Oops All Trauma: Some Thoughts on Coming-of-Age Stories (feat. Taika)

I have a child protagonist who starts out with coping mechanisms, develops new ones, but gains some measure of confidence.

All his life he has been hurt and mistreated by an inability to understand his surroundings. He's blind and developmentally disabled, so he has an almost innate fear of being unable to understand things. He knows if he doesn't people will yell at him and/or he'll barrel face first into a wall. As he gets older, he tries to find safety in more and different types of knowledge, but then gets ill and has to figure out who is he is without his understanding of the world. He has to find a way to keep living despite losing a lifelong coping mechanism and identity (I am the one who studies to understand the world around me).

Oddly enough, it's a happy ending despite everything bad that happens to him. Before he lost his abilities, he went up against an authoritarian government and won. Yes, he's now maimed and too ill to remember much of anything, but he escapes with a servant and is now free to experience the world, even if he can't understand it.

Why are you giving out screenwriting "advice"??? Your videos are amateur hour. You have no IMDB credits whatsoever, no track record, NOTHING.

RIP Garfield he will live forever in our hearts

Hey LocalScriptMan, I am currently writing a script about a slave rising up and killing his Roman Centurion master. Do you have any tips regarding writing historical dialogue? Obviously I'm not going to write the screenplay in latin. What makes a script in historical settings sound good?

Just wondering, have you ever looked into psychodynamic or humanistic theory and how it relates to the sort of stuff you're talking about? Honestly, as a psych & counselling student, a lot of your most recent videos remind me a lot of concepts in that field and it makes me wonder whether you'd come across them before or just arrived at these ideas through thinking about stuff.

Especially the idea of "lower-case-t trauma" being anything that happens which shocks someone's systems for making sense of the world, and which doesn't have to be some huge, singular event. The role of a good writer and a good therapist is not to get hung up on the "scale" of trauma, but to think about the ways a person's model of meaning-making was disrupted by the trauma and how to work towards a new, healthy sense of meaning which accommodates the trauma that exists now and will never go away.

Urasawa's Monster is a brilliant collection examples of different arcs that are described here and nature vs nurture is a key pillar in the entire story. The antagonist arc has a brilliant twist that flips the entire nature vs nurture premise.

I think, characters, who are NOT changed (in their cor) by the events can be interesting, IF the story explores, what gave them this strength an how they manage to hold on to it. Not, if the story just goes for the "it is, what ist is" approach. So a bit like a backstory upbeat instead of a backstory wound (what's the opposite of wound?)

Shonen are such poorly written stories they simply are distasteful

Start a writing podcast with schnee

From what I intuit, the appeal in the concept of paragon, unchanging additute, character is that we first come to know what they're about and get to know how that effects the story surrounding them. The change is of a more external, extroverted, collateral damage than an internal one.

If you have a protagonist whose behaviour is adaptive, healthy, functional, and appropriate for the situation, the best solution for your story is to just demonstrate why that is against a miriad of differentiators. In a way, demonstrating why that behaviour was valued over others.

Obviously, a single behaviour is not always a strength in every situation. However, it's not really a good lead to have your character go through a miriad of poor circumstances; having to learn and unlearn behaviours repeatedly, without getting to show off why those attitudes should be kept. Sometimes, people just want the protagonist to be in the right and see how far that takes them, rather than only seeing that at the end of a story.

It makes me think the child arc are about solidifying beliefs while the adult arcs are about softening beliefs.
That covers the elementary "start believing in yourself" arc and the "stop believing your own thoughts so much" arcs.

Whether the belief that is affected becomes more or less adapted to long term well-being just informs us on whether the story is mostly tragic or feel-good.

I sat my English assessment o writing a short story coming of age a few days ago!! I wish I knew this beforehand..

Great vid, my current story has trauma (and the ways we Do or Do Not Deal With It) as one of the core themes of my story, and it's been a difficult tightrope to walk without making my story feel like Traumatization Porn

FUCK YES schnee and local scriptman in the same video, im eating GOOD today

The fragrance of dark coffee in the background. Perfect.

So what’s our homework?

Boy is such an excellent little film I'm glad it's getting some recognition

hold the fkn phone, was that THE Schnee in your patron roll?! (tho i wont comment his appearance in the actual video cause im nonchalant and cool like that)

You’re not allowed to mention A:TLA without making a full video essay on it now, I don’t make the rules

Opinion on the Bible as a story?

Great Video but while this was playing I got the worst cramps of my life and this was playing in the background while I was crawling and writhing on the bathroom floor like it was my death ost

Hey bro, I think you need to work on the ordering of content in your videos. Expecting a climax only to get an ad is really frustrating. I don't mind the ad but please put it somewhere else.

Dude I’m just cracking up. where have you been all my life? LOL. I just love your self deprecating humor . You remind me of all the f-ed guy friends I have in my f-ed up life! lol.

i love this film smmmm

I love how In depth and detailed you go with your videos you should cover the horror genre

As a Kiwi writer tackling my first novel and as a fan of both you and this Kiwi classic, this video is now one of my all time favourites Local. My novel is definitely a coming-of-age tale too and you once again are opening writing eyes I didn't know I had. Kia ora my man.

I have a feeling you’d like chainsaw man

Eye opening content in this neighborhood. Thanks!

Where can we find the character map files?

For writing
Where should I start for learning this

It's also interesting bc this is essentially Daenerys' story in GoT! Yes, she has trauma from her impoverished, unstable background prior to the start of the story, but it's also kind of how her Lie is formed as well. Because initially she doesn't want the Iron Throne or want to be Queen of Westeros, however, due to tons of external influences she later decides she DOES want the Throne, and her new external goal (the thing she thinks will bring her happiness/ a family/ a home) is to conquer Westeros and sit the Iron Throne.

And this is kind of all solidified for her as well when she literally 'births' three dragon eggs. There hasn't been dragons for hundreds of years AND she was the one to bring them back into existence AND she's the last Targaryen/ the heir to the Iron Throne. Her ancestors conquered Westeros with three dragons and she also intends to go back and conquer Westeros with her dragons as well.

But there was a video on here (by David Lightbringer) that made a really great video on Daenerys, and theorized that she'll likely have to give up her want/ desire for the Iron Throne (be Queen) in order to save the people of Westeros from the White Walkers/ Long Night (be/ act like an actual Queen, and protect/ save her people from a cataclysmic event). So, in the first book of GoT we actually see Dany's 'want/ need' or external goal form, and it informs the rest of the story.

I've never seen writing videos so densely packed with insight. This stuff requires multiple watches, pausing and note-taking. It's really good. Waiting a month at a time for new content is a small price to pay for quality. Thanks for the immense effort and also for being quite hot.

do you write characters the way you do because you put a small part of yourself in them?

you should watch naruto he is a good shonen protag, he is a type 3 and he does have character development

Where’s the discord server?

Yo Matt, it’s me. Cuboid.Saviour. Why did you stop making surreal memes? Do you have any advice for me what to do?

Enneagram 6

Adult stories are about coping with past traumas. Child stories are about coping with cultural traumas. Culture stories are about coping with geographic natural traumas. Nature and geographic stories are about coping with planetary trauma.
all the way to the big bang.

Ferris bueller doesn’t change what is his number

Shonin aneemay is a doozie

Love your videos man!

I'm writing a sprawling epic story in the form of a collection of short stories. I was going through your recent series on enneagram types, when I realised one of my characters, a 7 fearing "I will be abandoned by everyone I love", has a very good and poignant reason to TURN into a 7 within the story, but doesn't have to be necessarily a 7 before that. Your comment on that in the series was "why would a character change their enneagram type, that would essentially turn them into another character". But in the frame of THIS video, traumatising a still relatively young character so hard that their dominant enneagram defense mechanism changes doesn't sound so far-fetched.
EDIT: Though, on second thought, I may just write this character beginning as a healthy, balanced 7 and deteriorating after the traumatising event...

Being disgusted by anime in 2024??? Are you sure you are not a boomer?