#please I am begging you. Please.

[lewiscarrolatemybrain]

One more time

A Positive Change Arc -- often called a Hero's Journey -- is one possible shape a story can take. It is not the only or the best character arc, it's just one option. In a Positive Change Arc, the protagonist begins the story believing the Thematic Lie, and must learn and embrace the Thematic Truth over the course of their journey.

TGCF and MDZS are not Positive-Change Arcs. They are Flat Arcs.

(I have not read SVSSS)

A Flat-Arc is a story where the protagonist begins already knowing the Thematic Truth, while the world around them believes the lie. In a Flat Arc, the protagonist will have their knowledge of the Truth challenged and tested, they will be tempted by the Lie, and they will ultimately use their conviction to inspire the world around them to also embrace the Truth.

Flat Arc characters do not need to learn the Thematic Truth. They already know it. They may be seduced by the lie, they may falter, but they will always rally back to the Truth in the end.

(If they ARE successfully converted to the lie, then that isn't a Flat Arc anymore, it's a Corruption Arc, and it's usually a tragedy.)

"But Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian learned--" Nothing they learned impacted the Thematic Truth. Did they learn things? Yes! That's how Being A Person works. Both of them DID change and grow as people from the start of the series to the end. But neither of them learned anything that impacted the Thematic Truth. Because they already knew it.

Xie Lian was already kind, he already wanted to help people, he already believed that common people should be protected and uplifted. His suffering at the hands of BWX did not teach him any deep or important lessons. He already knew the Truth. BWX tried to tempt him to embrace the lie -- that people are undeserving, that you should never do anything for anyone who won't grovel with gratitude, that caring for other people is a waste -- and failed, because Xie Lian knew the truth and even when he was at his lowest he was searching for confirmation that he was right. Xie Lian only needed one single act of kindness to reassure himself that he was right and BWX was wrong. He did not learn anything new, he reaffirmed what he already knew and understood.

Wei Wuxian is good, and righteous, and morally upright. He is a character who does the right thing regardless of the consequences he might face. The sects collectively wanted to destroy him because he refused to bow to them, not because he ever at any point actually did anything wrong. Even the vengefulness he showed while actively at war is narratively justified, and it's key that the sects did not care about the desecration of bodies while it served them. He did not learn any valuable or important lessons when the Sects raided the Burial Mounds. The fact that Lan Sizhui exists at all is proof for us as the audience that everything Wei Wuxian did was worth it. All of it mattered, and all of it was the right choice, because a-Yuan is alive. He doesn't come back to life having learned anything new, he already understood the Truth.

Obviously neither of them are Omnipotent. They learn that there's dudes in love with them, they solve the mysteries of their respective true Big Bads, they uncover some other stuff. But the Thematic Truth, the core theme of the story, is not a lesson either of them needs to learn. It is a lesson they teach others by refusing to bend to the Lie the rest of the world believes.

#MXTX #MDZS #TGCF #Heaven Official's Blessing #Grandmaster Of Demonic Cultivation #Xie Lian #Wei Wuxian #story structure #character arc #please I am begging you. Please. #I know school failed you but please #if you are going to try and get into meta #do some research into story theory #do independent studying into how story craft works #I know school probably taught you that the Hero's Journey #is the best or only story structure #but it is not. It isn't even the most common. #school probably also failed to teach you how Themes works #but you really do need to understand them if youre going to try and write deep meta #you cannot dissect a story if you don't understand the pieces it's made of

[sanctus-ingenium]

and there was no border between sky and sea | print

#please zoom in i beg of you. tumblr doesn't like landscape art #patrons voted on the theme of this! they voted 'werewolf'. who am i to deny them their uhhh. werewolf #artists on tumblr #seascapes #dnd

[finisnihil]

“They finally made this theme more blatant-" Why does it need to be blatant. What's wrong with subtlety? Concepts can be underused but subtlety is not neglect.

Blaring all your concepts and themes is not good writing. It's so disruptive to a story's flow when the characters look off the screen to be like "See? This is the concept. The idea. The theme."

If you can feel the hand of the author becoming too heavy that's bad.

For example: I see people saying Azula's abuse in ATLA is more blatant in the live action and it's good because "it's being discussed more". It already was discussed at length. The show made it clear she was a victim at every turn, every behavior, every reaction, it came from a place of trauma. It was made clear that she was scared of ending up like Zuko because Zuko was an example of what would happen to her if she failed. When she says she's better than Zuko it wasn't just because she was raised to think hersef superior to him but because Zuko failed and failures get mutilated and exiled, failures are abandoned. In that final Agni Kai the music is morose and somber because this isnt some epic battle its a fucking tragedy, the burning out of "Ozai's brightest light" and Azula finally succumbing to her terror and trauma she was repressing now that her worst fears are realized. How can you see a fourteen year old girl chained to a sewer grate wailing and writhing and breathing fire desperately as unsympathetic? Even Katara and Zuko are horrified as to what has become of her.

The writers weren't looking us in the eye and saying "See? She's a victim too" when they wrote this, they weaved it in. They weaved it into her obsesison with symmetry, her extreme perfectionism, the way she talks about Ozai, the ways she calls herself a monster, her isolation from those with healthy home lives, all the ways she held herself together and ultimately all the cracks and seams that she shattered down when she fell apart. It did not need to be blatant to be clear.

#Finis Analyzes #Nihil Dreams #ATLA #avatar the last airbender #Azula #I’m so fucking sick of people saying stuff like this #Please learn media literacy I am begging you #The narrative is not going to hold your hand and play tour guide and point out everything #Stop acting like it has to #You can analyze it yourself I promise

[stedebonnets]

RIP Izzy Hands. You did not die alone. You died surrounded by friends and family. Belonging to something.

#listen listen i'm unwell... sad i miss my tiny silly unicorn but i will always love him maybe we are going to see him as a ghost next season #izzy hands #con o'neill #our flag means death #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd s2 #ofmdedit #ofmdsource #ofmdaily #usercaptainflint #userkristi #dailypiratemedia #my stuff #mygifs #please no negativity in this post i beg you i am still crying!

[ewwww-what]

Nobody is as excited about the preview as I am. I have paragraphs.

#very bad doodle I just need to get this out there #don’t look at it too hard I’m begging #someone please talk to me about the blood rush breakup before the world explodes #it is not that serious but I will do anything for twenty seconds of them arguing #the episode hasn’t come out but I am shaking #every time they talk I become a little more evil and fucked up #genuinely though aside from the silliness of the conversation being about sports I have some very strong feelings about the little bits we- #-got to see in the preview #like I will inevitably talk about it but just because I know people are gonna beat me to it I just want to express how excited I am #fantasy high #d20 #d20 fantasy high #dimension 20 #gorgug thistlespring #fabian seacaster #thistlecaster #<- yeah fuck it why not #for my one mutual who likes them #this is for you and you only #fhjy spoilers #my art

[novelconcepts]

The defintion of hell is knowing a show is incredibly well-received in its first season, but if people don’t become machines churning out tweets, content, and rewatching 24/7, there’s no likelihood it’ll get a chance to tell its whole story. This shit is madness. Shows in different genres shouldn’t have to pit-battle for dominance. First seasons are MEANT to be baselines establishing worlds and characters, not complete storylines. The idea that this golden age of television has turned into “get it done in one or get out” is revolting.

#the sandman #paper girls #some of the hot takes on Twitter are breaking me #‘why don’t we know the whole story? it’s bad writing if you don’t have a complete story in the first season’ girl WHAT since WHEN #how many excellent shows were weak as fuck in S1?? and here we’re getting shows with incredible first seasons fighting for their lives #like fuckin Christ dude the idea of long form storytelling is allowing your story time and space to spread out #otherwise we would only make movies #i am so sick of this edge of my seat fear that any new show I fall in love with will get axed because the higher powers don’t care about art #this has to be a bubble right? this has to pop at some point and go back to shows valued on what they are #and don’t even get me started on creators having to beg for good reviews to balance out review-bombing from shitheads #if every one star review is clearly bigoted from the comments? why is anyone taking them into account?? #why is there no way to manage this shit aside from creators being like ‘please help us”’

[respectissexy]

As a therapist who mostly works with traumatized teens, I find discourse about the Bad Kids weirdly triggering. Like, you think the 16 year old lesbian who escaped from a fundamentalist cult a year and a half ago should be nicer? Her current relationship with her god and religion should be unproblematic and she should be an ideal cleric? Jail for one thousand years.

#dimension 20 #fantasy high #fantasy high junior year #kristen applebees #please let female actual play characters be bitches I am begging you

[stil-lindigo]

Context: Israel “allowed” aid in the forms of flour bags to be airdropped into Gaza, waited for hundreds to congregate, and then opened fire into the crowd of desperate, starving Palestinians. 150 Palestinians were killed. Hundreds more wounded. This is being called “The Flourbag Massacre”.

source

Meanwhile, over on the other side…

#the things I want to say about Israeli Zionists would get me blasted off this website #but I’ll settle for something like - #these people are depraved fascist fucks who should be tried and punished at the fucking hague #and made to suffer through even a fraction of the immense pain and suffering that they’ve forced onto palestinians #also. as someone who’s not a US citizen but js unfortunately part of the world the US influences #god I am fucking begging you neoliberal fucks to recognise what continuing support for Biden MEANS #please. PLEASE organise #free palestine #palestine #free gaza

[gophergal]

You get wrecked by a Heavy+Medic duo and see one of these taunts before you respawn. How do you react?

(aka: @cursed--alien and I were bullshitting about potential taunts that would kill homophobic gamer boys on sight and these shitty doodles are the result)

#gopher art #team fortress 2 #heavymedic #red oktoberfest #tf2 medic #tf2 heavy #please imagine. im begging you. #if something to this effect got added i would pay so fucking much money for it. i dont give a fuck #also. we were discussing the hilarity of this being some squeaker's gay awakening. he gets annihilated by a heavymedic duo #and they tauntsmooch on his killcam. and he has to re-evaluate something. ie google “am i gay quiz” #see my vision boy

[cryingpages]

I'm just... gonna leave this here...

*silently slinks away*

Pls tag me if someone hears my call and writes something

#call of duty x reader #call of duty #cod x reader #cod mw2 #x reader #simon ghost riley #ghost x reader #john soap mactavish #soap x reader #tf 141 x reader #poly tf141 #john price #price x reader #john price x reader #simon riley x reader #john soap mctavish x reader #kyle gaz garrick #gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #please someone write this #i am begging you pls write this and tag me😭❤️ #maybe with some chubby reader👀

[kami-kun1003]

im just gonna come right out and say it:

pretty much everyone in this fandom portrays Silver as this perfect, flawless, polite, beautiful, princely, romantic gentleman who can do absolutely no wrong in his life ever. which is… not really accurate at all.

he’s odd. he struggles with showing emotions and doesn’t understand social cues very well. his dorm uniform vignette is literally about how people find him strange and unapproachable due to his lack of expressiveness. in his lab coat vignette, Jamil straight up calls him weird to his face and he fully agrees without hesitation.

and in one of his voice lines, he calls Yuu strange just for wanting to hang out with him. stop and think about that for a second. he considers himself boring and doesn’t expect anyone would want to spend time with him. maybe he used to try and make friends, but people kept avoiding him, saying that he wasn’t fun to be around.

he’s not the handsome guy that everybody in the school falls for, he’s the quiet kid who doesn’t say much or has any friends outside of his own personal circle. and i think that has a lot of potential for angst.

#if u reply to my post with smth like ‘oh but he IS perfect and flawless and princely’ i will actually fucking block you #youre free to disagree with me ofc but please dont be annoying about it #read a vignette instead of an x reader i am begging you #i wrote this on zero sleep so if i seem annoyed or my wording is off thats why #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #twst silver #twst analysis #diasomnia #chemy’s concoctions 🧪

[0nelittlebirdtoldme]

Need to know if somebody else is obsessed with mummy joe's Kid Vampire. I have been quoting "For why?!" the entire week

#kid vampire #mummy joe #ramble of the day #i am begging you please look it up if you don't know it

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

growing up with a perpetually anxious primary caregiver is such a mindfuck. that shit will rewire your nervous system

#not a shitpost #i get that parenthood and modern life in general is extremely anxiety inducing #and that anxiety is a common mental health issue and anxiety disorders exist and do not disqualify you from being a loving parent #but i am begging you PLEASE do not project your anxiety onto your kids #especially younger kids #your job is to make your kids feel safe and secure. that is a primary requirement #that doesn't mean you can't be anxious! #but just like being angry doesn't mean you're allowed to yell at your kids or slam doors or break things #being anxious doesn't mean you are allowed to surround your kids with your own fear and stress or teach them to share your anxieties #your job is to be a comforting nurturing parental figure. that means projecting comfort and love #even when it is hard! even when you are tired or angry or scared! #which is a damn hard job! and you won't get it right all the time! #but dammit babes you gotta TRY #kids deserve to feel safe and comfortable in their daily lives #you CANNOT be teaching them to expect catastrophe lurking around every corner

[bizlybebo]

hey. you. random jrwi fan. in front of you is the compelling, three-dimensional female protagonist jay ferin. your job is to describe her in one sentence without using the word "girlboss" or equating her to the sole wingman of fnc or else the saw trap will go off and you will die a slow and painful death.

#YES I KNOW that the council themselves referred to her as a girlboss. i know. #its about the fact that when you look at her you ONLY see 'girlboss' or 'ahha fnc (i am going to reduce this female character solely to her #-relationship with and proximity to other men' #jrwi fandom i BEG of you i really love you guys PLEASE understand jay ferin #i love jay ferin #she is my shining star my light in life #jay ferin #jrwi riptide #jrwi #vixen rambles

[il-predestinato]

Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen fighting for P1 at the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix. 🎥: F1TV

#charles leclerc #max verstappen #lestappen #f1 #f1edit #* #my edit #las vegas gp 2023 #lestappen on track >>>>>>>>>>> lestappen off track #my favourite flavour of lestappen will ALWAYS be wheel to wheel lestappen #fave #FERRARI I AM BEGGING YOU PLEASE LET THEM HAVE THIS EVERY RACE NEXT SEASON

[em-exceeds-change-zearu]

the only thoughts i've had since this morning's direct

#pokemon #pokemon legends za #flygon #gale shitposting #gamefreak...gamefreak i am begging you. please. it's all i ask