hello again due to The Spiders I have started the process of converting a former Special Comfort OC Guy Story into a tragedy, due to him becoming contaminated with Sludge and becoming un-fluff fic-able. I can take comfort in him no longer so therefore I am making his life Worse as divine retribution
As the resident tragedy/predestination/Media That Makes You Feel Bad TM enjoyer, any advice on the Inevitablity of tragedy? What is it about a story, in your opinion, that makes it feel like "Yes, these choices *could* have gone differently, but it would have been a betrayal of the writing to do so?" I have a beginning, and the actual timeline and everything exists, but I want to really cement that special spiders "personal agency conudrum" sauce in the middle so that it's not just "bad things happen to this guy for some reason" if you know what I mean.
Additionally, if you have pinnacle Tragedy Media For Pain and Suffering recommendations they would be appreciated.
Thanks very much and enjoy the spiders as always
imo the best Spiders come from a character making a choice that makes things worse by acting on a personality flaw that they were already aware of. at least on some level they already know "I'm too impulsive / self-centered / untrusting / loyal / proud / etc," but knowing that doesn't erase the flaw, so there's almost a version of them standing an inch back from the situation watching their body make what they know is the wrong call saying "oh god oh no oh fuck." a good thing to pair with this one is a moment where it really does seem like they've got an opportunity to call it quits with The Narrative, but then something goes a little awry and shocks them back into old patterns of behavior in a moment of stress, and whoopsie daisy they've done something irreversible. another classic is to have it set up so there is some kind of external agent forcing the character to act a certain way for a while, and the character clearly doesn't like it, but then the external force goes away and they still keep acting the way they've been conditioned because the external force has become the internal critic.
