One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is non-traditional story structures.

(Spoilers for The Matrix, Sicario, and John Wick if you haven’t seen them by now…)

A good example of a traditional story structure is The Matrix. It’s a typical three-act structure with an underdog protagonist who explores a whole new world, powers up via his mentor, and then takes down the stronger villain and gets the girl. But it’s more creative and better executed than most. Top shelf stuff.

In contrast, a movie like Sicario is less traditional. We mostly follow the story from the protagonist’s perspective. But then toward the end, she basically gets defeated and her worldview is invalidated. And then a supporting character, like a dark anti-hero type, kind of takes over as the main character for the final 20 minutes of the film. It’s quite highly rated and very good, but that kind of structure can be risky because the protagonist that we've come to care for goes through an anti-climactic and unhappy ending, with the dark/cynical side winning over the light/optimistic side. And it’s not even as simple as “villains win”, but rather, the anti-hero kind of takes over as the main character and defeats villains in the original protagonist's place, so we have partial "protagonist rotation", where a supporting character kind of ends as the main character. It’s a higher difficulty level to land that type of ending because the viewer is like, “Damn. I mean amazing too, but damn.”

A less complex example of a non-traditional structure is John Wick. It’s an action movie, one of the better ones for its genre, but the non-traditional element is that we know from the start that the protagonist John Wick is the biggest badass around. None of the villains are as strong as him individually, or even close really. The villains are the underdogs. And so to make that non-boring (“John Wick just kills everyone and wins easily”), it requires things like greater numbers of villains, and/or various schemes to surprise or outsmart the protagonist. It’s also a little harder to stick the landing because the climax can be less satisfying if you know from the start that the protagonist is stronger than the antagonist, and so it either needs emotional depth, complex situations, or other ways to make that ending satisfying.

I’ve been exploring some of these and thinking about it a lot because my novel has a number of these types of non-traditional elements, which elevates the difficulty in terms of making them satisfying despite going against the basic structure that people expect as a baseline.

Are there books, shows, or movies you like that go through rather non-traditional story structures?

I bet we'll hit 100K in 2025. Maybe even 1M. We just need that one killer app, that one killer use case, or that government endorsement of Nostr's use cases.

Watching Dennis the Menace with my boys. First time they’re watching it and the first time I’ve watched it in decades.

Pure Americana. White picket fences. Well dressed parents. Children free to explore.

We must bring it back.

In America you can grow up the child of a drug addict engulfed in trauma and rise through your own individual effort to become the vice president of the United States.

Stop the black pill bullshit.

America is a beautiful place worth fighting for.

Hate to be the one to shit on the Parade, but a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve *will* be built through confiscation and taxation.

Here's Senator Cynthia Lummis already hard at work to make it happen:

Cynthia Lummis teamed up with Elizabeth Warren to propose the regulation of Bitcoin under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws to "combat anonymous crypto asset transactions".

Cynthia Lummis also re-introduced the Responsible Financial Innovation Act "inspired by Senator Warren", which introduces higher penalties for "crypto asset crimes", regulates "mixers and tumblers", and increases KYC requirements.

For the amount of time Bitcoiners have claimed to be of peculiar intelligence, you are all getting played *incredibly* hard right now.

WE WILLED BITCOIN INTO EXISTENCE.

AND NOW WE HAVE LARRY FINK SHILLING THE CORN.

WE MUST WILL NOSTR INTO EXISTENCE.

LETS MAKE IT HAPPEN.

POST MORE NOTES.

ZAP MORE NOTES.

REPOST MORE NOTES.

FOLLOW MORE NPUBS.

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

I think it is a mistake to blame 'all' Jews. To me, it looks like the Khazars assumed the identity and use Jews as scapegoats in order to impose their will and subvert the world. Perhaps this is another psyop, but it does seem like a lot of information points to this being the case.

When Zionists are calling other Jews residing in Israel 'antisemites' for criticizing their actions, it's clear that something is not adding up.

The issue I see is that innocent Jewish people will be caught up in the growing disdain people have for the conduct of Zionists, seeing as there doesn't seem to be much room for nuance.

Hey now that’s racist against Jews except Jews aren’t a race except when they get their results from 23andme