(no subject)
...I suspect that I'm more like Kisa than I first thought.
I've been posting to the cfud_concrit community from the very first post in the community -- no joke -- I'm actually something like the second last commenter in it. I've also made an anonymous concrit post on this journal and although I greatly appreciate the "So cute!" posts I'm...still ridiculously worried.
When reviewing the manga for my application (I didn't get the anime until the day after I was accepted) I worked out that Kisa really has four major forces driving her:-
1. That she over-thinks, and what she says is really only a shallow representation of what she truly thinks and feels; and
2. That she wants to be liked and to have friends.
3. That she's naturally a sweet and kind girl.
4. That she's also thirteen years old.
The first two points are common for all of the Jyuunishi -- in fact, it's one of the consistent themes of the series. The last two, however, are unique to Kisa, and it's all of the above which is causing me some stress-fits.
I've taken a dramatic turn to where I thought I'd be with Kisa -- I thought she'd be a very minor character in the CFUD game and that she wouldn't interact with a lot of people. It turns out that I was so very wrong. Some of this comes from my lack of desire to idle out -- and from watching the game, it's a good idea to go out and meet people regularly so that you don't get locked into things -- but some also comes from the way in which Kisa arrived. She arrived in a box but no character laughed at her. Not a one. Haru helped her out of the box, people were genuinely interested in her welfare and people wanted to be her friend. This is a decidedly new experience for Kisa, as in her canon, she speaks to all of three people -- Haru, Hiro and Tohru. (Where's my goddamn Tohru?) Her classmates at school laugh at her whenever she speaks and she's very, very lonely.
CFUD is so very different from this. Kisa has friends -- some I would never have picked (Ueki? Ash? I swear she's going to become Shouta Sohma one day), very few people have laughed at her and people have been, in general, very supportive of her. To Kisa, it's like coming to a camp full of Tohrus, but with all new things for her to learn. Kisa wants to learn -- she wants to be liked, she wants to be loved and she wants to be the person who she thinks Hiro deserves. (Of course, if Hiro were asked, he'd want her just the way she was!) It's a very supportive environment, and so she's reaching out. She's not very sure about it yet, but she's trying. And that's my first wibble: is Kisa too social? Is she too confident?
In regards to the stuttering and stammering, I should mention that in my mind, Kisa isn't typing into the keyboard -- this is how she's managing to keep in the game with a broken collarbone. She's actually saying it aloud (most of the time in Japanese, for anyone who wants to know) and the computer obligingly translates it for her. (Her laptop likes her because she talks to it personally every morning, asked it what it wanted to be called and asks it whether it wants to look pretty etc. Yes, she's befriended her laptop. Go figure) As such, the stuttering, stammering and whispering is not just her using fancy font tricks but simply how she's talking. It's also fluid, with her being more hesitant or less so depending on the circumstances. This is my second wibble: is this apparent, or is it just coming across as an annoying affect?
The third thing is something rather more fundamental. Kisa's entire characterisation is designed to bring the cute. She's shy, sweet, loving and kind. She's also the youngest-looking twelve year old I've ever seen in the anime and manga. (The aging up of her later on was so good -- so happy here!) That said, she's still thirteen years old, and from a family where nudity doesn't seem to be such a big issue -- most of the problems from the series seem to come from Tohru seeing them naked, most of the Sohmas seem resigned to it now. She's old enough to understand sex and she's old enough to start to wonder about the opposite sex (and Hiro, but that's an essay for another day!). I don't want to play her as just being another cute kid at camp, but a cute thirteen year old girl who is sweet, kind and loving. My third wibble is: am I keeping this balance as it should be, or am I biased towards making her older to the detriment of her utter adorableness? (And she is! I freely admit that she looks utterly adorable. I just don't know if I'm balancing that).
Finally, the Akito-thing, as it's come to be called in my mind. In her canon, Hiro told Akito that he liked Kisa. Akito, being the deranged head of house that she is, punished Kisa for it. I kinda wish I were playing from a fusion of anime and manga, because then I could skip across and use the anime version of this scene. Anyway, in the manga, Kisa has to stay in bed for two weeks after Akito's finished with her. (This whole period was a period of suck for Kisa -- her best friend stopped talking to her, she started school and no-one liked her, she stopped speaking, then going to school and then finally ran away.) However, while we know that Kisa was hurt because of Hiro and Akito's jealousy, Kisa doesn't know that. All that Kisa knows is that Akito got her alone and beat her. She doesn't know what she's done, but she's dwelled on it ever since and has decided that it must have been something so horrible that Akito couldn't even speak of it. Because she doesn't know what she did, she's worried that she'll do it again, and that Akito will be even more angry with her this time because she didn't learn from her mistakes last time. As such, she's very, very cautious about what she does, and insists on things like people leaving her arm as it is -- in case it was something like not taking responsibility for her actions. She doesn't want Akito be disappointed in her and to punish her again -- in fact, she's terrified that he will. (In my head, Akito told Kisa that the reason why Hiro had been sent to camp and he was utterly miserable because of her and her being disobedient.) And that's my last big wibble: am I making too big a deal about this?
I've been posting to the cfud_concrit community from the very first post in the community -- no joke -- I'm actually something like the second last commenter in it. I've also made an anonymous concrit post on this journal and although I greatly appreciate the "So cute!" posts I'm...still ridiculously worried.
When reviewing the manga for my application (I didn't get the anime until the day after I was accepted) I worked out that Kisa really has four major forces driving her:-
1. That she over-thinks, and what she says is really only a shallow representation of what she truly thinks and feels; and
2. That she wants to be liked and to have friends.
3. That she's naturally a sweet and kind girl.
4. That she's also thirteen years old.
The first two points are common for all of the Jyuunishi -- in fact, it's one of the consistent themes of the series. The last two, however, are unique to Kisa, and it's all of the above which is causing me some stress-fits.
I've taken a dramatic turn to where I thought I'd be with Kisa -- I thought she'd be a very minor character in the CFUD game and that she wouldn't interact with a lot of people. It turns out that I was so very wrong. Some of this comes from my lack of desire to idle out -- and from watching the game, it's a good idea to go out and meet people regularly so that you don't get locked into things -- but some also comes from the way in which Kisa arrived. She arrived in a box but no character laughed at her. Not a one. Haru helped her out of the box, people were genuinely interested in her welfare and people wanted to be her friend. This is a decidedly new experience for Kisa, as in her canon, she speaks to all of three people -- Haru, Hiro and Tohru. (Where's my goddamn Tohru?) Her classmates at school laugh at her whenever she speaks and she's very, very lonely.
CFUD is so very different from this. Kisa has friends -- some I would never have picked (Ueki? Ash? I swear she's going to become Shouta Sohma one day), very few people have laughed at her and people have been, in general, very supportive of her. To Kisa, it's like coming to a camp full of Tohrus, but with all new things for her to learn. Kisa wants to learn -- she wants to be liked, she wants to be loved and she wants to be the person who she thinks Hiro deserves. (Of course, if Hiro were asked, he'd want her just the way she was!) It's a very supportive environment, and so she's reaching out. She's not very sure about it yet, but she's trying. And that's my first wibble: is Kisa too social? Is she too confident?
In regards to the stuttering and stammering, I should mention that in my mind, Kisa isn't typing into the keyboard -- this is how she's managing to keep in the game with a broken collarbone. She's actually saying it aloud (most of the time in Japanese, for anyone who wants to know) and the computer obligingly translates it for her. (Her laptop likes her because she talks to it personally every morning, asked it what it wanted to be called and asks it whether it wants to look pretty etc. Yes, she's befriended her laptop. Go figure) As such, the stuttering, stammering and whispering is not just her using fancy font tricks but simply how she's talking. It's also fluid, with her being more hesitant or less so depending on the circumstances. This is my second wibble: is this apparent, or is it just coming across as an annoying affect?
The third thing is something rather more fundamental. Kisa's entire characterisation is designed to bring the cute. She's shy, sweet, loving and kind. She's also the youngest-looking twelve year old I've ever seen in the anime and manga. (The aging up of her later on was so good -- so happy here!) That said, she's still thirteen years old, and from a family where nudity doesn't seem to be such a big issue -- most of the problems from the series seem to come from Tohru seeing them naked, most of the Sohmas seem resigned to it now. She's old enough to understand sex and she's old enough to start to wonder about the opposite sex (and Hiro, but that's an essay for another day!). I don't want to play her as just being another cute kid at camp, but a cute thirteen year old girl who is sweet, kind and loving. My third wibble is: am I keeping this balance as it should be, or am I biased towards making her older to the detriment of her utter adorableness? (And she is! I freely admit that she looks utterly adorable. I just don't know if I'm balancing that).
Finally, the Akito-thing, as it's come to be called in my mind. In her canon, Hiro told Akito that he liked Kisa. Akito, being the deranged head of house that she is, punished Kisa for it. I kinda wish I were playing from a fusion of anime and manga, because then I could skip across and use the anime version of this scene. Anyway, in the manga, Kisa has to stay in bed for two weeks after Akito's finished with her. (This whole period was a period of suck for Kisa -- her best friend stopped talking to her, she started school and no-one liked her, she stopped speaking, then going to school and then finally ran away.) However, while we know that Kisa was hurt because of Hiro and Akito's jealousy, Kisa doesn't know that. All that Kisa knows is that Akito got her alone and beat her. She doesn't know what she's done, but she's dwelled on it ever since and has decided that it must have been something so horrible that Akito couldn't even speak of it. Because she doesn't know what she did, she's worried that she'll do it again, and that Akito will be even more angry with her this time because she didn't learn from her mistakes last time. As such, she's very, very cautious about what she does, and insists on things like people leaving her arm as it is -- in case it was something like not taking responsibility for her actions. She doesn't want Akito be disappointed in her and to punish her again -- in fact, she's terrified that he will. (In my head, Akito told Kisa that the reason why Hiro had been sent to camp and he was utterly miserable because of her and her being disobedient.) And that's my last big wibble: am I making too big a deal about this?