#is intentional storytelling

[veerbles]

the end of ck is like, if you are a protagonist whose main character arc is being haunted by your dead brother and your friend has just recently developed powers allowing her to raise people from the dead, is it really a coincidence or is it just the doomed narrative coming for you?

[anne-is-confused]

Captain Francis Crozier, at Furthest North.

[peachcott]

letters, unread. ✉

[icyblueroses]

My favorite detail in the Fionna and Cake finale? In the original flashback when Simon and Betty get together, he spins her and she lands on the step below Simon

And when Simon tries to change the past by offering to go with Betty instead, this time when he spins her she lands on the same step

[canisalbus]

Look, I know it's supposed to end badly. But I need to admit that in my head, they declared a mutual "fuck this shit" to the world and society. Packed all the stuff they could one late night and escaped to a remote open plain in the middle of some thick woods where they spent the rest of their lives healing and living freely in nature.

I've been having a lot of intense feelings about them as well. The tragical elements are so baked in to their story and setting, it's hard to imagine a happy ending for them. But every now and then I find myself thinking of scenarios and AUs where they both live and grow old together. For coping purposes, I suppose.

[not-poignant]

Me, reading this : "Like, my intention in amongst the hurt/comfort isn’t for things to feel easy or nice all the time, I am absolutely challenging the reader by introducing things that feel uncomfortable.". AH... I see. Here's Pia's dom personality XD Much love! Please keep challenging us forever!

Aha, it is weird sometimes to think that like, this is something that all writers are generally doing, and then it's like 'yeah no that's... introducing conflict means ideally you feel it too, that's... that's what makes the resolution feel so good' - like that's the job.

Tbh, this is why when folks are like 'omg I can't believe they KILLED that character' or 'I can't believe THIS HORRIBLE THING HAPPENED WHY' it's like well, they wanted you to feel this way. That's why. They did it on purpose. Outside of shitty tropes like 'burying your gays' etc. when folks are genuinely bemoaning why a show has made them miserable the answer is nearly 100% of the time - they wanted you to feel miserable.

They wanted you to have the awful experience of a tragic ending. They wanted you to feel the conflict at the end of a season so that you'd be driven to the catharsis of resolution in the next season. It's an intentional move to create emotional response, catharsis, expression, frustration and resonance, to lead you through a journey that is more than just cerebral.

And when it works, it's incredible, and it's my favourite part of storytelling.

[pencap]

hmmm. you know i thought i was being rather unsubtle in these recent-old poems. but several people have said "sorry to blorbo your poems" and then tagged it as bucky barnes.

it occurs to me that my sense of "unsubtle" is possibly very skewed.

[haemosexuality]

what im really enjoying about dungeon meshi is that at no point the progression felt unnatural. the stakes are so much higher than when they started and so is the general tone of the story but i was never like, "woah, thats a really big jump". everything made complete sense as the natural next step

[hcnnibal]

do you have tips on comic layouts?! lowkey making me want to do a comic of my ocs, also what kind of brush do you use?

i have way too much to say about comic layouts, paneling, framing, etc but i will refrain from yapping. i guess the gist of it is figure out the tone of the scene or the emotions u want to evoke from the audience first, then try to make it happen :D sometimes u have to go through a ton of thumbnails before u settle on something that makes it onto a page, its a lot of trial and error but eventually u get a feel for it

i use these brushes

[rebouks]

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Transcript:

Ivan: C’mon Dourpuss, it’s just you n’ me now-… Bruno: I don’t want to talk about it. Ivan: Pfft.. it’s non-negotiable, same as you being a good person.

Bruno: Tch. Ivan: I ain’t lettin’ you beat yourself up about the past forever n’ ever. Bruno: [sighs] There’s so much that I regret though.

Ivan: Listen.. y’care about those closest to ya, y’good with kids n’ animals, y’help people who’re goin’ through what you’ve been through, even though y’not much of a people person-.. y’care about me, more than anyone else ever has. Bruno: None of that cancels out the things I’ve done.

Ivan: I ain’t sayin’ it cancels anythin’ out, shit ain’t as black n’ white as that.. y’know? No singular choice makes someone bad; it’s everythin’ mashed together, right? My Pa was a good example; complete asshole, couldn’t raise a kid for shit-.. but he wasn’t all bad, he just got lost n’ never found his way again. That’s why I still loved him, took care of him n’ stuff.

Ivan: [sighs] Would y’rather turn yourself in, risk goin’ back t’prison? Bruno: No, but it’d be nice to get it all off my chest-.. like you said. Ivan: So, do it…

Bruno: I hate how easy it was. Ivan: Yeah? Bruno: Like in a film? The good guy stands there; hands shaking, agonising over pulling the trigger-.. but I just fucking did it.

Ivan: Why? Bruno: One was an accident, but the other-.. I knew who he was, what he was like; he was an abusive rapis-… Ivan: Okay, so the world’s better off without him.

Bruno: Nothing gives us the right to take away someone’s life like that. Ivan: Leah killed Arturo, was she a bad person? Bruno: [pauses] No.

Ivan: What about war veterans n’ stuff? Bet they’ve killed a bunch o’ folk, some get medals for it an’ all. Bruno: How the hell is that comparable? Ivan: They’re just followin’ orders, right? Who’s t’say I wouldn’t have ended up killin’ someone if I stuck with the Navy?

Bruno: You’re making this difficult on purpose. Ivan: Yeah, ‘cause I’m challengin’ your logic. Bruno: You’re biased, it doesn’t count.

Ivan: Okay, I don’t much care for Wyatt, but I wouldn’t have judged him if he shot Arturo-.. hell, I would’a choked the shit outta him if he’d actually shot you… Maybe we’re more violent than some, but our intentions are good. Bruno: I still feel guilty about Silas…

Ivan: I know. Bruno: I should’ve made sure he got away safely. Ivan: Why didn’t you?

Bruno: [sighs] I was still mad at him; annoyed with myself for letting him walk all over me, again… So, I brushed him off n’ said staying any longer would be dangerous-.. which it was, but I was happier to spend the night with you n’ Oscar. Ivan: It was his decision not t’leave sooner, wasn’t it? I don’t want you blamin’ yourself anymore.

Bruno: [sighs defeatedly] Alright. Ivan: You’re a package deal, B; I love you and your past, okay? Bruno: [nods] I love you too…

[leotanaka]

jughead almost immediately removing himself from the musical aka the narrative the moment that someone else (kevin & clay) starts writing their own version of it and in turn, his removal from controlling the narrative ends up allowing the characters to take back control of their own narrative because when jughead writes and rewrites the story, it ends up trapping the characters deeper inside the narrative and the cycles they are desperate to escape until they are repeating the same behaviours over and over again but when kevin & clay write and rewrite the story, it ends up giving the characters back their agency because they're trying to help them which then allows them to break free from the narrative and walk away.

[nobodymitskigabriel]

I don't understand when people criticize Mystery Spot for "making light of Sam's suffering". Not like that Trickster guy is known for making light of people's suffering?

[emblazons]

Me when someone says something like “the duffers aren’t that smart / I don’t trust them with this story” knowing that number one they’re the ones who conceptualized the entire original idea for the thing we’ve spent months analyzing the first place + more I listen to them talk after spending months critically consuming their show…the more (not less) impressed I am they’ve been unfathomably calculated about half a million little details in this story from the start:

[catilinas]

sacrificed to the narrative vs narrative as sacrifice

[mc-pumpkin]

QSMP: you can only wear iron armor and use iron tools :)

QSMP: also here's some really Really powerful mobs to fight :))

[lord-squiggletits]

NGL I think one of my least favorite "gotchas" that I see/get while critiquing stories is "so how would you fix it? oh so you don't have an idea of how to rewrite the story to make it better? oh so basically you're just complaining that you don't like it and don't have actual critique."

Buddy.

Sometimes the reason I don't have a "solution" to how the author should've rewritten their story to be better, is because I'm not privy to the author's thought process, what their alternate story ideas were, what they talked about with their editor, what they might've been forced to do by deadlines, or even what they might've thought they were writing towards at first but then later changed the trajectory of their story to be about something else.

It's all well and good for me to say something like, idk, "I think Character A should've gotten more narrative focus because their story could have helped fix XYZ Plot Hole," but it could very well be that the author never intended for Character A to be a prominent character (just a secondary or tertiary character). Maybe using Character A to solve one Plot Hole would've gone against the writer's plans because then it would open up a different plot hole for something else they had planned later in the story. If it's an ongoing story, maybe something I see as a "plot hole" is actually a deliberate mystery that the creator left open to write about later-- or maybe the plot hole is because there was a deadline crunch and the author had to drop a certain character/plot point/etc because they couldn't fit it into the story any more. Maybe having Character A be a more prominent part of the story is just based on MY personal tastes and what I would want to write in MY version of the story, but completely clashes with the characters/conflicts the author wanted to focus on.

Because yes, there are some story critiques that are as simple as "part A doesn't make sense, you could just fix it by doing B", but there are also some story critiques where suggesting a viable "solution" would require BEING the author or someone involved in the production of the story to understand what limitations or plans were involved in the selection of that flawed plot point. There are also some story critiques where even if there is a "problem" and my critique offers a "solution," there could be another "solution" or even dozens that do just as good of a job fixing the issue, but involve vastly different characters, plot ideas, so on and so forth.

Being a good critic isn't (just) about going "the story would've been better if X happened" because the story is ultimately in control of the author and their vision, and without knowing what the author's vision was (something that you almost exclusively know if you're 1. the author or 2. their beta reader), it's impossible to definitively say "this plot point should've been cut/[completely different thing] should've happened instead" because THAT is the point at which you're complaining, not critiquing. I would argue that in some cases, trying to "fix" a story yourself actually makes your critique worse, not better, because it ends up being a case of you simply imposing your artistic vision over the author's to say "I think it would've been better this way."

At least if you just say "this part of the story was flawed because XYZ" without saying "it should have been ABC instead", then you're stating your grievances with the story without being presumptuous enough to assume that YOUR version of the story would fit the author's original vision, or the constraints they were working under, or the other versions of the story that they were debating over at the time before ultimately settling on one version (even if flawed).

There's a point at which "this plot is flawed, that should've happened instead" is just fix-it fan fiction and not actual critique that could help the writer write their story in a way that fits their vision.