#theming

[sonic7ischaos]

Thinking about Gamoverse again.

So if Snappers had won, if he'd KILLED Flappers, would flappers get a game over and have to restart? Would he respawn just outside the boss level, start over from the first level in the boss world, or depending on how old the game is, start from the first level?

Because if he starts out from the boss room, or even from the boss WORLD, Kit & Kaboodle can never leave. If they want to save Flappers' world, they have to keep making sure he loses until he gives up and then stay there to make sure he never tries again.

But even if he starts over from the VERY beginning, they still have to keep coming back, because if Flappers can get to the end once, he can do it again, and considering the genre, assuming it's not like a torture platformer like Ghosts n Goblins, they have to do it frequently, because platformers like Flappers are typically designed to be VERY beatable.

Which brings me to my actual observation about Gameoverse and its apparent theme: It's about the inevitability of death. Kit & Kaboodle, and Gobbles & Flappers now, are stuck delaying the inevitable encroaching end, something they can only EVER delay and not truly prevent. They're doctors, thematically speaking. They can slow the end down, but so long as the rules of the world are in place, that's the absolute limit of their abilities, they can't stop the end entirely. Given everyone's narrative connection to grief it makes sense, in order to conquer their loss, they need to help others prevent or overcome their own.

If the hero is already on their way to beat the villain, that world is doomed.

...Assuming life & death even works that way in Gameoverse. If Snappers killing Flappers just KILLS Flappers, it's a whole different thing

...GOD this show is so good.

[southernfriedshark]

If your theme park bins don't talk then I'll take my rubbish elsewhere thank you very much! 🗑️

[atlas-and-aus]

Something is so fun to me about the themes of finding home in Onyxverse. Home, as a concept, is so many things.

The typical label of home, a specific place that brings you comfort, can be found in Nightmare's hideout, or the Church of Spera for Dream.

Or it can be more conceptual. Like the forests that let Dust feel at peace, or the rivers that give Swap that wonderfully calming feeling.

Or it can be a person, as it is for Ink and Cross, as much as they hate each other.

You may find home where you are, but there's always a part of you that misses your true home where your family resides, like with Horror.

You may have A home, but it doesn't feel like YOUR home, like Error.

Or you can find home in your own imagination and thoughts, creating your own home that follows you wherever you go, like Killer and his illusion realm.

Anyway, yeah. Just like thinking about the themes of Onyxverse and this is one of my favorites.

[stuckasmain]

Not to continue being a theme park adult on main but it’s really interesting that there seems to be a presence on every platform but this one to really get into detail on park stuff. Or I’m not using the right tags

Only close to active circle is haunted mansion which, I’ve been in a little on another blog but it’s so established in its own new lore so idk

[virtualcuriosities]

Nowadays, many users expect applications to have both a dark theme and a light theme, and an option to toggle from one to another.

What users don't know is that they fell for big corp propaganda!

We used to have themes of all colors, full customizability, and instead of demanding that we spend our time asking for mere light / dark theme support.

You don't want dark theme. They want you to want it so they can cut development costs. You want freedom. Freedom to make your apps look in a way that looks nice to you.

[spiritsofprogress]

I do think “Hidden Mickey” gets abused by a lot of people. You’re at a Disney park, most of those are a very intentional on purpose direct Mickey. That’s just a Mickey.

[artist-issues]

this my sound silly, but do you have any advice on how you come up with something to say for a story?

I think you're right that good art has something to say and communicates it well. That's certainly true of every story I've ever loved.

But while I love inventing fantasy worlds, you've made me realize I've never actually planned to say anything with them.

I've got lots of opinions, lots of beliefs, lots of stuff to say, but now that I realize I need to, it's been hard to pick one of those to be the core point of a story.

the trouble is, the dominant writing advice I saw online was the opposite. that stories made for the purpose of communicating a message or promoting something just turn into preachy propaganda, so the best way to make a good story (that, dare I invoke the curse, appealed to a wider audience) was to muddy it so you could take away as many interpretations from it as possible. thus most of the material I've given myself to work with has been slightly poisoned.

I really like how you said all of that! I agree with your assessment of the advice most people give.

Here's how I do it:

A loose concept, like a disgraced knight falling in love with the King's head of staff who's come to live in the village he's hiding in, will pop into my brain. I'll like the concept. I'll imagine one or two interactions between them that I just like.

But when it comes time to write anything down, even just for my own notes—then it's time to find a message. And usually that's not hard, or at least, that's not disingenuous, because:

what I believe, my worldview, was already subliminally shaping the things that I liked.

So then as I go to write down the names, the histories, the plot points, of my fun little knight love story idea, I find that something kind of...readily fits them.

But now here's the catch; it really helps to know what you believe, and to feel strongly about it, for all of that to come as naturally as possible.

About Propaganda "versus" Stories:

It's a lie to say that something which is created to say something is always propaganda, and something which is created with no careful point thought out is always art. Silly thing to believe. It's like saying "all words are propaganda." No, all words are communication. It's not our fault they don't like that we know what we want to say, and we want them to understand it clearly.

I mean. All art is propaganda, if by "propaganda" or "preachy" you mean, "I tried to take what was going on in my head & heart and put it in your head & heart." All art, all storytelling, is that. Otherwise you'd just keep what you think and feel bouncing around in your own brain, instead of doing anything outward (writing, drawing, painting, singing, speaking, reacting with your body language) with it.

I think what people are getting at when they say "avoid being preachy" or "that's not art, it's propaganda" is "you weren't being genuine." And that can be true. Sometimes people can tack a meaning onto a movie or a story where it doesn't fit because they either a) don't believe that strongly in the thing themselves, but everyone around them was clamoring for it or b) they were lazy and didn't do the work to make the story fit, genuinely, with the message, in a way that enhances and makes the message winsome.

But as bad as those two mistakes are, neither of them prove that intending to say something with your story, very carefully and genuinely, that you don't want misinterpreted, is somehow a bad thing.

Look at the fairy tales that the Brothers' Grimm collected. Look at any stories from the time before commercialism: Our oldest stories combined genuine enjoyment with the virtues and meanings that made enjoyment possible/worthwhile.

Anyway. I have a feeling you agree with me already about this so I'll hop down off that soap box.

What Comes First: Having Fun Making What You Like, or Choosing Something to Say?

I don't think it is wrong to tell a story that...you didn't have an intended thesis written down for. I think people like J.R.R. Tolkien and Walter Elias Disney prove that. But the thing is, what they believed got infused into their storytelling, because of course it did. It can't help it. When you want the audience to like your lead character, you make her likeable—but the traits you think are likeable are informed by something.

Snow White is innocent and pure because Walt Disney naturally considered those things beautiful and good and worth liking. He probably didn't even think to write it down and revolve everything around it: it just came out that way.

Frodo is a little scholar, and willing to soldier on with what little he can do, despite his lack of experience, because those are character traits Tolkien felt were good and likeable. Why? Because deep down, in his worldview, he believes being book-smart and doing what you can with what you have is valuable. And that just...comes out, much like his valuing of history, in the thing he creates.

Now, if they didn't know what they believed--or if they were insecure people "blown about by every wind of false doctrine" that comes their way--or if they were focused more on satisfying what the largest number of people liked--they wouldn't have been able to infuse the story with any genuine meaning, planned-out or natural.

That's what I think.

I think it's all a matter of loving what's good and true. Training your affections, so that you care most about things that are worth caring about—the things you feel most strongly about in characters will be the things you feel most strongly about in life. I love Stitch because I love redemption. Not primarily because I love sci-fi characters, the color blue, or the blend of ugly-and-cute—even though I do like those things on a more minor scale. See?

But if you've trained your affections for junk food—you feel most strongly appreciative of characters that are hot, or spout off funny one-liners, or come onscreen to cool music—then that's what will naturally come up in your own storytelling.

There's also nothing wrong with doing it the other way; saying you want to teach a certain lesson, and then coming up with characters and settings to fit that lesson. Coming at it from that direction is just as valid—as long as you put in the work, and care more about that lesson you genuinely believe in than you do what other people think.

Anyway,

To Write Your Own Main Point/Thesis/Armature/Theme

When it’s time to start writing anything down, it’s time to figure out the main point, and that’s when I...typically think about what I'd want to teach the kids I'm around, to be honest.

With my disgraced-knight love story, I go "what is it he loves about the girl, in all those vague vibe-y scenes I’ve been picturing?" And I make the connection between her virtuous character traits to what I want him, the main character, to learn.

So for example, she used to live in the palace, working for the King, but she was humble enough to give all that up and live in a no-name town to take care of her stepfather. He's disgraced and doesn't want anyone to know who he is—well, that's a pride issue, totally the opposite of how humble his love interest is. And why’s she humble? Because she’s not focused on herself. She doesn’t care about her own reputation or status. So then I just reverse engineer that: the point of the story is "Live in the King's name, not your own." Now one of the two main characters embodies that—the other has to learn it, and the story is the obstacle course he’s pushed through to get there.

I wasn't consciously thinking about making her the king's former head of staff, or him disgraced, when I first came up with the vague concept of the story, see? I just liked the "vibe" of a hopeless dude suddenly seeing a ray of light in the "vibe" of a girl from poor circumstances who seems happy regardless of them. I liked that "vibe." Then I traced what I liked about the vibe back to something that is true and worth teaching or appreciating in real life.

I’m in a job I don’t love right now, and it could make me miserable, but if I just remember “in everything you do, whether in word or in deed, do for the glory of the Lord,” then my focus isn’t on myself and I have joy and hope. And that hope can be used to point others, around me, to hope, too. So I’m not “preaching” something disingenuous; I’m living it, because this is what I believe, so no wonder it’s also leaking it’s way into my story. I just happen to be creating a pipe so that the leak flows more smoothly, which can only help, in the long run.

But I’ve done it other ways, too. Once I watched kind of from afar as a friend’s family fell apart. I felt like, from the outside, I could see where one of my friends was hurting and what they needed to accept (from the Bible) to move forward, but I wasn’t in a position to say it to my friend directly. Then I figured, “if my one friend is going through this situation, others probably are too, and this lesson from the Bible is universal anyway” so I…made up an analogy for the way their family fell apart, then came up with an ending that taught the “family” in the analogy the lesson I got from the Bible. So for that, you can see how I first came up with the main point, then built up characters and a world and a story to fit around it.

Both ways work, the chicken or the egg first. But they only work if you are committed to working hard and serving others with your story, not committed to being popular or “only making what YOU like.”

Make sense? I hope so! Thank you for the question!