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warsofasoiaf · 3 years

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Writing Characters With Believable Military PTSD

I typically write these writing and worldbuilding essays from a dispassionate perspective, offering advice and context to prospective writers from as neutral a point of view as I can manage, with the goal being to present specific pieces of information and broader concepts that can hopefully improve writing and build creators’ confidence to bring their projects to fruition, whether that be writing, tabletop gaming, video game programming, or anything that suits their fancy. While writing this essay though, I struggled to maintain that perspective. Certainly, the importance of the topic to me was a factor, but ultimately, I saw impersonality just as a suboptimal presentation method for something so intensely personal. I do maintain some impartiality particularly in places where historical or academic context is called for, but in other respects I’ve opted for a different approach. Ultimately, this essay is a labor of love for me, love for those who suffer from military PTSD, love for those who love those who suffer from it, and love for writers who want to, in the way that they so choose, help those two other groups out. Thus, this is a different type of essay in certain segments than my usual fare; I hope the essay isn’t an unreadable chimera because of it.

This essay focuses on military-related PTSD. While there are some concepts that translate well into PTSD in the civilian sphere, there are unique elements that do not necessarily fit the mold in both directions, so for someone hoping to write a different form of PTSD, I would recommend finding other resources that could better suit your purposes. I also recommend using more than one source just in general, trauma is personal and so multiple sources can help provide a wide range of experiences to draw upon, which should hopefully improve any creative work.

And as a final introductory note, traumatic experiences are deeply personal. If you are using someone you know as a model for your writing, you owe it to that person to communicate exactly what you are doing and to ask their permission every step of the way. I consider it a request out of politeness to implore any author who uses someone else’s experiences to inform their writing in any capacity, but when it comes to the truly negative experiences in someone’s life, this rises higher from request to demand. You will ask someone before taking a negative experience from their own life and placing it into your creative works, and you will not hide anything about it from them. Receiving it is a great sign of trust. The opposite is a travesty, robbing someone of a piece of themselves and placing it upon display as a grotesque exhibit. And if that sounds ghoulish and macabre, it’s because it is, without hyperbole. Don’t do it.

Why Write PTSD?

What is the purpose of including PTSD in a creative work? There have been plenty of art therapy actions taken by those who suffer PTSD to create something from their condition, which can be as profound for those who do not have it as it is therapeutic for those that do, but why would someone include it in their creative works, and why is some no-name guy on the internet writing an essay offering tips as to how to do it better?

Certainly, one key element is that it’s real, and it happens. If art is to reflect upon reality, PTSD suffered by soldiers is one element of that, so art can reflect it, but what specifically about PTSD, as opposed to any other facet of existence? Author preference certainly plays a factor, but why would someone try to include something that is difficult to understand and difficult to portray? While everyone comes to their own reason, I think that a significant number of people are curious about what exactly goes on in the minds of someone suffering through PTSD, and creative works allow them a way to explore it, much the way fiction can explore scenarios and emotions that are either unlikely or unsafe to explore in reality. If that’s the case, then the purpose of this essay is rather simple, to make the PTSD examination more grounded in reality and thus a better reflection of it. But experiences are unique even if discernable patterns emerge, so in that sense, no essay created by an amateur writer with no psychological experience could be an authoritative take on reality, the nature of which would is far beyond the scope of this essay.

For my own part, I think that well-done creative works involving PTSD is meant to break down the isolation that it can cause in its wake. Veterans suffering may feel that they are alone, that their loved ones cannot understand them and the burden of trying to create that would simply push them away; better instead to have the imperfect bonds that they currently have than risk losing them entirely. For those who are on the outside looking in, isolation lurks there as well, a gulf that seems impossible to breach and possibly intrusive to even try. Creative works that depict PTSD can help create a sense that victims aren’t alone, that there are people that understand and can help without demeaning the sense of self-worth. Of course, another element would be to reduce the amount of poorly-done depictions of PTSD. Some creative works use PTSD as a backstory element, relegating a defining and important element of an individual’s life as an aside, or a minor problem that can be resolved with a good hug and a cry or a few nights with the right person. If a well-done creative work can help create a bridge and break down isolation, a poorly-done one can turn victims off, reinforcing the idea that no one understands and worse, no one cares. For others, it gives a completely altered sense of what PTSD is and what they could do to help, keeping them out, confusing them, or other counter-productive actions. In that sense, all the essay is to help build up those who are doing the heavy lifting. I’m not full of so much hubris as to think this is a profound piece of writing that will help others, but if creators are willing to try and do the hard work of building a bridge, I could at least try to help out and provide a wheelbarrow.

An Abbreviated Look At The Many Faces and Names of PTSD Throughout History

PTSD has been observed repeatedly throughout human history, even when it was poorly understood. This means that explorations of PTSD can be written in settings even if they did not have a distinctly modern understanding of neurology, trauma, or related matters. These historical contexts are also useful for worldbuilding a believable response in fictional settings and scenarios that don’t necessarily have a strict analogue in our own history. By providing this historical context, hopefully I can craft a broad-based sense of believable responses to characters with PTSD at a larger level.

In the time of Rome, it was understood by legionnaires that combat was a difficult endeavor, and so troops were typically on the front lines engaged in combat for short periods of time, to be rotated back for rest while others took their place. It was considered ideal, in these situations, to rotate troops that fought together back so that they could rest together. The immediate lesson is obvious, the Romans believed that it was vital for troops to take time to process what they had done and that was best served with quiet periods of rest not just to allow the adrenaline to dissipate (the "combat high"), but a chance for the mind to wrap itself around what the legionnaire had done. The Romans also recognized that camaraderie between fellow soldiers helped soldiers to cope, and this would be a running theme throughout history (and remains as such today). Soldiers were able to empathize with each other, and help each other through times of difficulty. This was not all sanguine, however, Roman legions depended on their strong formations, and a soldier that did not perform their duty could endanger the unit, and so shame in not fulfilling their duty was another means to keep soldiers in line. The idea of not letting down your fellow soldiers is a persistent refrain in coping with the traumas of war, and throughout history this idea has been used for both pleasant and unpleasant means of keeping soldiers in the fight.

In the Middle Ages, Geoffroi de Charny wrote extensively on the difficulties that knights could experience on the campaign trail in his Book of Chivalry. The book highlights the deprivation that knights suffered, from the bad food and poor sleep to the traumatic experience of combat to being away from family and friends to the loss of valued comrades to combat and infection; each of these is understood as a significant stressor that puts great strain on the mental health of soldiers up to today. De Charny recommended focusing on the knightly oaths of service, the needs of the mission of their liege, and the duty of the knight to serve as methods to help bolster the resolve of struggling knights. The book also mentions seeking counseling and guidance from priests or other confidants to help improve their mental health to see their mission through. This wasn’t universal, however. Some severely traumatized individuals were seen as simple cowards, and punished harshly for their perceived cowardice as antithetical to good virtue and to serve as an example.

World War I saw a sharp rise in the reported incidents of military-related PTSD and new understandings and misunderstandings. The rise in the number of soldiers caused a rise in cases of military PTSD, even though the term itself was not known at the time. Especially in the early phases of the war, many soldiers suffering from PTSD were thought to be malingering, pretending to have symptoms to avoid being sent to the front lines. The term “shell shock” was derived because it was believed that the concussive force of artillery bombardment caused brain damage as it rattled the skull or carbon monoxide fumes would damage the brain as they were inhaled, as a means to explain why soldiers could have physical responses such as slurred speech, lack of response to external stimuli, even nigh-on waking catatonia, despite not being hit by rifle rounds or shrapnel. This would later be replaced by the term “battle fatigue” when it became apparent that artillery bombardment was not a predicative indicator. Particularly as manpower shortages became more prevalent, PTSD-sufferers could be sent to firing squads as a means to cow other troops to not abandon their post. Other less fatal methods of shaming could occur, such as the designation “Lack of Moral Fibre,” an official brand of cowardice, as an attempt to shame the members into remembering their duty. As the war developed, and understanding grew, better methods of treatment were made, with rest and comfort provided to slight cases, strict troop rotations observed to rotate men to and from the front lines, and patients not being told that they were being evacuated for nervous breakdown to avoid cementing that idea in their mind. These lessons would continue into World War II, where the term “combat stress reaction” was adopted. While not always strenuously followed, regular rotations were adopted as standard policy. This was still not universal, plenty of units still relied upon bullying members into maintaining their post despite mental trauma.

The American military promotes a culture of competence and ability, particularly for the enlisted ranks, and that lends itself to the soldier viewing themselves in a starkly different fashion than a civilian. Often, a soldier sees the inability to cope with a traumatic experience as a personal failure stemming from the lack of mental fortitude. Owning up to such a lack of capability is tantamount to accepting that they are an inferior soldier, less capable than their fellows. This idea is commonly discussed, and should not be ignored, but it is far from the only reason. The military also possesses a strong culture of fraternity that obligates “Don’t be a fuckup,” is a powerful motivating force, and it leads plenty of members of the military to ignore traumatic experiences out of the perceived need not to put the burden on their squadmates. While most professional militaries stress that seeking mental health for trauma is not considered a sign of weakness, enlisted know that if they receive mental health counseling, it is entirely likely that someone will have to take their place in the meantime. That could potentially mean that another person, particularly in front-line units, are exposed to danger that they would otherwise not be exposed to, potentially exacerbating guilt if said person gets hurt or killed. This is even true in stateside units, plenty of soldiers don’t report for treatment because it would mean dumping work on their fellows, a negative aspect of unit fraternity. Plenty of veterans also simply never are screened for mental health treatment, and usually this lends to a mentality of “well, no one is asking, so I should be fine.” These taken together combine to a heartbreaking reality, oftentimes a modern veteran that seeks help for mental trauma has often coped silently for years, perhaps self-medicating with alcohol or off-label drug usage, and is typically very far along their own path comparatively. Others simply fall through the cracks, not being screened for mental disorders and so do not believe that anything is wrong; after all, if something was wrong, surely the doctors would notice it, right? The current schedule of deployments, which are duration-based and not mission-based, also make it hard for servicemembers to rationalize their experiences and equate them to the mission; there’s no sense of pairing suffering to objectives the way that de Charnay mentioned could help contextualize the deprivation and loss. These sorts of experiences make the soldier feel adrift, and their suffering pointless, which is discouraging on another level. It is one thing to suffer for a cause, it’s another not to know why, amplifying the feelings of powerlessness and furthering the isolation that they feel.

Pen to Page - The Characters and Their Responses

The presentation of PTSD within a character will depend largely on the point-of-view that the author creates. A character that suffers from PTSD depending on the presence of an internal or external point-of-view, will be vastly different experiences on page. Knowing this is essential, as this will determine how the story itself is presenting the disorder. Neither is necessarily more preferable than the other, and is largely a matter of the type of story being told and the personal preference of the author.

Internal perspectives will follow the character’s response from triggering event to immediate response. This allows the author to present a glimpse into what the character is experiencing. In these circumstances, remember that traumatic flashbacks are merely one of many experiences that an average sufferer of PTSD can endure. In a visual medium, flashbacks are time-effective methods to portray a character reliving portions of a traumatic experience, but other forms of media can have other tools. Traumatic flashbacks are not necessarily a direct reliving of an event from start to finish, individuals may instead feel sudden sharp pains of old injuries, be overwhelmed by still images of traumatic scenes or loud traumatic sounds. These can be linked to triggers that bring up the traumatic incident, such as a similar sight, sound, or smell. These moments of linkage are not necessarily experienced linearly or provide a clear sequence of events from start to finish (memory rarely is unless specifically prompted), and it may be to the author’s advantage to not portray them as such in order to communicate the difficulty in mental parsing that the character may be experiencing. Others might be more intrusive, such as violently deranged nightmares that prevent sleep. The author must try to strike a balance between portraying the experience realistically and portraying it logically that audience members can understand. The important thing about these memories is that they are intrusive, unwelcome, and quite stressful, so using techniques that jar the reader, such as the sudden intrusive image of a torn body, a burning vehicle, or another piece of the traumatic incident helps communicate the disorientation. Don't rely simply on shock therapy, it's not enough just to put viscera on the page. Once it is there, the next steps, how the character reacts, is crucial to a believable response.

When the character experiences something that triggers their PTSD, start to describe the stress response, begin rapidly shortening the sentences to simulate the synaptic activity, express the fight-flight-freeze response as the character reacts, using the tools of dramatic action to heighten tension and portraying the experience as something frightful and distinctly undesirable. The triggering incident brings back the fear, such as a pile of rubble on the side of the road being a potential IED location, or a loud firework recalling the initial moments of an enemy ambush. The trauma intrudes, and the character falls deep into the stress response, and now they react. How does this character react? By taking cover? By attacking the aggressor who so reminds them of the face of their enemy? Once the initial event starts, then the character continues to respond. Do they try to get to safety? Secure the area and eliminate the enemy? Eventually, the character likely recognizes their response is inappropriate. It wasn’t a gunshot, it was a car backfiring, the smell of copper isn’t the sight of a blown-apart comrade and the rank odor of blood, it’s just a jug of musty pennies. This fear will lead to control mechanisms where the victim realizes that their response is irrational. Frequently, the fear is still there, and it still struggles with control. This could heighten a feeling a powerlessness in the character as they try and fail to put the fear under control: "Yes, I know this isn’t real and there’s nothing to be afraid of, but I’m still shaking and I am still afraid!" It’s a horrifying logical track, a fear that the victim isn’t even in control of their thoughts - the one place that they should have control - and that they might always be this way. There’s no safety since even their thoughts aren’t safe. Despair might also follow, as the victim frantically asserts to regain control. Usually with time, the fear starts to lessen as the logical centers of the brain regain control, and the fear diminishes. Some times, the victim can't even really recall the exact crippling sense of fear when attempting to recall it, only that they were afraid and that it was deeply scary and awful, but the notion that it happened remains in their mind.

Control mechanisms are also important to developing a believable PTSD victim. Most sufferers dread the PTSD response and so actively avoid objects or situations that could potentially trigger. Someone who may have had to escape from a helicopter falling into the ocean may not like to be immersed in water. Someone who was hit by a hidden IED may swerve to avoid suspicious piles in the road. Someone buried under a collapsing ceiling may become claustrophobic. Thus, many characters with PTSD will be hypervigilant almost to the point of exhaustion, avoiding setting off the undesired response. This hypervigilance is mentally taxing; the character begins to become sluggish mentally as all their energy is squeezed out, leaving them struggling for even the simplest of rational thoughts. This mental fog can be translated onto the page in dramatic effect by adding paragraph length to even simple actions, bringing the reader along into the fog, laboriously seeing the character move to perform simple actions. Then, mix in a loss of a sense of purpose. They’re adrift, not exactly sure what they’re doing and barely aware of what’s happening, although they are thinking and functioning. In the character’s daily life, they are living their life using maximum effort to avoid triggering responses; this is another aspect of control that the character can use as an attempt to claw back some semblance of power in their own lives. Even control methods that aren’t necessarily healthy such as drinking themselves to pass out every night or abusing sleeping pills in an attempt to sleep due to their nightmares, are ways to attempt to regain a sense of normalcy and function. Don’t condescend to these characters and make them pathetic, that’s just another layer of cruelty, but showing the unhealthy coping mechanisms can demonstrate the difficulty that PTSD victims are feeling. Combined with an external perspective, the author can show the damage that these unhealthy actions are doing without casting the character as weak for not taking a different path.

External perspectives focus on the other characters and how they observe and react to the individual in question. Since the internal thought process of the character is not known, sudden reactions to an unknown trigger can be quite jarring for characters unaware, which can mirror real-life experiences that individuals can have with PTSD-sufferers. In these types of stories, the character’s reaction to the victim is paramount. PTSD in real life often evokes feelings of helplessness in loved ones when they simply cannot act to help, can evoke confusion, or anger and resentment. These reactions are powerful emotions with the ability to drive character work, and so external perspectives can be useful for telling a story about what it is like for loved ones who suffer in their own fashion. External perspectives can be used not just in describing triggering episodes, but in exploring how the character established coping mechanisms and how their loved ones react to them. Some mechanisms are distinctly unhealthy, such as alcohol or prescription drug abuse, complete withdrawal, or a refusal to drive vehicles, and these create stress and a feeling of helplessness in characters or can impel them to try and take action. Others can be healthy, and a moment of inspiration and joy for an external perspective could be sharing in that mechanism, demonstrating empathy and understanding which evokes strong pathos, and hopefully to friends of those who suffer from PTSD, a feeling that they too, are not alone.

As the character progresses, successes and failures can often be one of the most realistic and most important things to include within the work, since those consumers who have PTSD will see parts of themselves in the characters, which can build empathy and cut down on the feelings of isolation that many victims of PTSD feel. A character could, over the course of the story, begin weaning themselves off of their control mechanisms, have the feelings of panic subside as their logical sides more quickly assert control, replace unhealthy coping mechanisms with healthier ones, or other elements of character progression and growth. Contrarily, a character making progress could, after experiencing significant but unrelated stressors, backslide either into unhealthy coping mechanisms or be blindsided by another attack. This is a powerful fear for the victim, since it can cause them to think ‘all my progress, all my effort, and I am not free!’ This is often a great fear for PTSD users (people with depression often have the same feeling) that find methods of coping are no longer as effective, and the struggle is perceived as one that they’re ultimately doomed to failure. This feeling of inevitable failure can lead to self-harm and suicide as their avenue of success seems to burn to ash right as it was in their hands. More than one soldier suffering from PTSD has ended up concluding: “Fuck it, I can’t live like this,” as horrible as that is. Don’t be afraid to include setbacks and backsliding, those happen in reality, and can be one of the most isolating fears in their lives; if the goal of portraying PTSD accurately is to help remove that feeling of isolation, then content creators must not avoid these experiences. Success as well as failure are essential to PTSD in characters in stories, these elements moreso than any other, I believe, will transcend the medium and form a connection, fulfilling the objective we set out to include in the beginning paragraphs.

Coming Back to the Beginning

It might be counterintuitive at first glance to say “including military PTSD will probably mean it will be a long journey full of discouraging story beats that might make readers depressed,” because that’s definitely going to discourage some readers to do that. I don’t see it that way, though. The people that want to do it should go in knowing it’s going to be hard, and let that strengthen their resolve, and put the best creation they can forward. The opposite is also true. Not every prospective author has to want to include any number of difficult subjects in their works, and that’s perfectly fine. Content creators must be free to shape the craft that they so desire without the need to be obligated to tackle every difficult issue, and so no content creator should be thought of as lesser or inferior because they opt not to include it in their works. I think that’s honestly stronger than handling an important topic poorly, or even worse, frivolously. Neither should anyone think that a content creator not including PTSD in their works means that they don’t care about those who suffer from it or for those who care about them or who simply don’t care about the subject in general. That’s just a terrible way to treat someone, and in the end, this entire excursion was about the opposite

Ultimately, this essay is a chance not only to help improve creative works involving PTSD, but to reflect on the creative process. Those who still want to proceed, by all means, do so. Hopefully this essay will help you create something that can reach someone. If every piece of work that helps portray PTSD can reach someone somewhere and make things easier, even if ever so little, well then, that’s what it’s really all about.

Hoping everyone has a peaceful Memorial Day. Be good to each to other.

SLAL

#essays on writing and worldbuilding #ptsd

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erazonpo3 · 3 years

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Lost Legends

Okay so I read Lost Legends: The Rise of Flynn Rider and general thoughts? It was cute and fun, and I have gripes here and there but I can still recommend it. I don't want to compare it to WOWM because it's like apples and oranges but Lost Legends wins points for me by actually acknowledging the TTS storyline and characters, even though it's kinda brief and not quite as... entertaining.

And before I go into the in-depth spoiler review I'll jot down a few thoughts here: there's a lot to be said about tie-in media and 'canon', but where I think it becomes contentious is where two pieces contradict each other, and whether those contradictions necessitate a canonical hierarchy or cancel something out completely. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because while LL borrows TTS lore it also contradicts it? which is. ironic.

but i'll get into that. Spoilers ahead

Basic Summary of The Plot

Our story starts at the Dark Kingdom, with a short prologue. It's all stuff we already know from the series: King Edmund tries to grab the moonstone, his wife dies, Eugene gets sent away for his own safety. What's funny is that Ms Queen still doesn't get a name, but her Lady in Waiting/Handmaiden gets a name (Maeve), and it's Maeve who really drops the ball on dropping Eugene off at an orphanage instead of raising him as Prince Horace. Go girl give us nothing

And from here the LL timeline begins, as Eugene and Arnie are now twelve year olds (I think?) in an orphanage in Corona. Which is the first contradiction to 'canon' but shelve that thought for now. Eugene and Arnie are good little boys but they're getting too old to keep hanging around and the orphanage needs money for the evil Tax Man, so they decide they'll go off into the world and send some money back when they're rich off their famous adventuring. What happens instead is that The Baron's circus rolls into town (yes that Baron) and Eugene and Arnie decide to try their luck signing up for that gig.

To prove themselves to the Baron, Flynn and Lance have to perform a hazing ritual a heist. The heist is literally just to buy a key from the Weasel but it plays out as this huge dramatic thing with a guard chase which is eternally funny to me because two kids walk into a bar, buy a key and then leave, and it's treated like fucking ocean's eleven. The Stabbingtons try to betray them (those guys are here too) but Flynn and Lance outsmart them, beginning a rivalry for the ages. Also, the pub thugs are all part of the Baron's circus crew. Don't think about it too much.

Anyway, as this has all been going down, Eugene is really interested in getting to talk to this guy with a tattoo of (what we as the audience know is) the brotherhood symbol, which Eugene recognises from the note left with him as a baby. He wants to talk to this dude in the hopes he'll get a clue about who his parents are, but this dude keeps eluding him. He also hasn't had a chance to tell Lance about this yet, so when Lance finds out about it he assumes Eugene only tried to rope him into the circus so he could find his parents and ditch him. Cue an ongoing silent treatment.

Eugene eventually does talk to this guy and he learns that the Brotherhood symbol is from the Dark Kingdom but the Dark Kingdom is gone so he shouldn't bother looking for it. Bummer. And now the Baron is planning a huge heist of the reward money for the Lost Princess' return, and Eugene is getting cold feet. He's been okay with a little bit of thievery so far but this feels like too much for him, and he's not okay with pulling it off but Lance still won't talk to him.

As the plan unfolds, Lance and Eugene reconcile and then they work together to betray the Baron and return the stolen treasure that they stole back to the King and Queen. They get caught by the Baron, escape, then get caught by the guards, but it's okay because they're presented to the King and Queen and when Eugene explains that they felt really sorry about it and promise not to do it again they're let go. And so the story ends on a high note.

My Thots™

Okay so here are the thoughts

Canon Compliance?

The obvious takeaway here is that this story offers you a beautiful pie in the form of the characters you know and love and the established lore, then shoves the pie in your face with things like "Eugene already knows the Dark Kingdom and the Moonstone exist but he never brings this up" and "Eugene betrays the Baron in a very significant way but somehow they'll make up and he and Stalyan will get engaged". Which means that if the integrity of the series is important to you, you'll probably just mentally cross out Eugene knowing about the Brohood/DK/Moonstone.

And imo that's fine! My own approach to this story is a kind of general 'if it works it works, if it doesn't I'll leave it' thing to work my own headcanons around. Because there's a lot of fun things to pluck from, like a new ex-Brotherhood member and other characters that could pop up from Eugene's past and other worldbuilding details.

The Story

The story was pretty short and obviously very tailored towards a younger audience, but it still felt kind of... slow? Mostly because nothing particularly exciting is happening until the big heist and even that feels pretty underwhelming. And of course I don't expect a story like this to be particularly complex and can appreciate its simplicity, but I felt like if it had been longer there could have been more twists to keep things interesting.

For example, the Baron is set up as a character not unlike Gothel, who lavishes praise upon the boys and goes on about how they're 'family' but is obviously just manipulating them and would throw them to the wolves in a heartbeat. Eugene underestimates just how criminal the Baron is, but at no point in the story does the doubt we have in the Baron's sincerity ever amount to anything- Eugene only turns against him because he has a morality crisis, which I'll get to in a minute.

Misc. Thoughts

Okay so one thing I thought was really cute was that each chapter has a little 'quote' from a Flynnigan Rider book, and I wrote them all down so if you've read this far and want me to post those separately lemme know. Anyway I just thought it was a very cute touch.

An honourable mention goes to every time Stalyan shows up, she doesn't really do anything in the story yet still is somehow the only character holding the brain cell. Rapunzel gets an indirect cameo by Lance and Eugene stumbling upon her tower and going "Whoa that's Crazy. Anyway. " which is amazing, and Cassandra even gets a little mention by the Captain! And to answer the question nobody asked, there's a chameleon running around Corona because she's an escapee from the circus, and Pascal's mom's name is Amélie!

Characters - okay really just Eugene

Eugene/Flynn is the title character of the book and we get the story exclusively from his POV, so there isn't a lot to say about Lance. On the one hand while I can acknowledge that this is a story about Flynn, not Lance, there's a few choices that feel like a missed opportunity at best given that this book really was an opportunity to explore Lance's character in a way the series never really does.

And it feels extra egregious when the plot demands conflict between Eugene and Lance, because while the emotion between them is engaging when it's happening, at other times it just feels like a convenient way to shove Lance offscreen again. (As a side note, as contrived as the conflict is these are also two twelve year old boys so. Can't blame em too much).

Also, Eugene coming up with the name "Lance Strongbow" on Lance's behalf while he's unconscious is one of those backstory things I'm not going to be acknowledging, thank you.

The Robin Hood Dilemma

Something I touched on after reading What Once Was Mine is that Eugene's characterisation prior to the movie isn't something writers seem to really like... dealing with. And it kind of makes sense that the author received a lot of characterisation notes from Chris Sonnenburg, because little Flynn does feel very similar to the Eugene we know; only the Eugene we know is an adult man who has since grown out of his Flynn Rider persona. But the Flynn Rider persona he needed to grow out of isn't something that ought to be cast aside entirely!! Stop being cowards!!

Taking a step back, the whole premise of the book is kind of a paradox- because Eugene needs to become Flynn Rider before he can learn to embrace his authentic self, but Flynn Rider isn't hero material, he isn't a good guy, he's not the right protagonist for a story for kids. So what we get isn't Flynn Rider, it's really just Eugene trying on a new name. That works for the beginning of the story, because he is just Eugene trying on a new name, but he doesn't grow into it.

At the beginning of the story, Eugene is an orphan in a poor but still functional orphanage run by a kind old lady, and he is surrounded by nice little boys. Eugene is motivated to leave and get a job by a desire to send funds back to the orphanage, and when he joins the Baron's circus he's taken aback to learn he's among thieves. Here's where I thought: okay, this might get interesting. We might be getting a G-rated 'angel falls from heaven' story about Eugene being morally corrupted by the Baron, of learning that the world outside is tough and he needs to look out for himself first and foremost-

but no. The Baron shares his plan to steal the reward money for the Lost Princess, because all the people he's surrounded himself with are already criminals who don't give a shit, but Eugene thinks that this is going too far! What about that poor lost princess who people need an incentive to search for? (he's like, projecting about his own parent issues which is fair, but still). And so the story ends with Eugene turning on the Baron to return the money to the "right" people (aka the king and queen of a kingdom?? okay) but he takes a single golden egg for himself so he can send it to the orphanage.

Which is all sweet and nice but. He still has to become Flynn Rider, asshole extraordinaire. He still has to lose his morals to the point where he'd take an inexperienced young woman to a pub that he, in this book, recognises is a dangerous place in the hopes that he can ditch her. He still has to go and become a wanted thief and rejoin the Baron and then ditch Stalyan on their wedding night.

The reason I'm going on about this so much is that the appeal of Eugene to me is that he is this good guy who wants to be a better person for the people he loves, but that means recognising that he has behaviour he needs to change, and his development is meaningful for that. Watering him down to a righteous Robin Hood hero does him a disservice.

The Real Villain Was Capitalism All Along

I will not elaborate nor should I

#hi i do book reviews now #sorry if you came here for anything else this is who i (cringe) am

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gumnut-logic · 4 years

Video

youtube

Coffee

This is @godsliltippy ‘s fault because she was so kind to me and posted Pocket Virgil to help me through the day. Above is the original three clips, of which Pocket Virgil is part of Clip Two. After watching Pocket Virgil try again and again with no success, I kinda wanted to help him, so this fic happened.

Total meta crack, that really didn’t go anywhere, but hopefully will be fun nonetheless. Certain laws of both physics and worldbuilding were totally ignored, so there may be some brain frying concept-wise.

This is for Thunderfam and for all the kindness you continue to bestow upon me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You guys are amazing. ::hugs you all::

Leave sense at the door. I hope you enjoy it :D

-o-o-o-

Virgil Tracy was grumpy.

He knew this idea was good an all and he fully supported Lady Penelope when she suggested they document some of their rescues for the general public.

But not once...not once! Did she mention that he would be dragged out of bed before the sun, thrown on a set to perform, and the only coffee they would provide would be thimble-sized, consequently cold and allocated to break times.

At the moment, ‘break’ was definitely a keyword. Sans coffee, Virgil Tracy was quite ready to do something of the kind to the director.

“Now, Virgil, I know you’re tired, but you are the calm brother, the respected peacemaker of the family. Snarling at the camera isn’t quite in character.”

In character? He was playing himself, for goodness sake. He was in character, character sans coffee! Across the studio, he eyed the Tracy villa swimming pool and wondered if there was a possibility of filling it with coffee.

“Can we try again?”

Virgil grunted at the director. Bet he had had his coffee. Bet he was allowed to access that wondrous machine up so high on that shelf. Bet he hadn’t given one thought to how his precious Tracys might feel about the matter.

Yeah, Virgil Tracy was not in a very good mood at all.

The director stood up from the set and stepped away to be half hidden by the camera again.

Virgil lowered Two’s hatch and climbed aboard. All prepared to launch Two with a smile.

He grit his teeth.

Backing her up into her hangar again, he closed the cliff face and waited for the call.

“Action!”

Practised fingers went through their motions and Two cruised out onto her runway under the fake sunlight.

A poke at a control and the palm trees moved aside...not quite the way they did at home, but well enough...and Two taxied towards her ramp.

“Cut!”

Oh, for the love of...what now?!

“Virgil, you are grinding your teeth. I would say we could mute it in post, but you look like you want to kill someone. You’re the valiant hero, the gentle giant, not Hannibal Lecter daydreaming about dinner!” Virgil stared up at him through the windows. Usually, Virgil would be mortified, but it was barely past 7am, he had been up late for a real rescue last night, hadn’t slept well, and there was no damned coffee!

The director stared at him a moment longer before throwing up his hands. “Okay, you know what? Take fifteen, go find some coffee, for all our sakes.” He ended that with a glare and turned away calling the crew to a halt.

Virgil sat there staring at the replica of his ‘bird’s controls. He had been in the real thing last night. Saved sixteen lives.

He was just tired and not really being fair to anyone, including himself.

He just wanted coffee. Please, I just need coffee.

If his inner voice sounded like a dehydrated man in a desert pleading for water, it was just being honest.

The thing was that the crew had coffee. In that machine on the shelf. Sure, the cup was bigger than he was, but it might be just enough to put his brain to rights.

But he couldn’t reach the button to activate it. In fact, the one time he had tried, some smart ass on set had filmed him jumping up, trying to reach it. It had made the rounds until it hit Gordon, who then promptly made sure the rest of the world had the opportunity to enjoy laughing at his brother.

But then Gordon still didn’t know who poured dye in his pool...while he was in it.

The full body make-up his brother had to wear that day to hide the purple was almost worth it.

But coffee...god, he needed coffee. If only he could extend his reach. If only he could grip the cup...

Virgil blinked.

The solution was obvious. Oh my god. He felt like kicking himself for not thinking of it before. You idiot!

There was one piece of equipment he had brought on set that wasn’t fake.

It was here for two reasons. The first was that it was built for Virgil, only he could wear it and it was cheaper to just wear the real thing than to build a poorly functional duplicate. Secondly, Virgil preferred to have one on hand as often as possible, just in case, and since they had been spending so much time in Aotearoa on set, he had stashed one with the lead model maker for safe keeping.

He exited the fake Two and leapt out onto the runway. The fact that one of the set hands saw him and immediately made herself scarce was kind of depressing. He had been a grumpy bear this morning.

But that was all about to be solved.

He eyed the director and, making sure the man wasn’t looking, grabbed one of the discarded thimble-sized coffee cups and slipped away towards prop storage.

It was a hike and he had to dodge wheels and staff who didn’t see him. Those who did all immediately looked at their watches and, just like the set hand earlier, hurried out of his sight.

Maybe he was beginning to get a reputation.

Serve them right for not giving him coffee!

He found his helmet and his exosuit exactly where he expected them to be. Some neurotic librarian type had attached a huge name tag with a barcode onto it.

Virgil’s shoulder mounted laser took care of that.

It was almost comforting to slide on the equipment. The surety of its strength settling on his shoulders, its weight snug at his hips and ankles.

He sighed.

Of course, that one moment of relaxation was interrupted by Steven, the lead model maker, suddenly bursting into the room.

“I don’t know, Scott. That sounds kind of dangerous. The real Thunderbird One might be able to handle you surfing it, but I’m not too sure of the mockups.”

“I’ll talk to Brains. We’ll make it happen.”

“Why are you feeling the need to surf on the outside anyway?”

“Because it looks cool?” Scott cleared his throat. “Ah, because that is what happened during the incident we are portraying and accuracy is important.”

Virgil hunched down behind a scarily accurate model of that moon buggy Scott was always raving about. He dared not move because the wheeze of the suit’s hydraulics was far too familiar a sound to hide from his brother.

But then, since Scott was buzzing around at Steven’s eye height thanks to one of his jetpacks, his older brother really didn’t have a single leg to stand on.

Mostly because he apparently didn’t need them.

Virgil found himself grinding his teeth again.

He really needed coffee.

“You actually surfed on the outside of Thunderbird One?”

“Well, yeah.”

“That is so cool, man.”

“That’s what I said!”

Steven reached past Virgil’s hiding spot and picked up one of the fake explorer pods and Virgil remembered that he was supposed to clamber up the side of an equally fake mountain later in the morning.

Hell, coffee was mandatory.

Fortunately, Steven appeared to have everything he needed and both he and Scott left almost immediately after that, Scott coming as close to raving as Virgil had ever heard him, babbling about surfing on One.

Sounded about right. Scott and Alan might as well have been twins if it wasn’t for their age difference.

They both gave Virgil grey hair.

But then so did Gordon.

John was easier, cool and calm and sensible most of the time. But that just meant that when he did slide off the rails, he did a proper job of it, likely taking most of them with him.

Hmmm, must remember to grab some more hair dye on the way home tonight.

With the coast clear, he secured his thimble cup to his suit and made a run for it.

He made it across the floor to the blessed coffee machine without interruption this time, though he had to admit, his suit was much noisier than he had realised. But a good percentage of the crew were focused on that scene Scott was filming.

He could still hear his brother declaring that he knew his stunts better than any stunt man.

Virgil had to agree. If anyone was capable of surfing Thunderbird One, it was Scott.

The idiot.

Now, not only was he doing stupid stunts to save people, but now just to show off.

Virgil had a good mind to kick his ass. He was as bad as Alan.

No, correction. Alan wasn’t that stupid.

Virgil found himself taking a step in his big brother’s direction and it was only the wheeze of his suit that made him realise exactly what he was doing.

Coffee, goddamnit, he needed coffee!

Without a second thought, he fired a grapple line up to the bench top and was gratified it secured with a thunk. Pulling himself up with the right equipment was so much more efficient than the equivalent pseudo rock climbing he had had to do last time.

Before he knew it, he was up there standing next to the huge dispenser of coffee. He gazed up at it for a moment and blessed its existence.

But unfortunately, Sadie who had been kind enough to set it up for him last time wasn’t available.

Hell, if his assistant hadn’t been called away at the last minute, he would have gotten his coffee that day. As it was, the director had found out about the incident when Virgil arrived late on set and had given Sadie a dressing down that involved images of Tracy brothers falling into giant vats of coffee and being boiled alive.

As if Virgil would be that stupid.

Boiling himself would be such a waste of good coffee.

But there were no more attempts at giant coffees for Virgil Tracy from that point on. It was banned.

So, this time, he had to set it up himself.

He was consequently reassured that yes, he was really good with his tools. The suit hummed in appreciation as he made it do what he needed it to do and despite dropping coffee granules all over himself at one point – he was considering eating them off the counter, but then considered that a caffeine overdose wasn’t wise – he set up the machine ready to dispense some black heaven.

The teacup he had used last time had been pushed away to one side, but his exosuit made it a simple job to manipulate it into position so he could stand on it.

With the extension of his claw, he easily reached up and hit the green button.

It was a pleasure just to hear the coffee machine start up.

He was seriously tempted to take off his helmet and breathe in the gloriousness that was the scent of brewing coffee, but he still had to get that coffee cup into a position from which it would be safe for him to drink.

He may be coffee and sleep deprived but he wasn’t an idiot.

So, he stood there watching the coffee machine make the drink of the gods.

It was a little mesmerising.

And then the process was complete. The machinery quietened and the coffee cup sat waiting for him.

He didn’t hesitate.

It took both claws and a secure grapple to the shelf above the bench for stability, but he manoeuvred the cup down onto the bench top.

Steam fogged up his helmet as he looked down from atop the upturned teacup, so finally, he broke the seals and lifted it off his head.

Oh.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

He almost melted on the spot.

The smell was heady, intoxicating. Drowning in the dark liquid no longer seemed a bad idea.

He leant over a little further.

Ohhhhhhhhhh, it was just too good.

“Virgil! What the hell do you think you are doing?!”

It was Scott’s voice. Unmistakeable.

He would want to take away his coffee.

No.

No!

Not his precious coffee!

His brother flew up onto the bench and alighted without a sound. “Virgil!”

Virgil hissed at him. “Go away.”

That earned him a worried frown. “That’s not safe.”

Screw safe, he wanted coffee. He unhooked his thimble cup from his waist and reaching down, scooped up some blessed, steaming liquid manna.

It was hot.

It was delicious.

He poured it down his throat.

Oh, god, yessssss.

Another scoop and he sculled some more. His tongue scalded a little, but he didn’t care.

More.

He was guzzling like a dying man at water filled oasis.

“Virgil?”

“Virgil!”

And suddenly the coffee cup disappeared.

No, no, no, no, no, no!

He over balanced and would have fallen if it wasn’t for a sudden thunk of a grapple on the back of his suit.

He looked up to find Scott securing his grapple line to a coffee cup hook underneath the overhead shelf as Virgil teetered on the edge of his teacup, barely prevented from falling by the cable’s connection to his suit.

And there was no more coffee.

No.

Please.

“I need coffee.”

Scott floated down to Virgil’s eye level and Virgil realised exactly who had taken the coffee cup away.

The director was standing behind his big brother.

Virgil was in so much shit.

Damnit.

“I just want coffee.”

Scott was frowning at him. “Are you okay, Virgil?”

“DO I LOOK OKAY?!”

Um, that may have come out a little bit louder than intended. But then he was hanging partly suspended from an empty coffee cup hook.

Much quieter. “I just need coffee.”

Scott’s eyes were wide. “I think you’ve had enough coffee.”

No, he needed more. Buckets more. “Please, Scott.”

“Uh, no. We’re going home.”

Virgil blinked. “What?”

But Scott had turned away and was talking quietly to the director.

Virgil caught a glimpse of something shiny out the corner of his eye and turned to find a single drop of deep brown gold suspended from the coffee dispenser.

Coffee!

Without thought he leapt for it.

Perhaps it was a good thing that Scott actually did think, because a yank on that grapple line probably prevented Virgil from being scalded.

“What the hell, Virg?!”

He blinked as he hung fully suspended by his brother’s grapple line, swinging slowly back and forth, one very unhappy commander glaring at him.

Umm, yeah, maybe that was taking it a step too far.

Scott’s words were firm. “Shed the suit and go and sit in the car.”

“Sco-“

“Now.” Blue fire lasered him where he hung.

Virgil gave in with a single nod.

Scott lowered him to the bench top and Virgil dropped the suit with a clatter. He stomped off in a huff as Sadie was called over the PA system to come and assist him.

He only wanted a decent coffee, for crying out loud.

After all, Gordon did get that massive hot dog the other day, and John had slept in his bagel, for goodness sake.

Why couldn’t he have his coffee?

It just wasn’t fair.

-o-o-o-

FIN.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #Virgil Tracy #Scott Tracy #crazy meta #meta crack #meta #nutty is nuts #he just wants coffee

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script-a-world · 5 years

Note

What are your five rules to new authors about world building? I struggle with this, as a minimalist author. And I would love suggestions on how to build a world in as few words as possible, while the description is still efficient and powerful.

Constablewrites:

Teach us about the world through the characters interacting with it. If your characters never interact with it, is it really relevant to your story?

Culture and society all ultimately derives from people--what they know about the world around them, how they survive in their particular environment, how they ensure the survival of future generations, and so on.

Conflict and tension come from limitations. Infinite and/or ill-defined power kills a reader’s emotional investment.

Don’t answer a question we haven’t asked. Context first, then explanation only if necessary.

Your reader will comprehend your world based on what they know of ours.

Personally, I think minimalism can be a good thing! New authors tend to err on the side of waaaaaay too much world building and explanation thereof. The best way to figure out the balance is to read closely. If you’re reading something that makes you feel really present in the scene, pay close attention to how they do that: the details the author chooses, the things they merely suggest or infer, the senses being evoked, and so on. And remember that contemporary literature has to world build just as much as genre stuff does; I’ve spent just as much time on a ranch as I have on Mars, so while I might be bringing more knowledge/assumptions to the table I’m still relying on the writer to make the world come alive.

Brainstormed:

Do you enjoy what you’re making? If not, let the idea lie fallow to be recycled, and ask yourself what would make you enjoy the worldbuilding again. Even if what you’re doing will never show up in your story, it’s still worldbuilding and therefore great. Just prioritize plot-relevant details, and make sure to have fun.

How different would the plot and/or characters be if this detail was changed? This question allows you to figure out the really vital parts of your world and its natural consequences in your story. The details that don’t affect much of your plot/characters are still good, as they add depth, but okay to parse down for a more minimalist perspective.

How far am I willing to ask my readers to suspend their disbelief? Can be asked of specific parts of your world, like magic systems or physics or geographical oddities, or of your setting in general.

Is this self evident? That is, does this part of your worldbuilding become foundational to the plot and/or setting in such a way that the reader understands and extrapolates without ever requiring the dreaded infodump? Not every detail has to be self evident, and in fact I don’t think every detail should be. There’s plenty of things about the real world that I would love to absorb infodumps about, but the way the sun in the sky affects my day to day life requires no context.

Breadth vs. depth, which is more a function of your plot and cast than setting. If your plot follows your characters wandering through a great deal of varying places/cultures/times/etc or a very diverse cast of different races/beliefs/jobs/etc, you’ll need a lot of distinct and interconnected settings with just enough detail to function and stick out as unique in the reader’s mind. Buckling down on a single world/culture/nation/etc to flesh out its complexities and variants will get far deeper into the why’s and how’s of your plot and/or characters, just be careful not to turn it into an encyclopedia instead of a story. (of course, you could do like me and create a lot of breadth and then murder yourself by trying to achieve depth with all of it)

Saphira:

Worldbuilding itself, and setting up the world, comes before the writing in my book. I find that chronic descriptors fall into two categories:

Those who know their world so well that they want to tell EVERYTHING. These I affectionately call the Gushers.

Those who are discovering their world as they write. The world is a mystery to them until the written word tells the writer where they are. These I affectionately call the Explorers.

I suspect you are concerned about being the former. In my gut, however, I suspect you may be the latter. Now there are different rules for each method.

FOR GUSHERS: Use Constablewrite's rules. Those rules underline what's important.

Worried you're still overboard? Count your paragraphs. How many has it been since something happened?

FOR EXPLORERS: Write as normal. Then go over it and look for the things Brainstorm mentions! Highlight them, or copy the stuff on another document.

When you get to rewriting your work, look at your notes and see what you feel is important! You've already explored, so now you can filter.

Worldbuilding in the scale that we know it is relatively new to novel-writing. (Thanks to Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors in the 1950's? Ish? Research it. Cool stuff.) That being said we're already getting really good at it. We've seen the wild phenomenon of cultural diving that Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Harry Potter have had, and we want to give our readers the same experience!

Though I will note, what draws a reader into the world is the intrigue of the questions they can ask! If we can give our readers just enough information about the world to ask the coolest, deepest questions? We have succeeded.

Tex: I'm not a big fan of generalized advice, especially in regards to "new"... anything. I'm not aware of either your flaws or your strengths, though your use of "minimalist author" intrigues me - what do you consider minimalism? Is it descriptions, is it settings, is it dialogue? Is it something else?

I don't know whether this minimalism is the result of developing your writing voice or the result of underdevelopment in various writing skills, so I hesitate to give any concrete answers. In that respect, I would like to recommend @scriptstructure for the finer points of writing descriptions.

The others look to have covered about everything on this topic, but I would like to reiterate the idea that worldbuilding for the purpose of exposition is heavily dependent upon the plot. Whatever the focus of the plot is, and to some degree that of the characters, is the focus of your worldbuilding.

What's important to your story? Can you remove an element and still make sense? Those are consistently my two biggest guides when worldbuilding because everything outside the immediate needs of the plot are usually extraneous.

Feral: I don’t have rules so much as questions to provide some guidance for new writers getting into worldbuilding.

What quirk of character or plot stands out as being from a society different from my own, and what society would produce this? For a sense of verisimilitude in fantasy and sci-fi, it’s important that the characters not be reproductions of who you would expect to meet in the author’s own society especially when that society does not reflect the author’s own. Dragons, a post-singularity Earth, and a hundred other things that cast the story in a specific genre would create very distinct pressures that would lend themselves to different worldviews, economies, traditions, etc.

Would a particular feature of the world make my character or the plot more interesting? Would it create more problems than it would solve? I always advise against creating a feature of the world that solves your characters’ problems. Features of the world should either a) provide a lovely flavor or b) create obstacles for your characters to overcome or c) both. New writers, particularly those who don’t want too much superfluous flavor might look at Premise Brainstorming, or “In a World Where…” brainstorming to create world ideas that tie directly to the character and/or plot.

Am I avoiding describing something because it is not in my style or doesn’t fit the narrator’s voice? Or am I avoiding describing something because I can’t picture it in my mind or lack the confidence to execute it? This is me all the time. 2 decades of writing, and my first couple drafts are always a little lean on world details because I’m still wrapping my mind around what things really look like and how to take the image in my brain and translate it to the page. It’s ok to take your time getting the world rendered out; that’s what multiple drafts are for.

How have writers I admire and whose writing style matches what I want for myself handled the question of worldbuilding? If you’re not familiar with The City and the City by China Mieville, I strongly recommend checking it out. When I think of so-called minimalist world building, that is what I think of.

Do I know enough about my world to know what is important and what is not important to include? I recommend the Iceberg Principle for newer writers/builders: 90% of the world isn’t gonna make it into the story. So, that 10% better be enough and relevant.

#pylons #world building #rules #kt-anansi

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whimperwoods · 4 years

Text

29-Day Whump Challenge - Day 15

Day 15: Branded || Forcibly Shaved

Apparently I’m just in a Kyle mood this weekend? Time for more heroes and villains worldbuilding! Soft present, whumpy past. (Well. Slow concussion recovery present, whumpy past. But you take what you can get.)

tw: flashbacks, tw: manipulation (past), tw: head injury, tw: disorientation, tw: non-graphic nudity, tw: small spaces (shower) (not active claustrophobia)

This is a long one, but I promise it eventually makes it to the prompt, lol.

Previous Kyle installments: doesn’t want to be put down, drugged, concussion

Prompts by @yuckwhump

Challenge tag list: @inky-whump

*****

Kyle leaned into Hank’s arm, fighting through a wave of dizziness with every step. Hank’s gait was awkward, but Kyle had watched him go in and out of the room long enough to have realized, even with his injured brain, that it was nothing new and Hank was used to it. The man’s arm was steady, and Hank’s limp didn’t jar Kyle at all.

He couldn’t work out how he felt about that.

He couldn’t work out how he felt about anything, other than that he was definitely having a lot of feelings, and that was a frightening thing in itself.

“Ok,” Hank said, voice quiet but cheerful, “So we’ll definitely need to get the shower chair for you. But we’re used enough to injuries around here, so we’ve got a good one, and there’s handholds in there, couple of different bars you can grab. If you get dizzy, you just sit on down in the chair and yell for me and I’ll come help.”

Kyle blushed, just thinking about it. He felt weirdly comfortable around Hank, one of the many feelings he wasn’t ready to try making sense of, but it was hard enough facing the fact that he trusted the man to help him walk. Admitting to himself that he trusted Hank enough to be naked around him would mean - something.

Hank had been right about there being lots of choices to make. Kyle knew he couldn’t go back to his old team, and he knew he was officially with “the enemy,” not that he’d ever had much of an impression who the enemy was, other than that the boss sent him on missions and told him he’d be tortured if he were captured.

He had a vague impression that there must have been something else, once. Some purpose. Something that wasn’t just fear and following the boss’s orders. There had to be a reason he’d joined the boss, didn’t there? But whatever it was, he couldn’t come up with it.

Hank closed the lid of the toilet in the large, homey-looking bathroom and helped Kyle sit on it, then bustled around setting up a shower chair and pulling a towel and wash cloth out of a cabinet and a pair of pajamas out of a drawer.

The bathroom was welcoming, the floor tiled in light brown tiles that looked vaguely like stone, and the glaring white porcelain of the large jacuzzi tub softened by the plush green rug in front of it. The dual sinks were set in a clean countertop in a light stone not far off the color of the floor, a toothbrush and electric razor set up beside one and nothing around the other. The cabinets were a rich, dark wood, or at least looked like it, and the outside of the shower’s glass doors were framed in more of the same. The whole thing was warmer than he’d expected, not institutional at all, and he shivered without knowing why.

Hank laughed as he came back over to help Kyle up. “Yeah, it’s a bit much, eh? The whole house got assigned to us after the owner went bankrupt. We really only use it when somebody’s injured ‘cause it’s too nice to use for a safe house when we think it might get compromised. Nobody wants to go back to trying to heal at HQ.”

That was - a lot. He didn’t nod, because he knew better, but Hank didn’t seem to need him to.

The man levered him upward and helped him over toward the shower.

“How much help you need?” he asked.

“Oh, um - let me sit down,” Kyle answered. “Then I’ll know.”

Sitting was good. Manageable. But as he thought about trying to stand up and lean over long enough to get off the sweats he’d left the hospital in, he knew it was beyond him. His shirt would be easier, but taking that off meant jarring his head, which meant - something, maybe.

Hank was watching him, his eyes gentle, patient, and Kyle knew very little, and half of what he knew was just something he was sure of by instinct, and he couldn’t remember why he’d been afraid of being captured, but he knew he had been, and he knew Hank was safe anyway, and he decided it was still better to hide as much of his own past and his own weakness as possible.

“I can’t take my pants off,” he said, his head pounding again as his blush drew extra blood upward. “But I think I can do my shirt.”

Hank nodded. “Alright. Can you reach the bar by your side? If you can stay up, I’ll just, uh -” Hank grinned sideways. “Well, you know I never did get to pants anybody in high school. Not really that kind of kid.”

Kyle didn’t smile at the joke, but he did feel a little less tense. He grabbed the bar and forced himself to his feet.

Hank helped him with his pants, and then didn’t look at him again. He didn’t watch as Kyle took his shirt off, slower than he usually would, and threw it out the shower door. He didn’t look back at Kyle as he turned on the water, his hand blocking the spray, and adjusted the temperature. He didn’t even look at Kyle through the glass as he closed the shower door, keeping his eyes on the shower head.

Then Kyle was alone, his whole world vibrating with the sound of the water pouring down around him. It was warm and comforting, except for the noise.

The chair was far enough back that the bulk of the water hit his chest, below his head, and he grabbed the bar of soap and wash cloth from beside him on the chair, scrubbing his arms and chest almost reflexively.

Hank and his team knew who he was. They knew he’d worked for the boss. They knew some of the missions he’d been on, but not all of them. He hadn’t worked out if they thought he was important or not. He wasn’t, really, but he was a little. He wondered what would happen if they knew more. When they knew more.

He wasn’t sure when the last time was that he’d been clean. Probably in the hospital. Probably they’d had to wash him somehow in the hospital, because he knew they’d had to do a lot to get him stable anyway, and he couldn’t remember any of it.

It felt good getting rid of the grime of several days’ sweating under his blankets and dripping soup down his front while he was still disoriented.

It was alright washing his arms and chest and stomach, and alright scrubbing down his thighs, and even alright pulling his legs up onto the chair to wash his shins and feet.

But then he was facing the thought of having to wash his back, which would mean standing and turning into the water and staying up with just his grip on the handholds to keep him from falling. That was - that was a lot.

He wished he knew why he hadn’t wanted to be here. He wished he knew how he’d ended up where he’d been before here. He wished he remembered anything before he was afraid. Maybe if he remembered that, he’d have a reason not to call Hank in to help. Maybe if he remembered that, he’d have a reason to call him in for help.

He sat under the warm water, breathing in the steam and trying to gather his strength.

He could do this. He could. He was tough. He’d dragged himself through worse things than a concussion. He’d made it back to the boss with a dislocated shoulder only to drag himself back to the barracks with two. He’d leaned against a shower wall while the water pounded into fresh whip marks. He’d stayed upright with broken ribs. Just because this was his brain, now, and it felt like being half himself didn’t mean he wasn’t still tough. It didn’t give him an excuse to collapse.

He forced himself to his feet, turning the water a little bit hotter once it was in reach, because maybe that way he’d feel clean faster even if soap was - challenging.

He had to stay up. He had to hold onto the bar beside him and stand firm. He didn’t have to wash his hair, under its waterproof shower cap. He just had to get his back. That was all. And maybe if the water was hot enough, he could call getting under the water enough on its own.

The shower was an awfully small space to be disoriented in, but as he tried to rotate in place, he found himself wobbling and half-panicked, the water against his head confusing and scaring him, and ended up leaning against the wall beneath the shower head, the knob digging into his lower back as he panted, catching his breath.

This was bad. It was also foolish. He almost called for help, but bit it back. He’d made it to his feet. He couldn’t back down now.

He steeled himself for another attempt at getting under the water and stepped forward, reaching his arms out to grab the metal bar on the wall with one hand and the edge of the door handle with the other.

He misbalanced just a little bit, his head spinning and making him lean too far. All that held him upright were his arms, gripping tightly to cold metal on both sides, and all of a sudden, his whole body was breaking out in goosebumps and shivers and his heart was racing.

He hadn’t thought about the brand on his back for a long time. It was the boss’s logo, seared in raised red scars into the space between his shoulder blades.

As he caught himself, his arms taking his weight and the heat of the water landing abruptly on the same spot, he was back in the moment, the iron sizzling into his flesh, the hiss of water in his ears spinning in and out through that old sound, come back again.

He’d been graduating from the boss’s training program. He’d been standing in line with his teammates, taking turns to step up and take the mark, listening to his teammates scream, smelling their flesh burn, waiting for it to be his own, and he hadn’t shown his fear, had bit his lip until it bled and held onto the bars he’d been told to hold onto and kept himself still even as his muscles clenched hard enough to ache, a tiny pain that felt miles away from the roaring pain in his back.

The steam of the shower was smoke again, a smell he’d half forgotten filling his nose and throat.

It hurt. It hurt. He’d never hurt so much before. His master had been behind him, the boss pressing the iron firmly against his skin, burning his symbol deeper even as he grunted and quivered and broke out in a sweat.

His arms shook, the way they had then, and his mind blanked out into white, howling pain, his entire world contracting to that one unreachable spot on his back where he’d never been his own, to begin with, where he’d never been able to touch himself, only be touched, and now he was burning, burning, and the boss was claiming him for good.

The boss had shoved the branding iron harder into him, punctuating the half-ceremony with a cruel thrust forward that almost made his arms give out, and that was when he’d screamed, blood running down his chin and smoke still rising from the middle of his back as the boss pulled the iron away from his skin and the edges of it tore his flesh away with it.

His knees hit something hard, the force of the landing sending pain spiking up his thighs, and for a moment, he was certain it was concrete, certain that if he didn’t get back up and stumble forward toward his teammates, he was going to die here, but then his hands touched down, and the texture was smooth, and he realized it was tile and almost banged his head on the bottom of the shower chair as he tried to crawl forward.

He didn’t realize Hank was here until the shower door was squealing open, the man sliding the door faster than it was meant to go, and a large hand was shoving the chair backward, away from him before he could hit it.

“What happened? Are you ok?”

Kyle sank down into the tiles, tucking his knees underneath him and leaning forward onto his elbows to breathe.

The water cut off abruptly, and as Kyle gasped for breath, he realized his throat hurt.

“Jesus,” Hank whispered. His fingers traced gently across the brand on Kyle’s back and it didn’t hurt, because it wasn’t new, hadn’t been new for years, and Kyle’s heart was still aching in his chest, stressed even as it began to slow down, and he didn’t hurt, and he wasn’t there, and he choked out a sob, hunched over in a small, pathetic heap and dripping into the drain.

“Let’s get you up,” Hank said, “Let’s get you back to bed. Fuck. We have got so much stuff to figure out. You don’t worry, though. I’m gonna take care of you. You’re gonna be ok now.”

He remembered the boss talking to them all as they stood there, shirtless, with their new brands. He remembered the boss’s fingers under his chin, lifting it up to force him to look into those cold, cold eyes. “Don’t get captured, now,” he’d said, “Now everyone will know you’re mine. You’re only safe with me. You’re only safe if we win. You’re going to be good little soldiers, aren’t you?”

He shook his head, and pain exploded between his eyes, filling his head so fast he gasped against it, tears pouring from his eyes even faster.

“Whoa!” it was Hank. It was Hank. “Don’t do that! Don’t do that, Kyle, your head’s injured.”

“No,” Kyle gasped.

“Yeah. It is. But you’re safe. You’re safe. Come here. I need you to help me. I don’t have a good angle to help you, and I need you to come here, by the door.

“Hank?” he asked, dazed.

“Yeah. You’re safe.”

Kyle sobbed and didn’t know why.

Hank cursed, and then there were hands on Kyle’s sides, gentle on one side and grasping on the other, and he leaned instinctively toward the gentle one. Then Hank had a grip on him and was easing him up to a sitting position, still on his knees, but upright.

“Come on, buddy, I can’t really reach. Do you think you can grab the handhold? If you can get to your feet yourself, I can do the rest. Get you out and dressed and everything. You’re gonna be ok.”

Kyle’s hand shook as he reached for the metal bar, his fingers quivering, and before he could touch it, another sob worked its way out of his throat. Everything was confusing. It was so confusing. And it hurt. But it hurt wrong. His head hurt, and his knees hurt, and his back was fine, was nothing, was healthy.

“Fuck. It’s gonna be ok. It’s gonna be ok. I’m just gonna squeeze in behind you. We’ll have to be careful, with my leg. But you’re gonna be ok.”

The hands were back, reaching down from behind him and grabbing hold of his elbows. Hank grunted, helping him to his feet while Kyle shook and managed nothing beyond putting his feet underneath him once they unbent.

“You just have to stand for a second,” Hank said, letting go but holding still for a long moment, his hands hovering beneath Kyle’s elbows to catch him again if he needed to.

He wasn’t there. He was here. He was here, and here was - somewhere. He didn’t know where it was. It wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. That was supposed to be bad. Wasn’t that supposed to be bad?

Hank stepped awkwardly out of the shower, using the door handle to steady himself, and then reached for Kyle again, and things were starting to make more sense, in the only way they ever made sense with his head still trying to split itself in two.

Kyle stumbled forward, desperate, almost tripping over the lip of the door, and grabbed ahold of the front of Hank’s t-shirt, his fingers twisting into the soft material as Hank half-stumbled and then caught himself, wrapping his hands back around Kyle’s elbows and holding them both up.

Kyle was safe. Hank was safe. On their feet, Kyle was maybe a half inch taller than Hank, but Hank had taken a half-step back, and Kyle hadn’t, and it wasn’t hard to hunch over and bury his face into Hank’s shoulder, unclenching one hand from his t-shirt and grabbing ahold of Hank’s upper arm instead.

“Oh, geez.”

Hank said it, but he didn’t mean it. His hands came up around Kyle’s back, landing gently against his wet skin, and his body stayed solid under Kyle’s grip, holding him up.

Hank let Kyle drip water across his t-shirt and shake against his chest and cry silently into his shoulder, his breaths hitching and catching but never quite making it to a sob. He gently patted the middle of Kyle’s back at the bottom of his rib cage and made soft, vaguely reassuring noises, not quite words.

Kyle’s breath steadied and he found himself relaxing and then, abruptly, embarrassed.

Blushing, he stepped back and pulled away.

“Sorry, I - I’m - I’m sorry.”

Hank’s answering smile was soft and sad, something purer than his usual attempts at cheer. “You’re alright. Let’s just get you into some clean pajamas.”

Kyle blushed harder, his eyes tearing up. “Yeah. Thank you.” He looked down, staring at the wet patches on Hank’s shirt.

Hank helped him to the toilet and eased him down to sit on the closed lid before he moved to get the pajamas, and Kyle found that his eyes were leaking again, but couldn’t work out why.

#whump #flashbacks #branding #head injury #injury recovery #shower fall #nudity #(non-graphic)#29-day whump challenge

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albatris · 5 years

Text

very aware that i have other messages that have been sitting in my asks for like a month now very sorry very sorry here’s something that’s definitely Not Those because why am I like this

alrighty so when I talk about other dimensions and timelines and the multiverse I need you to understand that I am 100% just pulling it out of my ass like I have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about in terms of actual science

for all intents and purposes ATDAO takes place on our Earth but it’s also a version of our Earth where I’m a little bit drunk and I'm dragging people aside at house parties like “WHAT IF REALITY WORKED LIKE THIS THOUGH” and they’re like who are you and how did you get in my house

but anyway yeah so

it’s all absolute nonsense bullshit with no scientific basis whatsoever but it’s internally consistent in its nonsense bullshittery and it commits wholeheartedly and that’s what’s important

on that note, a readmore

HEY SO I WAS THINKIN ABOUT TIME, and time loops, and unrealities, and other dimensions, and I’m gonna talk some words at you

so let’s say time flows in different directions in different universes

so in some universes it goes Forward, and in some universes it goes Sideways or Slightly North-Easterly or Backwards

and I mean this in a purely directional sense. it means absolutely nothing temporally. just that time flows in one direction. like rivers. right. all rivers flow forwards but some flow forwards in a different direction

and I want to emphasise that if you have a universe where time flows Backwards, things don’t happen in reverse, Backwards would just be your Forwards and you wouldn’t know any different

the dimension ATDAO takes place in is disintegrating because it’s old and creaky and falling apart because of some other long-winded circumstances that I’m not gonna explain here because that’s an entirely different worldbuilding post

What Ports Are and How Ports Work is a whole other big complicated thing that’s also Spoilers

but let’s say you’ve got an overlap between two universes or crack in reality where in one universe time goes one way and in the other it goes the other, this overlap can make a little time whirlpool bc it’s flowing two directions at once and getting all swirly in the middle like so

that’s a fucking bad illustration but you all know what I’m trying to express right

anyway that’s how your time loops (?) happen, y’know, you wander unsuspectingly into a whirlpool where time is just going round in circles and you have no idea. maybe it feels a little weird but lots of things are a little weird these days. you come back out of the whirlpool and time outside has just continued as normal without you

so this is how Kai went into a cool abandoned house for like ten minutes and came back out six years later and was like Well Fuck

and ALSO here’s something else I’ve been fucking round with

I fucked around with the idea of time moving Sideways in the unreality and what this would mean. so you would have the reality the characters exist in, and then the unreality where time goes Sideways so in a directional sense it looks like so

which means like............................

if ur reality is moving like this ------------------> but you hop to another plane where it flows sideways, or perfectly perpendicular, to yours you have two timelines which together look like this

time you spend in the Definitely Not Your Reality is time that is not passing at all in Your Reality, you're perfectly sideways from your reality, it’s all just occurring in the exact same moment and isn’t taking up any time at all back in Your Reality. if you hopped back over no time would have passed

AND the reverse would also be true. time that passes in Your Reality takes up no time at all in the Definitely Not Your Reality

which makes more sense to me now that I’ve laid it out visually but when I was thinking about it earlier and was like "no time passes either way in either reality" I was like WHAT the fuck that is fucking with my head

and this would make communication in and out of the unreality extremely difficult and definitely explains why, when there is a frantic attempt at conversation, it’s just absolute garbled nonsense. or, more likely, just a single burst of fucking weird noise that makes things whack out and explode. text or email would possibly be okay possibly but speech is a no go

also, goldfish. which is only slightly unrelated

anyway that's just something silly I was screwing round with, I’ll screw around with it a bit more and see what happens and whether it’s something I wanna pay attention to. I like to mess around with stuff

I GOT OTHER THINGS TO SAY ABOUT TIME

something I’m keen to explore in the story that I haven’t paid enough attention to before is how absolutely fucking bizarre adjusting to life back in your regular reality would be after spending any amount of time in the unreality

there's lots of really fun things to talk about here that DON’T have anything to do with time and instead have to do with senses and sensory input and sounds being pavers and colours being textures and how the human brain comprehends Absolute And Total Nothingness

but this post is about TIME so I’m not gonna talk about any of that

SO you’re born into a universe where time flows one direction. and you have no way of telling which way time is flowing because you have nothing to compare it to, and it doesn’t matter. that’s just your forward. it’s just time, going. time just Happens to you, it’s whatever. it’s like how fish don’t know they’re wet

but if you hop to a universe where time goes a different direction suddenly ur like, oh, so this is time, I can physically feel time moving, time is going sideways where before it was going forward, this is weird, time is weird, time is a real thing, which I can feel, physically

possibly Kai got a bit of a sense of this with the time whirlpool pothole thing, but it wouldn’t have been super intense because time was not really....... moving...... there. like they got a weird vibe but not weird enough to ring alarm bells. Kai is fairly used to weird garbage

but yeah any character that goes into the unreality would come out of it and have to deal with just......... the discomfort of like. time. and being aware of it in the background constantly, time going a specific direction, time being a Feeling. you can tune it out but it’d be one of those things that as soon as you think about it you’re like UGH time. like how you can always feel your clothes touching you or how you become aware that there’s no comfy way to hold your tongue in your mouth

IT’D BE FUCKED UP

thanks for coming to my ted talk

also I need to stop referring to it as "the unreality" because that is not accurate and it doesn't get called that in the story at all

#atdao #i know nothing about science or time!!! but i have fun #interdimensional tomfoolery #this is a new level #this is interdimensional fuckery #tldr: time is fucked up #at some stage i'll probably decide all this is stupid and unnecessary for the plot but it's fun to mess round with

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cap-ironman · 6 years

Text

Cap-Iron Man RBB: Writers weigh in

If you're an artist thinking of participating in this year's Cap-Iron Man Reverse Big Bang, you and many other artists may be asking yourself the same questions:

What should I draw? How complete does it need to be? Will anyone even want to claim my art?

Don’t get too frustrated! There’s still plenty of time, plus we’re here to help you work through these questions!

But don’t just listen to us. For some answers, we decided to go straight to your target audience: the writers themselves! We asked RBB participants from previous years a few questions on what draws them to an RBB piece.

What do you look for in an RBB art?

What draws you to a particular art piece?

What elements do you find appealing/attractive and inspire you to write a story?

In their responses, we saw many similar themes and elements show up!

Of course, there are as many writers as there are people in the world, and as you'll see, many people's responses even conflicted with each other's. But hopefully, some of their input will be helpful to you as you plan and work on your RBB pieces.

So, let's go step-by-step through our writer's thought process and see what they have to say!

Brainstorming phase: Universe? Ambiguous, or AU, or canon-set?

“In general, is it a canon that I feel comfortable writing or interested in writing is the first consideration. “

“What makes me pick out pieces for my list of choices has a lot to do with the universes I prefer being an option for the story or preferably even a hint that the universe was a clearly intended choice that was taken into account when the artist made the piece.“

“I love AUs so AUs pieces tend to get a heavier consideration.”

“I usually look for art that is clearly meant to be one of my preferred universes - if it's ambiguous, usually it's not fully conceptually fleshed-out enough for me. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum and I like to collab with my artist...even just a universe narrows it down.”

Brainstorming phase: Tropes/Worldbuilding

“I usually look for the potential to write some of my favorite themes or tropes.“

“If it looks like I can do a lot of world building and make the story my own with my own setting then that draws me the most.”

“It's nice when there is already a little bit of a story behind the art, but it's also open ended enough that I can go in my own direction with it.”

“I like a sense of a wider story in the art, that when I look at it I know there is more going on than what I'm seeing. I'm drawn to art that has more than just Tony and/or Steve in it, but that also has some background and props, something that indicates a world outside Steve and Tony that they exist in. The more details in the artwork, the more easily inspired I tend to be. It gives me more to work with for the fic. I definitely prefer wide-shots over close-ups. Show me more than just Steve and Tony. Show me their world too. “

"I like lots of little clues that point to how they MIGHT have gotten into this situation, but leave lots of room for interpretation/backstory."

How much freedom should I give my writer? Should I have a set idea in mind, or should I let them do what they want?

“Where I am not getting too much of the story in one piece. It has to grip me, like I ask - what's happening here and why?... I don't want the whole story, I want the inspiration.”

“I'm drawn in by elements that give me specific context. Just a plain portrait doesn't give me a lot to work with, but a portrait with a black eye and a speech bubble of specific text gives me a starting point. Again, it doesn't have to be pretty, since it's just a draft, but it does have to have a sense of story to it.”

“When I look at RBB art, I'm looking for one of two things: either a sense that the artist has a solid idea of the kind of story they'd like to see or a piece that immediately inspires me with a solid idea. The former is up to the artist, but the latter is completely dependent on my gut reaction to a piece.”

“I'm attracted to working with artists who have a clear sense of view or core concept for the story. It's tough to just be handed art with no connecting idea. At the same time, though, too rigid an idea can also be frustrating.”

What type of “hook” should I have?

"I like drawings that seem like the story is already in progress, whatever it is."

"After sorting out by that, I look for an interesting hook -- what is the action in the art scene? is it something that can generate a quick sustainable writing idea that I can write?"

"I want to see something about the context of the situation. Where is the tension? How did they get to that scene depicted in the art? What moment in canon is this referencing? What trope or setting is this going for? What does what's going on in the art mean for Steve and Tony? How does it influence their choices from there?"

"I tend to like art that introduces the main conflict."

"I'm drawn to art my imagination latches on to and can run away with. To me, the art always represents a pivotal scene in the story, and pictures that suggest a strong conflict, problem, or dire/unusual situations easily get a story going in my head."

"I like art that makes me ask “how did they get here?” or “how can they get out of this?” If I get stressed out by a piece of art, then my mind's already at work thinking of all the possible scenarios."

"I'm drawn to weird art with elements I would maybe never incorporate into fic myself unless prompted. I like art that's clearly a big reveal moment, or a pivotal scene, or anything that isn't static - tense art leads to lots of plot bunnies."

What should my piece contain? Action?

"Pieces with a lot of dynamic action tend to catch my eye too, as soon as I see it, my brain already tries to fill in what might happen next."

"Probably most important, though, is having action in the art. When the characters are in the middle of an action, whether it's throwing the shield or manipulating a hologram, it helps give me a sense of what the artist thinks the characters are doing in their world and gives me something to work off of in getting the story started. It also helps if the scene depicted is part of the story. You might not know what the story will be yet, but an idea of your own story helps a lot."

Emotion?

"Art is appealing when there is a strong emotion behind it, one that really stuck me last year really had a strong feeling of struggle and betrayal and it was that raw emotion that drew me in."

"A clear mood is also helpful - are we going for dark, happy, dramatic, angsty? Any sort of scene that gives me a hint at plot or motivations and shows me what the dynamic between the characters is like, so that I have a sort of map to build a story on, will be inspiring."

"A picture that shows me the emotions of the characters is better for me than something without."

"I also need a mood. If the picture is beautiful but leaves me guessing what kind of genre the artist had in mind, I usually don't feel up to make that decision."

How detailed should my submitted art piece? Sketches? Complete pieces? How many should I send in?

“In general, I look for clean art. Some sketchiness is alright, but I like seeing mostly finished line art and some details. It doesn't have to be too much, but being able to tell who I'm looking at and an idea of what the characters are doing is a must.”

“I like smooth lines and recognizable characters in the art; other than that, I'm not too picky!”

“I like action pieces...with backgrounds."

“Something that catches my eye and prompts a story idea -- in recent years, I've been particularly drawn to draft art so the actual art isn't the attraction but the intent behind it -- like the canon, the idea for a story, the AU premise, that sort of thing."

“It's helpful if the artist submits several sketches, even if they're very rough. That gives a sense of progression or arc which sometimes one piece can't do on its own.

#stevetony #stony #superhusbands #capimevents #capimrbb #inspiration post

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benjaminreevesart · 5 years

Text

WHY DOES FORTUNA DISAPPOINT ME SO?

In November of 2018 DE released its latest OpenWorldTM Fortuna, an update I had been waiting for with bated breath from the edge of my seat since its announcement last year. At the time of launch I was logging in every day just for the chance to be one of the first to experience it.

Now over a month later, I sit here struggling to convince myself to go back. Yes, even after the heist update. A sentiment seemingly shared among many others in the community. So as with all things in life we must ask ourselves… why?

-Aesthetic: they decided to drop this thing in November, so I guess instead of going outside to play in the snow users could stay inside log on to warframe and play… in the snow. Yay.

I find myself missing the familiar exotica of not-africa and its kind-of-alive-but-not-really-except-its-made of-flesh-and-you-can-eat-it-wtf-DE? tower. (that bothers me). Just standing in these updates’ respective hub-areas and listening to the ambiance of the environment speaks volumes. The plains has haggling traders, merchants announcing their wares, wind rustling through the many canopies and tent flaps of hand hade fabric, it feels alive where fortuna feels like a cold mechanical day job. If you say that’s intentional… well, I hardly think boredom is anything to aspire to.

I get that they’re going for a sci-fi-punk feel, but it just comes off as monotonous, hopeless, and impersonal.

-Personal connection: Sure Saya’s Vigil was stupid romantic melodrama, sure onko’s decision is lame, sure it was kinda dumb to give newby players a warframe blueprint they couldn’t build until after reaching the mid-game, but ya know what? It worked.

I know who saya and konzu are, i have been with them on their story, every time I see konzu standing there with his girl I know that is because of me. My journey, my struggle, my effort brought these people together. Its simple its small, its human.

I mean who the hell is eudico anyway, why does she fight? Why caste shade on biz’s origins, and are we just going to gloss over an innocent person getting their head chopped off and their organs harvested in the open fucking street???????? There are constant references to people being “brain-shelved” which I can only assume means they get their brain put in a jar and thrown in someone’s freezer, and we get ZERO resolution for that! I mean sure there are fragments to find and scan, but they don’t really tell us anything that couldn’t already have been inferred. With exception to the relationship between biz and little-duck, not that it seems to play into any of their interactions at all. The business does have his conservation thing, which is a part of his character, an old war veteran understand the fragility of life and working to preserve it through peaceful means. But the spirit of it is robbed when they give the same shtick to the random bird guy from cetus. Why? while I could buy Nef Anyo hunting whole species to extinction for profit, nothing about the setting of the plains suggests the animals are in any kind of danger from the grineer. Its just pointless. I mean you could’ve just used the business for both, maybe he’s building a zoo for critters from all over the system, I wouldn’t have questioned it. Heck, it could even have been a nice little unlock to see the place once you catch one of every animal.

Weirdly enough the one character I think is kind of done right here is ticker. Yeah, the kiosk guy above biz’s shop whose only purpose is to sell you debt bonds so you can increase your standing. Maybe its just a dumb stereotype but I like tickers flair for the theatrical, I find it charming. Plus, his first fragment is so terribly depressingly human it just makes me want to give the poor dude a hug.

But at least there’s plenty of snow in the sandbox… er…

-The sandbox is full: I may not be in the console market these days but there have been a lot of sandbox games as of late, like… ALOT! Its basically the only game Ubisoft makes anymore. A wide-open area filled to burst with pointless shallow time wasting minigames of no real importance. OpenWorldTM. The announcement said Orb Vallis would be twice the size of Eidolon and good god does it feel like it! The very construction of the map itself restricts you from moving around it. With its massive board blocking Tim Burton mountains, and how those same mountains prevent you from utilizing the full freedom of the hoverboard, a new vehicle introduced with the update. Sure, there’s a new pet and new guns, but we already had fishing, we had mining, we had a new faction of peaceful traders and merchants to interact with. Outside of new shooty-tubes and endo dumps I don’t really see what’s so special here, especially when the terrain itself renders the races more chore than a challenge without delivering on any significant or memorable locations. Which is weird since there are interesting set pieces in the Vallis that are just never used. Of all the bounties I did getting to “old mate” rank the only location used was a data vault spy mission. You know, the building with the profit taker on it, yeah, you know the one the worst part of the map. Its built like a maze, is too easy to get lost in, has too many BIG rooms going into tiny vents you need an eagle eye to find, and its just an unenjoyable mess. This is especially infuriating as there are numerous more interesting locals around the map, they could use for practically any of the bounties. But no, its never the big Nef Anyo statue we’re fighting under it’s that damn farm thing again. Its never that cool cavernous road through the mountains, its that same damn bridge right in front of Fortuna. Its never a big base filled with enemies and tons of vertical platforms, its always that one generic outpost just down the road.

-Environmental Story: what’s even worse for the environment is its total lack of connection to the rest of the universe. The Plains weren’t just some vaguely African safari area, it was a battlefield. Haunted with the remains of shattered sentient contained within a massive forcefield that also happened to protect it from the deadly radiation and poisons of the outside world. The strange rocks which dot the landscape are the remains of alien spacecraft and its soils are stuffed with all manner of deadly armaments and tools. So, it makes perfect sense that the grineer or other factions would covet this area for its agricultural and military resources. The vallis just looks like a giant sink of effort and resources that could be put to more productive use elsewhere, doubly so considering it’s the corpus funding the whole operation. Which is even more sad given that environmental stories are the one story telling mechanic exclusive to video games. There is no other medium which allows a reader or a viewer to experience its world at their own pace to seek information in their own ways. Making this literary opportunity not only a waste of warframes universe but of the medium itself.

This is naturally only compounded upon with how the resources of the vallis seem even more restricted to fortuna than the plains did to cetus. The toroids are the worst offence in this, but I think I’ll save my thoughts on this growing problem in warframe for when I get around to covering the jovian concord as the issue of resource gating is more blatant there.

-The warframes: so garuda and baruuk, while I find it strange that DE released two frames around the same time that where functionally immortal, I just find their acquisition boring. Garuda’s main blueprint is just handed to you after finishing the introduction mission, and baruuk is straight up just another item you buy. The only difference between buying baruuk for real money and buying him for in game currency is time, and a lot of it given how rare the resource to get him is. Now I know garas main was given at the end of sayas vigil too but there it was built up as an ancient relic of mystical origin. A man left his wife and home to keep this powerful artifact out of enemy hands, sacrificing his whole life and happiness to keep them safe. You weren’t building just another tank with tits; you were reviving a warrior of legend who slew giants and protected the innocent. Revenant as well, had a deific entity granting visions to a child guiding you to the grave of an ancient warrior who fought and eventually fell to the control of his hated enemy. This might sound like a re-tred of inaros for most of you but at least gara and revenent look their parts, rather than just a mish mash of infested gunk slapped onto a skeleton. Point is worldbuilding matters, especially for the warframes. Being the name-sake of the game they deserve some kind of gravitas behind them. Treating a new warframe like another commodity to be bought off a shelf or passed out like a gold star from kindergarden is just… condescending. At least hyldryn got a boss fight out of her release, which is more of a backhanded compliment when you realize almost every other warframe gets a boss fight by default. Soooo… yeah.

Conclusion:

Maybe I’m jaded, just sick of snow, or maybe I’m projecting my exhaustion with the OpenWorldTM genre, I don’t know. There are a lot of reasons I find fortuna unfulfilling, but ultimately, I think its this; fortuna and the vallis were supposed to be an extension to the warframe universe, a playground to explore new perspectives and build on its mythos. It didn’t do that. We went from space travelling assassins trying to fight a war on many fronts to make the galaxy a better place, to a plucky resistance force against an evil conglomerate. It just doesn’t fit with the world we’ve already seen. everything “new” that was introduced here may be new to warframe but has been done much better within any title from the cyberpunk genre.

Its really a shame too as just looking a around can be breathtaking at times, some caves and structures are genuinely beautiful to look at. A lot of work was clearly put into this update, just not in the right places. Gameplay has a few upgrades, the environments are pretty if frustrating to traverse, but the story just comes up short. Sure, we can tolerate illogical grinds and only semi-complete mythologies for our new areas, but without a good story to keep us coming back, to tie everything together, its just disappointing.

-END OF LINE.

#warframe #game #fortuna #gaming #review #benjamineye #narrative #story #sci fi #cyberpunk #space ninja

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poorquentyn · 7 years

Note

So in honour of the new Justice League trailer, can I ask you what you feel are the top ten worst things about the DCEU movies so far?

*grins evilly, cracks knuckles*

Let’s get this one out of the way:

10. This fucking shot right here

“Pretentious” does not even begin to cover it. And that expression! I don’t have much nice to say about Henry Cavill in these movies, but I do enjoy his utter inability to hide his embarrassment at what he’s participating in at this moment.

9. The Why Did You Even Bother Club: Lois Lane, the Daily Planet, Rick Flag & June Moon, the media, the military, Congress…

Remember how The Avengers had this idea of Agent Coulson as the in-universe fanboy who understood the team better than anybody, and how the best part of Age of Ultron was the trip to Hawkeye’s farm? So why do the “human” elements of the DCEU feel so forced and stale?

8. Someone needs to go to jail for these action scenes

I thank the gods that I (unlike many of my friends) walked into Man of Steel sober, because Snyder’s destruction porn in that movie is a truly bad trip. Everything you need to know about the dude is in this juxtaposition: when he’s showing a building breaking apart, he wants you to see details, dammit, this is his canvas. When he has to cut to, y’know, humans, they’re dully shot and horribly lit, and his impatient desire to get to the next orgasmic splash-panel-shot is palpable. Elsewhere, the Doomsday sequence in BvS not only extends the plot far beyond its logical climax (the dictionary definition of overkill), it’s an unbelievably dull and drab nesting doll of mushroom clouds, pure headache-inducing sound and fury signifying nothing, my least favorite superhero throwdown on screen…until the Enchantress fight in Suicide Squad, which had me in tears in the theater, I was laughing so hard.

7. Pa Kent wants you and your children dead, you hear me? DEAD!

This may be the single worst aspect of Man of Steel specifically. I hate it on every level. I hate that Pa Kent spouts this BS, I hate that we’re supposed to take it seriously, I hate how it bogs down the post-Krypton story with no real weight or payoff (since we already know that Adult Clark is saving people by the time we get his Dad’s speech about not doing so), I hate that entire unbelievably dumb tornado scene, and I hate how freakin’ casual Snyder and Goyer are about death throughout this SUPERMAN STORY. Supes kills Zod, screams that scream…and then he’s downing satellites with a smirk, and biking through an apparently just-fine Metropolis, and hahaha look, glasses! Tone? Stakes? What are those? What was the point to him killing Zod other than Snyder getting that fetishistic close-up of the scream? Man of Steel was always going to be a bad movie, but this is where it became a Bad movie.

6. THIS IS KATANA

SHE’S GOT MY BACK

5. Batman v Superman is I Took Half a Philosophy Course, The Movie

Every single second of this insufferable thing is screaming at you to take it seriously. Every. Single. One. And it’s earned maybe 2% of the time, usually when it directly swipes a line from a comic. There’s nothing else to most of these scenes—just This Is Dramatic, with no attention put into the “this” from the basic “we need to care about these people” angle that Marvel generally has a lock on. The ambition falls flat. In particular, the worldbuilding sequences in BvS (the Injustice future, the Flash visitation, the videos of future JL members) constitute some of the clumsiest and most misguided scenes ever in a comic book movie, because they thoroughly ratfuck the tone, pacing, and focus in the most masturbatory manner imaginable outside of literal porn. (Has there ever been a less appropriate use of Exciting Pump-You-Up music than when Wonder Woman is…sitting at her laptop…watching QuickTime videos?)

4. Scene to scene, line to line, end to end, every storytelling decision in Suicide Squad is wrong

I don’t demand a movie make perfect logical sense for me to like it, and nitpicking about plot holes often aggravates me, because there are many more important things to making and watching movies. What I demand is that you not assemble your movie like a dozen different food-poisoning-induced fever dreams all happening simultaneously. When you have to literally actually reshow parts of your “villain launches their evil plan” sequence (kind of an important part of a comic book movie!) because it was so confusing and poorly communicated the first time through, you’ve lost any semblance of structural coherence. This isn’t clever nonlinear storytelling. This is an abysmal, abyssal editing fail. Honestly, given the garbage fire behind the scenes, Suicide Squad barely counts as a finished movie.

Final three slots reserved for the fatal performances. You know the ones.

3. How did you let Jared Leto keep doing this after day one

How did you not brain him with a shovel or something

2. Why, though

Why would you do this to us

And of course, at #1…

1. This ostensibly sentient block of granite you insist on calling Clark Kent

Ok, that’s not entirely fair. He’s poorly cast, written, and directed. The DCEU is fundamentally broken because its central character does not work. He’s got two modes–deadly boring and straight-up deadly–and neither is compelling. I’m far from the first to say it: this is a Superman for people who never liked Superman.

#dc #dceu #man of steel #batman v superman #suicide squad

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tumblunni · 7 years

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Random rambley development for unnamed zombie-fighting super mum simulator! Today’s thoughts- rules and regulations for how the zombies work in this setting.

* On the sliding scale of zombie origins, these ones are far more supernatural than scientific. They’re not really limited by the more strict rules of movie zombies, and judging them by human standards would be a mistake! After all, the mere fact that the dead are alive is already outside the realms of possibility, I don’t understand why ‘scientific’ zombies in fiction are defined by limitation like this. No matter how ‘scientific’ it is, the basic premis is inherantly supernatural! Making it ‘scientific’ should just be like... a genre decision. A way to add verisimilitude if you want a more real life or sci fi setting. It shouldn’t be an excuse to tone down zombies and complain that stuff shouldn’t be possible, because zombies aren’t goddamn possible :P But like.. making people BELIEVE they’re possible is why ‘scientific’ zombie thrillers are good! Making it excessively similar to real life just harms that, it gets people nitpicking details instead of being scared. It gets people closer to the biggest scientific realism- the fact that zombies will never exist. But yeah anyway, my goal isn’t to make people believe zombies are potentially possible, I’m going more for the sadness, character development and philosophy genre of zombie story rather than the pure scary genre.

* Sorry, I went offtopic rambling there. * BACK TO ACTUAL WORLDBUILDING POINTS * These zombies are more supernatural, and capable of things that you’d probably call ‘magic’. It might be better to call this a supernatural corruption instead of a normal virus. Long-lived zombies will eventually evolve into one of many specialized forms, and start shedding their humanoid appearance for something closer to living shadows made of black spores. Their various powers can include more normal stuff like spewing acid or giant claws, or they could have enhanced control of this shadow mist in various ways, or extremely developed ones can even warp reality to some degree. Trapping you in delusions, rending holes through spacetime, contorting in impossible ways... * They’re not quite as rotten as regular zombies, they’re kinda more like the ‘eternally frozen in time’ sort of undead. Not the pretty kind like vampires, but they don’t completely rot away and start stinking. Its more like... I guess... if you had regeneration powers but they were overcharged? They’re in a perpetual state of metamorphosis, their skin blisters and peels and shifts and rots off and grows back. It flakes off like charred ash, and the flesh underneath begins to petrify. Pretty quickly they become cold, at first its just the simple cold of death and soon it’s crystalline bonelike flesh replacing everything that was once human. And cracking open to leak black blood... and then black smoke... until nothing is left. It seems that what we call ‘zombies’ are just the juvenile stage of a demon. A walking crysalis for something else. * Oh, and their complexion is more greyish than green. Mostly just cos big red wounds would look even more horrifying against a monotone colourscheme, and when the blood becomes black too it would be its own kind of horror... I think the shade of stone they become is linked to their skintone though. That’s a thing that always bugged me about certain vampire stories, how they always turn pale in twilight even if they were dark-skinned in life. (Yes, that is a thing in the books. At least the movies threw a bit more diversity in.) And slightly related, its annoying when all zombies turn the same shade of green. I mean its not really the same thing cos its not like anyone’s saying the zombies are desireable and ooo all hot zombies become white, or whatever. It just gets a bit confusing as a sign that the creators just did not think about POC being in this setting. Also its weird because green isn’t really a realistic colour for rotten human bodies, it always feels a bit too cartoony lol. So yeah weird grey stone zombies would not all be the same shade of grey, and this is a minor detail that should have been obvious but regrettably in a lot of stories it isn’t :P

* These zombies are more intelligent than usual zombies, they’re more equivelant to a simplistic prey animal rather than just a lumbering mess. They’re only that slow and helpless at the earliest stages of infection, pretty soon they start adapting and forming hunting strategies, rather than just walking in circles wherever they first died. They can progress far enough to create dens and packs and compete with each other for resources, and normally display about as much natural intelligence as a cat. Their main problem is more like a lack of awareness rather than lack of intelligence, they retain very little memory of their former selves and essentially behave as if they’re learning how to live again from the start. Left to their own devices they just become animalistic, but considering how they DO remember some things, it might be possible to teach one how to be fully aware again...? * The memories they keep of their former life usually lead to them reenacting old routines that hold no meaning anymore. The places they wander between might be places that were important to them in life, they might gather human things like magpies, they might claw wildly at a broom and start smashing it against things, vaguely remembering that at this time on wednesdays they did the chores. This can be used to manipulate zombies if you can observe them and figure out what things would provide a personal distraction. And global things that’re likely to attract every zombie are A LIFESAVER! Malls are the best scavenging spots because even though they’re the most populated by zombies, there are a million methods to misdirect the whole horde at once, and a million useful supplies inside. So much that if you could clear the place out, it might make a really good stronghold against further zombies. I mean, you’d be pretty much guaranteed to have new zombies coming there every day, in numbers small enough to handle... * The big problem is that these vestigal memories of important things can cause zombies to act in unexpected ways, unrelated to their actual degree of intelligence. You might think no zombie is capable of figuring out how to use a gun on its own, but a military person who died holding a gun might! They already have the combat instincts bored into their brain, it was a large part of their life, their last thoughts would have been to keep shooting no matter what. And their zombie self wakes up with this weird metal rifle thing strapped to their chest, banging against them every time they take a step, making it hard to get through doors. They claw at it a little, get curious about it, and those memories are constantly reinforced every day until they come swimming back up. Any zombie that had a useful skill and was in an environment where its easy to remember will most certainly retain it, no matter how low their self-awareness level is. Your only consolation with the rare gun-zombie is that they don’t often remember how to reload, so you only have to dodge one magazine of bullets!

* Miscellaneous thoughts of things! * I haven’t decided exactly what, but there should be certain chemicals that zombies react differently to, compared to humans. That’d make it easier to craft things to help combat them, and to help deal with your tamed zombie. All i know so far is that zombies are immune to poisons and generally have an iron stomach, so when you collect meat for your zombie you don’t have to worry about it spoiling. And there’s probably something that’s like zombie catnip and makes them sleepy, cos that’d be very useful as a gameplay aspect. * I think zombie vision is limited, and they mostly navigate through sound. The degree of limitation depends on what stage they’re at, it goes on a sort of curve with newly infected and very old infected both at the highest end of the scale. Newly infected eyes haven’t started changing yet, though theyre quite dizzy and clumsy at this first stage. Vision quickly starts degrading around the time that their dexterity recovers, so the difference isn’t really that big. Colour vision goes first. It’s complete colour blindness, not just red/green, so they’re even worse at sight than dogs are. (and, in fact, often compete with feral dogs for food) After that, they can only see blurs of light. Moving things or strong light sources will attract them, and they’re almost completely helpless in the darkness. The problem, though, is that later level infected are absolutely adapted to the darkness! After they’ve got used to navigating by sound alone, they spend all their time there. The only way they can perceive light is as heat on their fragile skin, so they hide away in shady places until night falls. So basically, if you see a zombie out in the light you should run to the darkness, and vice versa! And then when the infection starts to reach its final stages, they become able to perceive the world through the shadows they emit. This new form of ‘sight’ is more like a psychic sense, so there are some limits compared to human vision, and some things they can perceive more clearly. But, generally, they’re back to how good their sight used to be, and you should be wary of that. * Zombies are kinda like snakes, lizards or vampire bats. They only feed once in a while, they gorge themselves and then sleep it off for days or weeks afterwards. So not eveyr zombie you meet will actually try to eat you, just break you. And they won’t expend too much effort on it, since there’s not as much benefit to it, even if their instincts tell them that flesh = kill. Generally you just need to avoid letting them know you’re there, or looking like a threat to their territory. And they’ll quickly forget about you once you manage to escape them, they only pursue you to their full extent when its time to feed. So, for example, if you’ve tried scavenging the same place multiple times then enemies might get increasingly aggro! They start to recognise your scent, and they start to notice that things are vanishing from their territory every time you come there. They might start performing more complex behaviours like staking out the place they think you’ll appear, or readying ambushes and rudimentary traps. In comparison, you might actually be able to tame enemy zombies, to some degree. Its not really possible to save every single zombie, its hard enough to be able to restrain and retain this one single zombie daughter, who’s only this responsive to treatment because she knew you in life. But you can make zombies moderately more docile through certain expert techniques~! For example, if you toss them some food every time you scavenge around their nest, then they’ll start to learn to ignore you, and not really notice the stuff that’s dissappearing. They only care about losing food that they can actually eat, so if you focus on canned goods then you can also reduce aggro. And if you move stuff around you can make certain routes harder for them to cross, but it works even better if you also help them move down other routes. That way you don't just delay them finding you, you psychologically encourage them to turn the other way. “Hey, what’s this interesting new path that I’ve never seen before?” Keep switching the paths back and forth and you can trick them into never losing that excitement, zombies have bad short term memory XD And hey, if you make a big noise somewhere every time you enter the nest, you start teaching the zombies to run over there whenever you get there. Expend some time misdirecting them down a long path with a chunk of meat at the end, and eventually you don’t even need to do that, you can just make the noise and they all run down there even if there’s no reward! * Oh, and this idea was mostly just so that feeding your zombie daughter isn’t too difficult. You don’t have to murder a guy every damn day, she can last varying long amounts of time without food. And depending on how big the meal is and how you train her, you can increase or decrease the time. She’s only a baby zomb though, so generally her HELLISH HORROR HUNGER should be relatively manageable ^_^ I’ll have to figure out what would work best, gameplay wise. Once a month? once a week? * Maybe she can still eat human food, to some extent. Its just that only raw flesh and blood sates the monsterous aspect of her, the rest is empty calories. Plus you kinda need to save it all for keeping our human protagonist alive! But you can give zombiekid treats to reward her for good behaviour, or to calm her hunger when she’s gone without food for a long time. A full stomach won’t actually do anything to help, but it’ll keep her docile. And human food is hard for her to digest now, its usually only okay when its a single treat alongside a full meal of human flesh. Too much of it might just make her health worse, but its what you have to do to stop her from lashing out. It can be a bit depressing to have to lie to her and see her wasting away, not knowing why she's feeling so sick...

#zombie sim thing

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script-a-world · 6 years

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The Nightmare Before Christmas: Worldbuilding Discussion

Just in time for Christmas, mods Miri and Werew have written up some thoughts about the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas and the worldbuilding within. We hope you enjoy!

The world in Nightmare Before Christmas is an interesting one from a world building perspective. (And one that goes along with several questions we’ve received over the last year.) Here you have a world, the human world, and you also have these separate, town sized holiday worlds. Each of these holiday worlds is completely different. Different climates, vegetation, animals, people. Each world is accommodating to the populace that lives within it.

Halloween Town is just what its residents need. There is an appropriate level of darkness, pools are the right toxic contents that they aren’t toxic to the locals. Ceilings are high enough to pass beneath. An outsider in Halloween Town is going to have trouble finding the things they need to survive. When Jack falls into Christmas Town, he reacts with amazement at how different everything is. He wonders at why things are what they are. He searches for monsters under the bed and is surprised to find none. He makes a lot of comparisons to how things are different. That is often how we relate to new things. When Jack tries to explain Christmas Town to the people of Halloween Town, they have trouble imagining anything but what they know. They try to rationalize the objects with what they would expect. A box they understand. The look of it is unfamiliar, but surely what is inside is what they would expect to find in a box. Jack decides to approach Christmas from scientific means, taking it apart to try to reconcile it with what he knows of the world. He learns as much as he can but still can’t understand the meaning of it all. Eventually he decides that he doesn’t have to understand it to believe in it. He takes what he has learned and tries to apply it in his terms. The results are not recognized or welcomed by the residents of the human world on Christmas Eve. It is. It what they have been cultured to expect and they react with both fear and violence. In the end Jack realizes that Christmas is not where he naturally belongs, and really, it isn’t where he wants to be. He’s had his look at the other side and chosen his path.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a yearly staple in my household, both for the movie itself and the incredible stop motion work. Not to mention the sing along aspect of it. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, and worth another if you already have.

Happy holidays, and may one of your gifts in the coming year be the answer to all your world building dilemmas.

Mod Miri

Let me start out by saying that I LOVE this movie. It was a staple of my childhood, and it’s an all-around awesome movie. Honestly, even when looking with an intentionally critical eye, I didn’t see much that I thought should be improved. I hope you enjoy this analysis!

The Nightmare Before Christmas is set in a very fantastical world, and one that isn’t really like anything else in mainstream media. This originality is great, but with unique worlds there comes the problem of trying to convey the basics to the audience without getting in the way of the story. Because TNBC is a musical, it allows for a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and a certain amount of exposition by song. It uses the opening number in a particularly effective and believable way to introduce the world, by starting off on halloween and showing us the celebration that the residents put on; this introduces all of the characters (at least to our sight), explains the basic premise of the world, and shows off a lot of the settings and themes.

The introduction of the world by the first song allows the story to get right underway immediately afterwards, with the audience happily on board. Because the setting is introduced so quickly, the movie doesn’t have to waste dialogue time explaining the world, and this allows Jack’s motivations to be introduced within the first ten minutes of the film. This isn’t really worldbuilding, but I think it’s related and I also think that it’s a great and effective way to get the audience hooked right away. Wow, this world is so cool! What, the ruler of it is unhappy with his unchanging life? It’s an immediate, relatable look into his character and drives the rest of the story.

One thing that really sells Halloween Town as being very different from the real world is the culture. This is shown in small, subtle things, especially the idioms and phrases that the people use in ordinary conversation. A few examples that I enjoy:

“Curiosity killed the cat, you know!” -said in a delighted tone rather than a reproachful one.

“Like a vulture in the sky”

“This fog's as thick as, as... Jelly brains!”

There is also an obvious, recurring cultural tendency to see a lot of somewhat negative things associated with Halloween--death, fright, dark themes, and even violence--as positive. This makes it obvious that the world is very different and that the scary themes of Halloween are commonplace and positive to them. It’s a little bit tricky to pull this off in normal conversation without making the audience feel like you’re beating them over the head with it. It’s also tricky to make sure that no idiomatic or cultural phrases that don’t apply end up in your world! Sometimes the things that we think and say are so ingrained that we don’t even register that they might not make sense in a different context.

There are only a few things that I found to be critical of. Most of them aren’t very plot-relevant, and are honestly unimportant to the story. Still, there are a good handful of odd, unexplained things that don’t make logical sense.

The population of Halloween Town doesn’t seem to be very large, yet they have two rulers--Jack Skellington the Pumpkin King (also referred to as the King of Halloween) and the Mayor. These two do not seem to conflict, and the Mayor definitely defers to Jack. In such a small community, it doesn’t really make sense to have two different ruling parties, one elected and one not.

For that matter, the Mayor IS an elected official--or at least he says he is. Yet not once, even as a throwaway line, is anything about an election or voting mentioned. His character is presented as being The Mayor, as though that is the majority of his identity. He’s not just a random citizen who happens to have been elected; he Is The Mayor. That’s his entire being.

Halloween Town seems to be in some kind of limbo as far as its relation to other worlds goes. They seem to be at least aware of the real world, but don’t appear to interact with it; their Halloween celebration takes place in their town and they never talk about traveling outside of it until Jack does. They also clearly have never heard of or seen the other holiday worlds, which Jack stumbles upon completely by accident. Yet, when he sets off to do his own version of Christmas, he doesn’t seem to have any question in his mind about how to get to the real world, or how to get back. While this isn’t really that important, I kind of wish it had been explained.

One last thing that struck me as a little odd is how different Sally is culturally, as compared to the others. She seems to be more aware of the world as an outsider might see it, and she doesn’t use as many Halloween-ish phrases. Her sense of beauty is unique in her world, yet there is no indication that she has ever been outside of it.

Though I discuss these things as problems, I honestly do not think that it’s a bad thing that they went unexplained. The movie’s runtime is fairly short, and the pacing is excellent. Sometimes the world and the explanation of it needs to fall by the wayside in order to tell the story in the best way possible, and that’s fine. The only time when world problems bother me is when they are inconsistent AND directly influence plot events, but all of the idiosyncrasies I noticed in this movie were in the background.

All in all, I think that The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fantastic example of a unique, fantasy world that is presented in a fun and effective way.

Thanks for reading!

Mod Werew

#the nightmare before christmas #magic #culture

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