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 Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:17 pm
Something I've seen a lot of people struggling with lately is coming up with plot arcs, storylines, and overarching narratives for their journals! I think one of the biggest assets to combat that is to have a baseline theme that you can refer back to whenever you feel stuck and unsure of where to take your characters next. The purpose of this thread is to compile a list of narrative themes for every raevan, but also help you come up with one if you don't have anything in mind yet! It's okay if you don't or are feeling stuck - hopefully looking at others can inspire you, or you can ask others for help if you feel comfortable! Here, you'll be able to refer back to everyone's themes and make sure that yours will be a unique one that you find engaging and fun to write with. To put it simply, you should try to come up with a phrase that can summarize your raevan's overall theme. It should be a recurring theme that they struggle with, time and again, in a unique variety of ways. It's something that shapes their decisions, the events around them, and themselves as a person - it should also be simple and clear for your own reference! Don't try to force something so precise that you get trapped in running through the same sorts of plotlines over and over, or something that can be resolved in a single arc, but give yourself and your raevan room to grow while still keeping the general flavor of the theme. This is NOT meant as a place for you to explain your raevan's entire storyline, just the general themes it involves! Please try to keep your explanations spoiler free for your benefit and others! Here is a list of currently known narrative themes for existing raevans!Cruz: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." LuLu: Themes of "indulgence" as she struggles with the concept of "being perfect." Aina: "Life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful!" Laurel: “Only when we face the impossible, and experience the unbearable, do we find out who we truly are.” Rhedefre (Cesc): "It's okay if it isn't you." Lorin: "Trust and love yourself as much as you trust and love others." Eden: "There cannot be light without darkness-- life would be incomplete." Vesna: "Only you can decide who you are." Cordelia: "The shadows of the past will forever follow and bind me... and for better or worse, will continue to shape my future." Dair: "The truth is rarely pure and never simple." ------ IF YOU'D LIKE TO SUBMIT YOUR NARRATIVE THEME please respond here with the phrase in quotation marks! Optionally, you may also include: a few sentences of supporting evidence as to how this theme applies to the raevan.
some common/recurring concepts or metaphors in your storytelling.
or anything else you wish that you think may add to the understanding of your raevan's narrative! You may find it more helpful to lay these details out, both for yourself and the benefit of others in understanding your character! Please check out my post for Cruz for an example of all of these to give you a better idea of where to start. For more detailed information, please see everyone's individual posts below.
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:19 pm
cruz
"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
All of Cruz's motivations, every choice he makes, and every action he takes, are with the intent never to cause harm. He wants to make things simple, better, safe, and happy for everyone but often he causes more trouble than he fixes. He's meddlesome and has a lot of difficulty knowing when he's overstepped his boundaries. More often than not, he brings about more complicated conflict than if he simply asked for permission. This is Cruz's fatal flaw as it is very nature as the Forceful Mistletoe to take tasks upon himself without a second thought and not tiptoe around social ceremony. While Cruz never wants to upset others, it is his very essence of self that dictates he step over other's feelings to meet his goals and it is something he struggles with constantly.
xxx- When he was still young, he took it upon himself to try and find his guardian a boyfriend without her permission.
xxx- His growth to sigel was heralded by attempting to bridge a gap in his guardian's estranged relationship with her father.
xxx- He has unintentionally made people uncomfortable and nearly ruined friendships because of poor communication.
Cruz's most recurring concept is the theme of consent and how important it is to respect people's boundaries.
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:05 pm
OHOHOH, I love this idea. It lends such an interesting layer when reading everyone's writing when you can reflect back on their intentions. It also helps to think on this when streamlining your RP goals!
LULU
"Indulgence"
Struggling with a balance between giving and taking. Lu bounces between this duality very frequently. She wants to help and support others, but has an innate selfishness she cannot let go of.
"Being perfect"
This was the big overarching theme of her first growth arc. AKA, being the prefect princess. However, it will still play a roll in her future development. Lu battles with what she believes the perfect person is and how difficult it is to achieve that vision for herself.
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:05 pm
Aina!
"Life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful."
aina is an incredibly anxious person at her core, and a lot of that is defined by trying to manage the really picturesque life she has grown up into. growing up as a childlike raevan has made her life incredibly idealistic, with people wanting nothing more than to protect her innocence, but the more she learns about her family, their troubles, and their pasts, the more aina struggles to simply accept things vs. overexerting herself to make things as perfect as she has always viewed things to be.
- her story arch is introduced by family struggles and arguments before her birth that color everybody's relationship with each other as slightly negative. once aina grows, her family tries to push that in the background and pretend like things are fine btwn one another.
- once that begins to break down, and her family is forced to confront what they have denied, they see what they have raised aina into full force. she is unable to handle instability and tries her absolute hardest to help things return to baseline, only to fail and make things fall further into chaos.
- her life philosophy is captured by her first school project when she asks what makes her friends and family happy. she is obsessed with this project, even before she begins school properly, because it encapsulates her biggest ideal in a perfect life - everybody being as happy as they can possibly be.
she's gonna learn real fast that some things can't be Solved, only forgiven, or maybe just processed, and that having overwhelming burdens does not mean that people can't be happy or have a good life in the end. Things Will Be OK. ANXIETY SUCKS
i hope that all made sense my man
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:06 pm
Laurel
“Only when we face the impossible, and experience the unbearable, do we find out who we truly are.”
- Vironika Tugaleva
Laurel's theme is centered around facing fear and defying odds set against him. Through determination, courage, inner strength, and unconditional love, Laurel will learn when to fight, when to flee, and find the balance between these two extremes. Furthermore, he will grow to understand that not everything is quite as it seems, and that what might feel like kindness and compassion on the surface, might actually be a cover for something far more sinister lurking underneath.
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:31 pm
Cesc It's ok if it isn't you.
It's okay if you're not the one in control. It's ok if you're not the one solving the problems. It's okay if you're not the one with the answers. It's okay if it's not you that fulfills someone else's expectations.
Many of Cesc's arcs deal with:
A) Capability: You don't always have to be the responsible party.
Ever since the jungle and probably before, Cesc has been worried about being able to protect others from harm, to help them get what they need, and to be the capable one if ever anyone needs it. He's like that about work, he's like that with his friends, he's even like that with strangers. It partly comes from his soul and partly from his ability to know what people are yearning for or missing; he wants to supply that and will sometimes ignore his own needs and wants, which leads to...
B) You don't have to solve everyone else's problems.
Cesc's stubborn desire to do good sometimes forces himself into situations where he knows he is making a poor decision and will do it anyway. He's working on finding a balance between doing what he wants to do for others and better listening to his own needs (or, you know, self-preservation.) It's a work in progress.
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Friendly Conversationalist
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:35 pm
LORIN
"Trust and love yourself as much as you trust and love others."
Lorin is exceedingly friendly, making sure his friends are cared for and accommodated, as well as always striving to make a good impression. He loves his friends and family more than anything, so when he is unable to make a friend with someone, he turns the examination upon himself and wonders where he went wrong. What was his misstep? This is particularly true in the case of Aaron's parents, who do not like him on principle because of a number of factors which have nothing to do with the boy himself. However being identified as something "bad" confuses and frightens him greatly - he is determined to set things right and do something to earn their love and trust.
This and a few other family-related circumstances puts him in a difficult position where he feels that in order to be truly accepted, he needs to be the most helpful person he can be to everyone, despite what his own feelings and desires may be. He deftly side-steps questions about himself and hoists the focus on friends, because he wants to shoulder his problems like he perceives adults do so that he does not cause worry or upset. He stubbornly wants to fix problems himself and not ask for help, to prove his own capabilities and earn the love and affection of those he cherishes, even if they do not cherish him in return. Deep down, he is afraid that his grandparents were correct and he really is bad, and that others will move on without him and forget him unless he presents himself in a certain way. He ranks his desires below that of anyone else's, and leaving such things unaddressed will only cause problems in the long run. If Lorin doesn't trust and love himself, he will not be fully able to love and trust others, as much as he thinks putting them on a pedestal is showing his love.
Family, trust, patience, and trying to grow up too fast are big plot elements in Lorin's stories, as well as learning to be okay with not being okay. Nobody is perfect, after all, and nobody should strive to be~
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:43 pm
eden
"There cannot be light without darkness-- life would be incomplete."
• Since the day she found out about her soul and what it was--and who it was--Eden has struggled with the contrast between that and her essence. Nymphs create life and are pure beings. Her very survival depends on her destroying things, no matter how much she creates. In fact the more she creates, the more she has to destroy.
• ALL ABOARD THE REPRESSION TRAIN!! Everything's fine if I just don't deal with it, right?
• She will begin to retreat into and comfort herself with the digital world, where there are no Real Problems and everything is beautiful and expertly coordinated. She starts to adapt this in real life as well, and struggles to keep up her "perfect" facade. Relationships will suffer, particularly when she does not want others to see she is not perfect.
• Things start to unravel when her passions become more like work and nothing really makes her feel happy anymore; she has no more escape mechanisms and grasps at straws to avoid her insecurities. Here begins her downward spiral.
This "accepting herself" theme will live on past her growth, but beyond that I haven't thought of much yet!
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 4:51 pm
ok well vesna has a few different themes in her arc but here's 1
vesna
"Only you can decide who you are."
-with her magical glamor, everyone actually literally projects what they think of vesna onto her, and it's hard for her not to go out of her way to try to please people or play along w/that
-she's also not very creative when it comes to defining herself, so ends up copying the things she likes as best she can and working them into her identity- her fixation on shoujo protagonists, her admiration for eden's lifestyle, etc.
-she's always being told by lorenzo and co. to decide who she wants to be and what her recovery from undeath feels like, but she doesn't fit in all the way with the dead or the living, and ends up feeling pressured by the expectation to be both
-she's got a lot of baggage from her soul that she doesn't remember yet, that essentially serves as a whole other person w/invisible expectations tied to that- someone who gave up the last spark of (un)life they were clinging to in order to make her
-essentially, all these elements are going to make her feel like she needs to run away rather than face the decisions she has to make head on and end up in a situation where someone a lot less friendly than lorenzo is trying to trap her into answering the question of who she is in a way they want to hear.
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Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 8:10 pm
Cordelia
"The shadows of the past will forever follow and bind me..."
Oddly enough this is a recurring theme for the entire Shade family. Things they've said, things they've done, things said or done to them (especially bad things) tend to linger with them looooong after they have happened. And Cordelia is no exception. In fact, it's probably worse for her as she has to deal with a past life she is now fully aware of. Throughout life, Delia will have to struggle with what she was, what she is and what she will ultimately become.
- Recurring themes of loss, regret and sorrow.
"...and for better or worse, will continue to shape my future."
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Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 9:31 pm
dair
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Dair's ability to sense lies give him a false sense of security that he isn't able to be deceived, which is something that he'll find out the hard way isn't the case when he gets dragged into the politics and scheming of the fae court. The first chunk of his growth will really focus on him realizing that he's just as
easily duped than anyone else, which will lead to some serious trust issues down the road, as well as a whole fun slew of moral quandaries that come along with taking a view on truth as cavalier as the fae.
The ultimate goal he's working towards is learning to trust in his own instincts and morals rather than relying on habits that he's picked up from being in unpleasant situations.
i'll probably be editing this later, i'm having problems with words tonight hahaha
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