#topic: storytelling

[tayfabe75]

"I think I've always just loved telling a good story, and I've been such a fan of a good story with interesting characters, and that's why so many of my songs are story songs."

October 24, 2012: As part of a live webcast with Scholastic, Taylor describes how stories influenced her songwriting. (source 1, 2)

[hoofpeet]

Re: archeops imitating voices: what if it learned to say cute things like “hello”, “wanna treat?” And “I love you”

Ough.. I feel like having a large & dumb bird be able to talk could backfire in some ways

[lynzishell]

The Present 🧡 Chestnut Ridge

Prev // Next

Transcript below the cut:

Danny: Papa? Joseph: Hm? Danny: Do I have a grandma or grandpa?

Joseph: Uh, well, you do, that would be my parents, but they died before you were born. Danny: Oh. What were their names? Joseph: My dad was Luis, and my mom was Adriana. Danny: Did my mom have parents? Joseph: Of course. Unfortunately, I never met ‘em, so I don’t know anything about ‘em.

Joseph: What’s with all the questions today, anyway? Danny: We were supposed to do a family tree in class, but I couldn’t finish mine. Joseph: Your teacher won’t give you a low score for it, will she? Danny: No, she said it was okay, but that I should ask you.

Danny: So, is anyone in our family alive? Joseph: I have a brother, so he would be your uncle. He’s alive, he just lives far away. Danny: What’s his name? Joseph: Julian.

Danny: Does Julian have any kids? Joseph: No, no kids. Danny: Hm. I wish I had a brother. Joseph: …

Danny: Then I’d have someone to play with and we could— Joseph: Hey, Danny, how ‘bout you go feed Daisy and get washed up for supper while I finish up out here, okay? Danny: Okay.

[starsoftheeye]

i need sam and celia to work out.

i dont mean that in the "they both live happily ever after and both survive" no they can die if that is what the plot requires, i just need their relationship to be okay. no petty drama or miscommunications that do nothing for either characters or plot other than be interesting

obviously the whole "alice not being over her and sams relationship" makes for good samalicelia shipping fuel and character-wise it is an interesting view into both of their characters, but i will be genuinely upset if it turns into a boring "which one will sam choose" romantic side plot

i can handle arguments, i can handle the realism of trauma and difficult situations making it difficult to maintain healthy relationships. what i cant handle is throwing away potential for a cheap shock, like we've seen in so many love stories before. what i also dont want is an unrealistic narrative that prioritises a relationship over a story

tma done their relationships very well, where the love was real, and at times it improved characters mentalities and helped develop them as their own people, but no matter how much they loved one another, it didn't save the world, and it didn't change fate. jon and daisy turned into monsters, martin and basira had to kill the people they loved most, sasha disappeared, and tim lost his brother, then himself. their love was never world-saving, and whats done would be done by the end of the day, but their love was real, and thats what made it compelling

as a fan of the characters, of course i want them to have a happy ending, and for everything to work out for them in the end, but as a fan of the show? i want it to hurt. i want to be devastated by these characters whose love was enough to bandage the wound but not enough to heal it

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

There's some special quality to stories made for a child audience by people who are also clearly making it for themselves that other types of media I think just don't get very much. Not that children's shows are like... "better" than adult oriented film, but I get something very different from Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, and Miraculous Ladybug than from, say, Bojack Horseman, Star Trek TNG, or Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.

Something about the serious topics being contextualized with lightheartedness and darkness being less explicit. Something about the story empathizing with childhood and showing the world from the pov of not yet being intertwined with expectations of adulthood—and when it is, it's inherently an injustice. Something about admiring the lessons you know kids are being taught from it and feeling good about their future. Something about it helping sometimes to process your own childhood in retrospect.

Though I'd like to make sure I note here that I'm not doing the whole "kids media is better than adults media" thing. I think it's weird when people do that. I just feel something special about this context of storytelling.

Yeah...

I'd maybe like to write a children's book someday.

[queen-mabs-revenge]

ok but the fact that sam's story line this episode was filmed before but aired after the whole gary lineker situation (i'm assuming) is such an indictment of the uk gov that their vile racism is so routine and ingrained that you can write stories about it down to the very detail and it plays out that eerily accurately.

but having said that, i'm really actually kind of appalled with the way sam's whole story was handled. the fact that it is a fucking to-the-letter accurate representation of the horrific political situation and the takeaway was... what? shit is wretched but anger will get you nowhere? forgive and move on in the face of actual violent injustice? sam's anger wasn't just lashing out, it was justified anger.

i appreciated the solidarity of the last scene, but i think with the stakes that they set up that story needed to be taken a lot more seriously within the larger story of the club -- keeley's storyline should have very involved in working ways to support and protect sam, there should have been a wider discussion about publicly supporting sam, the restaurant clean-up effort should have been a publicized response to condemn the violent policies sam was speaking out against and the violence and hate crimes it begets, and to show solidarity in fighting against it. that needed to be front and centre re: the ties that bind us, not just sam's side story with a feel-good coda.

like i think the dubai air story was handled better in the sense of the public facing aspect of it and the political weight of it. the fact that the consequences were knitted in with the club's story with the sponsor change, the entire team taking a public stance in solidarity, the press conference after. meanwhile this seemed very... hmmmmmmmmm yeah idk it didn't feel like it was given the weight that something sam's denouncements and the subsequent hate-fueled property damage really would have.

and esp bc we've since seen how an absolute institution like gary lineker was punished for similar criticisms, and how the solidaristic actions of other pundits refusing to go on air and publicly stating why was a huge deal as far as supporting that denouncement of state-sponsored racist violence. like the quiet response in the show feels really inadequate in light of that, you know?

it just felt like if they were gonna go there they needed to really commit to going there with all of the fall-out and club involvement it would entail, and they just didn't, which feels wishy-washy and frankly really dismissive. it was a writing choice to introduce this story and not actually deal with it with the weight it deserved.

really feels worse the more i think about it

[cinamun]

What advice would you give to a simmer just starting out writing stories with their sims? How do you build engagement with your posts?

Oh hey friend!! I think the biggest draw for people is your screens! Do you have nice sets? Is your background filled in behind your characters? Make sure your visuals are just as engaging as your dialogue.

For building engagement, don't hesitate to reply to people who reply! Ask questions of your readers (and yourself). Use the tags to call out little things that your readers might pick up on. Most importantly you need to enjoy what you're writing, etc. Its contagious! If you're having fun others pick up on that.

Finally!!!!! Don't be hard on yourself. You might have a story post with 5 notes and you put a lot of work into it and its going to feel shitty. Just keep going if you're invested. I've seen too many stories go poof because the notes weren't note-ing. I can only speak from experience here but engagement that is organic grows with time. So keep pushing!

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

august 26, 2021 4:00 a.m. a balcony, somewhere

time somehow seems to simultaneously slow to a crawl and race beyond the speed of light. grant doesn’t remember when they’d ended up perched like lovebirds at the pinnacle of a staircase, peering out over the night-drenched landscape, but it must have been a while ago. customers have long since stopped streaming in and out of the restaurant on the street below.

he remembers in better detail the stream of their conversation–they’d shifted from food and a strangely peaceful, humorous discussion of kicking the bucket to movies, and at some point, paranormal stories came up along the way.

it’d be hard to forget talking to yunha.

there’s something curiously enrapturing about her, something that had drawn him to her when he first made eye-contact with her.

the look in her eyes, maybe. it’s piercing, like she’s baring right through your skin and into your soul, but not malicious or judgmental. it’s friendly, it’s curious, it’s playful.

the way she speaks, maybe. she’s the most engaged conversationalist he’s ever encountered. everything you say, whether she agrees or disagrees, is met with affirmations and a lot of nodding. yes, yes, of course. i see, i see. i understand. ohhh, wow! really?

she’s unraveling every shard of the puzzle that is his personality and piecing it back together in one whole picture, analyzing it. figuring it out. appreciating it.

or maybe it’s the sweetness that radiates off her. she appears unafraid to smile, instead all too happy to flash those pretty, crooked bunny teeth for the world to see.

“so, i'm going to guess you’re not accidentally good at singing.”

she seems not to mind revealing her own puzzle pieces either, and the more she says about herself, the more fascinated he is with her. with who she is. with what makes her tick.

“i hope it’s not an accident,” yunha replies, laughing, “because shit, then years worth of practice was a waste.”

“time enjoyed is never time wasted.”

the unabashed cringe of the line garners an immediate eye roll, but she still seems to find it funny.

they’ve definitely been sitting here a while. grant straightens his back, fixing his gradually slouching posture, and is is met with an immediate flash of pain, distinct from the chronic dull ache underlying every day of his life, that radiates down every vertebra.

“what got you into music, though?”

yunha’s rosy pink lips purse in thought as she dwells on the question.

“a lot of things. my parents like music. i listened to a lot of different kinds of songs my whole life, first with them, and then later with my friends. i had some time between classes and studying to spend having fun, but i couldn't spend any money, so my friends and i would go to this music store. we walked around and picked random albums to listen to on the headphones. we never bought anything.”

grant nods supportively. “what’s, like, the first album you remember really liking? or albums. you don’t have to pick one.”

“ah! i treasure so many albums. seo taiji and boys IV. i think that’s still my favorite nostalgic album ever. i also remember fondly, um, this girl’s in love with you by aretha franklin. i heard that at the music store, and i was so impressed by her talent. i still am.”

“i'm not a music expert. surprise! i know, i know, i'm sorry to tell you, i did not practice for centuries for that wonderful spice girls performance earlier. no, but seriously, i most often just listen to the same old emo stuff i liked when i was 13. so, unfortunately i don’t know the first album at all, at least not yet, but i do know the second one. you have fantastic taste, that’s a classic.”

despite his ignorance, yunha still smiles from ear to ear. “you should look up the first one! look up, like, seo taiji ‘come back home.’ that’s the most popular song on the album. i don’t wanna bias you, so listen on your own and make your own opinions.”

“wilco. and if you don’t mind me asking, how’d you turn the interest in music into a skill? you are talented, but i know it's very much a skill. it does take a lot of practice to become tangibly good at music.”

“to express myself,” yunha says plainly, “it’s easier to tell your story in art than talking about it, and singing is free. you don’t need supplies to learn it. but yes, i needed that kind of outlet, you know? i always liked singing, always did it, but i needed more than only entertainment from it over time.”

“oh yeah, art is helpful. i really should have gotten on that train earlier. i got on board about a year ago. it's much better for you than intellectualizing everything. or at least that's what i tend to do. do you perform, by the way? outside of karaoke, that is."

"sometimes. but also, not in a long time."

there falls a brief, but peaceful lull in the conversation. grant’s eyes draw to black night sky as he recalls the last haphazard art he’d created–the mushy-gushy attempt at processing the universe. seeing it hanging above him now, his thoughts are no less conflicting. light pollution washes out the shining sea of stars, but the sky still retains its beauty, its bewilderment. visible or not, an infinite chain of dimensions and celestial bodies exist in the vacuum of space, orbiting independent of him, yet factoring in the tiny fraction of his mass on the mass of the earth in their delicate ballerina dance across the fabric of spacetime.

the universe must have created me for some reason, for something other than anguish.

his own words. again. ever-present.

“i miss seeing the stars.” yunha’s buttery soft voice breaks his concentration. “you can’t see anything here.”

“polaris.” grant raises his left arm and draws his index finger across the sky until it hovers above the only star he’s seen thus far. “technically, that means we should be able to see sirius, too, but we don’t need to get all science-y and talk about magnitude and that polaris isn’t–”

“i would like it if you did.”

she was thinking of the stars, too.

synchronicity.

“aw shucks! well. i’ll say this, polaris isn’t the brightest star. we just talk about it way more frequently because it has the most cultural significance in the northern hemisphere for, you know, navigation reasons. but hey, give it about 12,000 more years, and it even won’t be the north star anymore. thank you, wobbly earth axis. but also boo, woobly earth axis, because it's a little sad to think about.”

yunha’s eyes glitter with fascination. “it’ll be something else?”

“yep! the next north star will be vega,” he explains, “come on down, you’re the next contestant!”

“maybe we’ll see it happen.”

“if my consciousness is still floating around as little dust particles, that’d be pretty sick. you know? forget fly me to the moon, fly me to vega. why not?”

“i don’t think i'll be dust,” yunha says, not missing a beat at all, even as her focus remains fixed on the faintest twinkle emanating from polaris, “it’s kind of troubling. you don’t want to be, like, stuck in the whole cycle of the universe, but if you’re still here, you can see some really beautiful things.”

“ah. reincarnation?”

“if you’re asking me, you’re not going to be dust. either you escape the suffering or you come back in some kind of physical form, human or not, and you try again.”

grant thinks about it for a moment. and then the feelings, like usual, spill out at once.

“i'm not going to lie, that idea has always given me the heebie-jeebies. i think it’s very cool as a concept, but i'm, like, man, i don’t want to do this shit again. also, look, we're doing the thing again. oh, and shit, that sounded judgmental. i just run my mouth too much."

"most people don't know they lived before. you can't really remember your other lives without a lot of study," she answers, "and no, you don't. i prefer to hear your real opinion. it's actually stupid when people tell you what they think you want to hear."

"do you ever wonder what you were up to last go-around?"

"not too much, but i always heard strange birthmarks and scars are signs from your last death. fears, too. things you avoid. so, i guess, like, a clown stabbed me in the neck with needles."

"are you afraid of storm drains, by any chance? if so, i think pennywise had it out for you."

"hahaha." yunha shakes her head. "wait, i have to ask. is it not worse thinking you can only live once? that's not uncomfortable? feeling like you have to make everything perfect in your one lifetime?"

"oh no, it's terrifying. dying and just being done with everything is eerie, too, because there are nice things to do and see here in the real world. you’re right about that. and yeah, there is a lot of pressure to get it all right. also, that's not even mentioning that there are people i love that i don’t want to be gone forever. i'd like to think they remain somehow. conscious or not. i kind of think they do, but i don’t know. am i contradicting myself? capital-P probably."

“you don’t know what to think.”

grant immediately bursts out laughing. “yeah, no, absolutely not. i do not know. i just kinda waffle around and hope some scientist throws out some numbers and whatnot that proves some explanation of everything correct. but that’s impossible. it’s literally impossible. we can’t even simulate or predict the wacky physics that were going on at the exact moment the big bang happened.”

“not to be, like, all quirky, but...” yunha reaches over, patting him on the shoulder. “maybe don’t think about it? you’re gonna go crazy. you can just not know? and it's fine. this doesn’t mean anything anyway. the answer to anything is already in you, it’s not out there.”

and then she, too, starts giggling all over again and her cheeks blush deep red from sheepish cringe.

another stereotypical line, but he doesn't mind. they sound better coming from her than him anyhow.

a second later and she checks the time on her phone. her cheesy smile erodes into a slight frown.

“ahh, i really need to leave soon. i have a schedule in the morning.”

grant checks the time as well, drawing the sleeve of his hoodie up just enough to read the minuscule roman numerals on his watch.

on the watch an ex-girlfriend gifted him. not päivi, but...

4:00 a.m.

fuck.

right.

you’re leaving the country in two hours.

[animatedjen]

Hi! So I am relatively new to the Jedi games but became so quickly and deeply obsessed, and seeing another user send you a headcanon has inspired me to share one too, because I have no one I can talk about this stuff with IRL, haha. I guess a warning that it's kinda nsfw (like, VERY mildly), so it's TOTALLY okay if you don't want to post this.

Ever since finishing the game I've been thinking so much about Merrin and Cal and how their relationship will change now that they've admitted and embraced the fact that they have feelings for each other. Part of me for a while was thinking maybe Cal had his "first time" with someone he met through the Rebellion in the five-ish years between Fallen Order and Survivor, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it would be more in character for him to uphold the part of the Jedi code that forbids romantic attachments. Like, he was just so focused on fighting the Empire that even when a slight interest in a person did arise within him, he convinced himself that it was not only against the code, but a distraction from the fight. So, he pushed all those feelings away.

This leads me to my headcanon that Cal's first time is with Merrin after the events of Survivor. While I don't have lots of specifics in mind as to when or how it comes about, I imagine that when it does happen, it is the softest, slowest, sweetest first time in the history of first times. I like the idea of Cal, this person who dives headfirst into everything and (as Cameron once said himself) "kind of likes to fight," just being incredibly thoughtful and deliberate and maybe even nervous about allowing himself to be that vulnerable with another person. Like, all these powerful emotions and powerful physical feelings would be overcoming him, and the sheer magnitude of it all would cause him to slow down and ask Merrin to lead the way, and he'll follow, so that he knows he's not hurting her or taking things too fast.

And Merrin, who is always ribbing him and teasing him and having silly banter about who's stronger, who's faster, etc., abandons all of that during their first time and is just purely kind, patient, attentive, and present with him, taking pleasure in taking the lead and cherishing the trust that he's put in her. And when it's over, I like to think they just lay together talking quietly for who knows how long, with Cal holding Merrin tight against him and Merrin tracing her fingers along his skin, maybe along his tattoo or his scars, while they tell each other stories and pretend like they'll never have to get up and leave this wondrous place <3

My offline Star Wars community is pretty small, so it's nice to have people on here to share ideas with :) So glad you enjoy the Jedi games!!

There's a lot of narrative weight to Cal and Merrin: the Nightsister massacre being led by a lightsaber (Grievous), the manipulation from Malicos, the Jedi views of attachment and dark magick. They're both survivors of a war that destroyed their families, and they take turns helping each other heal and grow.

Almost every main character in FO/Survivor is a foil to Cal in some way - but unlike all these fallen Jedi, Merrin looks to the future and finds new purpose while still honoring her past. I think that's something Cal really admires in her.

I love the trust and steadiness that they have together regardless of romantic attraction. Admittedly I haven't read Battle Scars and didn't go into Survivor wanting a relationship for Cal, so I may not be the best person to share intimacy headcanons with?? But I'm supportive of the story Respawn wants to tell, and recognize the weight/importance of their connection when it comes to Jedi 3. These tags on my recent post are kind of where I'm at:

Also Star Wars is very much lacking in the "healthy relationship that LASTS and no one DIES" department so if these two can break the trend, that'd be great 🙌

[watery-melon-baller]

hyperfixating is all fun and games until your class requires you to be creative and all your brain can spit out is deranged crack aus

[tayfabe75]

"My first memories of performance go back to when I was in Pennsylvania growing up. My favorite thing was getting to be theatrical, to tell a story. And I've always brought that narrative element to my live shows."

July 17, 2019: While discussing her role in 'Cats', Taylor mentions her background in theater. (source)

[willowcrowned]

“Making anyone over the age of 8 watch tcw should be forbidden” okay, but why?

because it’s bad in the way only bad kids shows can be. and then it’s also bad in fifteen other ways

[positively--speculative]

Sorry to make this rant again, but there's more to the gothic genre than just "dark and twisted fucked up stuff." And I think the mindset that it is probably comes from being exposed to it at a time when you're not ready to consume it.

I had several friends and acquaintances in my late teens and early twenties who liked/loved Anne Rice. Only one of those friends recognized how fucked up some of her writing and approach to certain sensitive topics were. When I finally did read Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, I found myself waiting for some sort of moment where the writing would make it clear that many situations are, in fact, unsavory and awful...but they never are. Daniel doesn't interrupt Louis about the slavery. Nothing pushes back against Lestat or Gabrielle for the incest. It just happens and the reader just has to accept it. And when you have bright-eyed teens and early twenty-somethings wanting to delve into the subject of gothic literature and vampires without having been introduced to better-written gothic stories, they just kind of accept it and pat themselves on the backs for being able to enjoy something so "mature."

I know I've mentioned Crimson Peak before, but it's amazing how it just...does such a better job at not only including disturbing things but at framing them. No, it doesn't beat the audience over the head to explain why incest and seducing multiple wealthy women into marriage to murder them for their fortunes is horrific. We see things from Edith's point of view, so we are therefore able to fall in love with Thomas just as much as she does, and we can feel her horror when she finds out the truth about him and his sister. Their incest is never romanticized. And the disturbing part is knowing that Thomas has actually fallen in love with Edith--because it shows that someone who has done such horrible things can still have the ability to fall in love with someone and hurt them. Yes, Lucille was pulling most of the strings, but he was not blameless.

Anne Rice's writing, to me, talks down to readers who are, rightfully, disturbed by these kinds of things and it seems to reward apathy. It's like she was giving gold stars to readers who can just consume gross stuff and be unphased. And I kind of wish that her writing was treated as just shock porn rather than reading that challenges her readers intellectually because they really don't do anything to challenge her fans. I'm not begrudging her the "gothic" title, but I will say her gothic books are not really good at all aside from making some interesting characters. And it was because of her interesting characters that I was actually excited when the TV adaptation was announced, but I knew as soon as it was announced Louis would be Black that Rice's fans were going to be on their shit.

I think it says a lot that the show created a better gothic story than Rice ever did, and I think a lot of white fans resent it for that, because the show is asking them to think and be challenged in a way Rice never did. Even the ones who claim to like the show resent Black fans for "bringing race into everything" when one of the show's most central themes is race and racism. Maybe it's mean to keep saying they have the media literacy of a peanut, but there's no way to talk about this adaptation *without* bringing up race. But I really don't think they get that, because they're used to racism just happening (again, Louis was a racist slave owner in the book) without being made to pause and examine it.

[moongothic]

Also Lu feld ( the underworld emperor that funded MADS) looks veryyy similar to Crocodile, maybe there is a relationship between them both?

So Oda does have certain design tropes he likes to use, and so all his characters that fit into the "mob boss" archetype, including Capone Bege, all have similar design elements; a large coat over their shoulders (not exclusive to the mafia characters mind you), fine suits, cigars, expensive looking jewelry; they look very formal and they all even style their hair the same way (slicked back). So the similarities could be easily chacked up to Oda using the same design tropes for characters that fit into the same trope. If you look past those elements, the differences become more obvious

Like the facial anatomy etc between them all is quite different (Crocodile having Oda's default attractive male facial anatomy, compared to Lu Feld's bulbous, round shapes, while Bege has these triangular shapes to his face) along with body build etc etc

Reason I wanted to point this out is because I'm preeeetty sure I've seen people on Reddit speculate that Crocodile could be related to Lu Feld by blood, even be his son? And to be fair, this is One Piece, the characters don't need to look one-bit similar to one-another to be blood relatives, not by a long shot. And since we don't know how old Lu Feld is, theoretically sure, that could be possible.

But when all we're going off of is "they're both mafia bosses and dress kinda similar", I feel that theory is a bit weak, and more importantly, I'm not sure there's much of a point in it. As in, what would these two being related add to their characters? Like you could totally write an interesting story about them that could impact them both, but it's not like the two other famous theories (that Croc could be the son of WB or Xebec) where you almost immidiately understand the emotional baggage between the two (former Croc would have unknown beef with his bio-dad possibly related to him adopting so many sons while he's just there, the latter having once again questionable implications for Xebec's character but could immidiately shed light on Croc's beef with WB and his general trust issues).

Considdering Lu Feld is an Emperor of the Underworld though I would not be surprised if our beloved Mr Zero had purchased his Dance Powder from Lu Feld, maaaybe been involved with the underworld in other ways, who knows. But I personally don't believe Crocodile has deep ties to Lu Feld, I just think it's Oda giving a less important, borderline-background character a design with a few too many similarities to more important characters and not enough unique features--- but Lu Feld isn't that important, it's not like he needed a super unique design to communicate who and what he's supposed to be in the story

[varilien]

i used to LOVE ur trigun art and seeing you get into dbz is so joyous ... two of my beloved things? hjell yeah ... cant wait to see more art from u looking with my autistic eyes sooo hard

fun fact dbz directly contribute to why i didn't get into trigun as a little kid because watching dbz and anime with Similar Themes/Aesthetics made little child me look at the first four episodes of trigun n go "this is BORING AND LAME AND NO ONE IS PUNCHING AND KICKING EACH OTHER ENOUGH." LMAO

[ejunkiet]

- Ask Polly: why should I keep going? By Heather Havrilesky