So hey! How about Traveler Con, am I right?

Fjord’s leap was pretty sweet, as was him actually talking about his feelings. I rewatched both bits this morning to check I caught any nuances that I may have missed last night because I was very sleepy and my internet was patchy. I also glanced at the chat, which I guess I probably shouldn’t do. People are real hung up on ships, huh? Specifically I remember someone shouting about how Fjord and Jester was the most boring ship possible. 

I read a post recently refuting the idea that Jester is (and Keyleth before her was) a manic pixie dream girl. I believe that was written in reference to Caleb (the bitch of tumblr is if you don’t remember who made a post and you didn’t reblog it, it can be hard as hell to find it again), but I’d been thinking about it in regards to Fjord because he tends to be kind of taciturn on his actual thoughts and feelings and we got more out of him last night than usual. 

Specifically I’ve been thinking that one of the things I love most about critical role as a format is that it’s an exceptionally democratic ensemble cast. Nobody is the protagonist. Jester, Veth, and Cadeucus get coequal arcs with more traditional protagonist characters like Fjord (the insecure man trying to find himself and become a hero) and Caleb (the man trying to atone for his dark past and find redemption), and to a lesser extent Yasha (the grieving soul trying to find peace) and Beau (the rebellious child transitioning to adult responsibilities). If you wrote this story with either Fjord or Caleb as the viewpoint character, the main focus of the narrative, then yeah, Jester honestly probably would end up a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Especially in the hands of a writer who was very uncritically bought in to a number of assumptions rampant in American Culture. But the thing I quite like a bout Critical Role is that that really isn’t what it’s doing. Rumblecusp is Jester’s arc and everybody in it is her supporting character, but everybody gets their time and their spotlight. Fjord, who would have been I think a mediocre protagonist under the full weight of the story, gets to be delightful and one of my favorites because he can do things like fuck off and just have two spa days in a row. 

I’ve also been thinking about ships because that seems to consume so much of the.... well the everything and it’s just not my bag. Or at least it isn’t in the same way, I think? For example, Fjorester is actually my favorite ship just because so much of it revolves around both Fjord and Jester trying to squeeze Fjord into roles he’s not necessarily equipped for, and because both characters have done a lot of emotional maturing in ways connected to it. But Fjord and Jester getting together appeals to me significantly less than Fjord and Jester both just maturing into whole and supportive people who are the tightest fucking friends ever, and even moreso because they have that shared history of trying to feel each other out as potential romantic partners. If Fjord and Jester hooked up now, honestly, I’d feel like it was cheap and Fjord particularly hadn’t earned it, given all the time he’s spent pointedly not acknowledging it. Likewise I love that Caleb has a crush on Jester but has zero intention of expressing it to her in any way but showing off to her with magic he thinks will make her happy, knowing she can’t see it for what it is. Caleb and Jester actually becoming smooch buddies though? I’m kind a meh on it. Could be fun, I guess, but the quiet and unrequited of it is what hits me. I love Beau having a crush on Jester and dealing with it like an eight year old playground bully. I love Yasha trying to wash Jester’s weasel, which I feel like you could definitely read as a heroic amorous sacrifice.  

And frankly all of this, to me, feels like a fun side dish to a meal that’s about crazy ass psuedogods and political intrigue. Which is not to say I think everybody’s got to feel this way, more just that... I guess sometimes I don’t really understand the intensity of the focus on ships. 

analexia: retaining only a partial memory of something (usually words that you’ve read, or something that has been said to you).

roman-photo: a story told through photography.

metonymy: a word or phrase that is used to stand in for another word. (for example, the use of “the bottle” to mean a form of strong drink, or “count heads” to mean “count people”). 

internal analepsis: a flashback to a point earlier in the narrative.

external analepsis: a flashback to a time before the story began.

returning analepsis: filling in gaps in a story later on in the narrative.

prolepsis: anticipating a possible future as if it has already happened (i.e. a flash-forward).

analepsis on paralipsis: deliberately omitting something whilst recounting past events.

anisochronies: variations in narrative rhythm.

explicit ellipsis: skipping over a portion of events with reference to time passing (”two years later...”)

implicit ellipsis: skipping over a portion of the narrative and leaving it to the reader to work out exactly what, and how much, has been omitted.

iterative ellipsis: the mentioning of events that are linked to a certain retroactive time period. for example, “drinking lemonade in the garden” and “going to the beach” might both be related to “last summer”.

exordium: introduction.

isochrony: how language is divided into time portions. (for example, iambic pentameter.)

introduction

there are three separate meanings of narrative:

a discourse describing a series of events. (the story of ulysses is a narrative.) we can call this the story.

the events themselves, and the order in which they occur. (ulysses goes to an island, his men are turned into pigs, he meet circe, etc.)  we can call this the narrative.

the act of narrating something. (for example, ulysses’ telling of his adventures.) we can call this the narration. 

this third meaning is complex, as in some cases the story itself depends upon the action of telling. is ulysses the real narrator, or homer? if ulysses’ narration of events is fictitious, then his act of narrating becomes central to the story, because the story itself depends on it. 

key relationships:

the relationship between a story and the events that occur within it.

the relationship between the story and the person telling it. 

tense - relationship between the time of the story and time that the narration is expressed. for example, the past tense indicates that an event from the narrative occurred prior to the narration. 

aspect - how the story is perceived by the narrator. for example, the first-person pronoun marks the unity between character and narrator.

mood - type of discourse used by the narrator. for example: style, voice, perception of events, etc

order and time

narrative creates a duality of time. two years may be summed up in a sentence; one thought or interaction might span pages.  

media such as real-time film or comic strips can avert this

there is also the question of reading time - i.e. how long it takes us to finish reading about a sequence of events. by reading a novel, time has been actualised. the non-physical time that the author has depicted in the novel becomes physical time. however: the time it takes to read a novel rarely equates to the time-span of the novel itself. therefore you have three kinds of time: pseudo-time, reading time, and physical time. 

events in a narrative that take place out of order are called anachronies. these are visible in almost every kind of narrative save for the most basic ones (for example, fables). “three days ago...” and “it had happened because...” are examples of anachronies. 

it is possible to chart, or graph, the order of anachronies in a paragraph by labelling each one as present, future, or past. that way, it can be determined which aspects of the paragraph are linked to one another, and how they are interrelated. for example: does the paragraph zigzag between past and present? does it spend much of its time in the future before returning abruptly to the past as a means of comparing the two?

duration

because it is impossible to gauge the exact timespan of a book due to all its temporal shifts, we must therefore measure timespan by looking at the difference between narrative time and story time. whilst the events themselves may remain steady (one thing happens, and then another, and another, ad infinitum), the narrative may change pace, allowing for a greater sense of rhythm.

for example: proust’s “remembrance of things past” alters its rhythm in its later volumes, moving from a fluid and delicate temporality to a more brutal and rhythmic one. in the first volume, scenes are short and follow one another sequentially; in the last, scenes are very long, almost like stories in their own right, and are separated by huge narrative gaps. in this way, novels can be seen to have their own tempo. 

dialogue comes the closest to reconciling narrative time with story time.

in a summary of events, narrative time will be less than story time; in a verbal exchange, narrative time will be equal to story time; in a lingering description or drawn-out visual scene, narrative time will be greater than story time.

It is important for film makers to understand that ot everything can be included in a  film an so a process of selection must go on, which is pretty much the compression and reducing of ideas and material to a more manageable amount. the film must include, however;

Sequencing - deliberately arranging events

Causality -  linked to cause and effect

Conflict - must be something that is fought over

Closure- all stories must have an end. stories are defined by their ending.