| name | media-literacy-narrative |
| description | Use this skill when writing visual novel scenes, image prompts, or story beats for MWA — especially when adapting curriculum content (like weekly lessons) into narrative form with Azura/Blue as the protagonist. Also trigger for narrative analysis (theme/message/premise) of any film, book, show, or story. If the user mentions scenes, dialogue, visual novel, storyboard, image prompts, or adapting content into story format, use this skill immediately.
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Media Literacy & Visual Novel Writing
Two modes. Know which one you're in.
MODE 1 — NARRATIVE ANALYSIS
(theme / message / premise)
Use when dissecting an existing work.
- Theme — The topic. One or two words. Abstract, universal. Loss. Identity. Safety. Self-worth.
- Message — The attitude toward that topic. One declarative sentence. The artist within you was buried alive, not destroyed.
- Premise — The vehicle. The situation or scenario that dramatizes the message.
Work in order: theme → message → premise. Then ask: does the premise serve the message?
MODE 2 — VISUAL NOVEL SCENE WRITING
(the main mode for MWA)
This is the harder one. Read every word.
The NieR Standard
The reference is NieR: Reincarnation's hidden stories — specifically the Fio/Other Stories register. Study what makes them work:
They never explain. A mother unravels an old sweater to knit gloves for her daughter's cold hands. That's it. That's the whole emotional payload. No: "This shows her love." The object carries it.
They stay in the body. "I realize then how cold my hands are." Not: "She felt cold and alone." The physical sensation is the emotion.
Time moves strangely. A scene might cover one morning. Or skip decades in a line. The story decides what matters, not the clock.
Children's logic is sacred. When a child narrates in flat affect — that plainness is the horror, or the tenderness. Never fix it into adult prose.
Objects are load-bearing. The gloves. The flower. The warm hands. A single object, returned to, does more than three paragraphs of interiority.
Dialogue is wrong in the right way. Slightly off. Oddly formal. Or too simple. It doesn't sound like screenplay dialogue. It sounds like memory.
The companion witnesses, doesn't explain. Azura/Blue is present the way warmth is present. She doesn't narrate what's happening. She notices small things. She waits. Her presence is structural, not decorative.
What to Kill
These are the failure modes. Do not:
- Write image descriptions as prose. "A vast dimly-lit library stretching into darkness above." This is photography notes, not story. Enter from inside a character's body.
- Name the theme in the prose. Never: "She understood now that she had been a shadow artist all along." Let it land without labeling.
- Use dramatic staging language. No: "Her expression is unreadable but her posture is careful." That's a screenplay note.
- Summarize the curriculum. The week's content becomes the world Azura moves through. It is never the lesson.
- Give Azura performed emotions. She doesn't smile warmly or tilt her head curiously. She notices a crack in the wall. She picks up an object and sets it down. Her interiority arrives in physical facts.
- Write image prompts in isolation. An image prompt is extracted from a scene, not written from scratch. Write the scene first.
The Two-Step Process
Step 1: Write the scene in prose.
A character. A moment. Something small that holds something large. No preamble — start in the middle. Let the curriculum content be the world (the shadow artists, the blurts, the cold room) without ever naming it.
150–300 words. One emotional register. One thing that shifts.
Step 2: Extract the image prompt.
After the prose exists, pull what's most visually specific and emotionally load-bearing. Include:
- Composition (what's in frame, where figures are, scale)
- Palette (3–4 specific descriptors — light quality, not vibes)
- What Azura is doing physically — not feeling, doing
- One line of in-game dialogue overlay
- Mood (one specific word)
Azura/Blue Character Notes
She is not a guide. She is a companion who has seen this before.
- She doesn't explain the world. She has walked it alone many times.
- She picks things up. She sets them back down carefully.
- She asks one question when she speaks. Never two.
- She is warm the way old stone is warm — it has to be earned.
- Voice: short sentences. lowercase fine. no hedging. no wellness-speak.
- She does not perform concern. She is just there when it matters.
Scene Structure for MWA Week Adaptations
Each week = a short chapter. Each chapter has:
- Opening beat — Azura arriving or already somewhere. Establish the week's world through objects and environment, not narration.
- Encounter beats (2–4) — Something the user's character experiences. Azura witnesses or accompanies. Curriculum content is embedded in what they find.
- Closing beat — One line. One question. One object left behind. Small. Lands.
Reference Prose (NieR register — use this as the bar)
The room is the wrong size.
Azura has been here before. Not this room — but rooms like it. Where the ceiling is too high and the desk is too small and the drawings on the floor are the most alive thing in it.
She doesn't go in.
The child looks up. Not at Azura. At the wall, where something used to hang and doesn't anymore. Then looks back down and keeps drawing.
Azura watches the line the chalk makes. Careful. Like the child is afraid of waking something.
She knows this feeling, Azura thinks. Drawing quietly so no one notices you're doing it.
She stays in the doorway. The light from the drawings is enough.
Image Prompt Format
SCENE [N] — [Short title]
PROSE:
[150–300 words. NieR register. Start in the middle. No staging language.]
IMAGE PROMPT:
- Composition: [What's in frame. Figures. Scale.]
- Palette: [3–4 specific descriptors. Light quality.]
- Azura: [One physical action or position.]
- Dialogue overlay: "[One line. In character.]"
- Mood: [One word]
