More examples:
Futurama: Silly devices/gadgets/design fiction objects
Simpsons: Arguably the couch gags+intro mini-story that triggers the main story, like “they go to the fair and Homer buys 1 dumbbell”
South Park: “we learned something today” faux-morals
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Rick and Morty: inter-dimensional cable and quick-sketched useless parallel universes which don’t do anything for the plot, like the farting-asses universe.
Best example might be the brilliant pizza-universe set. There is NO good reason for this scene
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What to call this principle? Spice-note?
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Replying to @vgr
This is nifty and needs a name, like “spice note” or something: the fun flavor element which does a lot of the story work
Star Wars: spaceship design
Superheroes: costume design
aSoIaF: house banners & words
Agatha Christie: etiquette
Wuxia: special weapons & attacks twitter.com/vgr/status/133…
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Secret sauce is perhaps too broad. 🤔
This is a narrower animating thing.
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Tolkien’s secret sauce which he began doing even before he conceived of Middle Earth in 1917 while recovering from the Somme twitter.com/vgr/status/133…
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Big mood? Generator? Flywheel? Root chakra? Idiopathy?
Principle needs a clear statement too: “every successful genre story has an unnecessarily overbuilt world id-element.”
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Replying to
I think it’s “leitmotif”. And then you have to break it down into the leit and the motif. The motif is the theme that people notice: eh pratchett’s puns and historical references. The leit is the motivating force behind them.
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Replying to
Are leitmotifs necessarily overbuilt though? To me the overbuilding is the key part. In your case I don’t think it is computer science concepts. It is wordplay (not just dad jokes). Whatever you have “too much” of for story needs in a sense.
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Sometimes they’re the same, but not always. In Rick and Morty I’d say the leitmotif is the nihilistic disillusionment bits scattered in every episode, but the id-element is “cheap universes”. Relationship: a multiverse where universes are really cheap induces nihilistic stories.
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Replying to
I think we are saying the same thing but arguing about what to call it. There’s the “virtue” that shines through and the “vice” that necessarily tags along with it.
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