I Was Having Writers Block And So I Took A Break And Soon Enough It Was 3 In The Morning And I Had Impulsively

everyone who reads this post will get some big spicy joy within 24 large minutes (hours)

good things will happen 🧿

things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿

Reblog this doodleflopper and her cinnamon fluff tummy and you will have the best fortune

Fantasy Guide to Balls

When we think of fantasy we think of castles and princesses and then we immediately think of ballrooms and dancing. After all, what court is complete without balls and feasts?

Types

Throughout time there have been many kinds of ball. In mediaeval times, a feast could be a nightly occurrence. The monarch would pay to host their friends and vassals for dinner and afterward would come the dancing. The first few years of Henry VIII's reign had feasts and masques almost daily if not weekly. As we come closer to Edwardian times, some balls abandoned the dinner aspect for dancing, music and gossiping.

Invite only

If the monarch announces a ball, they will send an invite to the nobility or the wealthy if their presence is either desired or cursory. Snubbing a noble of an invite would be seen as an insult, a very public one. No noble or guest can show up without an invite. That would be seen as impetuous and rude, almost the equivalent of wearing white to a wedding.

Precedent

When you step into the ballroom, sometimes you would be announced to the room or introduced to the royal family. There would be a special sequence in which this would happen. The highest ranking to the lowest ranking always. It would be a manor faux pas to announce a mere Lady before a Duchess.

Dancing

Actual dancing sometimes ran like bingo. A lady could have a dance card which she would ask her dance partners to sign as a keepsake. The men would dance to show their grace and manners whilst some might be chasing a new mistress and the ladies would dance to show their grace and skill. It could be considered scandalous for a woman to dance more than a single dance with a man which could lead to gossip.

Different kinds of historical dances

Carole

Ductia

Estampie (Istampitta)

Saltarello

Trotto

Farandole

Allemande

Basse danse

Branle

Canario

Coranto

Dompe

Galliard

La volta

Pavane

Sarabanda

Spagnoletta

Tourdion

Bourrée

Canary

Chaconne

Entrée grave

Forlana

Gavotte

Gigue

Loure

Menuet

Musette

Passacaille

Passepied

Rigaudon

Sarabande

Tambourin

For @viola-cola

“Extremely detailed character sheet template”

Character Chart Character’s full name: Reason or meaning of name: Character’s nickname: Reason for nickname: Birth date: Physical appearance Age: How old does he/she appear: Weight: Height: Body build: Shape of face: Eye color: Glasses or contacts: Skin tone: Distinguishing marks: Predominant features: Hair color: Type of hair: Hairstyle: Voice: Overall attractiveness: Physical disabilities: Usual fashion of dress: Favorite outfit: Jewelry or accessories: Personality Good personality traits: Bad personality traits: Mood character is most often in: Sense of humor: Character’s greatest joy in life: Character’s greatest fear: Why? What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil? Character is most at ease when: Most ill at ease when: Enraged when: Depressed or sad when: Priorities: Life philosophy: If granted one wish, it would be: Why? Character’s soft spot: Is this soft spot obvious to others? Greatest strength: Greatest vulnerability or weakness: Biggest regret: Minor regret: Biggest accomplishment: Minor accomplishment: Past failures he/she would be embarrassed to have people know about: Why? Character’s darkest secret: Does anyone else know? Goals Drives and motivations: Immediate goals: Long term goals: How the character plans to accomplish these goals: How other characters will be affected: Past Hometown: Type of childhood: Pets: First memory: Most important childhood memory: Why: Childhood hero: Dream job: Education: Religion: Finances: Present Current location: Currently living with: Pets: Religion: Occupation: Finances: Family Mother: Relationship with her: Father: Relationship with him: Siblings: Relationship with them: Spouse: Relationship with him/her: Children: Relationship with them: Other important family members: Favorites Color: Least favorite color: Music: Food: Literature: Form of entertainment: Expressions: Mode of transportation: Most prized possession: Habits Hobbies: Plays a musical instrument? Plays a sport? How he/she would spend a rainy day: Spending habits: Smokes: Drinks: Other drugs: What does he/she do too much of? What does he/she do too little of? Extremely skilled at: Extremely unskilled at: Nervous tics: Usual body posture: Mannerisms: Peculiarities: Traits Optimist or pessimist? Introvert or extrovert? Daredevil or cautious? Logical or emotional? Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat? Prefers working or relaxing? Confident or unsure of himself/herself? Animal lover? Self-perception How he/she feels about himself/herself: One word the character would use to describe self: One paragraph description of how the character would describe self: What does the character consider his/her best personality trait? What does the character consider his/her worst personality trait? What does the character consider his/her best physical characteristic? What does the character consider his/her worst physical characteristic? How does the character think others perceive him/her: What would the character most like to change about himself/herself: Relationships with others Opinion of other people in general: Does the character hide his/her true opinions and emotions from others? Person character most hates: Best friend(s): Love interest(s): Person character goes to for advice: Person character feels responsible for or takes care of: Person character feels shy or awkward around: Person character openly admires: Person character secretly admires: Most important person in character’s life before story starts: After story starts:

found here

this

@bird-lord1993 I am trying to contain myself from the sheer emotions these gifs instill in me

peter falk as charlie adamo in machine gun mccain (1969)

I've been reading Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, and it's gotten me thinking about how worldbuilding is multilayered, and about how a failure of one layer of the worldbuilding can negatively impact the book, even if the other layers of the worldbuilding work.

I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I'm going to talk about it more broadly instead. In my day job, one of the things I do is planning/plan development, and we talk about plans broadly as strategic, operational, and tactical. I think, in many ways, worldbuilding functions the same way.

Strategic worldbuilding, as I think of it, is how the world as a whole works. It's that vampires exist and broadly how vampires exist and interact with the world, unrelated to the characters or (sometimes) to the organizations that the characters are part of. It's the ongoing war between Earth and Mars; it's the fact that every left-handed person woke up with magic 35 years ago; it's Victorian-era London except every twelfth day it rains frogs. It's the world, in the broadest sense.

Operational worldbuilding is the organizations--the stuff that people as a whole are doing/have made within the context of that strategic-level world. For The Hunger Games, I'd probably put the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and even the existence/structure of the districts as the strategic level and the construct of the Hunger Games as the operational level: the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and the districts are the overall world that they live in, and the Hunger Games are the construct that were created as a response.

Tactical worldbuilding is, in my mind, character building--and, specifically, how the characters (especially but not exclusively the main characters) exist within the context of the world. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has experience in hunting, foraging, wilderness survival, etc. because of the context of the world that she grew up in (post-apocalyptic, district structure, Hunger Games, etc.). This sort of worldbuilding, to me, isn't about the personality part of the characterization but about the context of the character.

Each one of these layers can fail independently, even if the other ones succeed. When I think of an operational worldbuilding failure, I think of Divergent, where they took a post-apocalyptic world and set up an orgnaizational structure that didn't make any sense, where people are prescribed to like 6 jobs that don't in any way cover what's required to run a modern civilization--or even to run the society that they're shown as running. The society that they present can't exist as written in the world that they're presented as existing in--or if they can, I never could figure out how when reading the book (or watching the film).

So operational worldbuilding failures can happen when the organizations or societies that are presented don't seem like they could function in the context that they are presented in or when they just don't make any sense for what they are trying to accomplish. If the story can't reasonably answer why is this organization built this way or why do they do what they do then I see it as an organizational worldbuilding failure.

For tactical worldbuilding failures, I think of stories where characters have skillsets that conveniently match up with what they need to solve the problems of the plot but don't actually match their background or experience. If Katniss had been from an urban area and never set foot in a forest, it wouldn't have worked to have her as she was.

In this way (as in planning), the tactical level should align with the operational level which should align with the strategic level--you should be able to trace from one to the next and understand how things exist in the context of each other.

For that reason, strategic worldbuilding failures are the vaguest to explain, but I think of them like this: if it either 1) is so internally inconsistent that it starts to fall apart or 2) leaves the reader going this doesn't make any sense at all then it's probably failed.

It's always the generic bros that are bullies. But I guess cargo shorts and a too small tank top don't make an as interesting visual.

why do they always showcase ‘bullies’ in cartoons as being some punk with a mohawk like

when was the last time you saw a cool guy in a leather jacket not minding his own business it’s usually some basic asshole in a graphic tee that has something to say

Princess Tutu and Grand Narrative

Once upon a time, there was a clumsy school girl granted the power to transform into the magical ballerina Princess Tutu.

“Once upon a time” is a familiar phrase used to connect stories that take place in lands distant and times different from one another into the same fairytale world. Each episode of the anime Princess Tutu begins with this familiar phrase and then proceeds to tell a story both known and new, where Hans Christian Anderson’s Ugly Ducking becomes Odette, the Swan Queen, from Swan Lake, thanks to the magic of the mysterious Drosselmeyer, who bares a striking resemblance to the character of the same name from The Nutcracker. Princess Tutu is not just a retelling of a handful of fairy tales, it’s an adaptation of stories across literature, ballet, opera, and of course, anime. Each piece of Princess Tutu’s narrative belongs to worlds larger than its own. The series challenges paradigms about typical narrative creation by weaving together multiple “grand narratives”.

While working as an editor for Kadokawa Shoten in the late 80s, Otsuka Eiji wrote a paper called “World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative” in which he explains the idea of the grand narrative. An individual story only gives the audience a small glimpse into that wider world that the story is set in. This wider world is full of countless narratives told from countless perspectives that make up the grand narrative. Eiji uses the Gundam franchise to illustrate this concept where any given episode of the anime is a small snapshot of narrative within the larger universe(s) Gundam takes place in. Eiji explains, “Countless other [stories] could exist if someone else were the main character.”

Everyone is the main character of their own story. But most of these stories that make up the grand narrative of a world are hidden from view. It’s impossible to tell every story at once and have it be comprehensible. Instead we can only consume small bite-sized narratives that give us a snapshot of the (hopefully) interesting parts of a protagonist’s life. But who, exactly, is controlling these smaller narratives? This is a question faced by the characters of Princess Tutu.

The concept of shifting protagonists and expanding the audience’s view into the grand narrative heavily ties into Princess Tutu’s premise. The anime’s story is catalyzed by Drosselmeyer, the author of a fictitious book called The Prince and The Raven. The book’s ending is a stalemate between the titular characters so Drosselmeyer decides to promote the minor character of Princess Tutu to the role of main character to help the story move forward.

As you can probably tell by the name, Princess Tutu is heavily influenced by ballet. One of the show’s more significant influences is Swan Lake. Through the anime’s re-purposing of Swan Lake’s Odette as a magical girl, Princess Tutu continues to uphold ballet’s tradition of adapting the story for its own purposes.

Princess Tutu and Odette

The basic story of Swan Lake is about a prince falling in love with a girl cursed to be a swan from sunrise to sunset by an evil sorcerer. The sorcerer tricks the prince into confessing his love for his daughter, Odile, instead of the swan girl thus dooming the swan girl’s chance at true love and breaking the curse.

Amanda Kennell, an American scholar, outlines in her paper “Origin and Ownership from Ballet to Anime” Swan Lake’s production history and the evolution of the ballet’s narrative. The original staging in 1877 had the story end with the villain going unpunished and the two lovers drowning in a flood. In a revival staging from 1895 the villain was defeated and the two lovers reunited in heaven after throwing themselves into a lake. In a single scene production called The Magic Swan from the 1940s, the iconic “black swan” was introduced setting the precedent for the same ballerina to play the role of Odette and Odile in striking white and black costumes. And finally, another staging in 2006, not only adopted the White and Black Swan motif, but also changed the ending once again so that the prince kills the villain and he and Odette live happily ever after.

Despite each staging of the classic having significant differences, none of the variations are cast away as counterfeits. The value of the production isn’t in how close it is to the original Swan Lake but instead in the relative merit of each variation. In fact, it doesn’t really matter which you consider “the original” where the additions made by each carry their own merit and add to Swan Lake’s grand narrative. In this same regard, it would be acceptable to consider Princess Tutu another variation on the world of Swan Lake’s grand narrative.

There is terminology for this phenomenon in Kabuki theater. Eiji points out in his paper the similarities between the concepts of Sekai (world) and Shukou (plot) from Kabuki theater and his ideas of the grand narrative and the smaller narratives.

In Kabuki, Sekai represents the world a story takes place in and Shukou represents the story that is a product of that world. Each staging of a Kabuki play is its own Shukou derived from either a single Sekai or the mixing of Sekai. What matters in creating a good performance is not necessarily conveying the Sekai but instead the relative merit of the Shukou’s take on things. No performance is exactly the same and different actors bring different strengths to a performance and in turn provide a different experience for the audience’s entertainment. This of course carries over to more art forms than just Kabuki, classic ballet is in a similar position where entire songs are sometimes re-choreographed just to match the strengths of an individual ballerina. Ballet in particular has a long tradition of making minor and major changes to suit an individual performance. Whether it be tweaking choreography or straight up giving the story a different ending. The evolution of Swan Lake’s production is an excellent example of how productions of what are considered to be the same story can dramatically vary.

But Princess Tutu borrows from more stories than just Swan Lake. This brings us back to Kabuki and the idea of mixing Sekai in order to create another Shukou.

Princess Tutu takes pieces of classic stories and rearranges them to create something simultaneously familiar and completely new. Princess Tutu is not forging a new Shukou from only Swan Lake’s Sekai, but instead is connecting the canon of European literature and performing arts together into an even more extensive grand narrative.

Just look at the series’ opening for example, where Swan Lake and The Nutcracker are intertwined with one another as the anime’s titular character is dressed in the ballet costume of Odette and dances to The Nutcracker’s Flower Waltz to simultaneously combine the worlds of two ballets while producing an entirely new moment unique to the Princess Tutu anime.

The anime ends on the implication that if one person tries to control a story and the grand narrative it’s connected to, that person will fail. Princess Tutu is an excellent reminder of how stories are dynamic. Stories end up taking on a life of their own evolving, expanding and being reworked by both creators and consumers.

Eiji explains that once the consumers feel they have a grasp on the grand narrative they are free to produce their own small narratives from it. This is exactly how its creators forged Princess Tutu from the grand narrative of classic literature and performing arts. Just as mangaka can’t help it if a doujinshi adds to the narrative of their original story, Travosky can’t control the new life his ballets have taken on in Princess Tutu. Stories will take on a life of their own, abandon the need for an original and become a part to a larger grand narrative to be consumed and reworked over and over.