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Cyclical soap opera is an idea widely known to exist. In such a production, a character might give birth to a child who is her own great-grandmother due to the length of the soap opera. This is not that idea.
The plot of the soap opera i have in mind could begin at any point. I choose to open with
the story of a character called Anna. She has a child called Bernard, who marries a woman called Felicity. They have twins called George and Diana and divorce. Each gets custody of the child of the opposite gender. Diana goes on to have a child called Edward, who in turn goes on to have a child called Felicity. This is the same Felicity whom Bernard met, and she indeed meets Bernard and they have twin children, divorce and gain custody of the relevant twin. George then has a child called Anna, who is the original Anna who is the mother of Bernard.
The story is depicted from the viewpoint of the following characters: Anna, Bernard, Diana, Edward, Felicity, George and begins to repeat with Anna. The story needn't begin with Anna, i've just chosen that as somewhere to start it.
The Oedipal plot is not essential, just an illustration of how the timeline runs. Other events could also occur. For instance, the court in which the divorce hearing takes place could be demolished by a car driven by a drunk driver who has a drink problem due to the trauma of his mother's legal career being cut short by becoming disabled as a result of a car crashing into the court in which she was representing Felicity, as a result of which she was frustrated at being a stay at home mum and took it out on her child or something. In the meantime, the motorist loses his licence and his job as a taxi driver, and as a result his son turns to a life of crime and becomes a gangster whose daughter reacts against him and becomes a lawyer who represents Bernard in the divorce case, and so on.
Various subplots intersect at the figure-of-eight crossing position which only make complete sense once every episode has been watched, and possibly not even then, and the points of view shift seamlessly due to the connections between the characters.
So, the crucial thing is, this is not merely a linear or cyclical soap opera but a self-intersecting one. There is no time travel incidentally: the setting is entirely non-science fictional.
It would obviously be set in Iceland.
//I have a little difficulty understanding what this means though//
http://xkcd.com/381/
[mouseposture, Oct 09 2011]
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Moebius strips open up another set of possibilities. In that situation, the timelines could actually branch as in 'Sliding Doors', cross over and then reunify but having appeared to swap or something. I have a little difficulty understanding what this means though, and it also makes me wonder about a Klein Bottle based soap opera. |
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Wait, are you reading my mind?! |
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Am I typing this, or just thinking it? |
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Maybe i'm a future version of you mindmelding with a past version of you, [Alterother]. |
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That would explain how you already know my username,
but why are you dating my evil twin half-sister? |
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Like sands through the looking glass... so are the Days Of Our Lives. |
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I lost the plot half way through reading! (that's a good sign +) |
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Don't worry, you'll pick it up again the next time around. |
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"Was that a pang I felt?"
"Anna!" |
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Please be more specific. I say a lot, and almost all of it is
total garbage. |
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The spin-offs would be endless. |
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Well, i also envisage a sort of plaited version: a
single, closed strand which crosses over with itself
in three different ways several times in the
middle. And also a version where the timeline is
topologically equivalent to the name of the soap
written cursively, so for example 'Eastenders'
starts at the top of the E, crosses over with itself
in the middle of the E, then goes on to the A,
where the timeline just barely touches itself
before looping round and up again. Crossing t's
and dotting i's would then be subplots and single-
episode specials respectively. |
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Well, [mouseposture], I think the xkcd joke is that, in the linear strip, we make sense of the narrative by identifying one combatant on the left and one on the right. Where would that get us in the Moebius version? Well, I *think* the idea is that it would imply a stick-figure fighting himself - so, if you started with one combatant and followed him vertically through all the frames of the story then, by the time you'd been round the loop twice, both the combatants in every frame would be identifiable as "him". |
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Coincidentally, I have been giving diagrammatic story constructs a fair old think about lately, after trying to explain to sneery, indolent nephews the plots of non bat-based Nolan (Christopher) films. This led me to consider taking the structures of well kent tales and pumping them full of steroids to produce, for example, a Jason Statham movie where JS lives in the third fortress in some shrivelled railtown, his feckless brothers bringing insane criminal harm to the Stath's reinforced door after their own boltholes prove insufficient to withstand the assaults of the massed ranks of a somewhat incongruous band of heavily armed undead Tonton Macoutes. |
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[pertinax] Yes, that's right. You really have to print
it (on translucent
paper), cut out the strip, give it a half-twist, and
tape the ends together. |
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An actual original idea on the HB. [+] |
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[+] I don't watch soaps, but this sounds interesting!! |
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//Anna, Bernard, Diana, Edward, Felicity, George//
Whatever happened to Charlie? (Or some other name beginning with C...) |
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A kind of civilian extension of "Allo Allo" then? Absolutely first class idea. It could run instead of ad breaks between all the other soaps to form a seamless soap. Should blend in perfectly. |
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[Neutrinos], what happened was, i drew an infinity symbol on a piece of paper and put the letters A, B, C...and so on on it with arrows. Once i worked out a rudimentary plot, i realised C was superfluous so i edited it out and couldn't be bothered to change the names. |
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If only we could apply this to any of our favorite shows--
the ones we wish would never end (including 'Allo 'Allo
which is perfect for a recursive plotline since it has only
the loose semblance of a plot from which to hang as many
jokes as possible). |
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[19thly], I think you just spurred me to enlightenment. |
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For all we know, there could be actual little swirly
bits like this in our own timelines. |
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You mean, like an attack virus worming around gathering weak plots from other soaps? How Devilishly cunning. |
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// For all we know, there could be actual little swirly bits
like this in our own timelines. // |
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There are. Has speculative science fiction taught you
nothing? |
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We'll all be there, [bigsleep]. |
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Actually, i've toyed with the idea that everyone is in
fact one person, sort of threaded through time.
Early in history, some person dies, is reincarnated as
someone born shortly after and so on until the end of
history, then they go back and are reincarnated as a
second series of people and so on, until they have
been everyone who has ever lived. |
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"I can't believe I'm reading this!" |
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// Did you ever get the feeling that everyone who has ever
existed is in fact you in some cycle of reincarnation ? // |
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No. In fact, nobody else feels that way. It's just you, you
wierdo. |
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//the idea that everyone is in fact one person, sort
of threaded through time// No matter how bad the
headache, on no account take a headache powder. |
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("All You Zombies,"
Robert A. Heinlein.) |
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Like sands through the Klein Bottle, so are the Days of Our Lives... |
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