Stories and re-reTop stacks
How the stories player differs from a feed, what the stack is, and how a chain of reTops is read.
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What a story is here
A story is a reTop, shown full screen with the next one a swipe away. It is not a separate kind of post with its own composer — anything you reTop can be read this way, which is why the tray at the top of the home screen fills up on its own as people you follow reTop things.
How long a card holds depends on what it is. A clip runs for the length of the clip, because the progress bar is the video's own position. A frame, a cover or a text card holds for a fixed beat instead, since there is no playback to follow.
The stack
When a reTop has been reTopped by others, the player does not show those as separate stories in a queue. It shows the original with the re-reTops fanned over it, up to ten of them, and the one belonging to whoever's tray you opened selected on top.
The layers button folds the fan away, leaving the original alone. Tapping a card in the fan selects it and brings it forward. The sheet lists every re-reTop including the ones past the ten the fan draws, so nothing is unreachable.
Reading a chain
The useful habit is to read a stack from the bottom. The card underneath is what was originally said; everything fanned over it is a response to that, and the captions are the responders' own words. A chain three deep is common and still legible, because each layer keeps the thing it is about attached to it rather than quoting it by reference.