Some Posts Are Fractal, or, It's Foreshadowing And Characterisation All the Way Down

[elisem]

So I just clicked over to Jeremy's goofing up the private message on an Order Only post, and reading through it reminded me how very many things get done at once in a lot of Alternity posts. (I know I'm talking about my own character, but it happens in every character's timeline.) In this one post, early in Jeremy's played time, there's:

* foreshadowing for the working relationship Bill and Jeremy have (which will eventually lead to Jeremy asking Bill to be best man when Jeremy and Maureen finally wed)
* an example of how the ISS group pools info to figure out what the grownups are not telling them
* Kingsley's guidance, and why he is so very much missed
* Sally-Anne, Pansy and Ron talking over interpersonal dynamics with an eye to future trouble and calculating the risk thereof
* Jeremy demonstrating his unexamined cluelessness about emotional impact by using the word squib as a self-putdown -- in front of Alice, while everyone is waiting to see if Frank has lost his magic for good. (This cluelessness about emotional impact will flower when he offers Hermione Teddy Nott's wand as a trophy and working tool.)
* showing how Remus/Sirius/Alice/Molly look after one another in times of stress and worry
* good early example of how Sally-Anne and Jeremy chat and banter (Sally-Anne telling him " I just lack the commitment to science and data-gathering that some Ravenclaws have, which is probably why the Hat put me in Slytherin.")

... and probably more. One of the things I love about Alternity is how interwoven all the pieces wound up being, and how not only the playing advanced the narrative, but how many directions it so often advanced the narrative at once.

Got any examples of fractal posts that you liked a lot? Pivotal ones? Or just things where the interplay and worldbuilding delighted you?

Comments

[synecdochic]

I had SO MUCH FUN with the 'random example from wizarding literature'. Because Tosha is so widely read that there's always an example somewhere! (I also loved that he was a snob about theatre and opera. The exchanges where he and Narcissa were catty about various things never failed to amuse me.)

You, meanwhile, are AMAZING at coming up with wizarding nonfiction.

[jenett]

I really love the payoff for a bit of Siz's background, where she goes "Wait, my own master, when I apprenticed, taught me a whole bunch of obscure wizarding culture so I could... translate her personal notes properly? Okay, then."

Alde was a serious Slyth grand dame who was about 120 at that point, who really didn't want to take Siz on, but did it because she'd owed a favour for about a century to Siz's predecessor. (I have backstory fic, I love Alde.)

But Siz was, at that point, an even more awkward young adult than she was later, very 'paint by numbers' with social skills (here are acceptable topics to ask about, here are the ones people don't like talking about), and really not good with the kind of manners/culture/etc. that would let her move comfortably in complex academic circles in a field where a lot of people who do it don't need to work for a living (or at least can work weird hours.) And even without her own awkwardness, she was a nice kid from a yeoman Huff family a generation or two away from being farmers.

And so Alde sort of shrugged when Alcor said "This is the payback I want", and said "Ok. I'll teach her All The Things" (making her earn it every step of the way) and then did. (They eventually became very close, but the first year or two were really rough.) And thus able to have those conversations.

And it's that stuff that let her manage Raz's social circles as well as she did, I think.

[jenett]

And on the non-fiction: for a couple of years, I was doing lists of books, riffing off current popular books. (This was a lot easier when I had the job where I was reading Booklist, one of the publications librarians use for book selection, every month)

So there's a bunch of books in the wiki where I looked at 'this is popular', riffed on it for Alternity, and threw it in a list, so that when we needed a book to mention, we had something handy and didn't have to think it up on the spot.

The Pure Hunger series started as one of those. I'm also rather fond of the "Dorothy L. Sayers was a Muggle, but her books are good, and this series isn't quite as good, but hits enough of the same tropes you might still inhale it"Carrillon Forrest series.

Elise helped with a lot of it, even before she started playing: I have several happy memories of sitting in her livng room while still living in Minneapolis and saying "Book that does X" and her coming up with awesome titles or details
Oh! I should mention the name for the original database that had 'random stuff in it' when we were still on Yahoo!, which I think was Gwen's or Flourish's naming? It was called the Room of Requirement. Like you would.

[elisem]

"Annoying book about etiquette!"
"Pop-culture trendy book about time management and mindfulness!!"
"Bad erotica for wanna-be Death Eaters!"

OK, we didn't do that last one. At least not as far as I can recall.

[cheyinka]

"Fifty Shades of Octarine"? Wait, wrong series...

[naomikritzer]

You mean "Intra Profundis"?

[elisem]

Point! For some reason, that one had been temporarily scrubbed from slipped my mind just then.