This Ship is Sailing

Ok

First of all, I understand that a lot of viewers didn’t understand what was going on in these episodes. Not only with the core four but with the story plot and I get that. So for those who didn’t get it, there were two separate cases:

Case 1: David was a complete red herring and was only trying to cover his argument with Sally to avoid the police coming after him. He’d previously been arrested for falsifying pm reports so was a natural suspect. Merrick ( the farmer) was a cover-up by Gwen (a pathologist who worked with Sally) and Brian (funeral home director) - who Sally found out were stealing body parts to sell (on the black market I presume). Merrick was used by them because Gwen knew he had a spiritual issue with his family member having a post-mortem and Sally wanted to ‘better understand why’. He’d had previous dealings with the police so naturally, they thought it was him. After Nikki confronts David she realises that it must be Gwen who’s stealing body parts and goes with Jack to see Gwen and they found Sally’s car, confirming that they were the ones stealing body parts - not David as Nikki had originally thought. 

Case 2: starts off with the murder of Litvar who was a member of the three kids who killed that family in the woods 16 years ago. He felt guilty for killing them so took two bouquets of flowers (one for the mother and father) and the teddy bear (for the little girl) to their grave after the birth of his own daughter brought back memories of what he, Gary and Anna had done while at school together. So Gary (a bit of a creep tbh) killed Litvar to cover up the murders. The police and Nikki then break Anna for killing the little girl so they could also get Gary. 

Nikki has PTSD or some form of mental health issue after being buried alive in Mexico at the end of the last series so isn’t supposed to be back at the Lyell centre - and this is why she is paranoid about David. The police put an idea in her head that it could be him and she became so focused on it as a way to cope. Jack and Nikki’s relationship is strained because Jack blames himself for what happened to her and that he couldn’t get to her in time and he doesn’t know how to talk to her about it - causing Nikki to not understand what is going on between them and therefore not tell Jack anything about Sally and David because she doesn’t know how to talk to him either.

Now my thoughts-

Did anyone notice that if Rey and Ben ever get together (and they certainly will), their storyline will be the exact opposite of Anakin and Padme’s ? Like, Anakin first fell in love with Padmé, and it’s precisely because of his love for her and his will to protect her that he finally joined the dark side. For Kylo tho, it’s the other way. He now fully embraces the dark side, BUT Rey is obviously the one who will be able to bring him in the light side again, balancing the force. Thereby, that will definitely close the circle of SW, started by the abandon of Padmé by Anakin in the prequel. In the end, it could also fulfill Ben’s words of “finishing what [his papi Vader] started”. 

CMON ANTIS

1.The setup: A scene or sequence identifying the exterior and/or interior conflict

2. The Meet: The inciting incident brings man and woman together and into conflict

3. Turning point: A new development that raises story stakes and clearly defines the protagonist’s goal; most successful when it sets man and woman at cross-purposes and/or their inner emotions at odds with the goal

4. Raising the stakes: A situation that irrevocably binds the protagonist with the antagonist

5. Second turning point: stakes reach their highest point as the romantic relationship’s importance jeopardizes the protagonist’s chance to succeed at his/her state goal—or vice versa—and his/her goal shifts.

6. The Dark Moment: Wherein the consequences of the swivel decision yield disaster and either the relationship and/or the protagonist’s goal is seemingly lost forever

7. Joyful defeat/Resolution: A reconciliation that reaffirms the primal importance of the relationship; usually a happy ending that implies marriage or a serious commitment, often at the cost of some personal sacrifice to the protagonist 

STAR WARS EPISODE IX, BITCH  

please note this is all self taught and i’m really only 40% sure of what i’m doing, but this is the system i’ve developed for myself.

BREAD AND BUTTER

i start with a concept and pick my key points and themes early on at that stage. and i work in the rule of thirds, so i always basically have three things to plot around the central dynamic. 

rule of thirds is something i was taught do in my visual training and find it useful in writing; the rule of thirds is basically about balance—in the case of, say, a painting, there should always be the same color used three times, as this is the natural way the eye will move across something. 

so: pick three narrative structures and plot them around the central story. 

and, i’m an incredibly visual person, so i threw together a quick chart for how i structure the overall flow of the story:

you might notice that even though it’s a pretty sharp dip after the peak crescendo, but it doesn’t ever go back down as low as when it started. 

i think that’s pretty important in storytelling; showing that even when reality hits you hard, the work you’ve done towards growth doesn’t go away.

:)

FOR EXAMPLE

i’ll give hra as an example since i don’t want to spoil all of stealing home! so the first thing i decided was that heart rise above was going to be a, my take on love and how it inspires healing, but is not a bandaid. and b, a story about dealing with the trauma that defines and stagnates childhood and learning to welcome adulthood. 

and thus i knew that meant it encompassed old relationships with family. i knew that meant it encompassed the way so much of growing into adulthood is realizing you and your friends might end up in different cities. 

so those were the key themes:

childhood/adulthood

family as the things that can hold us back and pull us forward

friends as representative of how situations effect relationships, but don’t redefine the love in relationships themselves

and obviously, the whole thing is a love story, which was the driving factor for coming to terms for all these things. they work in cyclical fashion; the three themes should support the central story, but the central story also drives the three themes. 

and in the way i write, each key theme has to have at least one metaphor. so once i knew what the themes were i could set those up. 

for childhood/adulthood, the metaphor was the broken truck itself, the failed road trip. these broken leftovers from childhood and/or literally trying to get on a path, trying to do something different, but immediately getting stuck—and accepting that and trying to fix things rather then let them get worse is what i associate with understanding new feelings of adulthood. 

for family, it was water for jughead, and the garage for betty. the expectations set upon them by their family, the worries they had about repeating history, the breaking of these cycles. 

(jughead’s was obviously more abstract, but i knew from the beginning that i wanted to build off fred’s line about fp was drowning and jughead could too. so drowning became an abstract metaphor, which became a direct metaphor, which became abstract again.)

for friends, it was less metaphor, more parallel. representing the visceral changes adulthood brings and observing the break up of a relationship and why that happened and what “timing” really is vs. a new relationship—and how being passive about choices is a choice and of itself. it was meant to work as a highlight to the forces within betty and jug that were keeping them from each other. 

so once i had all of those things decided, plotting them out just became about trajectory. again, i’m pretty new to long-term pacing, so heart rise above was basically my first real, measured, dedicated foray into it, but i wanted to establish the three themes very early on and then basically parcel them out equally over time. 

as in, solving each metaphorical blockage would be the key to understanding what the next one was. betty wasn’t able see what she wanted until she was to handle her issues with her sister until the truck was fixed. in parallel tandem for jughead and his father. 

but it was the inspiration of love and how love is not a bandaid, but rather simply asks you to be your best self that drove all of that exploration through the themes. but the themes drive the love story. again, cyclical. 

of course i also think it’s important not to layer too much angst or too much fluff back to back with itself. a lot of pacing is not overwhelming your audience with too much of anything. 

and…..that’s basically it! 

IN SUMMARY:

central, singular thesis concept 

three narrative metaphors/themes/points

cyclical nature of everything informing each other

start slow, start low

build up, the characters slowly making changes, taking risks, often unaware of it themselves

big peak of realization

with that comes angst, downward slope for a bit

then all the self-awareness that drives self-determination and seizing happiness

happily ever after, but just enough open ended to imply the rest of their lives etc

yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

FUCKIN YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

no BULLSHIT I KID YOU NOT! Look what I found while walking Home…..

OH MY GOD

OH MY F*CKIN GOD

THIS POST FUCKIN WORKS?!?!?! THIS IS PAST A COINCIDENCE NO WAY!??! NO FRIGGIN WAY!!! 

I try to confront you as little as possible, but after what I just read, I have to say something. You cannot compare them to a closeted gay relationship. 

Have you ever taken a minute to see how Cole was when he was with Bree? She was in basically at least one out of every 10 pictures he took. He was proud of his relationship and wanted everyone to know. So it wouldn’t even make sense that he’d treat Lili like he does, but that’s almost beside the point. 

If they were together that would HELP the show. Their PR team would not allow them to keep it a secret. You cannot compare them to Harry and Louis. They are not a gay couple. If they were together they would not be hiding their sexuality or be told by the team to keep quiet, you can clearly see the speculation is helping SUPPORT  the main couple on the show. 

🤔

she talked about waking up, seeing her roommates. and she said something along the lines of, “I saw my roommate and he uh… he had a friend over” 

sprousehart fam, please take this piece of information. I don’t know what to do with it but now with all the “cole and debby are roomates” theories, I’m like askjlgjklashdfjklsadhf. she does have other male roommates though, but… you know… heheh.

by the way, posted this around 4:45 pm pst and as of right now, she’s still streaming

Previously on LiliCole Sprousehart: We’ve been speculating whether Cole lives with Debby Ryan or not, and if thats why Lili is there all the time. Cole took her to Antelope Valley that she posted about wanting to go to just before he went there the last time for a photoshoot! She had a lovely dress on and they played Lana Del Ray and Weeknds new song Lust for life that has very Sprousehart friendly aesthetics and lyrics. Cole liked a funny Lili picture on Reddit. Lili posted a picture from a room with loads of polaroids and we all went crazy to see if there was a picture of Cole there. Lili went to a Marie Claire event last night with Mads and Cami and left early.