Grif who disappears into his own room next door with a little wave. Tucker turns back around to find he’s accidentally pushed the door open and the entire room staring at him.

“I, uh, just...Firo!” Tucker recovers quickly. “There you are! I’ve been, ah, looking everywhere for you. Yeah.” Hell yeah. Fucking smooth. Definitely doesn’t sound like you’ve been creeping outside the door.

Wash has gone bright red. “I, uh. There aren’t any, er, kids books on base,” he stammers and starts to stand up. “They kept asking to read this one cause it has pictures. It’s stupid, I kno—”

“What happens next?”

“I—” Wash stops. His brow furrows. “What happens what?”

“What happens next?” Tucker asks again, coming to sit cross-legged on the floor beside Junior. “Dude, you can��t leave us in suspense. I gotta know who lives happily ever after, right guys?” He winks at the kids who giggle. Junior slings a massive arm around his father’s shoulders and pulls him close.

Wash just sits there, ears and cheeks still tinged with red. “You’re sure?” he asks, narrowing his eyes in the way he does when he’s trying to figure out if Tucker’s fucking with him or not.

Tucker settled in, leaning back against his son. “Just read the story, dude,” he says, grinning.

Wash flips the manual open, laughing under his breath. “Okay then,” he concedes. “Section 1.4 Service History. The introduction of the BR55HB SR led to an immediate increase in the BR55's popularity, prompting all branches of the UNSC Armed Forces, except the Army, to replace the M392 with the newer weapon...”

[kieranconveyma]

4.Narrative Theory and Interactive Narratives: Notes

What is narrative ?

Dictionary definition:  narrative [na-ra-tiv], a telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator to a narratee (although there may be more than one of each)... A narrative will consist of a set of events (the story) recounted in a process of narration (or discourse), in which the events are selected and arranged in a particular order (the plot). The category of narratives includes both the shortest accounts of events (e.g. the cat sat on the mat, or a brief news item) and the longest historical or biographical works, diaries, travelogues, etc., as well as novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and other fictional forms.Chris Baldick, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 145.

Telling stories as a human tendancy

Animals vs Humans - Only humans tell stories (as far as we know)

Stories surround us. In childhood we learn fairy tales and myths. As we grow up, we read short stories, novels, history, and biography. Religion, philosophy and science often present their doctrines through exemplary stories... Plays tells stories, as do films, television shows, comic books, paintings, dance, and many other cultural phenomena. Much of our conversation is taken up with stories of one sort or another – recalling an event from the past or telling a joke. Even newspaper articles are called ‘stories’, and when we ask for an explanation, we may say, ‘What’s the story?’ We cannot escape even by going to sleep, since we often experience our dreams as little narratives, and we recall and retell the dreams in the shape of stories. Perhaps narrative is a fundamental way that humans make sense of the world (Bordwell and Thompson, 1993: 64).Bordwell, D., and Thompson, K. (1993). Film Art: An Introduction. London: McGraw-Hill.

Is narrative just ‘stories’? How do we tell stories? E.g. voice, print, video and , who do we tell them to? 

What is a narrative?

●The way in which a story is told (in both fictional and non-fictional media texts)

●Plot and narrative are not the same thing. 

Plot = what happened and why, causal link

Narrative = history of events or a sequence Narrative has a temporal dimension

Aristotles dramatic unities

Time - the action should cover no more than 24 hours 

■Place - a single physical space

■Action - a  play should follow just one main action

Over 2000 years later, Bordwell and Thompson (1993) identify three core components of narrative:

●  time

●  space

●causation

 ‘a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space’ (Bordwell and Thompson1993: 65) Traditional narratives 

Cook, P. (1985) The Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute

Experimental narratives

■  non-linear causation

■  lack of clear narrative closure (‘open’ or ambiguous endings)

■  disruption of dramatic unities (slippage of location, event, time, illogicality, strangeness)

■‘flat’, contradictory, or superficial characters

■Typically seen in non-realist modes such as surrealism - but also relevant to new media forms...

Vladimir Propp (1895-1970)

■Analysed over 100 Russian fairy tales and folk stories in the 1920s

■Focused on characters and their actions

■Highly influential in literary studies, film studies, interactive theory and games theory

■  31 narrative functions or narratemes, e.g. ‘A member of a family leaves home’, ‘Hero and villain join in direct combat’

■  8 character types

The hero

The villain 

The princess

The dispatcher

The donor

The helper

The father

The false hero

Todorov (1939 - 2017) - Equilibrium

Levi-Strauss (1908 - 2009) Binary oppositions Social anthropologist who studied myths in tribal cultures Values and beliefs of a culture are expressed in the form of binary oppositions. 

Good vs Evil

Peace vs War  

Light vs Darkness

Man vs Nature

Man vs Woman

Young vs Old

Rich vs Poor

Reason vs Passion

Revealing underlying themes and symbolic oppositions in media texts.

What about the relationship between games and narrative. Great narrative =great game?

Games and narrative - a continium

Games and narrative:opposing elements? 

Are narrative and interactivity antithetical? 

Does interactivity harm storytelling?

Does storytelling harm interactivity? 

Two separate fields

Narratology: Emerges from literary theory. Concerned with narrative 

Ludology: Specific to game studies. Concerned with interactivity. Salen, K and Zimmerman, E. (2006) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. London: MIT press.

The role of the player: first-hand experience “unlike literature, games are not about the Other, they are about the Self. Games focus on self-mastery and exploration of the external world” Aarseth, Espen (2004). 

‘Genre trouble: narrativism and the art of simulation.” First person: new media as story, performance, and game. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Pat Harrigan.Cambridge: The MIT Press.

"The reader/viewer needs an emotional motivation for investing energy in the movie or book; we need a human actant to identify with. This is probably also true for the computer game, only this actant is always present - it is the player" (Juul, 2001).Juul, J. (2001) Games Telling Stories: A brief note on game and narrative. Vol. 1, Issue 1. [Online] July, 2001. Available from : GameStudies.org http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/Participation

"The player is not an external observer. Observers are passive, the player is active. If the player does not act, there will be no game, and therefore no session at all" (Frasca,1999).

My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (Olia Lialina 1996) 

Narrative and Database ■ video games as huge databases of data from which the journey of the player is selected

■ traditionally narrative and database are ‘natural enemies’:

■According to Manovich, in new media forms they work together.Manovich, L. (2002) The Language of New Media. London: MITPress.

Aarseth’s (1997) ‘ergodic’ narrative

 ■ergon - ‘work

’■hodos - ‘path’

Finding your way through by choosing between alternatives. Aarseth, E. J. (1997) Cybertext. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. “Games and narratives share some structural traits. Nevertheless, my point is that: 

1) Games and stories actually do not translate to each other in the way that novels and movies do. 

2) There is an inherent conflict between the now of the interaction and the past or "prior" of the narrative. You can't have narration and interactivity at the same time; there is no such thing as a continuously interactive story” Juul, J. (2001) ‘Games Telling stories?’ Game Studies the international journal of computer volume 1, issue 1 game research “Games and narratives share some structural traits. Nevertheless, my point is that: 

1) Games and stories actually do not translate to each other in the way that novels and movies do. 

2) There is an inherent conflict between the now of the interaction and the past or "prior" of the narrative. You can't have narration and interactivity at the same time; there is no such thing as a continuously interactive story” Juul, J. (2001) ‘Games Telling stories?’ Game Studies the international journal of computer volume 1, issue 1 game research Narrative and Environment It’s not enough to have a story, games have to build a whole environment to interact with. Game narratives essentially create worlds “forming the game narrative literature into a model of player experience” (Qin, Rau & Salvendy, 2009). Qin, H., Rau, P., Salvendy, G. (2009) Measuring Player Immersion in the Computer Game Narrative. In : Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2007. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

99 Rooms (Kim Köster, Richard Schumann, StephanSchulz and Johannes Buenemann 2004)

Path structures of interactive narratives

1.The Complete Graph

2.The Network

3.The Tree

Ryan, Marie Laure, (2003). Narrative as Virtual Reality. The John Hopkins University Press. 

The complete graph all nodes are connected and the reader has complete freedom of navigation The network“ Standard structure of literary hypertext. Reader’s movements are neither completely free nor limited to a single course” The tree one path has been taken at a time 

Elfland Catacombs (1981) 

Embedded and emergent narrative 

Embedded narrative - already exists prior interaction. Experienced as context.

Emergent narrative - emerges from interaction. Based on individual interaction with the game. Game design can combine the two in different ways. ‘the term narrative has such a wide range of contradictory meanings and associations for different people and in different theories that it is practically meaningless unless specified in greater detail.’Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds,London & Cambridge MASS: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 156-157.

‘the term narrative has such a wide range of contradictory meanings and associations for different people and in different theories that it is practically meaningless unless specified in greater detail.’Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds,London & Cambridge MASS: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 156-157.

6 meanings of narrative (Juul)

1. Narrative as the presentation of a number of events –As storytelling in its original sense

2. Narrative as a fixed and predetermined sequence of events

3. Narrative as a specific type of sequence of events

4. Narrative as a specific type of theme

5. Narrative as any kind of setting or fictional world

6. Narrative as the way we make sense of the world

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You, Me, & the Bees — Juniper Publishers

Abstract

All over the world, dwindling bee populations are a cause for concern, with some species of bee now officially marked as endangered. To support the bees, this paper speculates on a world where bee kind and humankind live intertwined with one another. Through design, this paper questions anthropocentric norms embodied in design, which turn us away from the non-human. This project incorporates nonhuman agency as an active agent in creating a design, which explores a becoming- with others - in a flourishing world.

Keywords: Anthropocentric; Bees; Feminism; Brute matter; Spirited life; Matriarchal society; Scenography

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Introduction

Bees are dying. All over the world, dwindling bee populations are a cause for concern, with some species of bee officially marked as endangered [1]. Not only is another organism at risk of loss, but bees are a vital part of the earth's ecosystem, pollinating one third of our food [2]. At the same time, bees living in the city have been found to be healthier that those in the country [3]. These findings triggered thoughts of how living intimately with bees could be a response to this ecological problem. Through design as scholarship, this final year project, speculated upon a world where bee kind and humankind live intertwined with one another.

This paper situates itself as engaging with the emerging trend of 'new materialism, which has already left its mark on fields such as feminism, philosophy, cultural theory and the arts. And the project that underscores this paper began by questioning the hierarchical positioning of human over nature, which legitimates the hierarchical dominance within human society [4]. New Materialism was seen as a supportive guide- to question anthropocentric norms. Bennett argues species- narcissism is perpetuated by two governing ideas. The first is the separation of "brute matter” and "spirited life" This is the idea that living organisms are "radically other to matter”, where life remains "special”. The second idea is that of those with "special” life, humans are the "most special”, i.e. "man has the most life” [5]. For Bennett, ending the idea of "brute matter” vs. "spirited life” and instead acknowledging the spirited vitality of the nonhuman around us is an important, and powerful way to undercut societal hierarchies.

To explore the vitality of a new materialist position this speculative project, was structured around scale. This meant I explored my proposition through an installation, a domestic building and a public building. First, this allowed critical reflection to be staged through the design, to refine the proposition, process and methods. Secondly, the client of the bee created a scale of occupation different to usual human- scaled environments, which provides an opportunity to critique architectures traditional privileging of the large over the small Progressive scale is also used to structure this paper. There is no intent that this imagined space would be realized; but, we suggest this gap from reality frees us to consider ways that changes in architecture can be truly transformative [6].

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Installation

The installation aimed to question conventions of human bias - a straight forward look embedded in the conventions of drawing, namely the experience of viewing a drawing that tries to force an 'awry look. 'Alongside the more literary research, I attended bee seminars. I followed bees around. I translated scientific information about bees' vision into drawings: I drew with magnifying sheets and kaleidoscope glasses. I drew with UV paint. These explorations felt forced; they were neither scientifically valid nor creatively expressive, but rather an indecisive in-between. But, these explorations informed the process of building up notations which were extracted and collapsed into a single drawing; drawn in conjunction with my imagined apian collaborator. The original drawing is composed for linear observation from left to right, positioned vertically, copied, and cut up. The replication is presented as a manipulable face to face with the viewer (Figure 1). The drawing was then pile complementary to the original (Figure 2).

The replication and rearrangement of the original into its not-quite twin could also be interpreted as the final step of human-bee collaboration; with the drawing reconfigured and dispersed at an appropriate scale for an audience of bees, with neither version claiming to be the 'correct' version. The role of the installation informed the next design stage by continuing to question drawing conventions, and established a visual language that continues through the whole project.

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Domestic Space

The first building that I put bees into was an apartment for a single woman. Unlike humans, bees live in a matriarchal society, where the queen bee is central and essential to the livelihood of an entire hive. Here, by introducing bees into a human realm, the house for a human and nonhuman pair of Queen Bees critiques stigmas of women living alone. Terms given to women who live alone-spinster, crazy cat lady, shengnu (Chinese for 'left over women'), all label the single woman as a social outsider pitied rather than celebrated. The heterosexist biases that shape these terms also shapes the language of contemporary ecology, which all too often focuses on "matters of inheritance and procreation” [7]. In response this apartment seeks to re-appropriate the term queen bee into something positive, a place that celebrates the weird alien sisterhood between bee and woman.

Although the residents are fictional, their programmatic requirements drew from both real and unreal source material, including secret single behaviours of the author, and actual bee behaviour. The design started by fusing the installation with the authors own house. The plan and elevation were pulled and twisted into perspective drawings - providing hints of occupiable spaces (Figure 3 & 4). The drawings evolved through the creative friction between the two types of drawings; but, they were also shaped by the programmatic needs - of both queen bees. Drawings were multiplied, collaged, overlaid in an attempt to open up further spatial possibilities. The composite drawings were animated, to bring duration and the event space of the two queens more forcefully into the drawings (Figure 5).

The final building is not conventional (Figure 6). The �plan and section� of the apartment are chronological rather than conventional, the subject of the drawing the rich inner lives of the queen bees. The house arises accordingly to particular moments of inhabitation. The drawings question the meanings we ascribe to the house and also the conventions which architectural drawings emerge from.

Public building

The next scale, provides a further opportunity to explore architecture's possible collaboration with non-human agents. To thread ideas together, a narrative with the Queen Bee(s) is continued. But, another non-human element was added-bread. Similar to the house, a conventional grounded building in plan/ section/elevation was not the intended endpoint. Rather, the aim was to convey the experience of human and nonhuman 'intra-actions' through a series of spatial moments [8]. This hybrid set of relations were explored through an extension to Wellington airport consisting of a sourdough hotel and apiary The sourdough hotel is a programme provides a place for single people's sourdough cultures to be fed and looked after during time away from home. I began with a collaborative drawing with bread dough (Figure 7).

The arrival and departure of the queen bees and bread were animated. The animation sequences brought out some different storylines and spatial qualities together in a - collaborative story. Scenarios of intra-action were explored through models and drawings; and, finally a composite of drawing and model which explored a possible scenography (Figure 8-11).

As a final design, which contextualizes the discussion around new materialism through animated 'moments' show an architectural assemblage of human and non-human elements that is convincing perhaps not in pragmatic resolve, but in alien spirit.

While I cannot know what it is like to be a bee? I have tried to question how the plan, section and elevation inherently exclude those who don't fit certain assumptions. So rather than retreating to anthropocentric, exclusionary practice, the project has worked to incorporate nonhuman agency. Finally, this project is a reminder, a humbling and important one - we shouldn't laud ourselves over anything else, or each other. And perhaps by saving the bees, we may save ourselves, by valuing the importance of becoming-with others for a flourishing world [9].

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