#plot discussion

[polling-sonic-fans]

Could a film based on Sonic Unleashed work?

Yes

Yes but it needs to be heavily rewritten

It would only work as a TV show something akin to Knuckles

No

Thanks for the poll anon! Polls for the Sonic fandom on just about anything. Share polls you like to get more data. Asks and submissions always open.

[orvdiscrepancies]

Story Discussion/rant

Honestly, the whole streaming thing doesn’t make sense to me.

The first dokkaebi we meet is Bihyung. His streaming channel is #BI-7623. It’s pretty much accepted that he’s the streamer for the main cast because he’s Dokja’s streamer and they all pretty much follow him.

However, later on, we have another dokkaebi offering Dokja to join his channel. That implies that it doesn’t matter where the incarnations are, they’re always part of one channel.

If that’s the case, then Jihye isn’t under Bihyung’s channel. She’s in channel #BAY23515. That means she has a different dokkaebi that we just don’t meet in the webtoon. I don’t know if we meet them in the novel. I’m not there yet.

But regardless. When we meet Bihyung, it looks like he’s only the streamer for subway car 3807, meaning he’s only the streamer for Dokja, Gilyoung, Sangah, Hyunsung, and Myungoh.

There is no evidence when we first meet him that we have that Bihyung is also the streamer for the other cars. Unless it’s just plainly said in the webtoon or novel later on. But all evidence points to Bihyung being the main, if not only streamer in the Seoul dome.

I mean bro shows up, only talks to the people in car 3807, and then the prime minister gets killed on national/live TV, and then addresses the people in car 3807. That all points to the idea of him being the only dokkaebi/main streamer. Sure he could have been addressing everyone, but that's the assumption that he gave the same "this isn't fiction" lecture to everyone he's talked to. Perhaps it's a different dokkaebi, but that doesn't make sense either because we don't even know that there are more than one streamer yet.

Is he the streamer for everyone on that one subway? Then why does he only talk to 3807? I know why in a meta sense. It's to make it more personal and to better explain it to the reader. But story wise. Why? Has he duplicated himself so that he can explain it to each separate car individually? Is he just making his way through the cars one by one?

As far as subway cars go, we only really hear about two. 3707 where Joonghyuk is and 3807 where Dokja is. Stupid Texan in stupid small town where there are no subways doesn't fully understand the subway car naming system. But I do understand that Dokja is in the car behind Joonghyuk's (because he explicitly says it. I'm so smart).

If Bihyung is going through each subway car one by one then one, he's going super damn fast in order to be on time, and it means that the cars start times are skewed. Again, we only hear about these two subway cars. Of course Joonghyuk's going to start early, it's Joonghyuk. Bro came out of the regression stabbing.

We know that scenarios can be individualized for certain groups of people. In the King scenario (I can't remember what number it is and I really don't want to look through it to go find it), Dokja's group starts late and has a disadvantage because of that. Car 3807 doesn't start killing each other so the time limit is changed from 30 minutes to 10. So again, is Bihyung just the streamer for Dokja's group??

Does Joonghyuk have his own dokkaebi? Who is Jihye's? She's the only one who survives her school, so is she the only one in that channel? Is there some behind the scenes incarnation trades? Then why does that one dokkaebi bother asking Dokja to join his stream?

I'm not on the reddit because honestly reddit scares me. Maybe this has been discussed there. And maybe someone has a reddit post series or whatever where they go through discrepancies. If so, I gotta get together with them lmao.

[bluebellowl]

Ok, fnaf submas idea(maybe)

Now, i cant remember if you said something about a train chase scene between the twins and the player or not but if you didn’t then that is what i am proposing.

How i imagine it going is at first the player/gregory is taking the train to some new area that’s been unlocked with the twins having been a neutral party throughout most of the game until now or freddy mentioning them and helping gregory reach them to unlock fast travel(with little train stops here there that have been found across gameplay)

And upon the first encounter the twins become hacked and attack gregory as the train is going with you the player racing to get the conductor car with the twins following in suit behind you quickly (either rushing at you on their two feet or that really creepy bent-backward crawl on their hands and feet and their heads turned[360 turning capabilities?] in order to accommodate that position)

Once you get to the front car you then have control of the train and veer it onto an unfinished track, freddy contacts you and sets up some type of like bomb or something, you somehow escape the train before it crashes leaving the twins to scream metallically (and somehow fearfully) into the trash area. Fast travel is still accessible, you just don’t have the twins there to manually run the train, its on autopilot now until you get them back up.

Alternatively, if one them catch you, you either get fucking decked/punched to death (one punch only shown) or suffocated. Gruesome yes but i imagine afton getting real fuckin sick of the player at this point and commands animatronics to kill on sight no matter what.

And depending on who you find first they will either follow you around the trash dump(Ingo after you get him a battery) or head straight to the nearest train station to wait for you(Emmet).

Once they’ve been reunited you take em to the repair area, find a few leftover parts and fix em up as much as you can. Ingo’s voicebox still has that unnatural, glitchy, autotuned baritone and Emmet still twitches(he twitched and sputtered a lot before the repair, a result of his fall) here there due to faulty wiring/coding that would require an engineer and coder to fix fully, not a child. That and the parts were a little outdated.

Oh man I'm eating good today!! Thank you so much for that plot idea. I'm having a lot of fun juggling that around in my brain!

Some of that I already sorta used in previous fnaf AU pieces.

Like crashing the train into the trash dump and befriending the twins again after finding them down there.

or

Using the train as a means of fast travel to make navigation easier but with a catch.

But you mentioned that the twins are neutral at first, but the first time you actually encounter them they'll attack? Will they be a mystery at first then? Like you only ever see a portion of them from the back? Freddy would probably insist they'd be such nice fellows, like he does with music man. I wonder what would move him to place a bomb in order to blow them up. Maybe the train crashing off tracks and the fragile pizza plex floor might even be enough to doom them.

I do love the idea of them just straight up punching Gregory to death upon sight as their jumpscare. Just unrestrained violence. And you know those guys have the Newtons to crush an adult skull! Suffocation might be even creepier I think. Just their manic eyes staring you down, hands around your throat at your vision goes dark. As if they were simply putting you to sleep.

[msgirlfangirlingposts]

While I then and there critize Tvtropes info, I think it made a pretty good resume about my doubts about Stolitz breaking in the "The Full Moon":

Now, mind you, I don't think ONLY Stolas is in the wrong here, neither he does that in purpose. But that is the point. Both are in the wrong, but the series treats only Blitz as being guilt for their problems, and Blitz screaming at him at the end being something all horrible and cruel he shouldn't had said, when Stolas ins't being hold responsable for what HE said and did.

He is not pointed out as basically had forced Blitz into a sex deal. (Althought for a book he stole from Stolas and he shouldn't has in the first place) He said he never despress Blitz, when he didn't defend him from Asmodeus and Fizz at Ozzie's and pass half the first season desregarding Blitz limits about their relationship, sometimes even in public. And the series narrative basically pretends it never happen.

Again, neitheir I think Stolas is being insensive in purpose, neither I think Stolas is the only one wrong here, but the series in its own treats like that with Blitz, so I felt the need to defend him. Not from favoritism sake, Actually, I honestly prefer Stolas. All the episodes about the self-hate from Blitz is growing tired for me. That had been the entire plot of what... 4 episodes by now? But because I firm believe that series script is starting to lose itself. If it isn't fixed as soon as possible, the full series can be affect and the plot qualities can be decread.

[anthropictales]

Blather: Worldbuilding and Metaphor

Ok so, something a bit different, I have some thoughts re: Metaphor and worldbuilding and how they work.

Short version, a Metaphor is at its strongest when it agrees more or less with the Diegetic (in-universe) reality of the story in which it is presented.

Long Version:

In particular, I've been thinking about The Matrix.

Specifically, I've been thinking about a Tron+Matrix crossover and the way the two work or don't work on their own and in comparison

But in particular, I think The Matrix is an excellent demo of what I mean about Metaphor and Setting congruence.

The Wachowski sisters didn't plan on making more than the first film, and in the context of the first film, the metaphor of the Simulation and waking from it is perfectly congruent: Neo needed out, the Agents needed him sedated and asleep... any other implications are beyond both the story's scope (extradiegetically and metaphorically), and (diegetically), utterly irrelevant to Neo trying to not get himself and the Nebuchadnezzar's crew merked by the Matrix's Security Systems because it turned out his ass was of greater interest to the system than he realized or they had planned for.

But Warner wasn't quite in the business of money laundering yet, so they wanted more movies. What can ya do when the studio dumps a truckload of money at yer door and the world itself is clamoring for more anyway but put hand to keyboard and make something?

and here's the thing. the minute the Matrix was more than a metaphor for 1900's+ western gender binarism ideology or social control more broadly, the metaphor of plato's cave is no longer congruent to the setting.

suddenly, Neo's got sentient programs who cannot leave the system but are also under oppression.

and what happens if everyone did wake up? can Zion support 8 billion souls? probably not. what about topside? i dont think those megacity ruins have arable land. but Zion and Neo are dead-set on making that question very fucking critical if they win and they didn't once think about it.

the Scope of the story expanded beyond the base metaphor, and the sequels stumble trying to keep up because they don't laser-focus on any one facet of the broader metaphor they just sort-of nod in passing at the bits while between fancy action set-pieces.

So Reloaded and Revelations stumbled because they expanded the scope of the story without dealing with the immediate implications that anyone who might actually get a choice would have to think about in terms of what am I gonna eat if I do this?.

A lot of stories do this, where the intended metaphor is kinda incongruent to A: the way the story plays out or B: the actual setting itself.

Michael B. Jordan's character in Black Panther was A: dead-ass on the money and B: Had the right goddamn idea, as evidenced by both Marvel's in-universe united states (film and comics alike) and the fact that IRL a bunch of dumbfuck rural car dealership owners got so pissed that we elected a black man to be president that the US has now shot itself in the metaphorical dick, face, ass and kidneys, and is trying to take the rest of the planet with it.

Beyond the Wire is a sci-fi film about a US owned sapient android trying to nuke the US, and all the film could offer as an alternative was limp-dicked liberalism: 'but that'll kill lots of people, we need to let the system work'

the system is killing lots more people than one nuke could, even if we elide the fact that the US alone has (is right now) killed more people testing and building nukes than we did actually using them.

anyway, rant aside: Metaphors sound imbecilic if they contradict the stated nature of the setting.

and if the story contradicts the metaphor its laying out, it also sounds dumb that way.

I have a solution. It wont work everywhere, but it does work for me, conceptually at least.

If you want metaphor and setting to be congruent, approach the story from the perspective of the characters: they gotta live in the setting, so for them, it ain't metaphorical. it's literal fact that has a direct impact on their lives.

so if your Metaphor is something that aligns with the characters' objective reality, something they might organically think up in response to their life, then it's going to synchronize effectively with the plot, and not sound like you stapled two things that aren't the same onto each other.

or just let the story itself spit the metaphor out, then stand by it when it does.

half the time I see Metaphor and story contradict, it feels less like 'the uh, plan didn't work but by god am I gonna shoehorn this thing in if it kills me'

and more like: "corporate will fire us all and bury this work if we don't tone it down."

and it does not in the least surprise me that the executive class is stupid enough not to realize that a five-year-old could see through that shit.

If you have the luxury of choice, choose to commit to your story, and the product, good or bad, will always be compelling. and thats what you want in order to stick in people's heads.

[cinderellas-novella]

Playing through my first play-through of bg3 and most of the decisions have been easy so far honestly, save the grove, kill kethric, don’t have shadowheart become a DJ. But there’s one decision that has racked my brain.

Whether or not to ascend Astarion. Despite KNOWING that he becomes a worse version of himself if you do, I can’t help but contemplate whether I should let him do it or not.

When he gives me those puppy dog eyes I lowkey feel guilty for not wanting to ascend him.

That’s how peak the writing is in this game, i spoiled the game for myself and I’m still considering the bad option because they make it sound so appealing in the game.

[emmathefanficgal]

One thing I love is discussing about lore, characters, ideas in art, movies, game, books, etc.

I find it fascinating how each of us will resonate with particular details, all different. How we will, from this point, see the world under a slightly different version.

It shows the infinite variation of the human mind. It show that, from a single moment, an almost infinite number of feelings might be born.

It is interesting as a writer as well. How I craft a scene might not resonate in the same way for various reader. A simple thing that for me is a minor point, might become for a reader an important plot point.

[nilasvesture]

1200 sqft. Plot for sale at Kunnathur village.. Near Padalam junction..

Rs.4,00,000

[apollos-boyfriend]

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

[away-ward]

And when it wasn't about alexaydin itvwas about rika and her goddamn wedding then all the plot shit.

this is so true. i wanted to flip a table while i was reading NF. when u keep waiting for the couple you spent money and bought the book for to appear but they dont... its just group shit or how great alex and rika are. as if we didn't see it in the previous books including conclave. conclave is also a waste of paper ink and money. so the synopsis says they are trying to find will but that doesnt happen in the book. in fact it was all about rika again. this might come off as rude but i think penelope was trying to make rika everyone's favourite with that infertility trope. they were trying so hard to make rika the center of attention in a book about finding will and it was so forced. if they wanted the infertility trope to work why does she magically get pregnant a decade later. really? they want everyone to love rika by shoving a very serious and painful trope that they did not know how to handle but also want her to have everything? how does that work?

People with Nightfall:

this might come off as rude but i think penelope was trying to make rika everyone's favourite with that infertility trope.

That's a possibility. I got the impression it was something that happened to them or someone they knew and they thought "this would be a good problem for rika to deal with" because her life was going so perfectly, Rika needed another reason to be troubled.

I just wish PD had followed through and either given her one child after years of trying and giving up (aaron) or having her adopt (athos), but having both is, and having Athos dropped in her lap literally months after telling Michael about her issues is like PD going

"Psych" *snatches away all of Rika's interesting plotlines*

if they wanted the infertility trope to work why does she magically get pregnant a decade later. really?

Well, miracle babies do happen and it's joyful when that's the case, but giving Rika everything she wants before then + a miracle baby is a hard sell for me.

but that's just me.

[yelrabmena]

fnaf analog horror series where each episode is just 20 minutes of william afton kicking puppies, stealing candies from and popping balloons of small children, causing 9/11 sixteen years earlier (he does it again on the correct date later on don't worry) , all including a loud screaming audio for everytime he does something evil that goes for longer than it should. Also Freddy's barely if is important except for it being where he does the evil and there being a fazbear branded plane

at least 10 videos, each by different people, will be made for each episode talking about how it's "the scariest fnaf content ever made" and "made fnaf ACTUALLY SCARY again!!!" while the thumbnail is something like a monochrome photo of the twin towers with a fucked up looking springtrap facing the viewer with "HE DESTROYED THEM" written in bold, big red text

[musicawizard]

and I wouldn’t have it any other way <3

[tahbhie]

Effective Ways of Creating Relatable and Realistic Conflicts

As a writer, whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or expert, you've likely heard about the importance of creating "relatable and realistic conflicts." This advice appears in almost every writing guide. Yes, it's crucial.

However, this recurring statement might seem vague. Let's break down what these terms mean. We'll discuss how to create conflicts in your style that work, and what can lead to the opposite results.

✧✧✧✧

This is a flexible guide, not a strict set of rules. Let's begin.

✧✧✧✧

First, relatability is different from realism, at least in this context.

Relatability offers an experience that people have gone through before. They can easily identify it as something that happens.

Realism, on the other hand, can be a fresh experience or something entirely fantastical. Here's the catch: it must stay true to your setting and plot. For example, in a fantasy setting, your conflict could be the protagonist's dragon falling sick on the eve of a big race.

In the real world, we have no dragons. But in your setting, your situation with this creature feels real. Now consider an instance where we have intelligent insects with no apparent reason or explanation. This is an example of an unrealistic conflict that doesn't align with its setting. It's either you adjust a few things in the settings or adjust the conflict that stems from their intelligence or is solved by it.

Now that we've established that, let's consider what to keep in mind when writing conflicts.

Conflicts can be resolved instantly or extend further. They can begin your story, occur during it, or happen after a sweet moment.

Before writing a conflict, think about:

1. The Setting:

Where is your world set? This matters a lot! You can use our real-life world but still create your own rules, as long as you make that clear. Your conflict could come off as both realistic and relatable. However, where you have a total no is when your world is the normal world we know, with no changes, and your conflicts are unrealistic and unrelated.

You have such examples in some Bollywood movies. No offense to anyone in love with these movies. This is just a case study for clarification purposes.

Think of the fight scenes. The physical conflicts often stem from a grander conflict. You'll understand where I'm coming from.

2. Duration:

How long will this conflict last in your story? Earlier, I mentioned lasting conflict and fleeting conflict. The former helps create more meaning for your plot. The latter adds excitement that drives the plot forward.

3. Solvability:

Sometimes, the resolution to your conflict can render it meaningless, even after you've nailed the creation. Resolve your conflict in agreement with your plot.

4. Interesting Premise:

Conflict ideas sometimes come naturally as you write your story. I remember when I wrote high school stories, conflicts came to me as I wrote, but this doesn't happen every time. Sometimes, I knew I needed something more exciting and less predictable.

For example, it's common for a new female student to be rivaled by the school's most popular girl. This is usually because of the love interest—the most popular guy in school. But what if they become best friends, and the love interest turns out to be the popular girl's brother?

She mistakes the protagonist's friendship with a different guy as cheating, and the feeling of betrayal turns them against each other. This twist offers a fresh take on the usual antagonizing characters. It could make your story more interesting. This time the antagonist is doing what she feels is in her brother's favour not herself.

5. Character's Involvement:

This is slightly similar to the above. The difference is that it deals directly with the characters themselves, not just the conflict they face. The actions towards the conflict give the situation meaning.

6. Aim and Goals:

What do you aim to achieve with your conflict? Do you wish to entertain, hook the readers, drive the plot forward, or introduce a new object or character? It's best to aim for two at a time. Trying to achieve all in a single conflict could lead to complications.

Which conflict have you read in a book that made you wish you wrote it?

Aiming for a powerful plot? Check out this plot progression planner that helps you plan the aspects you often overlook. You get a free gift!

If you love what I do, support my work to enable more content production.

[chai-en-kaadhale]

the great thing about csm part 2 is that it actually addresses ""collateral damage"" which so many stories don't do to this extent, and its even better after part 1 didn't either. you get all of this main-character-centric tragedy, and all of these huge crazy fights- but when everything winds down, there was tragedy everywhere beyond the main plot- and a lot of it was caused in part by the main characters and their huge crazy fights as well. and this is probably bc of asa being the mc this part but csm is such a human story aaaa

[nilasvesture]

Contact for details..