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

[gwendolyngrace]

I think what you're describing is a process that is bound to happen with any set of characters where not all the variables are known at the first instance.

Naomi and I did not plan for Seamus and Padma to be besties, but it happened and it worked and we kept building on the groundwork that had been established to deepen and strengthen their relationship.

Deb mentioned that beautiful night when she and I stayed up til 3 (well, it was 3 for me; it was 1 for her) allowing Regulus and Sirius to finally talk to one another and hear each other, possibly for the first time in their lives. (At the time it was the latest night I had had playing Alternity. I look at this last weekend and think, "oh, how little you knew from late nights....")

But as I said, that conversation was a touchstone I used over and over in my understanding of Sirius's psychology, and Deb, in her play of Barty, particularly, used her understanding of Regulus to shade and inform what additional ammunition Barty could fire at Sirius. Because the same post featured a Reg-Pansy conversation, it also allowed me and Linny later to circle back to Pansy's relationships with both of them - Sirius's jealousy (and yes, he was!) that she started getting her advice from Reg instead of him, their bonding over how awful Walburga was and what it was like for her to be in Grimmauld Place, her love of music and how she used it to inform and broaden her horizons, etc.

Granted, I think the phenomenon you're discussing is much more obvious and varied when it's an open post like you're using to illustrate, and we had fewer and fewer of those as the plot and the necessities of character-cliques dictated smaller and smaller circles of trusted confidantes, but yeah, you're totally right.

It shows that we were careful and conscientious authors, yes, but also readers of each other's work, picking up cues that we left without even necessarily knowing we were laying the pipe.

[elisem]

That's the thing, yes! Readers, and picking up cues. And then playing catch with them, rather than bludgering each other.