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

[jenett]

So, I have another fractal (and I'm sorry for the fact it's Madam Pinkness, but she makes a good example here.)

Her post right after spring hols Y5, about new restrictions coming back to school

So, the first thing I should say was that figuring out how she was going to escalate when was really complicated: a lot of the plot about her blackmailing Raz was because we hit the question of "You have at least two highly competent people in the building who have no compunctions about killing other people, why do they not stop her?" and then we had to figure out what would stop them (a combo of a threat to Raz and then V's backing to let it play out, to make Harry do something being the solution we landed on, because we also realised we had to get Harry being more actively rebellious in some form sometime that year.)

But it also mattered to me that we had a reasonable progression from her end, that she got worse and worse, but in a way that made internal sense to her, and that built.

1) Kicking her demands for knowledge about private details up into higher and higher gear, and bringing out the theme of lack of privacy in a totalitarian regime.

2) Getting another mention in there of the role of the number 8 in the Protectorate (we went back and forth for a while on the total number of horcruxes, and decided on eight, and then had to seed 'eight is important, watch for that number' in there for a bit.)

3) The addition of further awful requirements (we never really picked this one up, I think because it's a kind of thing that's very tiring, but they were meant to be encounter-group style sessions, where one person sits in the middle and everyone else tells them what faults they need to correct. If I remember right, I'd had the idea for this earlier, and we didn't spring it until late in Umbridge's arc because we wanted to hint at it being horrible but not actually have to do much with it.)

4) Bringing out some more of the class dynamics, something Umbridge was pretty sensitive too, but that often were less commented on among the students for stretches of time.

5) Pushing the pureblood/halfblood separation much more clearly, so that Harry would be able to take a much more definitive stand.

6) Up the risks for the ISS kids, because they'd all spent their hols being tutored by traitors to the Protectorate.

And then there were some great comments (I adore Sally-Anne's "Dear Sirius Black, please do not give her additional ideas.")

[elisem]

She had the tiara by then, and it was ramping her up even further, right?

Umbridge + Horcrux = oh, dear.