So, I was working on some
Project Homuncupunk as
noted before.
Ms. Riku's backstory has the first two scenes written up-I had some pretty good momentum there for a while, but I had to eat and sleep and so on, so it got diffused. I'll comment more on that in the
below so you can look at that if you actually bother to read it . . . not that it's too long at the moment-I was going to wait until I finished to upload, but I decided that instead of asking people to read the whole thing at once, I should try to spread it out so it isn't as overwhelming.
Prose continues to be really awkward. In comics you just have cheesy dialogue, and you can show what's actually happening with pictures. Here, I have cheesy dialogue and cheesy narration. (Obviously, I really ought to learn to write even if it's just for the dialogue, but I'm really far too lazy. . . .) An interesting element that came up spontaneously is the fact that Ms. Riku is completely inexperienced with pretty much anything at the start, so she describes things in some rather childlike ways. It really makes describing things take a lot longer, because everything is so new to her and she doesn't know how to explain it in terms of someone who already understands it. On the other hand, the dialogue takes up a lot of space too. (Again, this is at least in part because I can't write.) You can see that I haven't balanced the action in well, so anyone who actually reads comic books is probably going to be pretty bored by all this stuff (unless he happens to be someone who really likes exactly this kind of stuff, such as me, obviously). I suppose the rule of having to keep the pace up doesn't really connect much with me, as I don't really notice whether I have emotional reactions when I read things, but I'm told it's important. I still may just ignore it, though. Writing stories is complicated enough as it is. You'll notice that there isn't a lot of differentation between Ms. Kurenai and Ms. Aoi. I wasn't sure whether to make them actually two characters, as they essentially have only one role in the story (and it is only a short story, after all, even when I write the next six-plus scenes). But, I thought that if there were only one of them, she would be more on a level with Ms. Isabel in terms of importance to Ms. Riku's life on a whole, and I didn't want to get in Ms. Isabel's way. Believe me, you don't try blocking Ms. Isabel's way to Ms. Riku, even if you had already met her 150 years before Ms. Isabel was born. After all, Ms. Isabel actually takes a major part in the main story, so we can't have her playing second fiddle in her primary inter-character relationship. Also, once I finish the backstory, you'll see that the fact that there are two of them is just about right for one logistical character development concern. Anyway, now that I'd decided they were two characters, I wanted to make sure neither of them stole the show too much (because that would be just too sad for the other one), so I ended up not thinking up much in the way of differences between them. I really didn't get across very well the idea that Ms. Riku, as a wolf-totem vampire, relies on her sense of smell a lot. This is because, well, I, like your average male human, don't pay too much attention to my sense of smell, as my sight and hearing are much more useful in most situations. Since most books I've read (even back when I did read books) were from a similar point of view, I don't get much sense of exactly what you can get out of your sense of smell, so I reverted mostly to more obvious visual stimuli to describe. I do remember how in The Wheel of Time, there are some scenes from Aybara's point of view after he's awakening as a wolfbrother or whatever, but I'm not sure how much the descriptions (of how he can judge things about people from their smells) are based in fact; after all, it is a fantasy series. If I'm not too bloody lazy, I might actually bother to research that a bit more. (Incidentally, it'd also be useful for a bit of Project AnthraXX, as you'll see if you look in the right place.) I also really glossed over the empathic impressions from the blood bond (with the excuse that Ms. Riku didn't remember it very well), because I really don't do well with abstract things like emotions. I know that even in comics, I have to express these in some way, and I'm really not bothering to try at this point. . . .
"The City" is just a bit beyond where it was
before. I added characters for a couple of people's names and changed the background details around a bit so they seemed more logical (for instance, Ms. Terese is only in her late 40s now). As you can see, there are still details that need to be worked out about the setting. I'm still not sure about the "unders" and "overs."
Finally, I've added a bit to
the comparison page. I originally created this page so that I could try to make sure I got enough variety in the female characters, in terms of both appearance and personality. I'll hopefully talk more about the vagaries (?) of differentiating characters' features in a later post. Meanwhile, you'll see that I added a bunch more rows to the table, including the few (relatively) major male characters. (Oddly enough, I almost forgot the main protagonist and antagonist, but now I've got at least their names down.) I of course decided I want to make sure that all the characters are significantly different (except where they have reasons to be similar). Of course, you can see that I got bored partway through this as well, so many of the folks who are later in the alphabet will have to wait.