Structure of Frangles -- Basics

FRUCTURE FOR DUMMIES

A lot of the journey of Frangles is following its evolution. You're not just reading a saga, you're reading an entirely new type of medium never attempted in the history of the only known sentient race to ever exist since the dawn of the observable known universe (or something like that). Or at least a magnitude never attempted, seeing how Frangles resembles the old children's Choose Your Own Adventure series which had first dibs. Hence on top of Frangles' confusing ass web of intertangled plots and characters, there's a higher level story (though perhaps a more boring one): the writing of Frangles. Not the story Skip writes in Writer's Bricks--or any other similar work of art involved in Frangles' fictional prose--but rather the story of Skip and all the other Frangles characters that you're reading here, written by the real real world people--or person, or alien, or AIM bot network; we still haven't told you for sure who writes this !@#$--here on your little blue-green planet called Earth orbiting the star system Sol. We're the real real life friters, and you're the real real life freers, and our collective real real life story is as good as anyone's!

Hence, at least for now, the explanation of what Frangles is and how it works will be slowly revealed and elaborated on as it evolves through dated updates rather than continuously revised pages. This avoids the annoyance of checking back to confusing inconsistencies, and also allows you the most in-depth understanding of what Frangles is and how it works, because where it came from is a lot of that story. Though don't worry, the key need-to-knows will always be explained somewhere, whether on this page, or in the 'about' page, or in an explanation of a particular book, etc, etc. Note that since the fiction and structure of Xangles, Frangles, & Blorkk are uniquely nonlinear, so must the websites presenting it be. You need not read everything (i.e. all the updates in order) to get the idea of Frangles; you can just explore the site at random, and it will make more and more sense as you go. (Or at the least, confuse you more and more, but that's your problem.) Just as fractal fragments contain tiny key blueprints of a much larger fractal (and then a larger, etc), just reading a few pages of Frangles here or there can give you the keys to its over all workings.

However, if you simply must have a quickie nutshell (you impatient !@#$%), then know this: Frangles is a saga of a whole big bunch of books, all interconnected in a careful, complex pattern, but not one you need understand in order to read each book normally as you would any other book. You may pick up on some of that complexity as you read, but even if you don't, you simply get the experience of reading any normal book.

Consider J.R.R. Tolkien. Some people consider Lord of the Rings to be a work intentionally written with complex ethical themes in mind of good and evil and life and death, its characters and events intentionally layered with subtle hidden metaphors and symbolism. Tolkien himself thought this was overanalysis. He once commented on this type of analysis. He told them, it's only a story! Any story can be analyzed to death by those seeing vast complexities in them, but they're not necessarily written or read that way (In its day, Shakespeare's plays had more in common with Seinfeld and South Park than scholastic works generally requiring copying cliff notes verbatim to write impressive theses about.) Presenting Frangles as radically complex and all the rage admittedly incorporates elements of infomercials and scams milking the spin of inflating a new and useful product to a radically new and useful product. We can hide behind contrived parodies of our own narcisism, but it's all a big scam nonetheless.

Acai berries, for instance -- relatively newly "discovered" as a beneficial, importable fruit from Brazil -- are as beneficial to health as plenty of other berries and fruits (all in their own personal ways), but because it's so rare or uncommon to unlock/reveal a whole new type of useful fruit, this can easily be inflated to a magical godsent wonderberry that will cure cancer, solve world hunger, and help solve homelessness by getting people off the streets and into productive careers as berry harvesters and evil scam marketers. The same goes for almost anything you've ever bought or seen on TV that was a radical 99% off, or refurnished your house for $19.95. ...And your friend's house. ...And your parents' house. ...And the housing complexes of 562 more acquantainces at for absolutely no additional charge. ...Plus a purple scrunchie.

What is new about Frangles is its radical innovative nonlinear structure, but one might claim that this is an equal- magnitude innovation to tossing together swordplay and science fiction to get trippy lightsabers and Jedi space cowboys, or coming out with a radically innovative new type of nonlinear video game, or releasing new software that will let you do something 8 times as fast as the last new big thing that did the same thing when it initially came out. Frangles from a bland frangle is simply a slightly new way of going about writing the same old stories. As one might combine rock and celtic folk music to create a new genre/style of music, we could be said to be simply combining elements of nonlinear video game plot lines, with basic fictional prose and text. But, since haphazard rehashes don't market very well, we'll stick to the hidden scam that Frangles' structure is brain- mangingly radical and innovative.

Radical or not, you need not fear this structure. We constantly strive for versatility of use, e.g., we work on ways to make all that stuff easy to ignore if need or whim be. To read Frangles stories, you may completely bypass everything new about Frangles' organization, and simply read certain pre-set stories in the exact way you're used to. That is, of course, barring just about everybody's masochistic OCD/ADHD compulsion to click all the exact buttons and links you know will confuse you the most. We have to take a certain amount of blame for tempting you, of course, but secretly, we're positive that getting confused by clicking stuff you don't want to click is completely and 100% your own damn fault. So don't do it!

Of course, insulting our own fans' masochism doesn't get you stick around, so know that we're always working on ways to make Frangles easier and easier to read and navigate, in addition to presenting complexities for more intelligent people to get into. (Note that this rudeness is just a post- traumatic gradeschool nerd/geek defense mechanism against the fact that most other people are more popular and normal than us. So don't mind it! It's also a great cover for the fact we haven't a clue what the hell we're being complex about either.)

Bottom line, if you're intimidated, just click on a beginning page and click "next" indefinitely, bookmarking a page as you would any other website, or as you would put a bookmark in a novel you're reading. Just be sure not to click the forbidden links! If you do want to explore Frangles strange nature, the best way is to simply click around randomly until you're so lost or nauseated that you decide you're one of the people who just wants to read a story anyway. If you do come to understand Frangles, please drop us a line, because we'd love to know what the hell it's all about ourselves.

QUICK NOTE ON SIZE CHANGE

Since Frangles' launching, we've "sevthed" the expected structure size (the number of pages to read) to 1/7 of its size when blueprinted. Not all blurbs and links have been updated to reflect this change, so be aware there may be some minor mathematical conflicts. Since extremely little of this lofty plan has been executed, the precise planned size is generally irrelevant for most basic reading purposes. Just be aware that some talk around Frangles will refer to the larger initial structure, and some will refer to the smaller sevthed structure. (This even applies to the following blurbs on this page.)

For reference (if/when you want to explore the specific mathematical complexities of Frangles), the initial saga size was 117,649 bricks (standalone scenes or or modules), that is, "6! bricks", and were labeled with 6 digits in nonzero base 7 (e.g. "123.456", where the digits may be any digit from 1 to 7), and the newer structure contains 16,807 bricks (5 factorial), with brick numbers of five digits instead of 6. (e.g. 12.345). You don't have to have a flying clue what that math means, or how we apply it to reading Frangles. The basic concepts should flesh themselves out as you randomly click around. For total confuscation eschewal, simply start on this page right away and click "Next" at the bottom of each page, bookmarking a page where you leave off to return to later. Or, read the 5 first finished chapters of Kyle Kirby's story, written as completely standard (linear-read) novel chapters, before we became obsessed with nonlinear complexities.

SOME MATH BASICS

A few key to things to note about Frangles. Firstly, except for some scattered posted chapters (which will later be reformatted), the page structure of Frangles are labeled with with six digits. The first three represent the book number, and the second three represent the page number, and each digit goes from 1 to 7. For instance, the pages of the book Writer's Bricks (book #131), go up like this:

131,111
131,112
131,113
131,114
131,115
131,116
131,117
131,121
131,122
131,123
131,124
(..etc..)

So the last page would be 131,777.   If this is still contusing, just click "Next" at the bottom of every page and you'll be fine! [Frangles is like a computer (or will be once it really gets going): you can use it's surface functions (email or play a video game), but if you want to get more involved (like one might study computer or software engineering), you can do that too.]

Secondly, there are a few super-key Frangles terms you should know, as follows:

    fractal: A type of self-similar image (see Wikipedia and pics)
    frangle: A point of view (a certain take or angle)
    freer: Frangles reader (or fractal reader)
    friter: Frangles writer (or fractal writer)
    frwoa: Any type of work of art, especially one involving fractals
    Okuaka: Name of the known universe
[You can look up any others you come across this index of terms.]

Thirdly, Frangles is the first "Xangles" saga, i.e. Xangles saga #1, so you might come across the term "Xangles" now and then. You don't need to know anything about Xangles to read Frangles, but of course you can explore Xangles if you want. You can also read some of Xangles saga #2: Blorkk: The Second Known Universe, which crosses over somewhat in terms of style and terminology and material. The one thing that crosses over significantly between the sagas is the full Xangles Index of Terms, which you can use simply to look up any Frangles term without worrying about the others.

Fourthly, Frangles covers the time line from the big bang to the big crunch of our known universe (also called "Okuaka"). This also conveniently lines up with the evolution of man. In Frangles, human life begins around the big bang in a sort of vague intangible dream-like form, and progresses onward where the idea of physical matter is thought up, until it it's a pretty solid concept by the time of present day Earth. Then physical science evolves to the higher technology of the future, and then onward, so advanced to seem like magic, and then even that evolves further to the point where science has become *so* infinitely advanced as to come full circle at the end of Okuaka, imagining that zero technology and infinite technology are sorta the same thing.

The seven ages of Okuaka go as follows:

     Flutonia (1): A strange dream-like place at the dawn of the known universe (the first age of Okuaka)
   Earth (2): YOU ARE HERE: Around the second age of the known universe.
   Flurth (3): The Not-too-distant future (essentially a big generic sci-fi parody)
   Florbb(4): The peak of the sciences of Okuaka, when the evolution of science will finally stop seeming like a corporeal, physical concept and become so advanced as to begin seeming magical and mystical again.
   Kroffonia(5): Sci-fi/fantasy (the next step)
    Generika(6): Generic fantasy parody
    Zeroa(7): When vague thought has finally progressed from science to super-science to magic and back to the vagueness of pure, knowledgeable thought and memories.

Lastly, while reading, note that some of the terms and styles of Frangles can be a bit confusing. Part of this is our fault for not introducing and defining every particular idea or concept precisely where it should be introduced. We just ask a little forgiveness and patience in these areas, as Frangles writers ("friters") are writing while taking into account zillions of things behind your back regarding the entire universe of Frangles of which only a smidgen is currently posted; intertwining concepts, themes, character and plot structures, exponential permutations of reading paths, good precedents for establishing an entirely new art medium never worked through before, blah blah blah blah...
We constantly joke that we could easily be giving you bull@!# excuses for being lazy unproductive writers, but in all seriousness (for one single moment in history), we really *are* taking that baffling nightmare of complexity into account, which is especially difficult as we're inventing a new *type* of writing that has never been done before, and which is, of course, ALL OUR PROBLEM!

The rest of what might be confusing is as unavoidable as diving into *any* new major style or genre of art, such as reading a modern poem for the first time, or watching your first episode of Star Trek or Seinfeld or Blue's Clues. Of course, there's no way around that, but fortunately for us, there's not any precise way for you to tell what's just new and what's just lazy, so pbpbbl=P on that one!

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So those are the basics of the structure of Frangles. Of course, If you do want to dive in to the complexities of Frangles' concept (which should greatly evolve as time goes on), just keep reading here or follow the updates page for a mighty story indeed: the evolution of an entirely new type of medium never attempted in the history of the only known sentient race to ever exist since the dawn of the observable known universe (or something like that).