ccckk falls apart bc of the tension between my desire to maintain an "authentic," self-contained, episodic narrative structure that gives the illusion of plot and then the actual plot necessary to hold up a medium-long character introspection.
osmt-san hasn't accumulated plot, but rather it has accumulated lore that can give self-referential padding when they're not being historically, literally referential. this is what helps provide longevity to sitcoms, the audience is able to build a language and world of references - symbols - together with the cast.
when i refer to plot i'm describing forward movement. the protagonist(s) going from A to B. choices, its permanence established by it's own consequential existence with little regard for in-narrative status quo. san-orignal characters experience something like this to be set up as foils to the stagnation of the original cast is awesome.
lore, then, is information that does not cause change. when usually applied in context, a reference is nothing but an inside joke. inside jokes are powerful emotional forces. maybe they could be sources of motivation, but they usually aren't. you can accumulate lore and still be going nowhere in terms of character change.
all of that to say i get super bent about maintaining the sense of zero-calorie-inconsequential-nothing-burger that happens when you consume osmt while trying to please the bigger plot driving the car. bc i'm not very good at it. i originally designed the story as being approximately episodic as it could be while fulfilling what i wanted: miserably funny yaoi. i have key points that have guided my glacial pace, but i never hardcore outlined scenes until i got to that chapter so as to preserve a sense of improv comedy. in my recency-bias opinion, each episode of ccckk is better than the last not only bc i Got Good but sticky lore i dropped on the floor in the early chapters Sometimes has a chance to come back later to appear as plot. whether or not i originally planned it all as such doesn't matter (where the improv comedy comes from on the production end). where the story falters are the instances i refuse to look back and instead plant it with something new bc i didn't like the flowers i originally started growing. it's bad and lazy so i've been waffling on how to further incorporate that tension into having payoff... eventually.
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
stormborns
dededos
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
