#i think it's interesting to conceptualize the narrative structure like this

[morayofsunshine]

Ok so right now I'm thinking of the various dimensions in the ATEEZ lore as a series of layers, that a character discovers as they get more involved in the plot. Like how dreams in the movie Inception are structured, since Ateez made so many connections to the movie in their song Inception for a reason. Additionally, this order of dimensions I'm about to talk about is structured mostly as a model for how events seem to take place in this narrative, from dimensions that have the most influence over other dimensions and the characters that cause most events, to those that have the least (as far as we know right now). I'm not really sure yet what exact metaphysical form the different dimensions take.

So at the moment, what seems to be the core of the multidimensional mv universe is the dystopia from where Halateez hails. That's where the music videos and performances have been making allusions to this entire time, and where this next comeback is explicitly set. It's where there's technology to lengthen human lives and keep them controlled, a government determined to suppress human emotion, and a revolution waiting to happen.

Just outside of this dimension is where a few fantasy dimensions exist. It's a bit early to tell what order these dimensions are in or how exactly they tie with the others, but in terms of most to least influence, they come next. These dimensions have the adventurous world of the pirates and their journey, and the dreamworld utopia of Eternal Sunshine. The music videos that featured these dimensions didn't come with a lot of directly stated background information the way the others did, so they're the source of most theorytinys' questions and speculation. I think they could be here to show examples of other personas the characters can have, who may eventually help with the main plot; as a distraction from the main plot, to try to keep the characters from accomplishing their goals; to teach the characters important lessons for their main quest, simultaneously introducing new themes of the narrative; as a way for the main Ateez group and Halateez to communicate with eachother without being watched; or a combination of these.

Next, we have a dimension that seems similar to our own, where the main Ateez group hails from. I call them the main Ateez group because they're the ones that are introduced to us individually, and with the members' real names. This is where the story chronologically seems to start, and the main group travels to the other dimensions from here. Here, things mainly seem to happen *to* the characters, until Hongjoong uses the Cromer and takes everyone to the core. This dimension seems a lot like our own: until the Cromer is brought from Halateez's dimension, there is no magic or outlandish technology, and the characters' problems seem a lot like the problems any student in the 21st century could potentially have. In fact, the storylines written for the characters in this dimension were based on the members' actual experiences. Which brings me to:

Real life. Our actual dimension, outside of the screens. We as an audience mainly watch and listen to things happen, with little power to impact the events in a story that the producers have already written. However, that doesn't stop Halateez from trying to reach out to us through physical posters and blink-and-you'll-miss-it social media posts. We're the ones being asked to "wake up" now that Halateez has reached out to their allies in the fictional dimensions that surround their world. Because this dimension may host the audience that treats the other dimensions as fictional, but it hosts the inspirations that sparked the ideas for the story, as well. And so the narrative influences wrap back around to the center in a multidimensional doughnut.

#ateez #ateez theory #ateez lore #i think it's interesting to conceptualize the narrative structure like this #esp given the nonlinear way in which it's been revealed to us #ofc these are my perspectives on what's going on and this comeback could completely negate this theory ksdlfks #also uhh it's clear they're trying to connect messages about art and emotion and authoritarianism between their storyline and the real world #but those messages are heavily undermined by their album production's involvement with nfts #so i'll be keeping THAT in mind with everything they release from here too :/

[punkitt-is-here]

Yknow i love fo4 and fo76 as games but hate them as Fallout games yknow?

Like theyre nice to play and i love some of the characters but man. They just. Are not Fallout. Its literally like if you took Fallout but made it for a general audience, theres no spice!! Theres no grime!! Why is everything so clean!!!

That's the thing; these games are built with inherently different base goals in mind. Bethesda in the modern day thrives off selling the idea of player empowerment, of being an explorer in a foreign land that you conquer through hard work. You shape the world to your liking by questing and exploring and conquering. And genuinely? I got no problem with that. I think games that gas the player up like crazy and set you loose on a world to make it your own are totally fine conceptually! Like, the fantasy of being able to shape the world the way you see fit is something I think a lot of people can get into, whether you're just looking for control in your life or you just want the experience of feeling like you can have some grand effect on the world at large.

But because of that, I think the core of what makes Fallout so interesting has to be put on the backburner. I don't play Fallout to feel powerful necessarily, and I certainly don't play it for the fuckin' gunplay. I play it because it has such a fun dedication to weird stories that feel like they have something to say, a staff of writers dedicating their time and effort to being a proto-DM at a table, trying to provide interesting and thought-provoking or at least real damn fun stories in front of you, because ultimately, the West Coast Fallout games are about people. They're about characters! And when you focus less on the idea of telling stories in a world and more on empowering the player as a fourth-wall observer, those priorities clash and in the East Coast Fallout's cases, it makes for a game with no spice or edge. Having something to say about, say, the US Military or American Expansionism and Exceptionalism or the nature of clinging to the past kind of fundamentally clashes with the player empowerment fantasy that Bethesda Fallout games want to sell you. You can't have these philosophy-based, morally-interesting factional conflicts that want the player to look inward when the very concept of your game is built around collecting loot and shooting guys instead of learning about that loot and learning about those guys you're shooting and why you're shooting at each other. Having radiant quest loot loop gameplay just doesn't mesh well with a world where choices are meant to have far-reaching impact, because if it did, it'd be impossible to program under a normal development timeframe, and it would likely make the player look inward and go "what the fuck am I doing with my time?" at the endless meaningless quests to go on.

I don't think the "Lone Wanderer Comes Across A Microcosm Of Adventure" format is bad, not at all, but you have to put a lot of work to make that feel cohesive with the larger character and faction-based narratives that 1, 2, and NV are built on, so instead those Bethesda-style games opt more for a toybox, playground approach to the post apocalypse. And when your primary goal is showing the player how cool of a sandcastle they can build, it'll never be structurally sound enough to sustain even a wave of nuance.

#my posts #asks #i-am-loco #fallout

[comradekatara]

ooh the bolin ask got me thinking and i’m curious as to how you’d rewrite/edit asami’s character and specifically korra and asami’s relationship if you had full creative autonomy. obviously we would have to retread some familiar points here (like, lok’s entire unfortunate politic and the often shoddy secondary character work) but i’m always interested in hearing what you think on the korrasami front!

this is such a good question to ask me specifically (the ghost of tumblr user bloodbenderz pointed out in my bolin post that i was the wrong person to ask abt his character bc he’s been the bolin champion since day one whereas i. do not care for him, but i have been asami’s champion since day one so YES HELLO) i have thought extensively about asami like truly so much, especially post finale wherein i reevaluated my entire weltanschauung because korrasami simply broke my brain. asami’s position within the narrative is almost paradoxical in the sense that she is established as a primary player but her inner life itself is afforded very little room for exploration. atla does such a great job of fleshing out characters and giving them these truly human dimensions, which is probably why it’s had such a chokehold on me for well over a decade, but lok fails abysmally at this with pretty much every character except korra herself (my baby my angel light of my life etc etc).

but asami is interesting, at least conceptually. obviously id give her more narrative space to figure out her shit, but also it’s a matter of understand what kind of narrative space is the right space to afford her. as ive gestured to in other recent posts, the most interesting facets of asami’s character are her relationship to her father (ie patriarchy, the nuclear family structure, systems of interpersonal abuse), her wealth (ie the guilt that stems from possessing capital built on exploitation and violence and how she reconciles with that as a deeply principled & ethical person), and her latent feelings for korra (ie actually going further into the implications of homoeroticism in a way that doesn’t veer straight into the mawkish heavyhandedness of the comics but also doesn’t leave it entirely subtextual until the last minute).

I think korra and asami’s relationship is actually one of the strongest aspects of the show, and i like that it’s largely lowkey instead of employing the shallow trappings of heteronormative romantic troping that turned me off other relationships in avatar (eg aang and katara, korra and mako, mai and zuko). there’s a poignant subtlety to their development that i appreciate, even as i also recognize that it was largely due to network restraints. i think that korra and asami kinda have a utenanthy thing going on but like. obviously not as profound. (also korra is utena and asami is anthy dont be racist.) so a lot of what rgu does with their largely unspoken, hidden feelings that are nonetheless evident to any viewer with a brain is what i would also employ to make korrasami more powerful. obviously lok (and atla, yes i voted rgu in those polls) pale in comparison to the masterpiece that is utena, but you get it.

that said, if i really wanted to improve asami’s character, i would focalize her relationship to her father. at no point in the show does lok ever state that hiroshi was abusive, despite concrete evidence that he tried to kill his own daughter. asami loves him unconditionally despite his role in funding a terrorist movement (let’s not get into that rn ok) and attempting filicide. we’re told that asami and hiroshi fostered a sort of codependent relationship after yasuko’s death. hiroshi retreated into his grief, and asami, an isolated heiress further isolated from her peers by her staggering genius (again, her being a genius is largely only implied but like. heavily), was left to depend on him financially, physically, and emotionally, while also sort of playing his pseudowife/caretaker as he failed to take care of her and himself (and of course it’s no coincidence that she’s the spitting image of yasuko). so in some ways, asami has been very independent from a young age, and in other ways, she is completely dependent on her father in every way. the subtext simultaneously goes unaddressed and is also thoroughly evident to anyone who bothers to tease it out. asami was, in some ambiguous configuration, abused by her father, and it culminates in him trying to kill her once she asserts her independence. her taking him down with the glove is literally a direct parallel to zuko redirecting ozai’s lightning, it’s not even subtle! it’s just. ignored!!!

moreover, asami’s struggle as she inherits the company in book 2 is handled so poorly it’s almost crazy. i have a post where i compare asami to azula and shiv roy (love seeing tags on these posts that are like “who the hell is shiv roy?” shiv my best friend shiv) and talk about each of their relationships to their fathers and how it informs their relationships to power. obviously lok refuses to acknowledge that asami was abused and operates on a psychological platform of paternal abuse in any real way, but it’s honestly one of the more logical readings of her character considering her actions. so again, if i had the power to write her well this time, i’d tease that out more, exacerbate those implications in a similar way to how azula, zuko, or even toph and sokka operate psychologically. and of course, that also would inform her relationship to her wealth and position as ceo, as both a great burden and a responsibility she feels she must adopt (it’s her biological destiny lol). and of course doing a better job to illustrate how that crisis of identity parallels korra’s, because, you know, it’s like the whole point? also (and this is tangential) but asami needed to hire zhu li and then they should’ve both killed varrick with hammers. but in general asami’s character needed to better serve as a critique of capitalism and patriarchy through her unique role in the system. like, it was really so close to achieving that anyway, but they continually dropped the ball so that the implications of her character were always fascinating, but her character itself was simply. there.

in summary, if mako’s character should function as an interrogation of intertwined structures of family and class within the society lok establishes, asami should have a similar function through different means. mako implicates the role of the impoverished orphan in a neoliberal patriarchy (and bolin, ideally, further complicates the dynamic by being more visibly earth kingdom than fire nation), whereas asami implicates the role of the abused yet wealthy girl in the same neoliberal patriarchy. in a good show, each character supplements the broader critiques being made by the narrative. but while mako, bolin, and asami all have the right pieces set in place to do so, they never quite stick the landing. because liberalism, or nickelodeon, or obama, or girlboss feminism, or whatever.

#unreachedgalaxy #asks #lok crit #analysis #asami #asamixkorra #synthesis #i love you asami sato i am free on tuesday if you would like to hang out on tuesday when i am free #she’s literally soooo important to me im not even kidding .

[sophieinwonderland]

i was scrolling r/SC and its weird the mods are saying you arent responding to their modmail responses and claiming you are "threatening sub members". I have seen no evidence of this anywhere.

Ive seen the odd claims that somehow you are only citing older DSM sources because it "supports your narrative" but then they dont read the criteria for how vague it actually is. Nothing you have show has supported the sysmed claims and I have a degree! I've studied this for more then 6 years and I'm licensed! It's vague for a reason.

The mods there seem to think that our life should revolve around them just because I sent a message to them asking them to remove a post mentioning my name and age. I have asks in my box, and other posts I want to make. I got what I wanted from that conversation, which was proof that I reached out to them to ask them to remove comments naming me. I might respond further if I find the time and the interest. But I haven't yet decided.

As for threatening members of the subreddit... I really have no idea what they're talking about. If anyone there has received any actual threats, it wasn't from me.

I think either they're making things up, or are taking some sort of statement that I'll continue to post about their hate sub as a "threat."

I don't have any idea what they're talking about with citing older DSM entries either. I rarely discuss the DSM, and when I do, it's almost always the DSM-5.

I prefer the ICD-11 as my go-to source, as it explicitly acknowledges that you can have multiple "distinct personality states" without a disorder.

Furthermore, most of the published papers researching and acknowledging endogenic plurality that I cite have all come out within the past decade.

Varieties of Tulpa Experiences: 2016

The Plurality chapter of Transgender Mental Health: 2018

The ICD-11's Boundary With Normality for DID: 2019

Exploring the Utility and Personal Relevance of Co-Produced Multiplicity Resources with Young People: 2021

Conceptualizing multiplicity spectrum experiences: A systematic review and thematic synthesis: 2023

It's just a body: A community-based participatory exploration of the experiences and health care needs for transgender plural people: 2023

And many others.

Practically the only time I cite the DSM is when debunking people falsely claiming the DSM says you need trauma to be a system.

Otherwise, I generally don't consider it that relevant. It never claims you need trauma to be a system. It acknowledges possession states as real phenomena. And the existence of criterion C implies you can meet the other criteria without a disorder. But I feel there are better sources out there to use.

Like you say, it's vague. Despite leaning towards the existence of non-disordered and endogenic plurality, it doesn't go far enough to make it valuable for me.

I'm certainly not going to use older versions of the DSM as sources.

But yeah, there really is nothing to back up their claims. I've been asking anti-endos for years for even ONE single peer-reviewed paper stating that you can't be plural without trauma or a disorder. Just one.

Because I can name countless reputable psychologists and psychiatrists who have made it clear they believe in other forms of plurality in peer-reviewed papers from reputable publishers. I've seen others who are open to the possibility but seem neutral for no other reason than the fact their specialization is in trauma disorders, and they don't deal with people who aren't traumatized or don't have mental illnesses of some kind.

What I have never once seen is a single anti-endo provide a peer-reviewed source stating that you can't possibly be plural without trauma. And I mean this with any wording. It doesn't have to say "plural" or "system," as long as it communicates that this is the only possible way to have multiple self-conscious agents in your head.

See, for example, how the creators of the theory of structural dissociation have said in one paper that "self-conscious" "dissociated parts of the personality" may be involved in mediumship and hypnosis.

In the years I've been asking for this, not one person has been able to link to a peer reviewed source where a psychiatrist or psychologist has stated the opposite.

All they have on their side is The Big Lie. I've talked about this recently. Just repeat a claim over and over again until people believe it. Claim the experts support and agree with you, and you never need to source any of those non-existent experts. That's what r/systemscringe, and sysmeds in general, are depending on. That their members will be gullible enough to just accept whatever they say.

#syscourse #pro endo #pro endogenic #psychology #psychiatry #science #plural #plurality #multiplicity #actually plural #actually a system #system stuff #sysblr #systems #ableism #sanism #r/systemscringe #hate group #hate groups #pro science

[scoobydoodean]

i’m trying to write a s15 fix it fic and i’m kinda stuck on what the ending for heaven should be. along with other smaller details i have figured out, i know jack’s not gonna be god, and neither will amara, but that means heaven can’t keep functioning as it has been, smth needs to change. i do have a few ideas, but i’m interested in what someone like you, who has a much more comprehensive knowledge of spn than i do, thinks. like how you wish the ending happened (other than dean living ofc), how you wish they handled the cosmic consequences of taking out chuck?

and ofc i won’t like steal your ideas! i’m just looking for inspiration and another perspective in order to flesh out my basic ideas

Well... to be honest, when I read fix it fics I often skip the world building aspects surrounding "new heaven structure". Honestly I'm more the kind of person to feel that part of the fun of fic is not having to do complicated world building and getting right into the character-oriented portions of the story. 😂

As far as my own wishes: I am a HUGE proponent of an open ending for Supernatural. Because Supernatural is about a battle between the concepts of Free Will and Destiny, and the final season, in particular, is about an evil author/god writing the characters lives, I feel the only narratively satisfying conclusion is one where even the irl author sets the characters free from their vision (after a certain point—obviously we want to have our fun and set the characters up for success). This is a HUGE issue with the actual series finale in my mind—that it attempts to write out the entirety of the characters lives even into eternity, entombing them in the author's vision with absolutely nothing left to the imagination when this show was MADE for a "ride off into the sunset" style ending because it's about free will. 15.20 simply was not that—it was far FAR too intrusive.

I mean to be totally honest because of its negative narrative significance, I kind of think heaven should simply implode. I think it would be very cathartic for everyone involved. The Winchester's provided (imo) an excellent landing pad for a fully canon-compliant fix-it fic where Dean once again tears apart the script. And yes—to me heaven is still someone else's script in 15.20, whether that was the authorial intent or not. Even if one isn't "Chuck won" truthing, one still has the line, "Cas helped" in 15.20—meaning that at the very least, Cas and Jack are trying to write paradise. They are trying to write The Future. (I discuss my criticisms of that here). This is also why the summary for my own WIP fix-it... looks like this:

Castiel abruptly drops the cassettes onto the kitchen table in a clatter, barely avoiding Mary’s morning coffee. “I need help understanding your son.”  Much to Castiel’s consternation, Dean… isn’t happy with the heaven Cas and Jack have designed and built for him. If that wasn’t clear enough from his preference for universe-hopping to alternate worlds over spending time in the heaven literally designed to be his personal peaceful paradise, or his in turns defiant and despondent attitude when grounded (read: when he hasn’t quite figured out how to chew through the plastic of his “cage” yet again)… it would be impossible for Cas to miss the fact that Dean will barely speak to him. Instead, he afflicts Castiel with one-track cassette tapes. 

On a symbolic level, to me, heaven in SPN represents false paradise. It represents Free Will losing to Destiny. It’s a hopeless, helpless, ultimate: “No matter what you do, you will always end up here”. Even if you succeed at defying The Man in life, you will ultimately be forced back into a heaven where someone else’s vision for your life plays out for the rest of eternity, sold as "paradise". You will always end up back in The Beautiful Room. The afterlife doesn't have to be conceptualized that way, but I think the "new" heaven in 15.20 still heavily misses the mark for me in this regard, especially given the surrounding context.

All of that said, in a more general sense, I think what you do with heaven in a fix-it fic really depends heavily on what relational/emotional themes you're exploring in the fic. For example, say I want to write a fic where Dean reflects on his life being full of responsibilities that were too big and how this deeply warped his sense of self-worth. Say though that I largely explore Dean's feelings and reflections on this through Jack, in the present, cracking under the pressure of being expected to be God. A narratively satisfying ending to that fix-it might intentionally leave the question of what exactly becomes of heaven an open question, because the catharsis in the end is that it isn't Jack's (or anyone else in TFW's) responsibility to figure that out. To have Jack say "I'm trying so hard to make everyone happy everyone wants me to make paradise and I don't know how and I'm drowning", and for Dean to say "You don't have to make paradise. You don't have to do any of this. It isn't your job." Could be a very emotionally poignant conclusion to a fic that focuses on that theme.

I wonder if taking even a further step back would also help? By which I mean: the concept of a heaven as a whole, or hell, or purgatory... they're all assumedly of Chuck's design, and while that doesn't make having four afterlife locations (including The Empty) inherently bad, it also doesn't make make for inherently good design either—practically or ethically. The angels were having trouble keeping the lights on upstairs as their numbers dwindled, Purgatory is an absolute mess (think about where Garth and Bess and their kids will end up...) The only place possibly doing okay in the end is Hell, under Rowena's rule. Death had lots of concerns about balance between the various afterlife areas and I actually think it would be hilarious to give Death... 4.0? a heart attack by just being like "Well... what if we just got rid of some of these places? What if we were trying to stay upright and balance on a seesaw instead of on a ball that can turn in any direction? Do we really need a separate afterlife for monsters? Can heaven and hell just both be in the same place and Rowena and a few other people run it?" Though the need for a new Death could also mean... a new one comes in with a new idea about how to structure the afterlife, but then you also have to ask yourself how intricately you want to detail any of this. If your primary goal is to build the most comprehensive possible fix-it fic that addresses any conceivable question a reader might have about the new reason of the world, then you might finely detail the new concept of the afterlife. On the other hand, if you're more interested in exploring an emotional theme, it might make sense to have whatever happens or doesn't happen with heaven symbolize or relate to an emotional/relational theme within in your story.

Idk that was very rambly sorry I hope it helps a little with brainstorming!

#mail #spn finale poo poo

[squuote]

We know so very little about Mariella, but I think her existence as an entity similar enough to Stanley to be narrated in the same structure is very interesting. A lot of people take a lot of liberties with her when they include her in fanfics/other fanworks, often making her somewhat of a straightman, a force of sensibility and stability (and often emotional intelligence)-- which is great!! I love seeing people have fun with her, and it's often good to have foils to Utter Disaster characterizations of Stanley and Narrator-- but personally I see her as... well, as more of a parallel to Stanley, especially with both of them occupying a "protagonist"/"office worker" role when seen.

TSP/TSPUD is constantly operating on at least five levels of meta simultaneously, so it's hard to discern exactly how reliable any information is, or what level of meta it should be read on. Mariella's described presence is her witnessing the destruction of Stanley in "the real world" and simply being glad that it isn't her before moving on. I think this actually speaks to a distinct LACK of emotional intelligence, or at least self-awareness, perhaps to outright denial/willful ignorance-- within the narrative put forth by the Narrator, Mariella appears to be self-conscious, perhaps even defensive, her first instinct self-protective and self-assuring-- "that isn't me. I'm sane. How fortunate that I am sane. How fortunate that isn't me." The irony of Mariella is, of course, that she is ALSO simply a vessel narrated and controlled by the Narrator, not in the real world but within a story, exactly as Stanley is/was (in this narrative put forth by the Narrator) before he apparently 'realized the inconsistencies of his reality' and spontaneously died.

The interesting contrast to THAT is then that Mariella is outside the control of the player, so she ISNT identical to Stanley, and whether she is within the influence of the Mind Control Facility or not within the Narrative is not entirely clear. She is a character, she is framed like a protagonist by the Narrator, but she is outside the player's reach, and largely outside the visible narrative. Does she have her own player? Does she exist in her own form, or like Stanley (at least Stanley per the Real Person Ending) is she reliant on being puppeted to make choices, somewhere beyond the player's perception? How real is she?

Personally, I think Mariella is a very similar presence to Stanley, but without the influence of a Player/the repetition of the Parable, she has shut out the hints of her nature to survive. She is a foil to Stanley (Stanley-the-Narrator's-character, anyway) because Stanley recognizes his reality and is destroyed by it, and Mariella sees that conclusion and refuses to reckon with her reality honestly.

Conceptualizing her outside of the Parable-as-Game metanarrative, I think of her as someone who was Weird growing up, who was made to feel small and stupid and Incorrect for that weirdness, and learned to self-protect by strongly and determinedly identifying as Just Perfectly Normal, obedient to social norms and a careful expert at navigating her position and role. Someone who learned to be bland, to laugh at people failing to fit in in order to fit in herself, to turn her face from their suffering because she was Normal, she WAS. She is normal, and everyone knows that Weird people get made fun of, because they're Weird. She hasn't grown past that and she fights questioning things around her because she is petrified of being Weird and outcast again. I think as a character she deserves internal torment too (/affectionate) and the opportunity to grow from shitty coping mechanisms, instead of always being the Perfectly Balanced Background Supportive Lesbian. (She IS a lesbian tho. To be clear.) Yes this is a HIGHLY autistic reading of Mariella but that's because I am too autistic to perceive a character as neurotypical.

Ideal fanwork narrative, for me, is her reluctantly befriending Stanley (and/or Timekeeper/Employee 432) where they all work at the Office Where Nothing is Wrong I Promise-- reluctant because she knows they're Weird but befriending because they are genuinely nice to her and despite her best efforts she isn't actually friends with/fully accepted by/comfortable with people who ARENT a little Weird-- and starting out a little shitty and judgemental and then slowly growing out of that and coming to recognize that it's Okay To Be Weird and that she is, and she's been hurting others and herself trying to suppress it for approval she has never and will never truly get. Partially brought about because there is Definitely Something Wrong In This Office and she has to embrace seeming crazy, defiant, and bizarre in order to solve the mystery with Stanley/TK and break free of the office's trap.

*waves hand* obviously that narrative concept also involves a lot of other characters growing too, and is based on how I perceive them, but you were asking about Mariella.

ANON I NEED TO THANK YOU PERSONALLY FOR THIS ASK I have literally been rotating it in my mind since you sent it holy fuck. Everything about this has given me an entire new outlook on how I perceive Mariella and I mean that so genuinely. I love the concept of Mariella forcing away the possible reality of being another vessel for the Narrator to project stories onto. Her need for herself to be normal, for her to be in control in such a contrasting and different way than how Stanley wishes to be in control.

Stanley fully knowing that he has no control over himself vs Mariella who insists that she has control, that she knows what is and isn't real. IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD ANON. SO, SO GOOD. I literally am framing this on my wall, I fucking love this so goddamn much

#asks #anon #the stanley parable #mariella #bookmark #IVE ACTUALLY MADE SOMETHING BASED ON THIS. I JUST FINISHED IT BUT LIKE FUCKING. I GOTTA THANK YOU ANON #this ask is so good and I fucking adore it so much #this flows so well with the ending's dialogue too. i was just relistening to it yesterday #and man it fits so well with this fr. i fucking lovethis so much AAAGHHH #also hell fucking yeah autistic mariella fr

[goldenpinof]

1) I'm a different nonnie but I loved your analysis on the dnpg comeback, but it leads into 2) what I don't understand about Dan is how YouTube stresses him out /so/ much, but how other projects don't as much? I've read his book, and I know it has to do with judgement and how hard he feels he has to pretend to make people like him (side note, I want him to write another book. I'd love Dan is Not Okay as a book even. I like his writing style), but you would think that that anxiety would translate to any public projects. 3) mildly unrelated, but when they react to pinof 4, I wonder if they're going to talk about 2012 in depth (Dan's breakdown on Tumblr, how the fans harassed Adrian, the friends they publicly fell out with between 2012-2013, just all of it) or if they're going to just react to the Pinof itself. Personally I feel like PINOF 4's energy is generally fine, but since they're focusing on controlling the narrative now, it could be interesting to use it as a possible retrospective and a way to clearly define their boundaries.

i'm gonna follow your structure :)

1) thank you <3;

2) i think it can have something to do with the amount of things being made. if it's youtube it "has to be" many good quality and interesting videos (3-5 is already many) and youtube demands consistency if you view it as a job. youtube is also a more public place than venues or bookstores. anyone, and i mean ANYONE, can see Dan's videos on the internet for free and form an opinion, and comment, and start a discussion (good or bad). and not that many things can be erased from the internet. books also cannot be erased the moment you make it digital but it's harder to go through a book and form an actual opinion than to watch a 10-min video and form an opinion also based on Dan's face. videos are personal, it's about him. bigger projects feel more like a job and are perceived as a separate entity. it's not Dan, it's what Dan makes. also books have editors and publishers that have some kind of responsibility alongside the author. independent youtube videos? not really. switching to tours. Dan likes irl feedback a lot. maybe that thing makes it easier for him to dive into an enormous amount of physical and emotional work every tour requires. also, the tour is not Dan, it's what Dan makes and plays a role in. there is more detachment from his personality even though we know he puts his own thoughts into his shows (tatinof and ii included). Dan may also like conceptual things (i'm assuming here, i don't remember if he ever said it, he could). to build a whole world based on an idea and live in this world for a bit. like, creating a tv series or a show requires more time, more revisions, help from others, but it's also more fun to create something so big, i guess. it requires more than his youtube videos but it also gives more in return. it's like making a baby that you're so proud of and then presenting it to the world, time and time again to different people. youtube videos could also be viewed as babies but as he said, a lot of it was made to please the algorithm and to survive on youtube (paraphrasing here). he overthinks his content and because of the amount (again) it's harder with videos than 1 or 2 bigger projects that he can spend months on making. (i bet the pitching of his projects and communication in general stress him out as well. but luckily, he has managers for that). you mentioned dan is not okay as a book, and i would die to see the script of a show as it is. and the fact that it already exists blows my mind a little bit. like, give it to me!!;

3) no, they won't talk about 2012 uneasy times. honestly, i'm gonna be shocked if they acknowledge it in any way. Adrian is a public figure now, mentioning him is a risk. i think they will just react to pinof 4, maybe they will give a few looks @ the camera indicating that they know we know, but other than that, i really really doubt we will get any serious commentary.

#answered #dan #wad #this tag will live forever ugh #dan is not okay #ywgttn #note: he was asked to write a book (i don't remember where he said it don't come for me) #so it wasn't really his idea. he agreed to it though and made it happen so i guess it counts as a baby.

[winterandwords]

Happy STS, Winter!

Is there any book/author that has influenced your writing? Be it with style, ideas, or something else (like the decision to do it better?)

Thanks for the ask 💜

✨Weird and/or fucked-up books I adored that didn't follow conventional narrative structure or have conventional moral messaging✨

Shout out to Bret Easton Ellis, Douglas Coupland, JD Salinger, and Chuck Palahniuk as early influences, although I didn't recognise them as that at the time. When I shook off all the writing shoulds, I realised that most of my lifelong favourite books were structurally and conceptually weird in some way, or in lots of ways, and I was allowed to do that too.

When I started writing novella and novel-length things in my thirties, having written shorts and creative non-fiction for my whole life, I got sucked in hard to the idea that longer works had to follow conventional patterns and structures. When I did that, I ended up not liking what I wrote. What I loved about short fiction was that I felt free to get unconventional with it and for some reason (Writing Internet™ was the reason) I didn't realise I was 'allowed' to do that with longer stories too.

So yeah, the books I loved, the ones that stayed with me, the ones that still live rent-free in my head, are the ones with negative reviews about how morally wrong they are or how weird they are or how nothing really happens and it's just a guy getting high and thinking about stuff etc. Even though I have no interest in conventional publishing, seeing authors in that arena writing those kinds of books gave me a little boost in inspiration.

I hope no-one drowned in that stream of consciousness.

#answered asks #storyteller saturday #sts #writeblr tags #writeblr #writers on tumblr

[yugiohz]

Just wondering but do you have any more lit theory recs? Or texts you think are like, basic readings? I had several literature modules in uni but they were ass and gave us No theorical base for analysis 😭 also it's fine if they are German/in German, I'm sure many of them will have translations into English

most intro books for literary theory are very easy to read as they're usually conceptualized for undergrad students, I think a classic one in english is terry eagleton's intro to literary theory? (I have a different one but i forgot which one i gave to it to a friend lol but in my experience, most are very accessible)

for narratology theories

Aristoteles' poetica if you wan to know how very early narrtology was theorized (a lot of fundamental concepts were conceptualized back then)

Barthes for authorship discourse (or others there's so many but Barthes is a good starting point)

Genette for narrative discourse

and then you have literary theory and criticism, but there is a LOT and not everything might interest you and worth a read, so I'd suggest just skimming some and only reading the ones you're interested in, I enjoy Bakhtin (Carnival, Laughter, dialogism), Kristeva (abjection), semiotics in general (saussure etc.), and post-structuralism is sth I'd also recommend

#metzler verlag der klassiker auf deutsch btw #this list is not complete by any means so I'd def recommend reading one or two good intro books #and using those as a starting point #im way too lazy to read everything so having abook that summarizes everything is always good #ive read all theories years ago but its been so long so i dont remember everything #but its good to know where to looks for what im a big fan of buying good intro books jkfdvmfv #good investment #asks

[pritishsblog]

BEST DIRECTORS IN CINEMA-5

Hi everyone! This blog is going to be the 5th part of my 8 part series of who I think is the Best Director Cinema has ever seen

And today I will be talking about

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Christopher Nolan (born July 30, 1970, London, England) is a British film director and writer acclaimed for his noirish visual aesthetic and unconventional, often highly conceptual narratives. His notable films include Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), and several Batman movies. In 2024 Nolan won an Academy Award for best director for Oppenheimer (2023), which was also named best picture.

(Early Life)

Nolan was raised by an American mother and a British father, and his family spent time in both Chicago and London. As a child, he attended Haileybury, a boarding school just outside London. From a young age Nolan was interested in moviemaking and would use his father’s Super-8 camera to make shorts. He was influenced by George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy and by the immersive dystopian films of Ridley Scott.After attending University College London, where he studied English literature, Nolan began directing corporate and industrial training videos. At the same time he was working on his first full-length release, Following (1998). The film centers on a writer going to dangerous lengths to find inspiration; it took Nolan 14 months to complete. On the strength of its success on the festival circuit, he and his producer wife, Emma Thomas, moved to Hollywood.

(His Famous Works)

Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), and transitioned into studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002). He became a high-profile director with The Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), and found further success with The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and Dunkirk (2017). After the release of Tenet (2020), Nolan parted ways with longtime distributor Warner Bros. Pictures, and signed with Universal Pictures for the biographical thriller Oppenheimer (2023), which won him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

(Filmmaking Style)

His Filmmaking Style

Nolan's films are largely centred in metaphysical themes, exploring the concepts of time, memory and personal identity. His work is characterised by mathematically inspired ideas and images, unconventional narrative structures, materialistic perspectives, and evocative use of music and sound.Joseph Bevan wrote, "His films allow arthouse regulars to enjoy superhero flicks and multiplex crowds to engage with labyrinthine plot conceits. Nolan views himself as "an indie filmmaker working inside the studio system"

(His Filmography)

Nolan made his directorial debut in 1998 with a movie named Following (1998). He made many other films such as Memento in 2000,Insomnia in 2002. He also made the Batman Trilogy which included Bataman Begins (2005),The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). In between the Batman Trilogy he directed movies like Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010). After this Nolan directed movies such as Interstellar (2014),Dunkirk (2017),Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023).

Nolan's hand and shoe prints in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre

(Awards & Honors)

Nolan has won 2 Academy Awards out of the 8 nominations, 2 BAFTA's out of the 8 nominations and he has 1 Golden Globe Award out of 6 nominations.

(Sources)

And that's it for this part folks, I'll meet you with another blog about some of the Greatest Directors Cinema has ever seen. Until then

CIAO

#Oppenheimer #christopher nolan #batman #dark knight

[deusvervewrites]

You probably talked about this before, but I'm not sure if you have a tag for it and I've only seen you commenting this sort of stuff when you talk about the fics you're planning to do. I decided to ask anyway because, well, why not?

So, do you have a process for making your fics? Like, an outline, general rules you keep in mind, narretive structures, whatever and etc? Any preferred structures or (snrks) quirks of narrative and storytelling you enjoy making or seeing on other people stories?

I don't think I actually have talked about this, or at least in detail.

All of my fics started as a simple elevator pitch, like 'What If All Might told Midoriya he could be a Quirkless Hero?' or 'What if Midoriya got magical powers from a death god during the sludge villain attack?' or 'Cathleen/Inko raising Izuku.'

Then I move on to brainstorming, where I develop the idea further and work out how I want to handle it. Haigha changed the most conceptually, so I'll use it as my example. It started as 'I want to write Midoriya with All For One Quirk, but not related to All For One.' During my brainstorming process, I came up with the idea of him being experimented on by AFO as a test run for Nine and Shigaraki, only for something to go wrong and that's how he ends up confused in an alleyway with no idea that his Rabbit Quirk is just one he snagged from AFO on the way out. However, as I developed this particular idea, I realized him having All For One wasn't actually as interesting as the mystery of what happened to him and what Quirks he had, so I cut AFO out of it, and reworked the concept to fit.

I also usually have some ideas for future scenes or chapters in mind by this point.

Then I move on to my timeline of events. Since a lot of my stuff involves For Want of a Nail--a small change that goes on to result in far more significant changes--having a timeline helps me keep track of how the butterfly effect is going, and makes it easier for me to adjust as I consider the implications of a specific change more.

I usually use this timeline as my outline, but the timeline in When Freemen Shall Stand is rapidly diverging from canon at an alarming rate, so I might go on to have a second outline specifically for the contents of individual chapters, which will also make it easier to add in more slice-of-life content.

From there, the trick is to do what helps the narrative the most. Haigha for example originally was supposed to start with Midoriya waking up and realizing that his body had been changed, and learning that it's five months later than he thinks it is. However, I couldn't make this chapter work. I think I've still got two or three scrapped attempts at it somewhere. I ended up writing the actual first chapter so that I had something down, and it turned out to be a much better starting point. Referencing his recovery and the effects of his disappearance without showing them helped the mystery, and Nedzu quickly recapping the most important points while seeding future events made it an excellent introduction.

#asks #writing advice #by association

[shoezuki]

Hey, Egg, I wanted to ask you a question related to fanfic writing if that's ok with you? I wanted to ask how do you plan your fanfics. Like, do you have a general structure you use? Or just go with the flow?

Asking bcz I saw your post on the background of the doc for ch 10 and got curious abt how you go abt planning, whether it be a oneshot or a chapter.

Sorry if its an odd question to ask 😅

Its np!!!! I love talkin bout anything fic related ngl. But to be honest i have next to No structure beksvssyd.

Im typically a oneshot type of writer where i do individual fics part of a bigger series such as the divinity au because for me i want some form of overarching topic/theme/AU without rigidly having a major story in place. Most often i have specific scenes/ideas in mind that are part of a bigger series or related to previous things. Tbh the doctor fic is an anomaly for me. I tend to abandon multi ch things out of losing interest.

I typically 'go with the flow' BUT have major scenes or plotpoints in mind. For the doctor fic i at first imagined it at 6 chapters in terms of major points in the story. Like ch 1: sampo leaving/finding gepard. Ch 2: them connecting/talking and getting closer, gepard's wound getting worse. Ch 3: the fragmentum amalgamation fight and sampo taking gep back to the city. Ch.4: gepards pov and finding sampo... etcetc. But i Obviously have a lot more chapters however the major plot points i imagined remain. There just happens to be more build up and plot in between major 'points'.

Time to get nerdy but in general this is how i think of my fics and anything i write: i block out the story in my head and what i want to convey in terms of key scenes. Kinda similar to the classic narrative structure/fraytag's pyramid but by conceptualizing the 'order' of major scenes between the First scene and the Final scene. W the doctor fic i have an idea of All major scenes ive written and will write, but also each chapter has this same format.

Usually this is All in my head tbh but for doctor fic im trying to actually do a shitty sort of outline w bullet points. Like for instance for ch 9 it went something like:

Gepard leaves to the underworld without telling anyone

He doesnt know what to do and goes to natasha's clinic first

Natasha doesn't trust him but realizes gepard actually cares/worries for sampo and shows him sampo in her office

Discussion of how he got there, nat's distrust of him/silvermanes

The badges.

Gepard falls asleep, wakes up and realizes lynx n serval were texting him

Gep goes home and serval chews him out. He tells serval about sampo

Lynx is passed out and gepard falls asleep beside her

Those are the 'big' portions i wanted to write, and then i add more points between and as im writing i go with whatever feels right to go from point A to point B. With other fics/chapters i have swapped around order of major scenes and ommitted some but i Always try to keep the beginning and the end fairly solid.

..... idk if any a this is helpful vslddgsjd. Like i really do keep most of everything in my head and rarely do i really like... outline or do a draft of these things. Altho the biggest thing i really Really am set on and would argue is most important is that. When writing a multi chapter thing or something with a bigger story to it, know your ending from the beginning. For one, having your ending essentially set in stone makes it much easier to build up to it and ensures the ending feels proper and satisfying. But also, at least for me, knowing how it ends makes it easier to stay interested/engaged with it.

W the doctor fic, how it ends is something ive known from the beginning. I technically have written beyond the ending even. Tbh if i had no end in sight i think id feel listless w it and probably drop it by now

Oh also. I like changing background colours of my pages and the fonts cuz it makes the documents look cool n i like tryna pick a bg colour that Feels like the chapter/fic :)

#is this any help idk #i have a structure in my head for how i do things but its hard to convey #theres a lot of 'fuck it we ball' vibes too #anon

[utilitycaster]

Heyy looks like we have in common the amount that the final reveal of neverafter’s premise blew our minds. Would love to hear more about what excites you about this type of plot and where you’d want to see things go from here. May even dm you about this later if you want, I have *thoughts*.

Feel free to DM me! But while I did absolutely love the most recent episode, one of the things I love is that I don't have any idea what will happen next and am more interested, particularly in this kind of plot, in watching it unfold.

I know some people don't like talking about narrative and pacing and whatnot, but I very much do*. So a story that is inherently about the concept of narrative, folklore, archetypes, structure, and so on is going to naturally appeal to me. I think this was skillfully hinted at with the concept of the Stepmother as a warlock patron, as well as Rosamund's inability to properly conceptualize what her prince looks like, because in these stories a prince is a device and not a character, and for that matter a princess is a device and not a character as well. I like that we engaged with universal and ancient archetypes, and the ways in which folkore has been shaped by moralizing and cultural intent. For what it's worth I'm both someone who has taken Hero With a Thousand Faces out of the library and never read it and yet also a Campbell semi-skeptic, so, you know, grain of salt. I also read far too much Gaiman at an impressionable age and had multiple English teachers who really wanted to be film teachers, just to really give an idea of where I'm coming from. Anyway I like the idea of near-infinite creations made from a fairly limited set of building blocks that a story like this provides and want to just be on the roller coaster, whereas with a more linear plot I will have more specific expectations and wants.

*I also think more people like discussing narrative than they think, as the general popularity of this episode, or Brennan's quote of "why do we tell stories" both indicate; I think dislike of this discussion is usually not about story structure itself but rather either a place of insecurity or as I've discussed at length, personal distaste for specific narratives that are going in places that are not where those people wanted them to go.

#answered #mapleandgingeroatmeal #neverafter #dimension 20

[zalrb]

I am not someone who is well educated in cinema so I don't know if it's my place to speak on these things that I may just be naive to but, from the few Christopher Nolan movie's I've seen. only about 5 at this point. there's a distinct robotic, cold, sterile, inhuman quality that I feel in a very particular way that I can tell is about Nolan and not his actors. I just don't know how to articulate what it is exactly.

Of course you can talk about it. And that's a common criticism of Nolan movies. As I've mentioned in the past, if I watch a Nolan movie, it's usually for the visual/cinematic spectacle, he makes the type of films you would study in a 101 class to be like here is how you can play with narrative structure

here is how you use shallow depth of field

this is how you use non-diegetic music to build tension (non-diegetic means music that isn't heard from within the world of the movie)

it's very much craft based as opposed to character-based because while his characters go through intense emotional journeys - a war, space/time travel, amnesia/the murder of his family, and while a significant aspect of Interstellar is the father-daughter relationship between Murph and Cooper

I find that he treats emotional arcs and the emotions of his characters theoretically and conceptually, it's clinical because he's more interested in the vastness of the world of his movie so I find that the right actors imbue his movies with the warmth/personal touch needed, like in Openheimmer, while it's a character study and Nolan takes great pains into visually showing us what goes on inside his head, it's still done with a sort of distance that I think Cillian closes. I think Christian Bale and Rebecca Hall really imbue their characters in The Prestige as well.

[billsfangearring]

5 Things You Never Get Tired of Writing

HAHA thank you for the tag, @squidgilator! This is a ridiculous thing to do when I only have two published fics—one of which is only 150 words—and two WIPs, but anything for you 😘

rules: list five things you never get tired of writing. it can be tropes, themes, characters, phrases, whatever brings you joy. then tag five people!

Proceeding to ignore the existence of my ficlet because it's nothing like the rest of my writing—

Friends to Lovers/pining. I enjoy reading Enemies to Lovers and Strangers to Lovers too, but for my own writing I'm all about complicated feelings for one of the people who knows you best.

Interiority. I think in internal monologue with no visuals, so this one's purely a reflection of how I experience the world and conceptualize a story. It also cuts down on dialogue.

Non-standard narrative structures. So far everything I've written has a nonlinear narrative, multiple POVs, or both, because I love to torture myself, no, I mean my writing process is chaotic, no, I mean I think it's interesting to explore the limitations and biases of a character's perspective.

Regret/uncertainty. My POV characters do a lot of second-guessing of themselves and their instincts, which absolutely doesn't say anything about me, and I'm here for the angst.

Atmosphere. I'm all about the ✨vibes✨ so this one is a must! I want my descriptors to add something to the story's mood.

Tagging @everythingbutcoldfire @the-dream-team @perverse-idyll and anyone else who wants to join in! <3

#or: a writing n00b attempts to find patterns in a too-small sample #this post is absurd #navel-gazing at its finest #tag game #billie writes fic

[lover-official]

The way I'm seeing people consume the Barbie movie uncritically and call it a feminist masterpiece is concerning.

It's giving the same kind of energy as how this site was in the mid 2010's, where we just somehow decided collectively that Men Were All Bad Actually ™️ and like ignored all the ways that's fucked up and that categorically not just dismissing but actively shitting on and harassing a group of people based on an identity they literally can't control is bad.

Like idk I thought we were finally acknowledging the damage that did to feminism. I thought we were finally acknowledging the way that bred a self loathing into men that isolated them and stopped coalition building, and the way young men of color (especially black men) were treated in explicitly racist ways but people used the guise of "no I'm just mad at men" to justify it, and the way trans men CONTINUE to be treated on this website... but here we are, getting real fucking hype about how good the Barbie movie treats the Kens.

And the thing is that while what the Kens do is bad they aren't given genuine agency in the narrative. They didn't like. Make this choice. It's a stupid and logically inconsistent argument that they did, one that's contradicted by the movie itself. They're infantalized by the Barbies at every turn and if ANY Ken has literally any formal education they're an exception. The Barbies don't know where the Kens live (spoiler: they are literally homeless) and they don't care. The Kens are quite literally second class citizens, but the movie doesn't even look at this as a bad thing! It's uninterested in the actually feminist idea that gender should not be used to cause divides or power embalances; instead, it acts out a female supremacy revenge fantasy on screen and then pats itself on the back for being so kind about how it makes the Kens second class citizens. Like sure, it says, the Kens aren't allowed higher education, or a Supreme Court seat, or homes, which are things women do have in the western world that this movie is made for as its primary audience, but at least we're not withholding healthcare or acting sexually violently towards them! And like... that's not the flex you think it is!!!! That's the bare fucking minimum!

Some of you have never read feminist theory and it fucking shows.

bell hooks didn't write The will to change just for you all to uncritically felate a corporate propaganda film as a feminist masterwork. Audre Lorde didn't say "You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same," so that you could say that coalition building isn't important, actually, and you'd rather men just suffer than for us to reach healthier societal views on gender.

I'm especially disappointed in the trans people, who should fucking know better, for regurgitating these ideas.

We have to do better about how we treat men even conceptually, because the structural power that men have is not the dominant experience many men have with regards to oppression and we would be better served to fight those battles together. We have to do better because men do not deserve to be isolated from the movement because of their gender. (And no. They don't just need a thicker skin, because a lot of this hasn't just been surface level. It's been vitriolic and insipid, for years now.) We have to do better because once we start making masculinity the devil it's so much easier to hate butches, and trans women, and any woman who's perceived to have masculine interests or features or behaviors. We have to do better because men are still fucking people and deserve to be treated with every bit of kindness and dignity that women are entitled to. (And that's not even getting into how this behavior affects masculine nonbinary people, who get the brunt of this hatred while simultaneously experiencing little to none of the privilege you insist is afforded them by the maleness you percieve.)

Idk I guess I just expected better and I just hoped we wouldn't be worshipping something that pretty clearly flies in the face of what feminists have worked for since like. The 60's. :/

#carmina posting #if you reblog this and try to start shit in the tags or comments I'm not engaging I'll just block #I'm upset because while I am a girl and I love women i also understand the reasons that this flies in the face of feminist theory #and I don't want to argue about that I just want to be allowed to be upset #if you want recommendations on further reading to make an informed opinion because you haven't read feminist theory that addresses... #...this kind of stuff though you can ask for that or dm me and ask and I'll provide resources #i just don't want to get into fights on this