Vertical integration : stories :: horizontal integration : ?
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I’m think sitcoms are more horizontal. So situations. Revealing that with streaming more situational things have long arcs across seasons.
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The analogy puzzle is not quite well posed. It’s more like:
Vertical integration : (story > X) :: horizontal integration : (X > story)
X = situation is a reasonable solve
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Traditional folktales are properly situational. Like British murder mysteries or American procedurals. In the former, the situation is lesser nobility. The butler-having class short of dukes. In latter, each layer (uniforms, detectives, CSI, DA) is a setting for a subgenre.
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How come there’s never been a procedural around a single courtroom with a judge as the star. I guess they’re too passive.
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Proper stories need characters to change at the end, internally and externally. Horizontal situations require that neither change be too dramatic. Otherwise the situational premise unravels. The detective can’t grow out of detecting.
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The hero’s journey with extra tight return leg tolerances
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Hero’s journeys proper are often thinly disguised class mobility stories. You journey bravely 2 classes away and your return prize is a permanent move 1 class up.
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Bilbo (lower class) beat dragon (upper class) and earned place in middle class (Elves). Frodo same.
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Horizontal stories never break class. So they are disproportionately either comedies or conservative institutional validations. Horizontal journeys are adventures abroad within a class.
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In Psych, Shawn and Gus often have traveling adventures but always in their own class. Their upper and lower class journeys are never aspirational. More gawking voyeurism.
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Prizes are regulated stories. Dull unless they go wrong somehow. It’s interesting that stories about prizes are always about discovering a higher value that makes the prize not really the point (eg top gun, karate kid, sports movies, music/dance movies)
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It’s kinda interesting that there are no real prizes on the internet. There’s the Webby awards modeled on the oscars I guess but afaik nobody really gives a shit. Maybe you need scarcity and gatekeepers to make prizes meaningful.
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The quoted thread is about lack of prizes online. This suggests class and class mobility are ill-posed and not a thing online, regulated or otherwise.
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An online story pretty much has to go offline to work. Like a blogger getting a book deal or scooping a print journalist on a big story. Pure online stories don’t exist. There’s nowhere to go/return to.
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What’s your hero going to do? Rise up from YouTube comments to Twitter fame and then return to Yelp comments? While there’s localized pairwise status inequalities online among b media, it’s not really a class system. So no regular stories.
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