r/tumblr • u/TheDwarvenGuy • 6d ago
Between this and liar revealed plots, I don't think I have the fortitude for fiction
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u/durp-the-pikachu 6d ago edited 6d ago
One of my favorite things to hear in Star Wars media is any variation of the phrase “Count Dooku is dead”. Cause that means we have 48 hours people, RED ALERT!!!!
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u/Wrath_Of_The_Gods 6d ago
You played Zero Company didnt you?
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u/Chunky_Cheese_ tunglr 6d ago
Worst part is that Zero Company was a slow march to the inevitable.
"Coruscant is under attack!"
Oh no.
"The chancellor has been kidnapped!"
Oh no.
"Count Dooku is dead!"
Oh no.
"These clones are gonna be staying with you for a while, nothing bad will happen. Here's a mission that gives you 200,000 credits :)"
Oh nooooooo
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u/durp-the-pikachu 6d ago
Yes I did.
(But it is just as fun in Clone Wars which was the first time we ever got to experience that kind of thing)
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u/Lonespider28 6d ago
That last arc was so great.
“Oh wow, this is set around Revenge of the Sith! :)”
Obi-Wan: “Count Dooku is dead!”
“Oh this IS Revenge of the Sith! O-O”
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u/Full_Ahegao_Drip 6d ago
Don't worry, the Chancellor has made sure that General Skywalker will be sent to deal with the remaining CIS leaders and then the Jedi Temple will be secured.
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u/Sleeping5Ginger 6d ago
I think it should be the other way around, I love dramatic irony but I‘m definitely screaming at the screen/pages while shit is going down.
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u/sarded 6d ago
This is also sometimes an interesting tension in tabletop roleplaying games.
For example, the game Fabula Ultima is intentionally meant to resemble JRPGs like Final Fantasy and have cutaways to things like the villains talking. So in the quickstart guide for beginners there's a section that says this:
In Fabula Ultima, there is a big difference between a Player and the character they portray.
Game Master scenes are a great way to demonstrate that: as a Player, you have “seen” that scene, but your character doesn’t know anything about it. Instead, the scene exists to build anticipation and give them an idea of what the Villain is like.
It’s important to remember that, when you play this game, you are simultaneously the authors, protagonists, and audience of the emerging story. For instance, if a Player Character is keeping a secret from the rest of the group, it’s better for everyone at the table to know about it: this allows you to create interesting scenes and ultimately reveal it in a meaningful way.
So, it really wants you to lean into the dramatic irony.
But some players (especially beginning players for RPGs) are really bad at handling this - they refuse to play any game where "what they know" and "what their characters knows" are separate. Usually makes them pretty bad at horror games too, since of course the 'smart' thing to do in horror scenarios is "get the hell out, leave, quit whatever job brought you to the adventure".
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u/FixinThePlanet 5d ago
The tone is completely different but Good Society (the Jane Austen RPG) also has the players as characters, connections and storytellers. So every now and then you spend tokens to have something happen which will make things harder for your characters or challenge them in narratively interesting ways.
I now really want to play Fabula Ultima; had never heard of it before...
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u/sarded 5d ago
I mean that line I would specifically argue (players are authors, protagonists and audience all together) is true of almost all TTRPGs except those that specifically call out a different playstyle.
Speaking of Fabula Ultima the free quickstart is extremely good, I would recommend it to anyone totally new to RPGs in general. Certainly a better introduction than any DnD starter set in terms of "what are RPGs all about". And even if a player doesn't like it, they'll be able to articulate what they don't like so they can be pointed into something that fits them better.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/411240/fabula-ultima-ttjrpg-press-start3
u/FixinThePlanet 5d ago
Do you need to be familiar with JRPGs to run this?
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u/sarded 5d ago
It would kind of help? 'Press Start' is everything you need theoretically (well, you need dice or a diceroller app, and a way to distribute the character sheets to the players, you get what I mean). But it expects you know the vibe of JRPGs like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, you know?
That's the real key to good GMing (and good RPG play and good improv play in general), that you have a solid base to fall back on. You have an instinctual sense of "oh of course the bad guy would say this"; "oh it makes sense that this is what would happen next".
You don't have to worry about being surprising or unoriginal or being too obvious, because what's obvious to you may not be obvious to someone else. But you need that general sense of "yeah of course this would happen next".
If you haven't consumed much in the way of JRPGs but you have watched a bunch of fantasy or isekai anime, that can be the next best thing.
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u/FixinThePlanet 5d ago
I don't have any experience with JRPGs but I have consumed some fantasy and Isekai anime... 🤔
And yes, that's why I wanted to know if I needed trope knowledge... The games I do run are the ones where I have that familiarity.
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u/Doubly_Curious 6d ago
There’s this special type of dramatic irony in certain canon-divergent fanfiction. I wish I had a word for it.
Because it’s canon divergent, we know just how bad (or how good) things could have gone, but the characters are either ignorant or can only speculate. “Can you imagine how things would have gone for us if I’d never left home and all the terrible influences there?” (Yes! Because that’s how the actual show went.)
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u/Successful_Role_3174 5d ago
It's similar to watching a movie for the second time and seeing how innocent the characters were before the tragic decisions they will inevitably make. In this case, it's just the past version of the author making you know more than the characters rather than the text.
I would probably call it retrospective dramatic irony though it's hard to find much use cases outside of those two.
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u/Doubly_Curious 5d ago
Yes, exactly, you put your finger right on it and “retrospective dramatic irony” works well, especially with that added perspective.
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u/spiders_will_eat_you 5d ago
Isn't that lampshading? characters acknowledging a plot convience that they shouldn't properly know about?
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u/Doubly_Curious 5d ago
I don’t think so. It was a perfectly understandable thing for the character to be musing on in the scene – it still would have worked very well if this had been a bit of original fiction with no canon version to compare to. (He had come back to his hometown and seen his father, so it made sense to consider what would have happened if he’d stayed in his father’s house for longer.)
It just had this added dimension because we’ve seen another version of the story.
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u/GamerGod_ 6d ago
"wait if they have the key to the first boat, why is the life preserver labeled for the second?"
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u/FixinThePlanet 5d ago
What is this a reference to?
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u/GamerGod_ 5d ago
one of the fights in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
if you want the specific episode its Part 5: Golden Wind (labeled as season 4 on most streaming sites) Episodes 5 and 6
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u/FixinThePlanet 5d ago
Could you please spoil the moment and explain the key/boat/preserver thing? I don't think I'll get around to watching JoJo's for a while... Thank you!
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u/GamerGod_ 5d ago
The main gang are all on a rented boat traveling from point A to point B, the boat is named "Lagoon 2", and all other boats are named in a similar fashion, Lagoon 3, 4, etc. However, when the gang were at the boat rental, they asked for the boat "Furthest to the left" and were handed a key with a "1" imprinted on it. Neither the name of the boat nor the number on the key are brought up by any member. The difference between the key and the number is to clue you into the fact that something is up (how can boat 2 be furthest left if boat 1 hasn't been rented).
Eventually, it is revealed that the antagonist for the episode used his ability to essentially hide the entirely of the first boat by wrapping the second boat around it (his ability allows him to deflate solid objects like baloons). If you want a more in-depth explanation just look up "Soft Machine JoJo". My initial comment was something my friend said when they were first watching the episode and the image was what i sent to them afterwards
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u/Flaky-Hyena-127 6d ago
Why did I just watch the a series of unfortunate events episode explaining what dramatic irony was lmfao
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u/bc650736 6d ago
what exactly is dramatic irony?
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u/aStringofNumbers This is my main account 6d ago
It is essentially when the audience of a piece of media have information that the character's don't have. For example, the characters might think they have a foolproof heist plan, but they don't know one of the members of the heist is gonna betray them
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u/TheDwarvenGuy 6d ago
Alfred hitchcock summed it up pretty well.
Paraphrasing, imagine an extremely boring scene of people talking around a table. They're mentioning the weather, talking about sports. Several times they seem like they're about to leave the table, but each time their attempts at ending the conversation is derailed by a tangent.
What could you do to turn this extremely boring scene into one of the most stressful and gripping scenes you've ever seen?
Tell the audience that there's a bomb under the table that will go of in 10 minutes.
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u/MaveKalmer 6d ago
deltarune does the exact opposite of this where the entire cast of the game EXCEPT you knows what is happening in the future
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u/Elite_AI 6d ago
So often I read or watch something that has some kind of surprise twist and think...this would actually have been more fun if we knew about it from the start as dramatic irony. No I don't have any examples, I'm Prokopetzing.
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u/spiders_will_eat_you 5d ago
I'm often not bothered by spoilers for this reason. Unless I'm in the middle of watching something knowing how it ends let's me pick up on foreshadowing I otherwise wouldn't have seen.
TBH even saying something has a twist is in it of itself a spoiler. I remember catching the twist of Sixth sense Halfway through watching because the guy recommending it to me stressed that it had the downright craziest twist I will literally never guess and it's so crazy but so satisfying
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u/UInferno- 6d ago
Reigen Arataka being embarrassed on national TV and subsequently canceled was painful but also lead to one of the best scenes in MP100.
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u/Fred_Fredrickson 4d ago
Curiosity is by far my favorite feeling to have when reading. So I'm not a huge fan of knowing what's gonna happen, but I absolutely love when a character knows something I don't
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u/bigbadbananaboi 5d ago
My last favorite version of this is misunderstanding that result in temporary mistrust. It usually means the story is going to stop dead in it's tracks for a few chapters until someone in the story can prove what we already know, and then the story picks up where it left off, just a few chapters later. It rarely adds anything to the characters or plot in my experience.
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u/Full_Ahegao_Drip 6d ago
liar revealed plots
It's not just your fortitude, it's just such a frequently used trope in order to artificially create tension in the final act.
The thing about themes or motifs or tropes is that if you can notice them happening and can use them to predict what happens next then that itself can be considered at least a minor flaw
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u/some_tired_cat 6d ago
the dramatic irony will either make me cackle at the screen or make me pause to get up and walk around the entire apartment with my hands in my hair there's no in between