What’s my day job? I just got this question from a Dramatica user, and my answer follows…

A Dramatica user asked:

The layout of the archetypal characters are the same in Situation and Manipulation, but different in Activity and Attitude. In attitude the dynamic pairs are all in the same quads, which makes the archetypes in that domain both dynamic and dependent. In all the others, they are dynamic, but dependent with others. In Situation and Manipulation this is the same relationship, but in Activity it is different. I’m just now noticing, so I am not even sure what it means yet. It’s like I have spent three years in math and finally see the pattern of quadratic equations. 😉

My reply:

I wish I could give you an easy answer, but the fact is, the arrangement of the elements on the bottom level was the single most complex part of the design of the structural part of the model. Reason being, it is where the helical pattern of the lateral iterations of the non-linear equations that define each position in the model temporally, intersect with the linear breakdown of the psychological processes from the top to the bottom into increasing detail and granularity, even while drifting off “true” spatially. This creates an interference pattern at the interface between space and time along the continuum, essentially the same kind of organized anarchy you find at the event horizon of a black hole. Light bends, time distorts, space is warped and matter simultaneously exists and does not exist. Think of it as Schrodinger’s purgatory.

In terms of the psychology of story, all four element levels are really the same thing, seen from the four different points of view of the four classes and distorted by the four levels of detail. But, at that level, you are so far around the progression of the quad of your thinking, that you are almost standing behind yourself looking at the back of your left ear. And so the helices break down as well as the linearity. That’s why no level of familiarity with TKAD or with the iterations will allow the pattern to be seen. It is only by calculating the impact of those two systems on one another (though in normal psychology they never interact any more than the inside and outside of a black hole) that the actual pattern can be discerned, which, to the “normal” eye will appear chaotic in normal negative space/time.

Make of it what you will, but it is God’s own truth.