Jenna JJ Q.

Hello! I'm Jenna, or jjjqance. I'm a reader and writer of webfic. My current project is "Chains of a Time Loop" which you can find on AO3 or RoyalRoad.

[jjjqance]

Book 3 start!

[Book 3] 72 - Stability and Instability - Chains of a Time Loop

A two-day trip east even with Lukai’s private train connections, followed by a half-day’s high-speed cruise through the belly of the Ilmania

[moonlit-tulip]

Many stories have reveals, towards their later parts, which substantially recontextualize the earlier parts, in a manner which makes them rewarding to reread/rewatch/etc. in order to catch details which didn't appear salient on the first pass. For example a work might reveal towards the end that the protagonist's archnemesis is her own future self, thus recontextualizing said nemesis's previous interactions with the protagonist and her friends and making them substantially more character-revealing than they appeared at first glance.

This mechanism means that a lot of stories benefit from being consumed twice: they show events 1-9, revealing information-chunks A1-A9, which then get substantially recontextualized by event 10 which reveals important information-chunk B, where, with the benefit of knowing B, reviewing scenes 1-9 will now additionally reveal the previously-illegible information-chunks B1-B9.

But there's no fundamental reason this should need to stop there! Because, with sufficient application of narrative craft, it should be possible to set things up so that, much as 1-9 reveal B1-B9 given knowing B and not otherwise, so similarly 10 reveals new big past-events-recontextualizing information-chunk C only given knowing B1-B9 and not otherwise. From which we can then repeat, C unlocking C1-C9, C1-C9 unlocking D, et cetera, thus in theory rewarding potentially arbitrarily-many repeat passes over the story with new previously-invisible layers of depth, rather than just two.

In practice, I'm unsure how many layers deep this can be done within a single linear narrative—putting aside, here, the various nonlinear video-game-ish experiments in this direction, which have the benefit of being able to put actually-different content in front of the player on each successive pass—before the story falls apart under the weight of the limits on a narrative's information-density. But I'd be interested in seeing more experiments done towards finding out.

[jjjqance]

My first thought was that this is impossible, but then I remembered, this sorta describes The Sekimeiya. At least, if you ignore the ending that reveals all the answers and try to solve everything yourself, then you absolutely need to go through it multiple times. Later segments frequently recontextualize earlier segments, and these recontextualizations are essential for being able to interpret the earlier segments in a remotely useful way, and this _still_ leaves you with questions that need to be answered, and those answers then recontextualize everything again... properly unraveling that visual novel does involve deductions many layers deep.

[jjjqance]

chapter 72: interlude

INTERLUDE: Good Ending - Chains of a Time Loop

Loop ??? The barrier was a translucent blue-green, tetrahedral in shape, and it was multi-layered, with smaller pyramids in larger pyramid

[jjjqance]

chapter 70

forgot to post this here when I put the chapter up 2 weeks ago

70 - Castor ex Machina - Chains of a Time Loop

Day 28, 11:20 P.M. Myra was tense the entire train ride to the capital. If the loop regularly had large railway interruptions on the last

[jjjqance]

chapter 69

69 - Alarming Modifications II - Chains of a Time Loop

Day 27, 5:15 A.M. “Aaand we just need you to sign this consent form.” Kiera had been up all night getting everything together, and she looke

[jjjqance]

chapter 68

68 - Alarming Modifications - Chains of a Time Loop

Day 24, 9:13 A.M. Kiera was slow to answer the door, her audible footsteps stopping at the doorway an uncomfortably long time before the doo

[jjjqance]

chapter 67

important note: i corrected an error in the last chapter where at the end it said 22 seconds and it should have been 23 seconds. anyway here's the next chapter

67 - Sleeping duck VI - Chains of a Time Loop

Two sages dead in sunken ship along with massive treasury Sages of economy and sea faring, Elwyn Senserenasia and Linda Zeawak, are dead aft

[jjjqance]

chapter 66

66 - Sleeping duck V - Chains of a Time Loop

Imperial Sages of Engineering and Forestry Assassinated at Trebuchet Center Imperial Sage Theodore Kettle of Engineering and Imperial Sage M

[ot3]

can everyone go read the flower that bloomed nowhere so we can do kamsu posting. we're experiencing some category 5 kamrusepa of tuon moments lately and i think it's of interest to the greater tumblr lesbian population. please. please. please.

[jjjqance]

people sometimes say that creativity is born from constraints.

one form constraints can take is in the constraints that arise from writing serially and having to maintain consistency with your previous chapters. I DO believe in going back to edit stuff when it's absolutely necessary, but this still has to be done within reason. While it can be frustrating to be stuck with the elements you've set up, there's something to be said for trying to make do with what you have.

For example, (minor spoilers) in Chains of a Time Loop chapter 53, I was originally stuck when I realized that there would obviously be some kind of guard staking out the location the characters were trying to get into. This stumped me for a while, but I eventually realized I could pull together a reasonable heist plan based on a feature of the location that had been set up earlier in Book 1. I had fun writing that bit, and it led to me finding more ways to incorporate that element into the story, which is for the better.

constraints can also be imposed more intentionally. in my other WIP, which is not a serial work, but something which will get the full edit treatment before being posted, I have a setting where the supernatural elements are a lot more narrowly defined. There isn't quite as much wiggle room to pull spells or artifacts out of my ass whenever I need to, not even with the ability to set things up arbitrarily far in advance. This is obviously due to my own choices with the setting, rather than a hard constraint of causality, but nonetheless, sticking to these constraints forced me to think outside of the box, and again, I think this has worked out for the better.

All that said, I think I would hate to write a work that's both written serially and has a hard magic system. That would be too many constraints for me.

(Yes, I do realize it probably says something about me that I consider COATL to be the soft magic system here.)

[jjjqance]

chapter 65

65 - Sleeping duck IV - Chains of a Time Loop

Justice Krasus Dead in Disturbing Restaurant Incident Justice Philium Krasus passed away last night while eating out at the famous Wing Hous

new chapter, new geographical region

[jjjqance]

Chapter 64 - Sleeping duck III

Sleeping duck III - Chains of a Time Loop

Imperial Sage Ornobis Assassinated Hazel Ornobois, Imperial Sage of Magical Infrastructure, was discovered assassinated this morning. Hazel

[jjjqance]

Chapter 63 - Sleeping Duck II

63 - Sleeping duck II - Chains of a Time Loop

Unkmirean Ambassador Lluruma Dead at Age 57 In a tragic accident this afternoon, the High Ambassador and Cultural Minister of Unkmire, Lluru

[jjjqance]

chapter 62:

new arc: Sleeping Duck!

62 - Sleeping duck - Chains of a Time Loop

Ralkenon University Closes for Semester After Second Catastrophe An ice-based Spontaneous Anomalous Phenomenon spawned early on Wednesday, N

[jjjqance]

sometimes plot problems cancel out like matter/anti-matter pairs

[jjjqance]

I'm always a little embarrassed to write about writing because what if people read my writing and think I'm bad at following my own writing principles?

[jjjqance]

chapter 61

Hope people like this one!

61 - All your fault - Chains of a Time Loop

Myra couldn’t contain her surprise at Ben’s proclamations, but at the same time, it all made a twisted bit of sense. “You can’t possibly be

Read on RoyalRoad or AO3