Operatic Maximalism

Operatic Maximalism (OM) is a popular genre or method of modern storytelling. Stories told in the Operatic Maximalism style tend to be sprawling, melodramatic, and complex, with branches that spiral off into entire series of their own.

While storytelling is critical to OM, plot is secondary. OM projects will often have many stories, some of which start and end abruptly depending on how such contributes to the theme.

Plot? Plot isn't the point! The plot is just a comfortable route to follow across the canvas, but the canvas itself is the point. Every inch is packed with detail.

Look at van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece, or The Crucifixion and The Last Judgment. Look at Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights! Every detail is worth a story on its own! These, of course, far predate Operatic Maximalism, but their influence on it cannot be discounted.

These stories aren't about I. They're about Us. Do you see?

— Vantti the Worldweaver, Director—Life Itself

Slow Burn to Popularity

Of course storytelling on this scale isn't new. It's just that these days you're more free to do it without worrying about also having to feed yourself, so there's more ability to tell the story without having to sell out or having to hire people with a vision too far removed from your own.

— Vantti the Worldweaver

OM was impossible due to tech constraints, and disliked due to commercial and social constraints, until the last two centuries. Technology allowed Directors to create virtual universes populated with characters generated and tailored alike, but it wasn't until these independant Narrators found a way to market their overwhelming stories—some of which now had multiple Narrators churning out more content than a lifetime could experience—that the movement really took off.

Some folks, you know, they don't really have the time to get into the whole thing. That's fine.

Instead, we give them branches, arcs, and side-stories to follow, because even in those there's sometimes enough to see that it'll take you months to get through with it. Even I haven't seen all of Life Itself, and I'm one of the subdirectors!

— Alueana Vyon-Hyruk, Subdirector—Life Itself

Maximalist Masterpieces

Maximalist Masterpieces are those projects which end in a way justifying every buildup, segue, and tangent.

Life Itself

100 Seasons / 30,000 Episodes, 300 Immersions

A meandering story with a fluid cast of thousands of characters over the century of its running.

Multiple major storylines play out at once, weaving through the series, while some episodes have no seeming meaning until years later.

The series ends with The Final Battle at the End of All Things in which the forces built up since the pilot episode go to war.

Tears of Akeldama

12 Trilogies, 36 Immersions, 777 Letters

Inspired by the Ledger of the Drowned and named in reference to the New Testament, each Tear biographs the life of a fictional pariah, with fractures off into the lives of side characters.

Each Tear opens with the pariah's dying moments to establish intrigue, then jumps back to their birth and continues from there. Each Tear ends with their funeral.

The series ends at the end of the universe, with the pariahs delivering a eulogy to the last dying star.

From Heavens Sent

17 Seasons, Musical Animation

The autobiography of God delivered as a black comedy. God does not realize she's God until the end of the first season, not that the knowledge does her any good.

The series ends with God taking a vote from everyone who ever lived about what to do in the next iteration of the universe.

Season 100: The Final Battle at the End of All Things

Episode 5: The Closed Loop

---

Hiro, Echna, and Master Antynic stood in the repurposed cafeteria, out of breath from running through the dense clouds of toxic vapor flooding the other decks. The lights flickered, waning and turning off periodically before cycling back on. A simulated viewport dominated one whole wall of the cafeteria, showing the glittering, chitinous hull of the looming Confa ship, the Bolt of Rapture.

"They're charging weapons. Master Antynic... I'm sorry, I don't think your father completed his mission. The explosives should have detonated by now," Echna said. An austere Aen with a penchant for swordplay, engineering, and sleight of hand, Echna for once felt like there was nothing she could do, and her hands were shaking.

"How much time do we have?" Master Antynic, an older Ral-Mi, asked. His voice, which emanated from a speaker in place of his mouth, was off-tune due to a fight with the shattered reflection of Van-Kyturnal of the Fifty-Thousand Hands some hours prior. The weight of their predicament drew his shoulders down, but they tensed as he braced for Echna's answer.

"Two minutes."

Hiro, a young Ral-Mi and Echna's training companion, froze, processing this. He collapsed against a wall and slid to the floor, head in his hands.

Antynic's head bowed. Heavy tears, glowing with the recently acquired Healing Radiance of Malruna, rolled down his cheeks, dripped from his chin, and drifted away from his face in a gossamer, prismatic vapor. They floated around the cafeteria listlessly; if Antynic were nearer to his father they would drift towards him, but his father was all the way over on the Bolt of Rapture.

When he spoke, it was through a clenched jaw.

"We're going to die." It sounded even more harsh in his mechanical voice. "I'm sorry, father. I could have armed you better, trained you better. I should have gone in your stead. Why did you have to fight me so hard on this?"

Hiro looked up. His gaze traveled to the far end of the cafeteria, to where they had cleared several tables and booths aside to place the stolen and experimental Time Pod. Echna's gaze followed his, and she began to shake her head vigorously. "Hiro... no..."

"We have to do something," Hiro said, pulling himself to his feet. His boots thudded the deck, heavy with determination, as he moved over to the timepod and began to clear it of debris. Echna followed, splashing through a gleaming puddle of liquid light left over by the initial raid of Confa jellyfish warforms.

"Hiro... don't you remember? Elfan tried to use it and he got torn through time. I can't even go to my old quarters anymore, sometimes he still appears there, gaunt and screaming. That's a fate worse than death!"

Hiro spun on his heel and jabbed a finger at her. "The Confa reaching Prime is a fate worse than death for everyone there. If there's even a slim chance of saving them, I have to take it. They're worth that. When the Dakito Quantum Spirit gave me this sigil, they told me that it would protect me in time... what if this is what they meant?"

Echna stopped in front of him, weeping. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. "Hiro, you idiot... okay, let me calibrate it."

She broke the hug, and Antynic approached to place his hand on Hiro's shoulder. "You're a great man, Hiro. Remember what the Quantum Spirit told us: don't change anything before now, only after, otherwise you may undo the events which lead to now. Whatever you're going to do, you'll have a very small window to do it in. Echna, what is the window of error here?"

"Nine years. Sorry Hiro but I'm going to have to send you back at least ten years for this. Are you strapped in?"

"I'm in. Ten years gives me time to plan."

Outside, Energy coruscated around the shell of the Bolt of Rapture as it lobbed several spheres of glowing energy at their ship. Antynic, who had been watching the viewport, turned to Hiro and Echna and cried out. "They've fired missiles! Echna, send him now, while we still have power!"

Hiro took a deep breath. "Antynic, you are like a father to me. Echna, a sister. I'm sure I'll be knocking on the door in just a moment now, and everything will be saved."

Echna pressed the button, and Hiro was gone. Echna watched the readouts from the device, clattering her claws against the console. He was gone, but the transfer wasn't complete. It could still go wrong.

In the pregnant silence which followed, Echna and Antynic wept. Anytnic's tears added an ethereal light to the darkening cafeteria. They braced, counting the seconds to impact.

"You love him," Echna said.

"Like a son." Antynic said. "You love him too."

She nodded. "Like a brother. I guess that makes us family. I love you, too."

Antynic's eyes were rivers. "I love you."

The ship shuddered as the missiles tore through the upper decks, killing whoever was left of the attending crew. Echna screeched in fear, expecting that any moment the wall would open like fabric tearing along a seam, and they would be blasted into space. This fear became utter horror as the readouts from the Time Pod went wild. "No... no... no! The readouts. It's Elfan all over again, only worse. He's careening!"

Antynic's shook as his gaze remained fixed on the viewport. Half of the screen was blank, but he could still see most of the Rapture, which was glowing so brightly now that his eyes burned just looking at it.

The Rapture shuddered as a series of explosions detonated along her port side, jettisoning chunks of meat and steel off into space and sending her on a slow spin. More explosions, smaller recoils and chain reactions, rippled along her side. Antynic began to laugh, but his expression soon turned hysterical—laughing and sobbing—as he realized that the amount of damage, and the fact that no pod had returned from the Rapture, meant that his father was gone. Victory, but at terrible cost. Hiro might very well be gone as well.

There came a heavy knock on the cafeteria door. It resonated through the room, though them. Antynic and Echna spun to face it, and saw that the prismatic vapor of Antynic's tears was clouding around the door.

The door opened and a figure stumbled through. This newcomer closed the door behind himself before too much vapor could follow him in. Though he was fully clad in the hoses and layers environment suit, they both recognized his movements. It was Antynic's father, Antyra. Tyra.

Tyra pulled the helmet off. Some of the fur on his face was singed off by the vapor, and there was surface level scarring, but it was nothing compared to the layered years of disfigurment from working the mines. He avoided their gaze, and Antynic recognized shame in his expression.

"Did Hiro make it with you?" Echna asked, voice pitched and cracking. Antynic stared, gaze distant, as the truth dawned on him. Tyra had knocked.

"All those years of avoiding the family. You didn't get those scars working the vapor mines like you told us, did you?" He approached one hesitant step after the next, as though seeing his father for the first time.

Echna watched on, lost. She kept peering beyond Tyra, hoping to see Hiro. "Tyra, where's Hiro. He told you to knock, right? He made it, didn't he?"

Tyra met Antynic's gaze, then hung his head and shook it. "Time scars. I came out the other side barely alive."

"How far back did we—"

"Ninety-three years."

It was then that it dawned on Echna what had happened. Her hand covered her mouth as she gasped. "Hiro? Is that you?"

Antynic lifted his hear to glance into her eyes before looking away again. There was so much suffering in that gaze. "I wanted to tell you two, I really did. But I couldn't, because if I did it would change things... Antynic I didn't plan this. Believe me. Your mother was the only one who saw past my disfigurement. We didn't mean to get pregnant. It was only after she announced the pregnancy that I met her parents and realized they were the ones in the painting back in the dojo. Antynic I—"

Antynic threw his arms around his father, shaking. "It's okay father. I understand now. It all makes sense. You did what you had to." His tears, one of the only lights left in the room, swirled around Tyra and soaked into his warped flesh.

"Antynic, look!" Echna said, marveling at the sight. For the first time since being imbued with the Healing Radiance of Malruna, Antynic's tears came near Tyra. They unfurrowed flesh and bone warped by time travel, they stiched together broken ligaments and a mangled body. It wasn't a total reversal, but they saw Hiro through the damage now—an older, more sorrowful Hiro.

A determined Hiro.

"We have to go," Tyra-Hiro said at last, pointing to the viewport. The bridge of the Bolt of Rapture had detached, and was flying towards their ship.

"It's not over."