#Dunk away

[hypotheticalprose]

The Benefits of Narrative Jazz

CAUTION: I am not a jazz musician, I have no real skill in music, and I am generally always talking out of my ass on this blog. Great, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I will now attempt to use jazz as a metaphor for storytelling.

I love TTRPGs, watch my fair share of actual-plays, and have a handful of hypothetical game systems rattling around in my head that I’ll definitely get around to at some point. However, I was a latecomer to the art form. Unlike many of my friends, I didn’t play DnD until my senior year of high school. I originally only got into it because my little brother was getting into it, and I wanted to be supportive.

Because of this, I have a clear moment in my life where my creative writing work was irrevocably contaminated by my ongoing love affair with random tables and collaborative storytelling. Comparing my mindset before and after that point, the best thing I can compare it to is the difference between classical composing and performing a jazz piece.

When I was younger, I had far more experience with building LEGOs and drawing maps as creative outlets, and I took a similar structural approach to my writing. My work was focused on putting pieces in the right place, making sure everything fit, and killing any narrative dissonance I found with extreme prejudice. In my mind, there was a thing called The Story, and The Story was essentially a window into a realistic, internally consistent alternate World that I constructed myself. It’s the mindset of a guy who obsessively read Wookipedia all throughout middle school to make sure that his homemade Star Wars faction was exactly as cool as the canon allowed.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I started running games of DnD in my speech and debate class (why weren’t we doing, you know, speech and debate? What are you, a narc?) and I discovered the joys of riffing. I approached each session with my meticulously crafted notes, and my grimdark villains, and my Map, and despite my best efforts my players transformed the game into Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Luckily, I am only sometimes an utter killjoy, so I found myself really enjoying the game despite the fact that it wasn’t a perfect Story in a perfect World.

Today, I mostly play rather than DM, but I’ve definitely DM’d more games than I have played in em. I also write professionally and personally. As it turns out, the skills that make for good improvisational, collaborative storytelling are just as useful when sitting down and writing a screenplay or narrative.

This is where the jazz comparison comes in. In jazz, a performance typically begins with the bassist playing a pedal point, a single note that the rest of the band builds the song around. There’s also usually a basic melody that they riff off of for their solos. Oftentimes, the performers only have a vague idea of what they will improvise during their solos. Sometimes, the best of the best would completely wing it. But of course, they have that foundation they’re building off of. And even the wildest performers are tethered to that pedal point.

For writers, the pedal point is the thing that makes the story worth writing. I’m aiming abstract here, because it could be a lot of things. A theme they find compelling, a neat character, a specific emotion, whatever. It can even be practical like “I need to write a story that I can use to pay the bills.” No judgement here, we’ve all done it.

The melody is essentially the story’s starting premise. This is the “idea” in its most basic, barebones form. A chord progression and time signature become setting, premise, etc.

It’s the riffing that makes things interesting. None of the players in a jazz band are going to know what the final song will sound like. That means they have to adjust on the fly. They have to connect with what the other players are doing. If inspiration strikes, they use the fundamentals as the tether that prevents them from going too far from the basic premise. When you record a jazz performance, you do slightly kill this magic, right? But here’s the thing: if no one recorded jazz, we’d all have a lot less jazz in our day to day lives.

Every story that exists today is essentially an example of this process. No story remains unchanged. For a younger me, that was a challenging thing to accept. I clung to every idea I had. Every new idea had to fit into my existing framework. It was, essentially, creative constipation. I was writing orchestral pieces where instead of getting rid of my older, amateur work, I was layering more parts over it.

The irony of treating every part of a story as sacred is, after a certain point, you might have a hard time remembering what the original idea that propelled you was. At that point, you’re kinda screwed.

I have found that in my own work, the method that I try to use for everything I do is this:

Follow your story’s guiding light with religious fervor. If you find yourself losing sight of it, your story is in jeopardy. if you have an idea that doesn’t fit the guiding light, consider an alternative home for that story. Alternatively, if you find that you need to change your pedal point out of necessity, recognize that you’re gonna have to retool everything built on it to avoid dissonance.

Be open to inspiration when it strikes, even if it means changing the planned meat and bones of your story quite a bit. If your guiding light is strengthened by the new idea, you will be glad you did it.

In situations where you are releasing episodic content (comics, fanfiction, ttrpg campaign, tv shows, whatever) and retooling past work is not ideal, aim for lean, mean storytelling. Don’t establish things “just because;” it can close you off to better ideas down the line, when it really matters. Don’t write the beginning as though you have a finished story already. Focus on your basic melody, then elaborate as needed.

Writing is output, and existence is input. The latter is the fuel that drives the former. You won’t have a new, better idea if you haven’t experienced anything new. Read something, go for a walk, whatever. Greedily swallow novel concepts and sensations, see what that does to your story. Watch how other people riff on similar melodies, get inspired. A closed system is a system that will put nothing out. If this advice happens to be life affirming, it’s purely tangential to my monomaniacal desire to write stories and shit.

You don’t have to be improvising stories on the spot for a live audience to find these things useful. It is fundamentally a matter of mindset, allowing you to build more effective stories at a high speed. Also, my general need for structure is still totally a thing, don’t get it twisted. I just have a more well-rounded tool kit. But I’ll still make a good fuckin map. With rivers and shit.

[joongdunking]

"They can do this all day" then show it to us!!

[moved2codacheetah]

Tell me your opinions on the stuff. Any stuff.

Grins. Smiles, even

I'm using you as an excuse to infodump my theory about the Island because I've had no in to do that, and my theory is pure opinion. Anyways:

THE ISLAND IS STUCK IN THE FUCKING FUTURE

(SCARE CHORD)

Hi so you might ask me. What the fuck do you mean by that. Well. Let's start with what we know about the Island, the King, and Wish Craft. (long ass post under cut. sorry)

The Island was redacted from the perception of outside world, via Wish Craft.

Wish Craft has the power to enable Time Craft. We see this primarily through Siffrin's timeloops, but also through the King's powers.

One of the King's powers is to show the saviors a "vision of the future."

...And this same attack is deflected back at the King by Mirabelle in ACT 5, in which the King is able to see the Island before being frozen in time.

...So. The King's "vision of the future." We're never told explicitly what this vision is. All we know is that it's apparently powerful enough to wipe the party in one hit, hearing it from a distance hurts your head, and that whatever Siffrin (and Loop) saw, they don't seem to actually be able to describe it. Even the King himself doesn't know what his vision entails.

We don't know whether the party all sees the same thing when struck by the vision, and Adrienne's answer to the question about it in the Reddit AMA is. vague? It's not a "no," and the specific wording makes me think the answer might be yes. But that's me reading into it.

Now. What do we know about the Island's redaction? The Island was affected by the wish recently, as in "like a decade ago" recently. We know that nobody in Vaugarde or the rest of the world is capable of thinking about the Island, anything closely tied to the Island's culture, or people on the Island for very long. When they do recall these things, they slip right out of reach. Particularly, the consequence for trying to think about the Island (or, more specifically, break the wish that forces the Island out of perception) is significant pain, localized in the head.

And that said pain is enough to become lethal, if pressed hard enough.

From here forward I'm running with the assumption that the King's "vision of the future" is not personalized to any individual, and is unchanging throughout the course of the whole story. Now. Remember the end of ACT 5, where the King gets hit with the deflected "vision of the future", and instead of dying, he recalls the Island and gets frozen in time? Very odd, yeah? Why wouldn't the King just die like everyone else does? He even does take 9999 damage when trying to say its name, like Siffrin does, and like the party does when they're hit by the attack.

Well. We know that he has a "true wish" that the ability to freeze Vaugarde in time grants. I don't think it's at all a stretch to guess that the King's "true wish" is to be able to remember the Island. My personal guess is that the King (and Siffrin) brought this "true wish" into effect via the "SAY ITS NAME" sequence- he even tries three times, a significant number in wishing.

The King (and Siffrin's) wish breaks, because it can't be fulfilled in this moment without breaking the wish to prevent the Island from being thought about. However. Consider the conditions at the end of ACT 5- the King sees the vision of the future reflected back to him, and what he sees is the Island. He remembers the Island, fulfilling his own wish, and is frozen in time. I consider this a compromise between his wish and the one binding the Island- the King gets to remember the Island, but nobody alive is able to think about it, because he's frozen in time; it's like the Universe is correcting itself (I WILL GET BACK TO THIS). The wish of all of Vaugarde to defeat the King is fulfilled, since he is no longer a threat, and Siffrin's wish wraps itself up soon after.

MY POINT BEING. The King's attack is a vision of the future. This "future" is of the Island, in some uncorrupted state. The saviors see it when he attacks them, and he sees it when it is deflected back to him.

The logical next question is "okay, so the Island exists in the future, but how do you know time shenanigans are even related to the Island?"

Recall a very odd series of interactions throughout the game, in which you try to interact with a piece of equipment that you already own.

The game rewinds slightly, before the item disappears, as the Universe corrects itself.

This is awfully similar to two particular events: looping back without seeing the death screen, and talking to the Daydreaming One about her sister. The latter is more interesting to me for the purposes of this theory.

In both instances, something is misaligned within the Universe (an item existing in two places, someone remembering something they're not supposed to) and it is corrected through some sort of rewind. Also compare the dialogue above to when you try to give Mirabelle the Stylish Bow when you already own it.

The world glitches, but Siffrin defuses the situation before the Universe has to intervene. Omitted from the screenshot is the fact that Mirabelle's portraits switch to happy from "catastrophically anxious" with no transition after Siffrin shows her where the bow is. Important to note is that when Mirabelle tries to recall receiving the bow, her head hurts, much like how trying to break the Island wish causes a headache.

The Universe leads you away from perception, and you can only follow.

My theory that I keep circling around is that through Wish Craft, the Island has been displaced temporally. The denizens of the Island, as well as the Island itself, still exist, but they are in the future. The Island is still loaded into the world, like how equipment is before you try to interact with it, and the Island cannot leave this quantum state, because it never actually went anywhere. The magnitude of the redaction event is so severe with the Island, because it is so much larger as an entity than a sword or a bow. There are of course things I don't really have pieced together, like why somebody would wish the Island into the future, how far into the future it is, or why equipment behaves this way. But it's the only Island theory I've seen that I have some level of confidence in, so I might as well lay out my cards for it.

[bluerosefox]

Summoning the Summoner

Another summoning/long lost family au but with twist!

So Damian and his class are at Gotham museum for a small field trip for a school project. Thing is none of them knew until it was too late that the new museum curator was part of a cult that had plans to kidnap and sacrifice this class of kids for some ancient god/deity/spirit.

Damian barely manages to send a message to one of his brothers and to the cave before being knocked out when he sees his classmates dropping from knocknout gas.

When he wakes up the preparations for the sacrifice are almost ready. Damian being the most prominent person in the class is going to be the one chosen first. He is then taken to the alter and it begins after the whole villain speech. Damian does manage to get out of his bindings and tries to fight back, does lead them on a merry little chase to get more time for his family to come, nothing to Robiny though, but is forcibly restrained again.

Just as they bring Damian back to the alter none of them notice, or rather, care that Damian was bleeding from getting hit when they recaptured him. None of them notice when the blood dropped from his chin onto the summoning circle because the Batclan (any) just dropped into the room.

They did notice however when the summoning circle started glowing beneath them however.

And none of the cultists had time to finish the summoning chant.

Meaning the summoning circle was not under their control.

And before any of them could do anything, they are all ripped away from the Mortal Realm and everyone, Damian, his class, the cultists, and the Batfam in the room are pulled into the Infinite Realms.

They are no longer in the warehouse they were about to be sacrificed in but in a throne room. Surrounded by glowing floating people and some don't even look human.

And sitting on the throne was a teenager with a shoulder wrapped cape made of stars and galaxies, a crown of ice, stars, and aurora borealis lights shifting in between them, about Damian's age, with white hair and glowing green eyes who looked rather shocked.

The reason? Both him and Damian shared the same face.

-x-x-

Danny was annoyed as heck.

Ever since his crowning it was like every magic user from legendary to mediocre got a notice that a new Infinite Realms King had been crowned and that gave them the go ahead and try to freaking Summon him!

Luckily refusing a summons was well within Danny's Ghost King rights, he's King now he does what he wants (Sam's wise words), and the only summonings Danny answered were his friends and family (Dani is such a troll with it though, butttttt it does get him out of those annoying meetings sometimes and they get to hang out wherever she decided to stop at), sometimes he'd answer the odd teenage morons just to scare them (it's always fun)

Although there were a few summonings outside of that, that he had answered. Thankfully he could sense what kind of summoner was summoning him and intent was always a huge thing. And those that didn't feel like insane fruitloops well... Danny's curiosity often took over.

So imagine his annoyance when he felt another summon happening in the middle of a meeting with his council. But also imagine his surprise when the normally tight demands on the summoning wasn't there...

That meant...

Oh Danny was going to have a lot of fun with this.

This meant they summoning but don't have control on which way the summoning was going to go. Meaning, Danny could reverse summon them to him instead.

With a wide grin he instantly waved his hand and the meeting room shifted to his throne room, might as well pull out all the stops and play the "Big Bag Ghost King"

He could see his council (and good friends and allies) raise their eyebrows at him or tilt their heads but could also sense the attempted summonings power of him and knew he had something planned.

With a short laugh, Danny raised his hand, grasped on the invisible summoning line, and pulled.

Now he was expecting a good amount of people, the summoning felt large so that normally meant cultists but he was expecting so many! Heck some looked to be teenagers his age, and a few oddly dressed people besides the cultists! Oh boy did that mean sacrifices?! Well he'll be happy to put those cultists in their place if that was the case.

But first, find the summoner. Separate them from the group and -

Oh... why... why does he have Danny's face?!

Danny took a quick look at the normally invisible to everyone but him Summoning line and almost choked when he saw it was a sibling line, a blood sibling line.

[fyeahthaidramas]

For science.

bonus because he deserves to look pleased with himself tbh

[secriden]

Me: still finding knives in unexpected places 😭

Style sees Fadel though the window and it's delight and joy and relief and excitement because this is the miraculous second chance that Style, after a week of fruitless longing, was beginning to think was lost to him forever...

...while Fadel turns to look at Style through the window and it's agony and disbelief and sorrow and despair as he watches the last light of his hope for a new life worth living be snuffed out like a candle in the wind.

[scoriarose]

Sakura:❓

[airenyah]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dunk Natachai B. (@dunknatachai)

not dunk posting a wedding proposal cake reel and then also making it explicitly gay via his emoji use in his insta story:

he did that specifically to mock me and my pain of not getting a fadelstyle wedding in the thk finale, i just know it 😭😭😭

[danwhobrowses]

Happy Easter Critters! Have a drawing of a scene I'm sure will happen multiple times in the post-C3 timeline and what better time to draw it than a time of gifting eggs to people, right Caleb?

[cozylittleartblog]

i can finally say real and sincere words i dedicate my song to you

print on my etsy

[joongdunking]

I don't even know this is clip number what of Joong kissing Dunk

And this was after Dunk came out of the car all sweaty but neither of them mind being this close

[aprilblossomgirl]

If you want it, I’ll give it to you.

[moeblob]

Right: Why are you like this... while you /do/ have beautiful eyes I didn't mean sell me on your body. Give me a fucking solid personality trait of yours. Paul: Oh. I'm a good listener. Right: ............ so you're pretty if you shut up. Gotcha.

[rnelodyy]

guys please im literally begging yall to understand that "the gods should have interfered when i was a hurt and scared little kid begging them for help" and "the gods shouldnt be forcing themselves onto mortals by way of colonial incursion" are not contradictory statements. ashton's perspective is flawed and biased due to their own experiences sure but its not hypocritical.

[secriden]

I'm specifically and especially very very broken up about this scene. (It's from the mock trailer, and no longer in the official one, so it may not even be in the show anymore. But.)

What it says about Fadel. The fragility in this admission. The way he's built up all these walls to protect himself and his brother, the way he trusts no one, lets no one close; but for Style, who he knows is keeping secrets from him, he will break that rule. Because Style has become more important to him that safety, more precious than having control, more desirable than the certainty of having his own heart firmly (coldly) in his own hands.

The fact that Fadel has reached a point that he's not only aware of this but is willing to admit it to Style. The way it slips a metaphorical gun into Style's hands and lines the shot right up to Fadel's head.

The way Fadel closes his eyes while Style is still staring unblinkingly at him. That Fadel is choosing not to see what is coming.

*sobs* I am not ready (but oh so so excited) for this heartbreak.

[emuanon34]