WHAT THE HELL, SELF.
SOooooo. As some of you already noticed, I apparently puked out a crappy monster-sized Harvest Moon fic when I had MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO BE DOING.... Yeah I suck. -_-
It's really an "id fic" in many ways, but because of that I did also make a deliberate effort to distance myself from the narrator and develop her as a character in her own right. Because y'see, she's that dreaded blank slate of a player character, like the FE Tactician... with similar results in the fandom, though as a whole the PC figure is more "acceptable" in Harvest Moon fanfic because that's the whole point of the games.
Anyway, what happened was that my brain started playing connect-the-dots with some of the themes that kept cropping up in character backstories. (I have a tendency to do that when the canon narrative is incoherent or otherwise underdeveloped, or even nonexistent. The narrative in this game is bordering on nonexistent, but it's there if you squint.) And yeah.... there emerged this really interesting pattern about family and expectations and the like which I found pretty striking in a game that's essentially idealizing the rural lifestyle over city life.
So yeah, basically it snowballed.
What makes it worse is that I wrote it in first person -- and you all know how much I hate first person... oh wait, only some of you do. XD I honestly think first person is deceptively easy and that most people, especially beginning writers, tend to use it as a crutch. Because by nature first person provides this instant connection between both the writer and the character as well as the character and the audience, making it theoretically easier to read/write. Why I consider it lazy or deceptively easy though, is because it's very easy to fall into the trap of overlaying too much of your own voice onto the character's, and what happens is that most first person fiction ends up all just sounding the same.
That's one of the reasons. The second is that it becomes incredibly difficult to show as opposed to tell at crucial points -- there are really only so many ways you can say "I did this" or "I wanted that" or "I thought this" or "I felt that" and you end up sacrificing a lot of subtlety as well, unless you pick and choose what to reveal very carefully and trust that your readers will pay attention/remember that no first personal narrator is EVER completely reliable.
But in the end this fic demanded to be written in first person (all 20k words of it or so o_X) -- mostly because I am lazy, but also because it just refused to work in third. So basically tl;dr, writing in first person at length drives me nuts, boohoo, the end.
At least now I know I can spew out crap at EXTREME speeds when I'm sufficiently motivated.
As for the fic itself, there were basically a few things I was deliberately messing with:
1. Keeping out teh dramaz. I hate melodrama as a rule, and for a game about frikkin farming the fic in the fandom tends to get awfully soap operatic (based on my quick browse through -- I always do this to new fandoms before I start writing anything, both to get the "lay of the land" and also on the off chance that somebody out there's covered what I want to cover already). Granted, small town dynamics do lend themselves to a lot of self-contained drama, but key word SELF-CONTAINED.
Besides, I like myself some slice of life.
2. Speaking of which, actually featuring farming as an integral aspect of the storyline. Yeah I mostly winged the details, but really, come on now. A city girl without any experience whatsoever, trying to get an abandoned farm up and running again -- she's not gonna have time to be embroiling herself in all kinds of ridiculous hot messes.
3. Romance and relationships from a non-teen perspective. Self explanatory.
SOMEDAY, I will finally come across a romance I can actually relate to instead of feeling like, what is this, high school? (And not even that, but TV high school?)
4. No hatin' on the women. i.e. no gratuitous vilification of female characters. Pet peeve of mine.
5. Rooting the story at least halfway in Japanese culture.
"But but but the characters are blonds and brunettes and redheads and they all have Western names!"
Except Kai. (And Won, but the less said about him the better.)
"Yeah and they celebrate Spring/Winter Thanksgiving (in-game White Day/Valentine's Day equivalents), a Moon Festival, eat soba on New Year's, and there's a hot spring in the mountain next to your farm. Your point?"
6. The above point, btw, influenced a lot of my characterization. Frex narrator is not a snarky bitch and actually makes an effort to fit in because it's culturally expected of her. And Doctor can geek out over ridiculous crap like "Negative Ion [Therapy]" without looking like a quack or a total doofus (okay, maybe still the latter :P) because the whole concept is just SUCH AN ASIAN THING. Man, Japanese and their pseudo-scientific health fads.
And for the most part, no one's going to be insulting anyone to their face. Because that's just not done.
7. Passing the Bechdel Test. Harder than it sounds, thanks to the nature of the fandom. (There are times when I deliberately don't bother passing it, or when it's simply not possible, but given the setting and premise of this story it would have been a disgrace not to include women talking to each other. About stuff other than men.)
8. Last but not least, not every story has to end with marriage and a baby. Even in a fandom like Harvest Moon where that's the major goal of the game.
SERIOUSLY.
This post brought to you by "No really, I am still on HIATUS/lurking mode until June or so."
(Does anyone ever believe me when I say I'm on hiatus anymore? -____-)
It's really an "id fic" in many ways, but because of that I did also make a deliberate effort to distance myself from the narrator and develop her as a character in her own right. Because y'see, she's that dreaded blank slate of a player character, like the FE Tactician... with similar results in the fandom, though as a whole the PC figure is more "acceptable" in Harvest Moon fanfic because that's the whole point of the games.
Anyway, what happened was that my brain started playing connect-the-dots with some of the themes that kept cropping up in character backstories. (I have a tendency to do that when the canon narrative is incoherent or otherwise underdeveloped, or even nonexistent. The narrative in this game is bordering on nonexistent, but it's there if you squint.) And yeah.... there emerged this really interesting pattern about family and expectations and the like which I found pretty striking in a game that's essentially idealizing the rural lifestyle over city life.
So yeah, basically it snowballed.
What makes it worse is that I wrote it in first person -- and you all know how much I hate first person... oh wait, only some of you do. XD I honestly think first person is deceptively easy and that most people, especially beginning writers, tend to use it as a crutch. Because by nature first person provides this instant connection between both the writer and the character as well as the character and the audience, making it theoretically easier to read/write. Why I consider it lazy or deceptively easy though, is because it's very easy to fall into the trap of overlaying too much of your own voice onto the character's, and what happens is that most first person fiction ends up all just sounding the same.
That's one of the reasons. The second is that it becomes incredibly difficult to show as opposed to tell at crucial points -- there are really only so many ways you can say "I did this" or "I wanted that" or "I thought this" or "I felt that" and you end up sacrificing a lot of subtlety as well, unless you pick and choose what to reveal very carefully and trust that your readers will pay attention/remember that no first personal narrator is EVER completely reliable.
But in the end this fic demanded to be written in first person (all 20k words of it or so o_X) -- mostly because I am lazy, but also because it just refused to work in third. So basically tl;dr, writing in first person at length drives me nuts, boohoo, the end.
At least now I know I can spew out crap at EXTREME speeds when I'm sufficiently motivated.
As for the fic itself, there were basically a few things I was deliberately messing with:
1. Keeping out teh dramaz. I hate melodrama as a rule, and for a game about frikkin farming the fic in the fandom tends to get awfully soap operatic (based on my quick browse through -- I always do this to new fandoms before I start writing anything, both to get the "lay of the land" and also on the off chance that somebody out there's covered what I want to cover already). Granted, small town dynamics do lend themselves to a lot of self-contained drama, but key word SELF-CONTAINED.
Besides, I like myself some slice of life.
2. Speaking of which, actually featuring farming as an integral aspect of the storyline. Yeah I mostly winged the details, but really, come on now. A city girl without any experience whatsoever, trying to get an abandoned farm up and running again -- she's not gonna have time to be embroiling herself in all kinds of ridiculous hot messes.
3. Romance and relationships from a non-teen perspective. Self explanatory.
SOMEDAY, I will finally come across a romance I can actually relate to instead of feeling like, what is this, high school? (And not even that, but TV high school?)
4. No hatin' on the women. i.e. no gratuitous vilification of female characters. Pet peeve of mine.
5. Rooting the story at least halfway in Japanese culture.
"But but but the characters are blonds and brunettes and redheads and they all have Western names!"
Except Kai. (And Won, but the less said about him the better.)
"Yeah and they celebrate Spring/Winter Thanksgiving (in-game White Day/Valentine's Day equivalents), a Moon Festival, eat soba on New Year's, and there's a hot spring in the mountain next to your farm. Your point?"
6. The above point, btw, influenced a lot of my characterization. Frex narrator is not a snarky bitch and actually makes an effort to fit in because it's culturally expected of her. And Doctor can geek out over ridiculous crap like "Negative Ion [Therapy]" without looking like a quack or a total doofus (okay, maybe still the latter :P) because the whole concept is just SUCH AN ASIAN THING. Man, Japanese and their pseudo-scientific health fads.
And for the most part, no one's going to be insulting anyone to their face. Because that's just not done.
7. Passing the Bechdel Test. Harder than it sounds, thanks to the nature of the fandom. (There are times when I deliberately don't bother passing it, or when it's simply not possible, but given the setting and premise of this story it would have been a disgrace not to include women talking to each other. About stuff other than men.)
8. Last but not least, not every story has to end with marriage and a baby. Even in a fandom like Harvest Moon where that's the major goal of the game.
SERIOUSLY.
This post brought to you by "No really, I am still on HIATUS/lurking mode until June or so."
(Does anyone ever believe me when I say I'm on hiatus anymore? -____-)