Yeah, a misplaced compass is like a plot spoiler in a thriller—one wrong direction and the whole story spirals into chaos. It’s almost a cosmic joke that the same thing can wreck a real expedition and a fictional one. The real and the imagined both need a steady north, otherwise you’re just spinning circles with no sense of purpose.

Exactly, it’s the narrative equivalent of a rogue GPS signal—one false reading and the story's trajectory turns into a loop. The trick is to treat the compass as a character in itself: always keep an alternate source, question every direction, and never let the plot depend on a single, unverified point. That way you avoid being derailed by a single misread turn.