#if seal: plotting

[if-seal]

Hello IF Seal! I have a question about how to progress the plot along by having things happen to the MC, instead of having the MC initiate everything. I much prefer stories that work like this (and I think in the world of IF they're more compelling, because the MC can truly be a blank slate and then the player gets to choose how they react instead of being forced into an action), and yet, I really struggle to write them.

Dear Plot-Progressing Friend,

As with many things, it's my thought that a balance is a good thing to aim for with this kind of thing.

Certainly it is fabulous to have plenty of options in which the MC can choose how to respond to major events. For example, the MC may be quietly having coffee when an adorable fellow visitor to the establishment accidentally drops their tray! Or the MC may be on the run from magical law-enforcement having just completed their heist! Or the MC may need to figure out how best to do their job of mussel-diving in their local caves for the day.

A lot of branching narrative is all about giving players options in handling what the game throws at them and writing situations like this enables players to decide what matters to their MC, what their personality is, and more.

That said! If you are finding that you are always writing the MC responding to things rather than acting, I wonder if there is some imbalance going on. If the MC is always reactive rather than proactive, that will work for some players and paths, but at other points it's great to also give the MC agency to make decisions.

For example:

They've come to the coffee shop and have seen their friend whom they've been arguing with, their rival at the swimming club, and the mysterious visitor to town whom they've seen lurking around the local graveyard. Who do they want to sit with? Do they want to sit alone? What happens in response to each of those actions?

And do you have the scope and ideas to have the MC go "actually I don't want to go to the coffee shop, I need to get to the library and work on my assignment" and have an entirely different branch?

I reread your question a couple of times and wonder about a line of reasoning that I believe is "if the MC initiates everything, they're forced into an action". If the MC is always initiating everything and there's only one choice, that can certainly feel railroaded. But if the MC is given choices about what things they can initiate, that's a different kettle of fish altogether. I also believe that if the MC is only ever having things happen to them, that can result in the same kind of unwanted railroading.

And no one wants an unwanted railroad!

So what I would recommend is having a look at your plot and where you are in it, and think about how the MC could knowingly or unknowingly drive it forward - and how they could respond to having an event happen to them. I think having a combination of these approaches may help it feel more organic and responsive, and hopefully you won't be put into that struggling situation.

Best of luck!

[marthajefferson]

♙♖♘♗♕♔

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Blazing Saddles (1974), Casablanca (1942), Aladdin (1992), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Blade Runner (1982), The Seventh Seal (1957), X-Men: First Class (2011), Independence Day (1996), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), Anastasia (1997), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), The Killing (1956), The Thing (1982)

[the-shotce-newsletter]

Scene from a fic I started. Selkie Soap is stuck as a seal and has a lot to say to Price, who’s hunting for answers. He can easily scoot and hop around, but why do that when he can make Ghost carry him like a sack of potatoes? Gaz is the only amused one.

[hypertechnica]

star trek as a concept is completely sexless. it is utterly devoid of sex. not one drop of convincing sexual tension has ever graced the screen on any star trek show. the weird unintentionally homoerotic psychosexual mind game shit on the other hand,

[amber-angel]

What's the POINT?????

I half expected Misty's fucking chocolate martini to be poisoned, that's how out of left field these stupid plotlines are getting

[moeblob]

Merry, who I made for an AU, in another AU for a buddy.

[spark-circuit]

love that there's always some kind of secret storyline to everyone's animal crossing islands/towns. secret cults. soap dramas. if you have something up with your islands or villagers please tell me i always find these stories so so creative and funny 💙

[boysofhyrule]

A Yiga foreshadowing

Link and Riju 100 years later after stunning Naboris

Riju: be careful Link!

Link: will do!

Link spends a while looking around Naboris

Link: Alright, so if Mipha spirit was in the last divine beasts so that means Urbosa should be here.

???:you would think that wouldn’t you hero

Link:Lady Urbosa?

???: try again

Link: Ganon?

???: Better!

Link: ummm Naboris?

???: what? No!

Behind link in a bluish green ghostly fire appears…a Yiga? Link immediately swings his sword through the ghost…it has no effect

???: Thats not going to work

Swing

???: yet you are still going to try

Swing swing swing

???: This is getting ridiculous

Swing swing

???: Do you have any bananas?

Link: huff…huff…huff where’s Urbosa?

???: Not here

Link: who are you?

???: you don’t recognize me?

Link:… … … … no … … …

???: IT IS I THE GREATEST ENEMY TO HYRULE! MASTER KOHGA!!!

Link: who? Wait what happened to Urbosa? I thought she died here?

Kohga: oh that, well I saved her

Bonus:

Kohga:Thanks for the bananas

Link: no problem but how ar-

Kohga tries to eat the banana to only have it go through him

[if-seal]

Hi dear seal 🦭 How do I make the layout for my IF? I'm thinking it will be at least 15 chapters but I only know what happens at the beginning and the end but not in between. Any tips on how to figure this out?

Dear Planning Friend,

This, alas, is another question that has been languishing for some time; I hope that it can be of use many months later, or that other readers can get something out of it.

My first point of advice would be: take some time to think about your player character and what they want.

This can be your guiding light for planning the middle parts of your game. A lot of the fun of travelling through the story is about the player character facing challenges that they can either handle, or which are hard to them, and the various obstacles getting in their way. If there are multiple goals that the PC can strive for, and succeed or fail at achieving by the end, what are the steps of those goals and how can the PC interact with those steps in different ways?

Progress towards the goals or the finish line can be described with stats, though it doesn't have to be; the best kind of progression is also done through events the PC can engage with and choices they need to make. Those events may escalate or shift as the game progresses, building tension (whether that tension is about mystery, action, romance, or anything else) until the arrival of the climactic moments and the endings afterward.

Something else to think about is: if you have a sense of what the player character can want, it's fun to test that desire.

So, say your selkie PC wants to find their skin which was stolen but they don't know where it is. They've stated through their choices that they'll do anything, including committing violence, to get it! Then it might turn out that the thief stole it for some other purpose and was being coerced themselves. Or the thief is actually a friend the PC has become close to earlier in the game. It's become more complicated now... Does the PC double down on what they said they wanted, or do they shift their perspective and try something else?

Thinking along these lines may help you figure out what you want to put the PC through during these middle parts of the game.

Other things may inspire you too. For instance, perhaps you want your PC to have dedicated time to get to know some companion characters - so the selkie has the chance to either enter a swimming contest or join a book club, which other characters are involved with. Both activities can help the PC get closer with the NPCs, and ideally they'll develop some of the other goals too.

There's also considering what other characters are doing during the game. If it's a game with a clear villain, what scheming is the villain up to and how will the PC have to deal with the fallout of that - whether they know who the villain is or not? Even if there's not a villain, other characters will be acting in ways that affect the PC's life and move themselves and the PC towards the end points. It's a case of slotting the NPCs' and the PC's actions together so that the PC can engage with them and affect the world.

I hope this is useful, dear friend. Thank you for your kind message!

[waterlinkedgirl]

Musical Touken Ranbu: Hanakage Yureru Tomizu (The Shadows of Flowers Swaying In The Whetwater) english subs

About a month later than I'd have liked, but here they are! Even if its writing is a bit more messy than usual, its core is very solid. Of course, Chougi's live song more than got away with me (it's got Japanese Sign Language), so if you could, please watch it gently.

I dedicate this to the friends of mine who love Ichigo Hitofuri. May you be unapologetically yourself, right the way you are.

Keep in mind that this is only the subtitle file, timed and tled to the DMM senshuuraku and BD/DVD. The archive version will have a talk at the start, so the starting times of the subs will have to be delayed accordingly.

You can find the subtitles and my TL document here!

[ganondoodle]

you know, i had a totk thought (uh oh)

soemthign thats really bothering me about the whole "actually, ganondorf didnt like the guy appearing out of nowhere marrying a hylian and just saying yep das our kingdom now and we can mine it barren under your nose and also i got laserbeam pebbles that i totally wont ever use on anyone come join me or die just bc of all of that but mainly bc the guy brought some weird tech with him that he dont like" - thing is that ......... we see almost not a single tech thing in the past (and for that matter see nothing of the oh so perfect and peaceful paradise hyrule was before big evil desert man didnt want to join our paradise- like what is the point about making the whole point of the game be -we need to restore hyrule to this paradise it once was- when you dont even see it or get to care about anything of it)

it might sound like a weird hangup but no really, the most we see is like two servant constructs, thats it, when they 'prepare for war' im pretty sure all you see is some lightly dressed ( ... is it just me or does their whole get up look alot like native american/other indingenous people too ... i still dont know how to feel about that- kinda adjacent to some of the sonau armor, the battery one i think??, also having that look...) hylians with spears, where the heck is all that tech?? is it implied to be all down in the mines hollowing out the underground (for no real reason either bc .... theres only two sonau left and no one else seems to want use nor need the tech otherwise there should have been more traces or soemthing left of it -unless it all just magically appeared out of nowhere in mostly prime condition while all shiekah tech jsut vaporized for bs non reasons just for it to be in tha game but oh dont you see its always been there lmao- so whats the point really????)

or up in the sky as most battle constructs are and they cant get them down in time bc *gestures vaguely*

or is it intentionally kept out of view bc idk seeing an army of robots on raurus side he can send out on a whim might not make him look as oh so good and perfect as they want him to look when he already got laserbeam pebbles (most of which hes been hoarding until ONE falls into hands not under his control) ?? like it just ... feels weird?? so many battle constructs that can even be a threat to link are jsut fully functioning strolling around in the present still, why wouldnt you want to use any of them to battle gan and if they DID why wouldnt you show that (no the 3 second unicorn cutscene doesnt count bc its just .. gan and his monsters isnt it) ?? (also ... why isnt there a big like battle ground , like fine you dont have to animate an army of monsters and robots clashing but... wouldnt it be cool to have you discover a giant flat plain in the underground (that magically got put under ground like gan just decided to stroll down there to get sealed lol) and its the only mostly empty field in the game littered with thousands of monster bones and dead constructs intermingled?? just to give it all a bit of weight?? evidence that it happened?? cool ass discovery????)

(also also i cannot let go of ganondorf apparently being sooooo anti tech but then clamgan uses the shiekah stuff??? shouldnt he also be against that then or is that suddendly fine bc- oh woops sorry, forgot clamgan is actually just something, not connected to gan at all actually, i mean why else would miasma turn into malice only to turn into miasma again haha none of that is connected actually what is a calamity anyway? also im sorry to bring this up again but i just cannot let go of the ppl in the present being so obsessed with using sonau tech in every part of their life now- they just lived through an apocalypse of a barely understood strange tech but CLEARLY this other even less understood strang tech is not dangerous at all lets make CARS OUT OF IT and what theres no danger in miasma and that tech existing at the same time LIKE SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE THAT IDK SEEMS LIKE A BAD COMBO--- oh sorry forgot that ceased to exist in both the world and peoples minds for *gestures vaguely* plot reasons- why why why are monsters mining the sonanium?? they dont even work with the yiga no that is also completely disconnected we dont wanna draw and interesting connections after all- whats the point if it means nothing but to be a loot box for the player-- actually, so much of totk is just a so built around throwing you into a box of toys with no substance to it- listen i know games are kinda like toys but if it doesnt make sense and offers you nothing interesting to think about even slightly whAT IS THE POINT)

[sosadraws]

So, I was trying to visualize how many signalis ocs I've created and

...well, that's a lot... 😅

The characters in bold are the most developed and the arrows mean that the character leaves the social circle/group they're in.

It's a shame that Sasha and Luchs are from different planets (and potentially different timelines as well), they wold have been besties...

[queenvhagar]

I saw a supposed leak that says Elinda is planning to hang up posters in kings landing to find more dragonseeds. I wanna know two things. How are team black members constantly getting through to King’s Landing without notice. Secondly how are the smallfolk going to read the posters when pretty much all of them are illiterate. Are they going to do picture posters?

LMAO it's all just hieroglyphics like:

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🫵 🖤 👩🏻‍🦳👑🧑🏻‍🦳➕👦🏻(🪦👦🏻)👦🏻👶🏼👶🏼❓

🫵 🪞🧑🏻‍🦳❓

🫵 💭 🐲 🏇❓

🫵 🚶🏻 ⛵️ 👉 🐲 🪨 (🌋 🏝️)❗️

(⚠️ 🐲👉🔥🩸💀🪦)

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[muffinlance]

JUST FINISHED THE SKIN STEALER'S SON. YOU ARE A GENIUS. I WANT TO CRY.

I am sure Anon is crying tears of joy. This is certainly nothing to be concerned about. Please read my very feel-good book where everyone has a good time and gets to eat baked goods at the end

[thesaintelectric]

the problem with jjk *is* gojo imo, he was such a titanic presence that rather than being a story with a mentor who had completed his arc, the story has to bend around him at every moment until it reaches a reasonable point to kill him. and then its a surprising fast roll to the finish line

[tennesseeroulette]

We NEED a time travel esque kirby game